https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Icelandic government officials recently met to discuss a dramatic scenario: what if the current that circulates Atlantic waters weakened significantly, or collapsed altogether? https://phys.org/news/2026-10-key-atlantic-currents-collapse-century.html Earth Sciences Thu, 29 Oct 2026 14:20:45 EDT news712494304 Scientists at Bournemouth University (BU) have solved a 150-year-old mystery about the identity of an extinct giant crane that lived in Europe over 20,000 years ago. The work is published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-year-mystery-identity-extinct-giant.html Paleontology & Fossils Wed, 28 Oct 2026 16:30:01 EDT news712422061 In places like South Asia, Africa and parts of the Americas, monsoon rains supply water for drinking, crops and hydropower for billions of people. Understanding the patterns that monsoons tend to follow can help people plan for drought risks affecting agriculture, reservoirs and hydropower across distant regions. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-ancient-stalagmites-reveal-exceptions-asiasouth.html Earth Sciences Sat, 24 Oct 2026 09:00:01 EDT news711981698 More than 30,000 years ago, people associated with one of Europe's major Paleolithic cultures (the Gravettian) were more interconnected than previously thought. An international research team led by the University of Vienna has uncovered new genetic evidence of long-distance connections between these populations. Published in Science Advances, the study combines genomic data from rare human remains with human DNA preserved in cave sediments. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-paleolithic-human-dna-reveals-east.html Archaeology Fri, 23 Oct 2026 14:00:11 EDT news711899701 Two thousand years ago, the Arctic remnants of a once-vast ice sheet started to grow again. It was the beginning of a new glacial period, more conversationally known as the next ice age—but by the 1960s, summer temperatures were already so high that the ice sheet started to shrink. In other words, global warming ended a period of glaciation that had already begun. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-global-halted-emerging-ice-age.html Earth Sciences Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:00:10 EDT news711882661 New research from the University of St Andrews has uncovered a previously unknown process that may have helped drive Earth into past ice ages. Published today (Oct. 22) in the Journal of Climate, the paper links ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere to changes in ocean circulation and sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere understood to drive down atmospheric CO₂. Linking these two key features of the ice ages has long been a challenge, given how far apart the two regions are. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-earth-hemispheres-ice-ages.html Earth Sciences Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:00:06 EDT news711733921 About 20,000 years ago, an enormous, floating ice shelf more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) thick helped lock in three of the largest ice sheets in northern Canada and Greenland. When that ice shelf disappeared, it helped unlock part of these ice sheets, which contributed to hundreds of feet of sea level rise, establishing modern coastlines as we know them. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-massive-ice-shelf-buttressed-age.html Earth Sciences Wed, 21 Oct 2026 17:20:08 EDT news711807181 The glacial Arctic Ocean was not a barren ice desert but a breeding ground for the evolution of cold adaptation in marine fish. This is the main conclusion of a new scientific publication from Stockholm University that examines small fish bones found in deep-sea sediments during an expedition aboard the Swedish icebreaker Oden. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-ancient-fish-bones-reveal-arctic.html Evolution Wed, 21 Oct 2026 15:20:01 EDT news711803702 The site of a former U.S. military base in Greenland was ice-free at a time when summers were a few degrees warmer than today, according to a new University at Buffalo–led study of ancient sediment recovered from beneath the site in the 1960s. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-forgotten-samples-greenland-cold-war.html Earth Sciences Tue, 20 Oct 2026 19:40:01 EDT news711727681 Legend has it that a giant elfin, owl-like creature called the chickcharney haunts the islands of the Bahamas. Those who encounter this cryptid on cordial terms are said to be blessed with good luck. Those who disrespect the chickcharney, however, don't fare as well. "If you see one shoe in the field, it means that chickcharney came, picked up this person and took them away," said Jessica Oswald, recounting a story she was told in the Bahamas. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-caribbean-islands-center-diversity-barn.html Evolution Tue, 20 Oct 2026 19:00:04 EDT news711714482 For thousands of years, humans shaped their world with stone, wood and bone. Metallurgy, the art and science of working with metals such as copper, bronze and iron, marked a turning point in human history. The mining that fueled metalworking also shaped Europe's and the Mediterranean's economies and politics over centuries. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-peat-bogs-natural-archives-fallout.html Archaeology Tue, 20 Oct 2026 10:20:12 EDT news711706402 Some 23,000 years ago, during the coldest part of the last ice age, people walked across the muddy margins of an ancient lake in what is now White Sands National Park, New Mexico. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-early-humans-america-climate-chaos.html Archaeology Sun, 18 Oct 2026 17:40:01 EDT news711294961 When a massive environmental disaster strikes, do societies simply collapse and disappear? Or do people find a way to adapt, rebuild and recover? https://phys.org/news/2026-10-ancient-volcanic-eruption-resilience-today.html Earth Sciences Sat, 17 Oct 2026 13:00:05 EDT news711298328 Expanded excavations at White Sands National Park in New Mexico have provided researchers an opportunity to refine the age of the oldest human footprints in North America and establish a deeper understanding of the landscape and environmental conditions at the time humans were present there. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-white-sands-footprints-humans-experienced.html Earth Sciences Thu, 15 Oct 2026 19:20:08 EDT news711297661 The area of water between Russia and North America and the Pacific and Arctic oceans is now known as the Bering Strait. Yet it was once what we call the Bering Land Bridge, an exposed land and maritime region that connected Asia to North America. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-bering-bridge-base-reveals-life.html Archaeology Wed, 14 Oct 2026 14:00:58 EDT news711185822 The first definitive evidence of when post-Roman lead production began in one of Europe's largest medieval lead-producing regions, the Derbyshire Peak District in central England, has been uncovered by archaeologists after centuries of mining had erased much of the archaeological evidence. The work has been published in Antiquity. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-human-impact-britain-largest-medieval.html Archaeology Mon, 12 Oct 2026 19:00:08 EDT news711015128 A research team from the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen and Leiden University in the Netherlands has examined a tooth from the Schöningen archaeological site in Lower Saxony. The study was published in Quaternary Environments and Humans. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-baby-tooth-macaques-northern-germany.html Evolution Mon, 12 Oct 2026 16:20:23 EDT news711036661 A rare assemblage of micro- and macro-fossils found in a roadside outcrop in South China, featuring thin ribbons, branching shapes and a tiny balloon on a stalk, offers a glimpse of marine life after one of Earth's most extreme ice ages. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-tiny-fossils-reveal-chapter-ocean.html Ecology Mon, 12 Oct 2026 15:40:10 EDT news711034845 Off the coast of East Antarctica, researchers led by Kiel University (CAU) and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), have investigated an exceptionally large sedimentary body embedded in the seafloor of Vincennes Bay: a so-called "grounding-zone wedge"—symmetrical, wedge-shaped, approximately 260 meters (853 feet) high and 65 kilometers (40 miles) long. With a volume of more than 580 cubic kilometers (139 cubic miles), it is the largest known isolated grounding-zone wedge on a glaciated continental shelf to date and constitutes an exceptional archive of East Antarctica's glacial history. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-seafloor-sediments-reveal-east-antarctic.html Earth Sciences Wed, 07 Oct 2026 13:40:01 EDT news710593682 Imagine you're an infant. Just a few months in the world, trying to gather your faculties, testing gravity—you're pretty helpless and fully reliant on the people around you. As a result, one of your primary tasks as a new person—even before hand-eye coordination and responding to your own name—is to figure out how the people you've just met are connected to each other. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-young-infants-saliva-bond.html Social Sciences Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:50:01 EDT news710525522 One of the unresolved mysteries about the history of the Americas is when the first people arrived. Despite extensive debate centering on genetic, archaeological and environmental evidence, there is still no consensus or conclusive proof. Did they enter before, during or after the coldest period of the last ice age, known as the Last Glacial Maximum? Evidence from recent analysis of ancient DNA is providing fresh clues. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-ancient-dna-evidence-narrows-people.html Archaeology Mon, 05 Oct 2026 17:00:12 EDT news710425242 Scientists used machine learning and super-resolution microscopy to overcome a challenge that has stymied research into the natural history of grasses for decades. Their method allowed them to detect subtle differences among grass pollen grains and trace changes in grass diversity and the proportions of the two main photosynthetic types of grasses at one site over a period of 25,000 years. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-pollen-reveals-hidden-history-grasses.html Ecology Mon, 05 Oct 2026 13:40:16 EDT news710421361 DNA analyses of ancient remains have revealed a previously unknown extinct bovine species that inhabited southern Siberia during and even before the last ice age. The extinct species was related to modern yaks but followed a separate evolutionary path for hundreds of thousands of years. The findings are published in Current Biology. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-extinct-bovine-species-siberia-reveals.html Plants & Animals Mon, 05 Oct 2026 11:00:01 EDT news710162041 As Ted Schuur stepped along the edges of Smith Lake, a bubble surfaced from the muck underfoot. And then another. They're bubbles of methane, a potent heat-trapping gas made from decomposing plants and animals that had once been stuck in Alaska's frigid permafrost. But that frozen ground is thawing because the Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the globe. For thousands of years that frozen ground stored dead plants and animals, but the accelerating thaw is allowing them to decay into methane and carbon dioxide. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-gas-frozen-arctic-ground-slowly.html Environment Sun, 04 Oct 2026 12:20:01 EDT news710069106 The earliest animals may have evolved hundreds of millions of years before their first unmistakable fossils appear in the fossil record, according to a new study led by the University of Oxford. The findings, published in Science Advances, suggest animals may have originated deep in the Neoproterozoic Era, even before some of the most extreme ice ages in Earth's history. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-animals-evolved-vastly-earlier-fossil.html Evolution Fri, 02 Oct 2026 14:00:13 EDT news710066581 Aurochs, the ancient ancestors of modern cattle, once roamed large parts of Europe, Asia and northern Africa. New research by an international team led by Lund University indicates that multiple factors contributed to their demise in northern Europe—one of the first areas where they became extinct. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-aurochs-genetic-evidence-reveals-multiple.html Ecology Fri, 02 Oct 2026 09:01:24 EDT news710149562 Ice cores recovered from an ice cap in northwestern Tibet appear to preserve fragments of ancient ice from the last ice age, extending Earth's glacial record by more than 100,000 years and making them the oldest ice cores ever recovered from the region, according to a new study. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-deep-high-altitude-glacier-ice.html Earth Sciences Wed, 30 Sep 2026 17:50:02 EDT news710005741 Although Mars may have once resembled Earth, the rocky red planet now appears far from hospitable. Still, certain details—such as ice-bound water—pique researchers' curiosity. As on Earth, ice on Mars contains valuable records of past climate that could reveal whether the planet hosts, or has ever hosted, life. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-north-pole-mars-dusty-scientists.html Astrobiology Wed, 30 Sep 2026 09:00:22 EDT news709975621 At the end of the last ice age, early humans crisscrossed the Americas following seasons, rivers and game, often with a trusty spear in hand. Nearly 13,000 years later, archaeologists are using those spearheads to study how America's first inhabitants understood risk. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-ancient-spearheads-reveal-ice-age.html Archaeology Mon, 28 Sep 2026 17:20:05 EDT news709824662 From the 13th to the 16th century, herring from the Sound—the strait in the Baltic Sea between Denmark and Sweden—was one of northern Europe's most important trade goods. Salted herring from the so-called Skanör-Falsterbo fishery fed large parts of Europe. Around 1570, however, the fishery collapsed rapidly, with far-reaching consequences for trade, politics and society. It took almost 400 years, until the 1950s, for catches to reach comparable levels again. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-herring-fishery-years-rebound-today.html Ecology Mon, 28 Sep 2026 05:00:08 EDT news709552981