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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...

An artist’s reconstruction of Miyumba chrisdickmani in the Early Miocene rainforests of northern Australia. Image credit: Nellie Pease.

Early Miocene Fossil Rewrites Family Tree of Little Carnivorous Marsupials

Jul 24, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists at the University of New South Wales have described a new genus and species of dasyurid marsupial from the Early Miocene of Australia,...

The north polar region of Io was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on December 30, 2023. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt.

Juno’s Microwave Vision Peers beneath Surface of Jupiter’s Volcanic Moon Io

Jul 23, 2026 by Natali Anderson

New data from NASA’s Juno spacecraft show temperatures spike more than 20 degrees Celsius just a few meters under Io’s surface, providing the first...

An artist’s impression of the Kimmeridge Clay pliosaur. Image credit: Megan Jacobs, University of Portsmouth.

Jurassic Pliosaur Liopleurodon Was Big, but Not as Big as Once Feared

Jul 22, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

For several decades, Liopleurodon ferox — a short-necked marine reptile that patrolled the seas of what is now England and France some 163 million...

Life reconstruction of Ceratocaudia antiqua, the earliest-known macronarian neosauropod species from India. Image credit: Connor Ashbridge / CC BY 4.0.

Small Sauropod Dinosaur from Jurassic Period Discovered in India

Jul 21, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists in India have unearthed a partial skeleton of a diminutive, previously unknown neosauropod dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic rocks of Gujarat’s...

Carinasquama rusmithii. Image credit: Daza et al., doi: 10.3897/sjp.145.188227.

Oldest Known Male Gecko Found Preserved in Kachin Amber

Jul 20, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have described a new genus and species of ancient gecko found in two pieces of amber from the 99-million-year-old (mid-Cretaceous) amber...