Deborah Bloomfield

This week, a 5-year-old child who lived 140,000 years ago is the earliest evidence of interbreeding between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, the first-ever recorded case of xanthism in nurse sharks has been seen in a bright orange individual spotted off the coast of Costa Rica, and 16,000-year-old paintings found deep inside a perilously inaccessible cave […]

Humans smell, there’s no denying it, but are some of those smells sending out chemical signals we aren’t consciously aware of? Are we, like ants, giving off pheromones?  The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. We spoke to Dr Tristram Wyatt, Senior Research […]

If you can’t point to Tuvalu on a map, don’t worry – in a couple of generations, it won’t even be there anymore. That may sound cold, but it’s true: Tuvalu’s future is so jeopardized by climate change and rising sea levels that almost the entire country will likely be underwater during high tide within […]

The extent of sea level rise measured by satellites around the world is in line with what climate models predicted in the 1990s, a new study has confirmed. That’s bad news, because what those models anticipate in future is frightening, but at least it shows our understanding of the climate is good. People who want […]

Great white sharks in the Atlantic are creeping farther and farther up the east coast of North America. Once rare sights in New England and Atlantic Canada, these giant marine predators are now being spotted more often, much to the surprise of fishermen, surfers, and beachgoers. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. […]

Waking up this morning, you may have seen the news that the US has reported its first human case of travel-associated New World screwworm – and most likely, along with the words “flesh eating parasite”. Those are some scary sounding words, but what exactly is New World screwworm, and how concerned do we really need […]

In the heart of Australia’s scorching Red Center, some 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) from the nearest city, lies a top-secret military communications base that few people know about – and even fewer have visited. Officially known as the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap – or just Pine Gap for short – the off-limits facility is […]

The bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) is one of the most recognizable animals out there, one of its most distinctive traits (besides its white head) being that powerful screech featured in TV shows, movies, and America memes alike… or at least, that’s what we’ve been led to believe. The rest of this article is behind a […]

Everybody’s talking about GLP-1s. These drugs, first used in patients with type 2 diabetes and more recently as apparently “miraculous” weight loss aids, have become inescapable in online discourse over the last couple of years. Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro are almost as recognizable as Tylenol and Tums. But what does science actually know about these […]

Swamps typically bring to mind an array of mushy greens and murky browns, but in Virginia, that all goes out the window in winter. Here, a swamp with rainbow waters can be found along the Bald Cypress Trail in First Landing State Park. The curiously colorful display is the result of rotting leaves, and hoo […]

The evidence for the Big Bang is overwhelming, but we cannot describe what goes on in that event. We can’t accurately call it a moment; time as we know it did not exist. Our science stops making sense a fraction of a second after it happened. The equations simply do not work. But what if […]

Over 91,000 people in the US die early every year due to air pollution from oil and gas, says a new study. Along with premature deaths, dirty air from fossil fuels was linked to 10,350 pre-term births and 216,000 new cases of childhood asthma per year, as well as 1,610 lifetime cancers. According to the […]

Honeybees (Apis mellifera) are having a rough time. Between pesticides, parasites, disease, and climate change, their populations have been in sharp decline. This bad news is not just for bees themselves, but for us too. Honeybees are a fundamental part of modern agriculture because of their pollination service for crops.  Their diet mainly consists of floral […]

Beneath our feet lies a hidden world of staggering scale, a deep ecosystem brimming with billions of microorganisms. Its astonishing diversity has earned it the nickname the “subterranean Galapagos” and suggests that its genetic richness may rival or even surpass life above ground. Presenting their work at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in 2018, […]

Humanity has collected samples from three asteroids: the stony type, Itokawa, and the carbonaceous Ryugu and Bennu. Carbonaceous asteroids are the largest class, so it wouldn’t be too surprising that both Ryugu and Bennu are among them; still, their similarities might be a lot deeper than previously thought. New research puts forward a bold hypothesis: […]

In tropical forests from Central America through South America lives the world’s largest carnivorous bat species. With a wingspan of almost 1 meter (3 feet), these creatures feed on birds, rodents, and even other bat species. But these giant flying mammals have a softer side, forming pairs to care for their young. Meet the spectral […]

Florida wildlife officials are turning to the public to help locate one of the state’s most elusive reptiles, the rainbow snake (Farancia erytrogramma). This distinctive, nonvenomous species has seen its population steadily decline, with only one sighting recorded since 1969, which has left biologists scrambling to piece together clues about its current whereabouts. The rest […]

A resident of El Dorado County, California, has tested positive for the plague, marking the first case in the area in five years. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. It is thought that the infected person was bitten by an infected flea […]

The star DFK 52 has thrown off 0.1-1 times the mass of the Sun over the last 4,000 years, creating a truly enormous bubble in space in a crowded star cluster. The observations are particularly intriguing because of the star’s apparent similarity to Betelgeuse. Aging giant stars, like stock markets and supporters of West Ham, […]

It’s October 1962 and the world is tense like never before. US reconnaissance planes have just discovered Soviet nuclear missile sites being built on the island nation of Cuba, just 145 kilometers (90 miles) off the coast of Florida. Although the Soviet Union claims they are part of a defensive move against the US after […]