Featured News | Sci.News

An artist’s concept of a Penghu Denisovan walking under the bright Sun during the Pleistocene of Taiwan. Image credit: Cheng-Han Sun.

Denisovans Were Surprisingly Tall, New Fossils from Taiwan Suggest

Aug 17, 2026 by Sergio Prostak

Two fossilized leg bones of Denisovans — an extinct archaic Homo group whose lineage diverged from the Neanderthal lineage 550,000 years ago and...

Reconstruction of the faunal assemblage of La Venta, showing the hypothetical predation event with Purussaurus neivensis attacking Pericotoxodon platignathus; also pictured in the foreground are Anhinga cf. A. grandis and Caiman sp. Image credit: Miguel Hernandez.

Giant Crocodiles Once Preyed on Massive Mammals in South America

Aug 17, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have uncovered the first direct physical evidence that colossal prehistoric crocodiles hunted large plant-eating mammals in what is now...

Adansonia za. Image credit: Hectonichus / CC BY-SA 3.0.

New Baobab Species Identified in Madagascar

Aug 17, 2026 by Natali Anderson

Scientists analyzing DNA of Madagascar’s iconic baobab trees have concluded that a widespread species called Adansonia za is actually two, formally resurrecting...

The Baturité antthrush (Chamaeza baturitensis). Image credit: Fábio Nunes.

Ornithologists Discover New Bird Species in Brazil

Aug 14, 2026 by Natali Anderson

A previously unrecognized species of the antthrush genus Chamaeza has been discovered in the isolated highland rainforests of northeastern Brazil. The...

Life reconstruction of a group of Chiniquodon theotonicus individuals, a pregnant female (left) as well as a female (right) breastfeeding few, relatively large neonates. Image credit: María de los Ángeles Miceli Baro.

Fossil Evidence Pushes Back Origin of Live Birth by 90 Million Years

Aug 13, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists studying a 236-million-year-old cynodont fossil from Argentina say they have found the earliest evidence yet of viviparity (live birth)...

This Webb image shows the MoM-BH*-1 object. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Webb / Naidu et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-026-10846-4.

Astronomers Find Black Hole Star in Early Universe

Aug 12, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Roughly 660 million years after the Big Bang, a strange bright red spot has been hiding in plain sight in one of the deepest fields ever imaged by the...

An artistic reconstruction of Jabalisaurus tethyensis, depicted in the water column close to the surface while pursuing halecomorph fishes. Image credit: Giovanni Serafini.

Germany’s Famous Fossil Beds Yield New Species of Jurassic Ichthyosaur

Aug 11, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

For more than a century, paleontologists studying the Late Jurassic seas that once covered southern Germany believed only one species of ichthyosaur, Aegirosaurus...

An artist’s rendering of a Homo antecessor individual known as the Girl of Gran Dolina. Image credit: Tom Björklund.

Homo antecessor Had Surprisingly Modern Skull, New Fossils Suggest

Aug 10, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new analysis of three skull fragments unearthed at the Gran Dolina cave site in Spain indicates that Homo antecessor had bone thickness closer to that...

Life reconstruction of Dinevenator robustus. Image credit: Sergey Krasovskiy.

New Troodontid Dinosaur Genus Identified from Fossil Bone Found Decades Ago in New Mexico

Aug 7, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have described a new genus of small, bird-like dinosaur that lived in what is now New Mexico approximately 73 million years ago. Life reconstruction...

The highest-resolution image of the Sun’s surface (photosphere) ever captured, taken at 416 nm by the Inouye Solar Telescope; it reveals deformed boundaries of magnetic elements and ultra-fine scale stripes, both associated with Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. Image credit: NSF / NSO / AURA / MPS.

Inouye Solar Telescope Discovers Hidden Plasma Vortices on Sun

Aug 7, 2026 by News Staff

Astronomers using the 4-m Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii have detected tiny plasma vortices on the Sun’s surface (photosphere) for the first...

Paranthropus boisei. Image credit: © Roman Yevseyev.

Study Points to Sugar, Not Just Meat, as Fuel for Human Brain Evolution

Aug 6, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

A team of researchers from the University of Sydney and the University of Glasgow argues that dietary sugars, not animal foods, may have played the decisive...

Morphology of Saxifraga candelabrum. Image credit: Zhang et al., doi: 10.1038/s41467-026-75288-y.

Scientists Add Unlikely New Member to World’s Carnivorous Plants

Aug 5, 2026 by Natali Anderson

More than 150 years after Charles Darwin first wondered whether certain sticky-leaved Saxifraga plants might be secretly carnivorous, Kunming Institute...

An artist’s impression of Yantaloong lini. Image credit: TotalDino / CC BY 4.0.

Fossil Find in China Reveals Dinosaur Family Never Before Seen in East Asia

Aug 4, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists working in southern China have identified a new species of sauropod dinosaur that appears to belong to a group never before documented...

An archaic hominin. Image credit: Ninara / CC BY 2.0.

Scientists Find Traces of Two Unknown Archaic Hominins in Human DNA

Aug 2, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

New research led by the University of California, Berkeley reveals that beyond Neanderthals and Denisovans, humans interbred with two mysterious ‘ghost’...

Life reconstruction of Musango matusadonaensis. Image credit: Mark Witton.

New Species of Triassic Dinosaur Discovered on Shores of Zimbabwe’s Lake Kariba

Jul 29, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

An international team of paleontologists has identified a new species of early sauropodomorph dinosaur in Zimbabwe, adding to growing evidence that southern...

One of 1.43-million-year-old footprints found at the GaJi10 site in the Koobi Fora Formation in northern Kenya; a 15-cm (6-inch) ruler is shown for scale. Image credit: Kay Behrensmeyer.

Ancient Footprints in Kenya Hint at Bigger Bodies and Group Behavior among Early Human Relatives

Jul 28, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

A set of 1.43-million-year-old fossil footprints preserved along the margin of an ancient lake in northern Kenya is offering paleoanthropologists new evidence...

This VLT/SPHERE image shows the clearest image ever of what likely is Betelgeuse B. Image credit: ESO / Montargès et al.

Astronomers Directly Image Betelgeuse’s Long-Suspected Stellar Companion

Jul 28, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

After a century of speculation, astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have captured the clearest evidence yet that the red supergiant Betelgeuse...

Apis aibai. Image credit: Y. Takahashi & J-ichi Takahashi, doi: 10.3897/zookeys.1255.162389.

Japanese Fossil Bee Fills Two-Million-Year Gap in Honeybee History

Jul 27, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have announced the discovery of a new fossil honeybee species that fills a long-standing gap in the evolutionary record of the genus Apis. Apis...

This illustration shows the stellar system CD-35 2722, with the newly found exomoon at the center; the star has about half the mass of our Sun, and it is orbited by a brown dwarf, the reddish-brown object seen here in the foreground (right). Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser.

Planetary-Mass Exomoon Found Circling Brown Dwarf

Jul 26, 2026 by Natali Anderson

Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have discovered a gas giant around a brown dwarf in the stellar system CD-35 2722. The discovery blurs...