CERN Physicists Observe New Exotic Particle
New Species of Octopus Discovered in Deep Waters near Galapagos Islands
Cows Can Recognize Familiar Human Faces, New Study Finds
‘T. rex’ Mosasaur Ruled the Seas 80 Million Years Ago
Before Dinosaur Extinction, Rodent-Like Mammals were Already Flourishing in Ancient Arctic
Insects May Feel Pain, New Study Suggests
Using spectral data from the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) onboard the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers analyzed the atmosphere of TOI-199b, a distant Saturn-mass world that is neither frozen nor scorching hot. An artist’s impression of a gas-giant exoplanet. Image credit: Sci.News. TOI-199 is a G-type star located around 330 light-years away in the constellation of Dorado. It...
New observations from NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft reveal that the Zwan-Wolf effect — a phenomenon once thought unique to Earth’s magnetosphere, in which charged particles are squeezed like toothpaste coming out of a tube along magnetic structures called flux tubes — is also reshaping the Red Planet’s upper atmosphere. An artistic representation...
Hominins at the Acheulian site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov in Israel relied on driftwood gathered along a lakeshore to fuel their hearths, according to new research led by archaeologists from the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social and Bar-Ilan University; 780,000-year-old charcoal fragments from the site show that survival wasn’t about finding the perfect wood — it...
Paleontologists have identified a new genus and species of pan-shinisaur lizard from a partial upper jaw discovered in southern France, pushing the presence of its lineage in Europe back by at least 30 million years. Paleoartistic reconstruction of Acutodon villeveyracensis, the oldest known member of the pan-shinisaur lineage ever found in Europe. Image credit: Olivier Jansen. Pan-shinisaurs are...
A single female specimen, collected 1,773 m below the surface near Darwin Island, has been described as a new species of deep-sea octopus, and it doesn’t fit neatly into the Megaleledonidae family it belongs to, forcing a revision of the textbook definition. Microeledone galapagensis. Image credit: Voight et al., doi: 10.11646/zootaxa.5814.4.5. The Megaleledonidae had long been defined as a family...
Physicists with the ATLAS Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have observed the Bc*+ meson, an excited version of the Bc+ meson — both consist of a charm quark and a bottom antiquark. An artist’s impression of the Bc*+ meson. Image credit: Daniel Dominguez / CERN. Protons and neutrons — the building blocks of matter — belong to a huge class of particles called...
An analysis of 27 animal studies found that switching to a healthier diet improved memory performance, though the effects were far weaker after diets high in sugar. Rehn et al. performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of the cognitive and behavioral effects of diet reversal in rodent models. Image credit: Steve Buissinne. “Our results show that improving diet quality does benefit memory,”...
Scientists have extracted and analyzed proteins from the tooth enamel of six Homo erectus individuals who lived in China roughly 400,000 years ago, offering an unprecedented glimpse into the genetic makeup of one of humanity’s most successful and far-ranging ancestors. Their results suggest that Homo erectus may have carried genetic variants that were later passed to Denisovans and eventually...
Unusual gases rising from geothermal springs within the Kafue Rift of Zambia suggest a deep fracture in Earth’s crust could mark the early stages of a new tectonic boundary. Location map of the extensional zone within the Central African Plateau of Zambia. The Kafue Rift is connected to the Luano and Luangwa rifts to the NE, and the Western branch of the EARS at the Rukwa rift (RRB) and Rungwe...
New research from the University of Oxford and the University of Reading suggests bipedalism and expanding brain size helped drive the overwhelming dominance of right-handedness in humans. Reconstruction of Homo erectus. “In all human cultures across every corner of the globe about 90% of people favor their right hand,” said University of Oxford researcher Thomas Püschel and his colleagues. “Based...
