Deborah Bloomfield

Prehistoric hunter-gatherers in South Africa applied deadly poisons to their stone arrows 60,000 years ago. Amazingly, the toxin they used is still employed by some Indigenous hunters in the region today, indicating a remarkably early origin for this ongoing lethal practice. Researchers used a series of micromolecular analysis techniques to examine 10 quartz arrowheads recovered […]

We all know we shouldn’t really eat raw cookie dough, right? But why? Is it just because your mom wanted to maximize the number of cookies that would come out of the oven, or is there some deeper logic behind it? Well, as you may well know already, there’s actually a very good reason to avoid […]

New Year’s celebrations are a little bit different in Antarctica. Under the relentless summer daylight and searing cold, the ragtag crew of souls who have found themselves at the planet’s southernmost point take part in an unusual but important ritual. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to […]

A series of 773,000-year-old human remains in Morocco may represent a population of hominins that lived just as our own species split off from our sister lineages, the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. Discovered at a site near Casablanca, the prehistoric specimens could help to fill in one of the most significant gaps in the human […]

Contrary to previous suspicions, Europe probably had many species of ceratopsian dinosaurs, a clade of large herbivores whose most famous member is Triceratops. Ceratopsian fossils are common across North America and Asia, but their relative absence from Europe had puzzled palaeontologists. A new study provides an answer: as well as settling a debate as to […]

It’s a question asked – often loudly, at 2 am – by everyone who’s ever had to share a bed with a snorer: how the hell can you sleep through that noise?! Well, we have the answer – or, we should say, answers. First, let’s be clear: sometimes, a person can wake themselves up by […]

The Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) and The Tony & Lisette Lewis Foundation have captured images of a northern quoll at Piccaninny Plains Wildlife Sanctuary, Northern Kaanju Country, Australia, for the first time in over eight decades. The northern quoll (Dasyurus hallucatus) was once widespread across northern and eastern Australia. But in the 1930s, cane toads, […]

Picture this: Prague, October 1604. The then 34-year-old astronomer Johannes Kepler was looking at the constellation of Ophiuchus, and he spotted something that he had not seen before: a new star. It became the brightest star in the night sky, so bright that it was visible during the day for over three weeks. It was […]

Each new year, many people resolve to change their diets, and some decide explicitly to lose weight. But going too hard on our new regimens – and in particular, “diet stacking”, where multiple diet strategies are deployed at the same time – can be seriously bad for our health, according to a new study from […]

Some animal names really like to keep you guessing. Just take the “psychedelic earth tiger,” for example. Not a hallucinogen, planet, or tiger, but in fact a very cool spider. Also known as the LSD earth tiger, or Indian rainbow tarantula, this vibrant species has earned itself a spot on Fauna & Flora’s 10 Species […]

The first confirmed discovery of an exoplanet was announced in 1992, when astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail reported two or more planet-sized bodies orbiting pulsar PSR1257 + 12 using the Aricebo telescope. The first confirmed discovery of a planet orbiting a main-sequence, Sun-like star came a few years later in 1995, in the form […]

On April 23, 1972, Apollo 16’s Lunar Module and its crew of two NASA astronauts – John W. Young and Charles M. Duke – left the Moon’s surface to reconnect with the Command Module before returning to Earth. While they were 95 kilograms (209 pounds) of lunar rock heavier due to their scientific activities, Duke […]

Are you a Duolingo dabbler, bilingual from birth, or a perfect polyglot?  This new “multilingual calculator” can help you find out. In a new study, two researchers at New York University (both, unsurprisingly, multilingual) have developed an interactive tool that allows people to assess just how multilingual they truly are.  The rest of this article […]

Europa is one of the four largest moons of Jupiter. It has an icy surface that hides a deep ocean, containing maybe two to three times as much water as there is on Earth. These characteristics made this world a prime candidate for hosting life. A new study, though, suggests that the possibility of a […]

There’s a sinister health threat we’re not taking seriously enough, a new paper argues – and it’s not a virus, bacterium, nor even a fungus. It’s the amoebae, free-living organisms that can survive extreme conditions and cause devastating human illness, but which – according to the scientists behind the new research – are “often overlooked […]

Dogs have played a pivotal part in the exploration of Antarctica, and have subsequently been used on the continent for nearly a century. But in 1994, the last dogs left the continent, and Antarctica has been paw print-free ever since. The first time that we know dogs laid paws on the continent was in 1899, […]

Comet 3I/ATLAS continues its flight away from the Solar System, and the data we have collected from this incredible interstellar object by missions in deep space continues to be steadily delivered to Earth. The latest is from Europa Clipper, the NASA mission bound for the eponymous icy moon of Jupiter. The full data is still […]

Were you among the lucky people who saw the extraordinary aurorae of May 2024? They were the product of an incredible solar storm, coming from a region on the solar surface that was among the most active of the last two decades. Scientists were keeping an eye on the area before the event and for […]

Some volcanoes get all the publicity. Some deserve it – Yellowstone, for example, has a reputation that’s entirely deserved: if it erupted tomorrow, “it would really feel like the end of the world,” Alexa Van Eaton, a physical volcanologist at the Cascades Volcano Observatory, told PBS Terra back in November. “The area well beyond Missoula, […]

Tokyo has been toppled as the world’s most populous city, with the Indonesian capital of Jakarta now ruling the roost, followed by the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka. The reshuffling is partly due to changes in how urban areas are defined, but it also reflects a broader, more profound shift in our world.  In November 2025, […]