Deborah Bloomfield

Hominin foot bones found in 3.4-million-year-old sediments in Ethiopia have been assigned to a recently described species. This provides further evidence of different elements of the human family tree living side-by-side in the cradle of humanity and further obscures the question of whether the best known early human fossil was a direct ancestor of ours. […]

A while back, we brought you the story that people have been advised to put bowls of salt in their windows for (somewhat dubious) reasons. Well, it turns out there is yet another winter trend for you to try out: airing your blanket out in the freezing cold. According to those who do it, the […]

We’re not kidding. The average life expectancy of a single crow is about seven or eight years in the wild – but “it’s now 14 years that the birds continue to respond to us,” John Marzluff, a professor of wildlife science at the University of Washington and bona fide corvid expert, told the American Association […]

In As You Like It, Shakespeare famously wrote about human life being divided into seven ages, from the “mewling” infant to the “second childishness” of the very elderly (he really did have a way with words, did old Bill). That was less science, more symbolism – but now, neuroscientists have revealed how the human brain […]

“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Palaeolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.” That’s a quote from Edward O. Wilson, the renowned father of sociobiology. Since he delivered these wise words over a decade ago, our technology has only ramped up further, yet our ancient biology has remained unchanged. In a […]

While “flat-Earthers” claim to believe the Earth is flat from their various positions around the globe, we have known since antiquity that the Earth is round. In fact, in around 240 BCE, Eratosthenes of Cyrene made the first measurements of the Earth’s circumference, using nothing more than a stick and a little knowledge. Born in […]

Down in the frozen beaches of Antarctica, penguins face harsh realities of extreme temperatures, predators, and finding food. But there is still space left over for a little romance. While diamonds might be a little hard to come by, penguin proposals do happen; it just takes the perfect pebble.  The rest of this article is […]

Each year in early December, American internet users become bewildered by the sight of people parading down an Alpine street, dressed to the nines in beast-like costumes and ghoulish masks, waving flamed torches and beating drums. Fear not, the Europeans have not declined into devil worship – this is an age-old tradition steeped in folklore. […]

Some Thanksgiving traditions just make sense: sharing a meal with friends and family, eating too much pumpkin pie, fighting over the TV remote. But the president of the US taking time out of, y’know, running the country to stand in the Rose Garden and give a pardon to a turkey that doesn’t appear to have […]

If you’ve never looked at a dog and wondered if there’s “room for a second head on there”, congratulations on not being Soviet scientist Vladimir Demikhov, a pioneer of organ transplantation who might be better remembered for his groundbreaking work in heart and lung transplants were it not for the “two-headed dog” experiments. Demikhov was […]

You might have seen sped-up videos of how some crystals form. Maybe you did the famous experiment of putting a metal ring in a solution rich in salt, and saw little crystals forming on it. Water is a great medium to see crystals form. But crystals form in a variety of conditions and liquids, even […]

Did you know cuttlefish have the most acute polarization vision of any animal? They can detect patterns in light that human eyes can’t see. We still have a lot to learn about how they process the underwater world, but one mystery we have solved is their bizarre W-shaped pupils. The rest of this article is […]

Tyrannosaurus rex got an upgrade in 2024 when a computer modeling study estimated that these dinosaurs may have been up to 70 percent heavier than we’d previously estimated based on the fossil record. It effectively supersized a predator that was already thought to be pretty damn big, highlighting how much food such a large animal […]

Blue is a relatively rare sight in living things. Green blankets much of the world, yellow and orange frequently pop up in plants and animals, while reds and pinks also find their time to shine. Meanwhile, blue is confined to just a meager selection of flowers, the odd eccentric bird, and a few freaky frogs. […]

When the ancestors of terrestrial life on Earth crawled or slithered out of the sea, they formed the starting point for many of the world’s species. Some of these species even made the return journey back into the water from a life on land. Now, a new study has taken a closer look at explaining […]

It’s nearly December, which – if you’re a tween in Australia – means it’s just weeks until your TikTok and Snapchat accounts go dark. The nation down under is about to become the world’s first home of a total ban on social media for under-16s, with the blackout set to kick off on December 10. […]

A new pre-print paper suggests that our latest interstellar visitor, comet 3I/ATLAS, may be headed for one final close encounter before it departs our Solar System in 2026. The paper, which focuses on dynamical simulations of the object, also attempts to look at the course 3I/ATLAS will take on departure, and the path that brought […]

Until recently, it was widely accepted that the earliest members of the Homo lineage were the first hominids to hunt. In particular, Homo erectus – which emerged around two million years ago – is typically credited with developing the taste for meat, yet new studies have begun to challenge this narrative, suggesting that our ancestors […]

Fort Knox is synonymous with gold. Lots of gold. But this Art Deco castle of concrete and granite is not actually the world’s largest depository of monetary gold on Earth. That title belongs to another US building in a far less conspicuous location. If you’ve ever wandered through downtown Manhattan, you may have walked right […]

A new mRNA vaccine against the flu has proven itself more effective than existing vaccines in a new clinical trial. The Pfizer-developed vaccine was found to be 34.5 percent more effective than current vaccines at preventing illness caused by influenza A in a trial of over 18,000 people. Though the new vaccine was associated with […]