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The 15,700-year-old stone projectile points from the Area B of the Cooper’s Ferry site in Idaho, the United States. Image credit: Loren Davis.

15,700-Year-Old Projectile Points Found in Idaho

Dec 26, 2022 by News Staff

Archaeologists have unearthed an assemblage of 14 stemmed projectile points at the Cooper’s Ferry site, located on a terrace of the lower Salmon River...

Bear skins have high insulating properties and might have played a role in the adaptations of Middle Pleistocene hominins, such as Homo heidelbergensis depicted here, to the cold and harsh winter conditions of Northwestern Europe. Image credit: Benoît Clarys.

320,000-Year-Old Cutmarked Bones Provide Evidence for Exploitation of Bear Skins

Dec 23, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

Researchers from the University of Tübingen and elsewhere have unearthed the cutmarked bones of cave bears at the Middle Pleistocene site of Schöningen...

An artist’s impression of an enantiornithine bird. Image credit: Tiny Longwing / CC BY-SA 4.0.

Paleontologists Discover New Species of Dinosaur-Era Bird

Dec 22, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new genus and species of enantiornithine bird has been described from a partial right humerus found in southern Patagonia, Argentina. An artist’s impression...

An artist’s impression of a sauropod dinosaur. Image credit: Levi Bernardo / CC BY-SA 3.0.

New Sauropod Dinosaur Unearthed in China

Dec 20, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new genus and species of titanosauriform sauropod dinosaur with an unusual tail has been identified from a partial skeleton found in northeastern China. An...

An artist’s impression of two temperate Earth-mass exoplanets orbiting Gliese 1002, a red dwarf star some 16 light-years away in the constellation of Cetus. Image credit: Alejandro Suárez Mascareño & Inés Bonet, IAC.

Two Potentially Habitable Exo-Earths Found around Nearby Red Dwarf

Dec 20, 2022 by Natali Anderson

The two temperate Earth-mass planets are located within the habitably zone of Gliese 1002, a red dwarf star that lies just 4.84 parsecs (16 light-years)...

The Eastern Tropical Pacific bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus nuuanu). Image credit: NOAA / NMFS / SWFSC.

New Subspecies of Common Bottlenose Dolphin Identified

Dec 19, 2022 by Natali Anderson

The Eastern Tropical Pacific bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus nuuanu) prefers the deep waters off southern Baja California, the Pacific coast of...

Adult and young individuals of Shonisaurus popularis chase ammonoid prey 230 million years ago, in what is now Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park, Nevada, the United States. Image credit: Gabriel Ugueto.

Paleontologists Identify Birthing Grounds of Triassic Ichthyosaurs

Dec 19, 2022 by News Staff

The renowned Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park, part of Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in the Shoshone Mountains of west-central Nevada, the United States,...

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.

Human Bipedalism May Have Evolved in Trees, Study Says

Dec 15, 2022 by News Staff

Bipedalism — walking upright on two legs — us a defining feature of the human lineage. It is thought to have evolved as forests retreated in...

Thottea beungongtanoeh flower. Image credit: Wendy A. Mustaqim.

Beautiful New Species of Flowering Plant Discovered

Dec 14, 2022 by Natali Anderson

Botanists from the Universitas Samudra have described a new species of the flowering plant genus Thottea from the lowland mixed forests of northern Sumatra,...

To create fusion ignition, NIF’s laser energy is converted into X-rays inside the hohlraum, which then compress a fuel capsule until it implodes, creating a high temperature, high pressure plasma. Image credit: National Ignition Facility, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Physicists Achieve Key Milestone in Nuclear Fusion Energy

Dec 13, 2022 by News Staff

Physicists with the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have successfully produced a nuclear fusion reaction resulting...

Life reconstruction of Ramsayia magna. Image credit: Eleanor Pease.

Giant Wombat Species with Large, Fleshy Nose Once Lived in Australia

Dec 13, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have discovered and examined the fossilized craniodental remains of Ramsayia magna, an extinct large-bodied wombat species that lived in...

An artist’s impression of the ALICE study of Milky Way’s transparency to antimatter. Image credit: ORIGINS Cluster, Technical University Munich.

Milky Way is Partially Transparent to Light Antimatter Nuclei: Study

Dec 13, 2022 by News Staff

Antimatter particles such as positrons and antiprotons abound in the cosmos. Much less common are light antinuclei, composed of antiprotons and antineutrons,...

Life reconstruction of Rinconsaurus, a sister species of Caieiria allocaudata. Image credit: Steveoc 86 / CC BY-SA 3.0.

New Titanosaur Species Identified in Brazil

Dec 12, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have identified a new genus and species of titanosaurian dinosaur from the fossilized remains found in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. Life...

Denisovan DNA Shaped Papuans’ Immune System, New Study Shows

Dec 9, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

Modern humans have admixed with multiple species of archaic hominins. Papuans, in particular, owe up to 5% of their genome to Denisovans, a sister group...

Reconstruction of the Kap København Formation ecosystem 2 million years ago. Image credit: Beth Zaiken.

Scientists Reconstruct 2-Million-Year-Old Ecosystem from Environmental DNA

Dec 8, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

Researchers have analyzed microscopic fragments of 2-million-year-old environmental DNA from of the Kap København Formation in Greenland. The DNA record...

The nibblerid microbial predator Ubysseya fretuma. Image credit: Tikhonenkov et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-05511-5.

Meet Provora, New Supergroup of Eukaryotes

Dec 8, 2022 by News Staff

Ten previously undescribed strains of microbial predators isolated from geographically distinct marine habitats — including coral reefs of Curaçao,...

The Hainan rhinoceros snake (Gonyosoma hainanense). Image credit: Mian Hou / Peng et al., doi: 10.24272/j.issn.2095-8137.2021.085.

Cryptic New Species of Rhinoceros Snake Identified in China

Dec 7, 2022 by Natali Anderson

Scientists have described a new species of the snake genus Gonyosoma from Hainan Island, China. The Hainan rhinoceros snake (Gonyosoma hainanense). Image...

When neutron stars merge, they can produce radioactive ejecta that powers a kilonova signal, as this conceptual image shows. Image credit: Dreamstime.

Hybrid Neutron-Star Merger Detected for the First Time

Dec 7, 2022 by News Staff

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) come in two varieties, long and short. Long GRBs, which last a couple of seconds to one minute, form when a star at least 10 times...

Hypothetical life restoration of a mawsoniid coelacanth from the Kimmeridge Clay Formation. Image credit: S. Gausden.

Fossil of Large Jurassic Coelacanth Found in England

Dec 6, 2022 by Sergio Prostak

Fossilized remains of an enigmatic mawsoniid coelacanth that grew over 1 m long have been discovered by an international team of paleontologists from the...