Other Sciences News

Paranthropus boisei. Image credit: © Roman Yevseyev.

2.6-Million-Year-Old Fossil from Ethiopia Shows Paranthropus Hominins Were Widespread

Jan 21, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

The newly-discovered fossil — a 2.6-million-year-old partial lower jaw found in the Afar region of Ethiopia — represents the first known specimen...

Tectonic Plate Movements, Not Volcanoes, Drove Major Climate Shifts Over 540 Million Years

Jan 20, 2026 by News Staff

New research challenges conventional wisdom by demonstrating that mid-ocean ridges and continental rifts, not volcanic eruptions, played the central role...

Operating principle and implementation of MASI. Image credit: Wang et al., doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-65661-8.

New Sensor Rewrites Rules of Optical Imaging

Jan 19, 2026 by News Staff

Inspired by a technique that allowed astronomers to image a black hole, scientists at the University of Connecticut developed a lens-free image sensor...

Facial reconstruction of Homo habilis. Image credit: Cicero Moraes.

2-Million-Year-Old Skeleton Offers Clearest Look Yet at Homo habilis

Jan 15, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

A newly-described partial skeleton from the Koobi Fora Formation in northern Kenya is giving paleoanthropologists their most complete picture yet of Homo...

Leang Bulu Bettue in the Maros-Pangkep karst area of South Sulawesi. Image credit: Burhan et al., doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0337993.

Enigmatic Hominins May Have Overlapped with Homo sapiens on Sulawesi

Jan 13, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

At Leang Bulu Bettue, a rock-shelter in the Maros-Pangkep karst region on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, paleoanthropologists have uncovered one of...

The 60,000-year-old backed microlith from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: (A) buphanidrine and (B) epibuphanisine detected in a sample from the microlith; (C) the microlith showing the reddish poisonous adhesive residue still adhering to the dorsal backed portion of the tool. Image credit: Isaksson et al., doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adz3281.

60,000-Year-Old Poisoned Arrowheads Found in South Africa

Jan 8, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Archaeologists have identified traces of two toxic plant alkaloids — buphandrine and epibuphanisine — on artifacts from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter...

773,000-Year-Old Hominin Fossils from Morocco Offer New Clues to Roots of Homo sapiens

Jan 7, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

The hominin fossils discovered in the Grotte à Hominidés at Thomas Quarry I in Casablanca, Morocco, are providing new evidence about the deep origins...

Google’s quantum computer. Image credit: Google.

Breakthrough in Quantum Computing: First Secure Method to Back Up Quantum Information

Jan 7, 2026 by News Staff

Scientists at the University of Waterloo and Kyushu University have developed the first method to create redundant, encrypted copies of qubits —...

The Voynich manuscript, folio 67r. Image credit: Beinecke Library, Yale University.

Historically Plausible Cipher Recreates Statistical Signature of Voynich Manuscript

Jan 6, 2026 by Sergio Prostak

The Voynich manuscript — often called the most mysterious manuscript in the world — has eluded attempts to understand its origin, nature, and...

Reconstruction of Sahelanthropus tchadensis. Image credit: University of Silesia.

7-Million-Year-Old Sahelanthropus Fossils Bolster Case for Earliest Upright Walking

Jan 5, 2026 by Sergio Prostak

For more than two decades, Sahelanthropus tchadensis — a very early (6.7 to 7.2 million years old) hominin species discovered in Chad in 2001 —...

DeCasien et al. provide the first empirical data showing the direct role the gut microbiome plays in shaping differences in the way the brain functions across different primate species. Image credit: DeCasien et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2426232122.

Gut Microbes Played Role in Evolution of Human Brain, New Study Suggests

Jan 5, 2026 by News Staff

Compared to other primates, humans have remarkably large brains relative to their body sizes. The resultant high demands for glucose may have been supported...

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

Researchers Sequence Genome of 200,000-Year-Old Denisovan

Jan 2, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

A research team led by Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology scientists has generated the high-quality genome assembly of a Denisovan using...

Ancient humans. Image credit: sjs.org / CC BY-SA 3.0.

European Homo sapiens May Have Been Hunting with Bow and Arrow Earlier than Previously Believed

Dec 30, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

In a new paper published this month in the journal iScience, researchers from the University of Tübingen and elsewhere present a multidisciplinary analysis...

Severity of Alzheimer’s disease correlates with NAD+ homeostasis dysregulation. Image credit: Chaubey et al., doi: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2025.102535.

New Research Reveals Potential Path to Alzheimer’s Recovery by Targeting Cellular Energy Deficits

Dec 30, 2025 by News Staff

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is traditionally considered irreversible. However, a team of scientists led by Case Western Reserve University, University Hospitals...

The facial depiction of the Beachy Head Woman. Image credit: Face Lab, Liverpool John Moores University.

‘Beachy Head Woman’ Originated from Southern England, Ancient DNA Study Shows

Dec 23, 2025 by News Staff

The skeletal remains of an individual colloquially referred to as Beachy Head Woman were re-discovered in the Eastbourne Town Hall collection in 2012,...

Example photographs of primary, mixed, and secondary halite inclusion assemblages. Image credit: Park et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2513030122.

Scientists Find Ancient Air Bubbles in 1.4 Billion-Year-Old Salt Crystals

Dec 22, 2025 by News Staff

Researchers have found ancient gases and fluids trapped in 1.4-billion-year-old halite crystals from northern Ontario, Canada. Their analyses directly...

This image shows a Neanderthal and a human kid. Image credit: Neanderthal Museum.

New Research Explores Paleolithic Transition from Neanderthals to Anatomically Modern Humans

Dec 22, 2025 by News Staff

The Middle to Upper Paleolithic Transition approximately 50,000 to 38,000 years ago is marked by the decline and extinction of Neanderthals, the emergence...

This is an artist's reconstruction of Homo erectus. Image credit: Yale University.

1.5-Million-Year-Old Fossil Reveals New Details about Homo erectus

Dec 16, 2025 by News Staff

Paleoanthropologists have examined and reconstructed DAN5, a 1.5-million-year-old fossilized skull of early Homo erectus found in Gona in the Afar region...

Forensic facial reconstruction of another Australopithecus species - A. afarensis. Image credit: Cicero Moraes / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Remarkable Fossil from South Africa May Be New Species of Australopithecus: Study

Dec 16, 2025 by News Staff

New research led by scientists from the University of Cambridge and Latrobe University challenges the classification of the Little Foot fossil as Australopithecus...