When the brightness of the star Betelgeuse dropped dramatically a few months ago, some observers suspected an impending supernova—a stellar explosion that could also cause damage on Earth. While Betelgeuse has returned ...
General Physics
Sep 30, 2020
20
3327
The most detailed study to date of ancient predators trapped in the La Brea Tar Pits is helping Americans understand why today we're dealing with coyotes dumping over garbage cans and not saber-toothed cats ripping our arms ...
Archaeology
Aug 5, 2019
0
2064
Around 12,000 years ago, something scorched a vast swath of the Atacama Desert in Chile with heat so intense that it turned the sandy soil into widespread slabs of silicate glass. Now, a research team studying the distribution ...
Earth Sciences
Nov 2, 2021
8
1216
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
Snakes are familiar, distinctive—and often feared—reptiles. And they've been around for a long time: body fossils found in the UK, Portugal and the US stretch all the way back to the late Jurassic period, about 150 million ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Oct 6, 2023
0
256
(PhysOrg.com) -- A 30,000-year-old finger bone found in a cave in southern Siberia came from a young girl who was neither an early modern human nor a Neanderthal, but belonged to a previously unknown group of human relatives ...
Archaeology
Dec 22, 2010
42
5
(Phys.org) —A team of researchers with Aarhus University in Denmark has concluded that the die-out of large mammals after the last ice-age was due more too human activity than a changing environment. In their paper published ...
Tens of thousands of years ago, a huge horse species walked, trotted and galloped across the shifting sands of what is today South Africa's Cape south coast.
Evolution
Mar 17, 2023
0
309
The western long-beaked echidna, one of the world's five egg-laying species of mammal, became extinct in Australia thousands of years ago…or did it? Smithsonian scientists and colleagues have found evidence suggesting that ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 2, 2013
0
1
(Phys.org) —A new study has demonstrated that large animals have acted as carriers of key nutrients to plants and animals over thousands of years and on continental scales.
Earth Sciences
Aug 11, 2013
14
1
