Why did we take so long to invent civilization? Modern Homo sapiens first evolved roughly 250,000 to 350,000 years ago. But initial steps towards civilization—harvesting, then domestication of crop plants—began only around ...
Archaeology
Jan 3, 2020
16
1641
If you could travel back in time to South America thousands of years ago, you might have caught a glimpse of an animal known as a glyptodont living alongside giant ground sloths and saber-toothed cats. Glyptodonts looked ...
Archaeology
Feb 22, 2016
3
2023
Archaeologists who have been exploring the world's largest underwater cave—recently discovered in Mexico—presented their findings Monday, including fossils of giant sloths and an elaborate shrine to the Mayan god of commerce.
Paleontology & Fossils
Feb 20, 2018
0
723
For the first time, a dramatic global climate shift has been linked to the impact in Quebec of an asteroid or comet, Dartmouth researchers and their colleagues report in a new study. The cataclysmic event wiped out many of ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 2, 2013
28
0
Every parent knows the feeling. Your child is crying and wants to go home, you pick them up to comfort them and move faster, your arms tired with a long walk ahead—but you cannot stop now. Now add to this a slick mud surface ...
Archaeology
Oct 9, 2020
1
1817
(PhysOrg.com) -- A biochemical analysis of a rare Clovis-era stone tool cache recently unearthed in the city limits of Boulder, Colo., indicates some of the implements were used to butcher ice-age camels and horses that roamed ...
Archaeology
Feb 25, 2009
5
0
Research published this week in Science offers the clearest picture yet of the reverberating consequences of land mammal declines on food webs over the past 130,000 years.
Evolution
Aug 25, 2022
1
743
When the largest modern-day plant-eaters—elephants—are confined to too small an area, they devastate the vegetation. So 15,000 years ago, when the herbivores like the Columbian mammoth, mastodons and giant ground sloths ...
Ecology
Oct 26, 2015
0
74
(Phys.org)—A team of researchers with members from several institutions in the U.K. and U.S. has found evidence that suggests that modern gourds would have gone extinct long ago if humans had not domesticated them. In their ...
Joshua trees face the risk of extinction after decades of development, drought and more frequent wildfires due to climate change in their Mojave Desert stronghold, according to California wildlife authorities who are recommending ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 14, 2020
2
397
