People thrive all across the globe, at every temperature, altitude and landscape. How did human beings become so successful at adapting to whatever environment we wind up in? Human origins researchers like me are interested ...
Archaeology
Oct 22, 2020
0
4
Of the six or more different species of early humans, all belonging to the genus Homo, only we Homo sapiens have managed to survive. Now, a study reported in the journal One Earth on October 15 combining climate modeling ...
Archaeology
Oct 15, 2020
63
10086
A new species of small pterosaur—similar in size to a turkey—has been discovered, which is unlike any other pterosaur seen before due to its long slender toothless beak.
Archaeology
Oct 15, 2020
0
282
Closed-canopy rainforests are a vital part of the Earth's modern ecosystems, but tropical plants don't preserve well in the fossil record so it is difficult to tell how long these habitats have existed and where rainforests ...
Archaeology
Oct 6, 2020
0
36
Two groups of tiny, delicate marine organisms, sea butterflies and sea angels, were found to be surprisingly resilient—having survived dramatic global climate change and Earth's most recent mass extinction event 66 million ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 28, 2020
1
74
Wolves today live and hunt in packs, which helps them take down large prey. But when did this group behavior evolve? An international research team has reported specimens of an ancestral wolf, Canis chihliensis, from the ...
Archaeology
Sep 25, 2020
0
10778
Much of life on planet Earth today relies on oxygen to exist, but before oxygen was present on our blue planet, lifeforms likely used arsenic instead. These findings are detailed in research published today in Communications ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 22, 2020
2
151
New Zealand is surrounded by highly productive oceans that attract seabirds from around the world, forming a global hotspot for seabird diversity. Establishing how and when this hotspot formed has been challenged by a lack ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Sep 18, 2020
2
270
When did something like us first appear on the planet? It turns out there's remarkably little agreement on this question. Fossils and DNA suggest people looking like us, anatomically modern Homo sapiens, evolved around 300,000 ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Sep 9, 2020
6
2046
On an expedition to the Central Andean Plateau, researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and colleagues were astounded to find a huge fossil-tree buried in the cold, grassy plain. The plant fossil ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 28, 2020
68
858
