News Archive for August 2026

Track-bearing slab T-373 from King George Island, Antarctica. Sclae bar - 10 mm. Image credit: Mansilla-Vera et al., doi: 10.1007/s00300-026-03539-1.

55-Million-Year-Old Predatory Mammal Footprint Found in Antarctica

Aug 31, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

A single fossilized footprint found in volcanic mud on a remote Antarctic island is the first known trackway from a mammal in Antarctica, and the earliest...

A pair of thylacines, a male and female, c. 1905. Image credit: Smithsonian Institutional Archives / E. J. Keller, National Zoological Park.

Tasmanian Tiger’s Skull Reveals Hunting Style with No Modern Match

Aug 31, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

For nearly a century, scientists have treated the thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) as a textbook case of convergent evolution — a marsupial that...

This colorful view of Mercury was produced by using images from the color base map imaging campaign during MESSENGER’s primary mission. These colors are not what Mercury would look like to the human eye, but rather the colors enhance the chemical, mineralogical, and physical differences between the rocks that make up the planet’s surface. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Mercury’s Crust May Hide Metal beneath Its Surface

Aug 31, 2026 by Sergio Prostak

Using a novel laboratory calibration, planetary researchers in Germany have produced the most reliable map yet of silica (SiO2) concentrations across the...

Diet macronutrient content affects the cardiometabolic benefits of weight loss. Image credit: Petersen et al., doi: 10.1016/j.cmet.2026.07.020.

Keto Diet Outperforms Others for Cardiometabolic Health during Weight Loss: Study

Aug 31, 2026 by Natali Anderson

Not all diets are created equal when it comes to reversing the metabolic damage of obesity, even when they produce the same amount of weight loss, according...

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Telescope lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 30, 2026 at 7:26 a.m. EDT. Image credit: NASA.

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Launches on Mission to Probe Hidden Universe

Aug 30, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched August 30, 2026 at 7:26 a.m. EDT (11:26 UTC) aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Launch Complex 39A at...

Paleo-Indians hunting a glyptodont, a relative of the armadillo that lived during the Pleistocene epoch. By Heinrich Harder, 1920.

Paleontologists Identify New Species of Glyptodont

Aug 28, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

An incomplete fossilized skull that has sat in the collections of the Natural History Museum of Denmark since the 19th century has turned out to represent...

Candidate event displays of double-Higgs boson production as recorded by ATLAS (left) and CMS (right). Image credit: CERN.

CERN Physicists Hunting for Pairs of Higgs Bosons

Aug 28, 2026 by News Staff

New results from the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) offer a tantalizing hint of Higgs bosons interacting with one...

Radiologically contaminated sites such as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone have created novel environmental stressors with the potential to substantially influence the ecology of organisms and wider ecosystem function. Nevertheless, radiation dose rates at which negative effects occur are uncertain. Burrows et al investigated a potential mechanism for these sub-lethal consequences by testing whether radiation exposure makes bees less metabolically efficient. Image credit: Josef Pichler.

Bumblebees May Self-Medicate when Their Colony Faces Fungal Pathogen

Aug 27, 2026 by Natali Anderson

In a new study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) exposed to a brood-killing fungus shifted...

Venus in real colors, processed from Mariner 10 images. Image credit: Mattias Malmer / NASA.

Something in Venus’ Clouds is Absorbing Astonishing Amount of Sunlight

Aug 27, 2026 by News Staff

New research puts stringent limits on the unknown ‘material’ responsible for Venus’ dark ultraviolet markings, suggesting it must absorb sunlight...

An artist’s conception of Etowah, a Mississippian culture site located on the banks of the Etowah River in Bartow County, Georgia. Image credit: Herb Roe / Sci.News.

Mississippian People May Have Consumed Cacao as Early as 11th Century

Aug 26, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Long before Europeans arrived, cacao (Theobroma cacao) may have traveled far beyond its Central and South American homeland to reach Etowah, a major Mississippian-period...

Alzheimer’s disease remains irreversible largely because the adult brain cannot replace lost neurons; Wang et al. present a Nano-ERASER-based Trim-Away system that enables adult neuroregeneration in Alzheimer’s brain. Image credit: Wang et al., doi: 10.1016/j.celbio.2026.100575.

Nanoparticle Therapy Reverses Alzheimer’s Progression in Mice

Aug 26, 2026 by News Staff

Researchers at the University of South Carolina have developed a nanoparticle-based treatment that appears to improve performance on standard memory and...

Shi et al. demonstrate that biodegradable plastics can release nanoplastics during routine use, highlighting a previously overlooked pathway of consumer exposure. Image credit: Alexas Fotos.

‘Compostable’ Coffee Cups May Shed More Plastic than the Ones They’re Meant to Replace

Aug 26, 2026 by Natali Anderson

Paper cups lined with plant-based plastic are often marketed as the eco-friendly choice at coffee shops and cafeterias. But new research by University...

Cornell et al. demonstrate all-mechanical coherence protection of a silicon-vacancy spin in diamond. Image credit: Cornell et al., doi: 10.1038/s41567-026-03369-2.

Physicists Use Sound Waves to Keep Quantum Information from Slipping Away

Aug 26, 2026 by News Staff

A team of physicists at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences has found that a steady stream of sound waves can shield...

These Webb images show massive galaxies studied by Cheng et al. Image credit: Chloe Cheng.

Webb Find Hidden Stars Making Early Galaxies Far More Massive than Thought

Aug 26, 2026 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have revealed a surprisingly large population of faint, low-mass stars in distant galaxies,...

Fossilized wings of the nine ensiferan species analyzed by Gu et al. Image credit: Gu et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2615107123.

Scientists Reconstruct Sound of Jurassic Insects

Aug 25, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using lasers, computer models and AI, researchers reconstructed the calls of 165-million-year-old relatives of modern crickets and katydids from fossilized...

Little red dots may reside in small galaxies with total masses equivalent to around one billion times that of the Sun. Image credit: Zhang et al., doi: 10.1038/s41550-026-02945-z.

Mysterious ‘Little Red Dots’ Could Be Tiny Galaxies with Giant Black Holes at Their Hearts

Aug 25, 2026 by News Staff

The mysterious objects spotted in the early Universe may not be isolated points of light after all. A new analysis of images of 217 ‘little red dots’...

Drummond-Clarke et al. show that trees were an essential component of the hominin adaptive niche, with bipedalism evolving in an arboreal context, likely driven by foraging strategy. Illustration by Arturo Asensio, via Quo.es.

Our Ancient Ancestors May Have Climbed Trees with ‘Monkey’ Feet

Aug 25, 2026 by Sergio Prostak

An enduring debate in paleoanthropology asks what kind of foot the last common ancestor (LCA) of humans and chimpanzees had: one built like a modern ape’s...

Nipponopelta yezoensis. Image credit: TotalDino / CC BY 4.0.

New Species of Armored Dinosaur Identified in Japan

Aug 24, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Cranial fossils of a nodosaurid ankylosaur unearthed more than two decades ago on the Japanese island of Hokkaido have been recognized as belonging to...

This image of Phobos in front of the Sun was captured by Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z camera on August 12, 2026. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU / MSSS / SSI.

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Spots Phobos Crossing the Sun

Aug 24, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Perseverance has caught the silhouette of Phobos, one of the two Martian moons, sweeping across the solar disk in a fresh transit video from Jezero crater. This...

This ALMA image shows the red supergiant star Betelgeuse. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / Dent et al.

ALMA Reveals Betelgeuse’s Fiery, Long-Lived Hot Spots

Aug 24, 2026 by Natali Anderson

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array have captured stunning new images of the surface of Betelgeuse, the famous red supergiant...

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