Humans, unlike most other species, have a knack for making tools. Six million years ago, our apelike ancestors probably smashed nuts with rocks or caught termites with sticks. Around 3.3 million years ago, hominins began using flakes of stone, perhaps to cut flesh from carcasses or chop plants. And by 1.5 million years ago, they…
Five years ago Italian researchers published a study on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. that detailed how one victim of the blast, a male presumed to be in his mid 20s, had been found nearby in the seaside settlement of Herculaneum. He was lying facedown and buried by ash on a wooden…
Mycorrhizal fungi are the supply chains of the soil. With filaments thinner than hair, they shuttle vital nutrients to plants and tree roots. In return, the fungi receive carbon to grow their networks. In this way, 13 billion tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide — one-third of fossil-fuel emissions worldwide — enter the soil each year….
Deep in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, physicists have uncovered evidence of a ghostly subatomic particle catapulting through space at a speed they once could only dream of. “What we have discovered is, we think, the most energetic neutrino ever recorded on Earth,” said Paul de Jong, a physicist at the University of Amsterdam…
It’s taken decades, but scientists may have finally found Earth’s first fowl. It started in 1993 on Vega Island, a frigid, windswept rock off the Antarctic Peninsula. A mostly headless skeleton of a loon-size diving bird emerged from rocks that, at 68 million years old, predated the dinosaur extinction. The species, which scientists named Vegavis…
Every July, at the opening ceremony of the San Fermín festival signaling the imminent start of the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, more than 5,000 people cram into the city’s central plaza. The crowd starts the morning dressed in white. By noon, much of their clothing has been dyed pink by the free-flowing…
Our solar system contains planets, dwarf planets, asteroids and comets — but only one world is known to harbor life. Scientists have long debated whether Earth is truly unique. Perhaps our planet just happened to have the right combination of ingredients, conditions and timing to allow life to emerge. But a pinch of grit from…
A tantalizing vision of a women-centric society has emerged from an ancient cemetery in the bucolic countryside of southwest England. Whereas women commonly left home to join their husbands’ families upon marriage, the Durotriges, a Celtic tribe that lived in Dorset 2,000 years ago, bucked the mold with a system called matrilocality, wherein women remained…
Mark Sutton, an Imperial College London paleontologist, is not a punk. “I’m more of a folk and country person,” he said. But when Dr. Sutton pieced together 3-D renderings of a tiny fossil mollusk, he was struck by the spikes that covered its wormlike body. “This is like a classic punk hairstyle, the way it’s…
“This replicates and reinforces what we already know about sugar-sweetened beverages,” he said, “but the findings highlight their severe costs on health and productivity, especially in Africa and Latin America.” The study detailed intriguing patterns in the consumption of sugary drinks. For example, researchers found that men had modestly higher rates of soda consumption than…
