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Human Bipedalism May Have Evolved in Trees, Study Says

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.
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 the Late Miocene to Pliocene period. Chimpanzees living in analogous habitats to early hominins offer a unique opportunity to investigate the ecological drivers of bipedalism that cannot be addressed via the fossil record alone. In new research, scientists focused on a community of eastern chimpanzees...

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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...

A portrait of a juvenile female Denisovan based on a skeletal profile reconstructed from ancient DNA methylation maps. Image credit: Maayan Harel.

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...

An artist’s impression of an active mantle plume -- a large blob of warm and buoyant rock -- rising from deep inside Mars and pushing up Elysium Planitia, a plain within the planet’s northern lowlands. Image credit: Adrien Broquet & Audrey Lasbordes.

Planetary Scientists Find Evidence for Active Mantle Plume on Mars

Dec 6, 2022 by News Staff

Elysium Planitia, a flat-smooth plain just north of the Martian equator, is underlain by an 4,000-km-diameter active mantle plume, according to new research...

Life reconstruction of Patagopelta cristata. Image credit: Gabriel Díaz Yalten.

New Small-Bodied Ankylosaur Species Unearthed in Argentina

Dec 5, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new genus and species of nodosaurid ankylosaur has been identified from fossils found in Patagonia, Argentina. Life reconstruction of Patagopelta cristata....

Life reconstruction of Natovenator polydontus. Image credit: Yusik Choi.

Cretaceous Bird-Like Dinosaur Had Adaptations for Swimming and Diving

Dec 2, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new genus and species of theropod dinosaur with a streamlined body as in diving birds has been identified from a well-preserved skeleton found in Mongolia. Life...

An illustration of an asteroid on its way to ancient Mars. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO / Nathan Owen-Price / Sci.News.

Chicxulub-Like Asteroid Caused Megatsunami on Early Mars

Dec 1, 2022 by News Staff

The Chicxulub-like asteroid crash landed in shallow ocean waters in the Martian region of Chryse Planitia 3.4 billion years ago (Hesperian period) and...

An artist’s impression of a tidal disruption event. Image credit: Carl Knox / OzGrav, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery, Swinburne University of Technology.

Astronomers Detect Very Luminous Jet from Star-Eating Supermassive Black Hole

Dec 1, 2022 by News Staff

A supermassive black hole devours a star that has come too close. In extremely rare instances — only about 1% of the time — these so-called...

Life reconstruction of Janavis finalidens. Image credit: Phillip Krzeminski.

Cretaceous-Period Toothed Bird Had Mobile Beak

Dec 1, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

Janavis finalidens — an extinct bird species that lived 66.7 million years ago and was one of the last toothed birds to ever live — had a mobile,...

This Webb image shows the center of Messier 74. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Webb / Hoyer et al., arXiv: 2211.13997.

Webb Focuses on Nuclear Star Cluster of Messier 74

Nov 30, 2022 by Natali Anderson

Using new images from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope as well as archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have studied...

Pterodactylus antiquus from the Late Jurassic Torleite Formation of Painten. Image credit: Augustin et al., doi: 10.3897/fr.25.90692.

Paleontologists Find Oldest Fossil of Pterodactylus

Nov 30, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

This Pterodactylus individual lived in what is now Germany during the Kimmeridgian age of the Late Jurassic epoch, between 155 and 152 million years ago. Pterodactylus...

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