News
Long before chariots and empires, humans were already riding horses
48+ min ago (983+ words) New research argues horse domestication began centuries before the DOM2 lineage spread across Eurasia. (CREDIT: Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 4. 0) Long before horses became the engine of empires, they were part of a messy experiment. That is the picture emerging from new research…...
Meet Nagatitan: Largest dinosaur ever discovered in Southeast Asia
6+ hour, 48+ min ago (1179+ words) Stylized life reconstruction of Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis gen. et. sp. nov. within the arid floodplains of late Early Cretaceous Aptian'Albian Thailand illustrated by Patchanop Boonsai. (CREDIT: Scientific Reports) A front leg bone nearly as tall as a person lay buried beside…...
Human childbirth is not uniquely difficult relative to other mammals
2+ day, 48+ min ago (915+ words) Human childbirth may not be unique, a new review finds similar birth risks across many mammals. (CREDIT: Shutterstock) Human birth has a reputation for danger. The usual explanation is simple enough: walking upright narrowed the pelvis, while evolution also favored…...
At 23ft and 8 inches, 'The Baroness' is the world's longest wild snake
6+ day, 5+ min ago (846+ words) A giant python in Indonesia now holds a world record, but her survival may matter more than her size. (CREDIT: guinnessworldrecords) A giant python in South Sulawesi has turned a local encounter into an international record, and not just because…...
Humans are not the only animals that kiss
1+ week, 1+ day ago (969+ words) Apes, prairie dogs, birds, wolves, and dogs use similar behavior for bonding. (CREDIT: Shutterstock) Kissing feels so tied to human life that it can seem almost impossible to separate from romance, family, grief, ritual, or desire. It sits inside wedding…...
8-year-old's backyard discovery upends a century of plant-insect science
1+ week, 1+ day ago (1173+ words) An ant holds an oak gall containing wasp larvae. Researchers discovered an elaborate relationship among ants, wasps and oak trees. (CREDIT: Andrew Deans, Penn State) What looked like a few seeds beside an ant nest in a backyard turned out…...
Scientists reveal the staggering number of insects flying in the sky above the US
4+ mon, 3+ week ago (544+ words) Weather radar data shows U. S. flying insect numbers stayed stable from 2012 to 2021, with strong regional shifts tied to winter warming....
Newly discovered purple-winged moth named after Pope Leo XIV
1+ week, 2+ day ago (1127+ words) Pyralis papaleonei sp. nov. , holotype. (CREDIT: Peter Huemer) Purple wings, orange-gold markings, and crisp white bands make the newly described moth hard to miss. That is part of what makes its late recognition so striking. In the White Mountains of…...
Spider and horseshoe crab relatives emerged 20 million years earlier than scientists thought
1+ week, 5+ day ago (1236+ words) Artistic reconstructions by M. Hattori illustrating oblique views of the dorsal (top) and ventral (bottom) morphologies. The sanctacaridid-like morphology of the posteriormost body region is speculative. (CREDIT: Nature) It looked, at first, like the sort of fossil Rudy Lerosey-Aubril knew well....
Ancient platypus had teeth 25 million years ago, fossils reveal
1+ week, 6+ day ago (1326+ words) Ancient platypus fossils from South Australia reveal a toothed species with a body plan close to today's platypus. (CREDIT: Gen Conway / Flinders University Palaeontology Lab) For an animal that already looks assembled from spare parts, the platypus has added another…...