Appearances can be deceiving, especially so when it comes to the South American lungfish. This freshwater creature can grow to four feet in length. But its genome is the largest ever sequenced in a creature, a new study has found. A research team studying the lungfish species...
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The dodo has had a bad rap. The flightless bird was a species native to Mauritius. It has long served as an evolutionary cautionary tale for ineptness: It has been depicted as slow and clumsy, leading to the belief that it was destined for extinction, according...
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On Whit Monday, 1828, a teenage boy appeared seemingly out of nowhere in the German city of Nuremberg. He could barely speak, but he was carrying two letters claiming that he was kept in isolation his entire childhood. His name, he said, was Kaspar Hauser. The...
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Since 2017, archeologists have been studying the Cerro Azul hill, a free-standing tabletop hill in Colombia’s part of the Amazon rainforest that includes extensive rock paintings depicting animals, humans – and hybrids of them both. Although the exact date of the work isn’t known yet, evidence...
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Scientists from the University of Alaska uncovered a surprising new twist in the story of lightning. Researchers Vikas Sonwalkar and Amani Reddy identified a previously unknown type of electromagnetic wave, dubbed a “specularly reflected whistler,” which allows lightning energy to penetrate much deeper into space than...
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For over a century, astronomers have predicted that our galaxy, the Milky Way, will one day collide with another, Andromeda. Meanwhile, all studies have claimed that we will not live to see the grand spectacle as it will occur billions of years in the future. Now,...
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More than 1,000 years ago, the Viking Erik the Red stumbled upon an ice-covered landmass and, wanting to attract settlers, engaged in some exaggerated advertising, calling it Greenland, Turns out, it might actually have been green once, new research shows. Nowadays, roughly 98 percent of the world’s...
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As most of the world’s ocean floors remain uncharted, scientists are brainstorming effective – and low-cost – ways to monitor underwater habitats. For example, South African researchers equipped white sharks to record kelp forests, according to a 2019 paper. Now, camera crews comprised of sea lions are...
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Last year, an archeological team was stunned to discover a hoard of gold coins during excavations in the ancient Greek city of Notion, located in modern-day western Turkey. It turned out these coins were Persian darics and were likely used to pay mercenary troops. Lead archeologist Christopher...
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Vultures are taken for granted. Or at least they were – until India’s vulture population experienced a dramatic collapse in the 1990s. Then, their numbers dropped from tens of millions to just a few thousand because of the use of a veterinary drug diclofenac, which was given...
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Clumsiness can sometimes lead to great things. As NASA’s Curiosity rover was exploring Gediz Vallis, a channel carved into Mars’ Mount Sharp, it accidentally rolled over and cracked open a rock that contained yellowish-green crystals. Scientists established the rover had found pure sulfur – a first-ever on...
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Archeologists in Turkey recently discovered a 3,500-year-old clay tablet that underscored one of humanity’s defining aspects: Keeping records. Restoration work in the ancient site of Alalakh in southern Turkey uncovered the small artifact – measuring 1.6 by 0.6 inches – which turned out to be a...
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The Tyrannosaurus rex had titanic proportions, just like many other dinosaurs hundreds of millions of years ago. Currently, the largest specimen ever found is “Scotty,” whose fossilized remains were discovered in Saskatchewan, Canada in 1991. Paleontologists estimate that the carnivorous dino weighed more than 19,000 pounds,...
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Cats get a reputation for being very detached creatures, though as recent studies have suggested that they can express a range – albeit subtle – of emotions. Now, a new paper found evidence that felines grieve when they lose another pet in the house, even a...
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One thing that makes humans human is our fast-paced conversation ability. Now, scientists have found chimpanzees have a similar trait. A recent study discovered that chimps also took rapid turns to speak – not with words, but with hand gestures – sometimes even interrupting each other. This could...
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The bite of a Komodo dragon is something to be feared. Apart from being venomous, the monitor lizard species sports curved teeth with serrated edges that can cut through a prey’s flesh like butter. Now, a new study found that those gnashers are coated in iron. Study leader...
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Scientists recently discovered a relationship between rabbit genetics and “feralization” after researching how reintroducing the critters into the wild can have a devastating impact on the environment. Feralization is known as the evolutionary process in which descendants of domestic animals that live in the wild lose...
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Nearly 130 years after the first modern Olympiads, humans might be finally reaching their limits, research says. This could bring the Olympic motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (faster, higher, stronger) to a standstill at the Paris Olympics this year, in the very city where Pierre de Coubertin...
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In an archeological twist worthy of a crime novel, researchers have unraveled some of the mystery surrounding the “Screaming Woman,” a 3,500-year-old Egyptian mummy whose ghastly expression has puzzled scientists since her discovery in 1935 near Luxor in southern Egypt. Archeologists discovered the remains beneath the...
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Plants, too, experience unrequited love. A tree in South Africa, the Wood’s cycad, has only had male specimens for at least 130 years. So far, the species has been preserved thanks to cloning. Now, a group of scientists have embarked on a search for a female specimen...
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