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Europe's huge cave bears may have become extinct because of their  inability to chew meat due to their evolved large sinuses, a new study suggests.US researchers say that a cooling climate forced cave bears to develop large paranasal sinuses – the air-filled spaces within the bones of the skull – to allow for greater metabolic…

The process of how crystals form on a flat surface, as shown in this electron microscope image, has been difficult to study in detail until now. Credit: Robert Macfarlane The process of crystallization, in which atoms or molecules line up in orderly arrays like soldiers in formation, is the basis for many of the materials…

Scientists from the Natural History Museum have helped date the Broken Hill skull, a key early human discovered in Africa in the 1920s. The study led by Professor Rainer Grün at the Griffith University, Australia, estimates that the skull is between 274,000 and 324,000 years old, which is much younger than previously thought. Scientists from…

Scans of the Australopithecus afarensis skull.Image: Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA LeipzigThe famous 3.2-million-year-old Lucy specimen has captivated scientists since it was discovered in 1974. Lucy was a member of the species Australopithecus afarensis, which walked upright and likely used tools. New scans of the inside of Australopithecus skulls reveal these extinct hominins had surprisingly ape-like…

View photos Joshua Dean, Author providedThe Arctic is predicted to warm faster than anywhere else in the world this century, perhaps by as much as 7°C. These rising temperatures threaten one of the largest long-term stores of carbon on land: permafrost.Permafrost is permanently frozen soil. The generally cold temperatures in the Arctic keep soils there…

Home News Skywatching What might the "red sign" have looked like? (Image: © Illustration: Space.com; Aurora: Nora Carol/Getty) A scarlet fan spread across the skies over Japan 1,400 years ago, and it's been puzzling astronomers ever since.According to historical records, on Dec. 30, 620, a "red sign" shaped like "a pheasant tail" appeared in the…

Apr 02, 2020 (Nanowerk News) If humans ever hope to colonize Mars, the settlers will need to manufacture on-planet a huge range of organic compounds, from fuels to drugs, that are too expensive to ship from Earth. University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) chemists have a plan for that. For…

"Backpack" computers used to track small animals' social behavior contain sensors about the size of a fingertip. Credit: Simon Ripperger To truly understand an animal species is to observe its behavior and social networks in the wild. With new technology described today (April 2) in PLOS Biology, researchers are able to track tiny animals that…

While travel may currently be limited to the scope of our laptops right now, that doesn’t mean we can’t explore some of the most magnificent places on earth. And this time, we have the legendary Sir David Attenborough to help walk us through it. Danny Martindale / Getty Images The British historian — who narrated…

Skeletal remains of Homo antecessor.Image: José María Bermúdez de CastroHuman evolution was messy, with multiple human species living and interbreeding at the same time, in a convoluted process that eventually led to us. Such is the emerging narrative in anthropology, and it’s a theory now bolstered by three fascinating new studies released today.Not too long…

Comparison of Modern Human and Neanderthal skulls from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Credit: DrMikeBaxter/Wikipedia In recent years, scientists have uncovered evidence that modern humans and Neanderthals share a tangled past. In the course of human history, these two species of hominins interbred not just once, but at multiple times, the thinking goes. A…

- Advertisement -    A partial skeleton of Homo naledi represents a rare case of an immature individual, shedding light on the evolution of growth and development in human ancestry, according to a study by Debra Bolter of Modesto Junior College in California and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and colleagues. Much research has gone into…

This image from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory in 2013 shows the bright light of a solar flare on the left side of the sun and an eruption of solar material shooting through the sun’s atmosphere, called a prominence eruption. This same region of the sun sent a coronal mass ejection out into space. Credit: NASA/SDONASA…

Home News Spaceflight NASA's next great observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, has fully deployed its primary mirror for the first time, marking another milestone on its journey to space.Before all work on the next-generation instrument, which is scheduled to launch in 2021, was paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic, technicians and engineers at the…

ANDREW FREEDMAN THE WASHINGTON POST April 1, 2020, 11:27AM The "Follow This Story" feature will notify you when any articles related to this story are posted. When you follow a story, the next time a related article is published — it could be days, weeks or months — you'll receive an email informing you of…