Deborah Bloomfield

After less than an hour and a half of bidding, the remains of a Stegosaurus dubbed “Apex” sold for a whopping $44.6 million at Sotheby’s on Wednesday, making it the most expensive fossil ever to have been sold at auction. The successful bidder was American hedge fund manager and multi-billionaire Kenneth Griffin, who doesn’t seem […]

A strip of scarlet-red cloth that was discovered in Israel’s Cave of Skulls has been dated to over 3,800 years old, marking the earliest archaeological evidence of a dyed textile using crushed bugs. Despite being crafted in the Bronze Age, the color of the extremely rare pigment is still full of life – and mystery. […]

Yesterday one of the longest solar prominences seen in years caused the Sun to fire out a major coronal mass ejection (CME). The prominence is estimated to have reached a length greater than the distance between the Earth and the Moon, around 380,000 kilometers (236,000 miles). Although CMEs are common so close to solar maximum, […]

Habitat loss and destruction is one of the key issues facing species today. Fortunately, conservation groups are working hard, both with species in conservation areas and with those populations that need to be raised in captivity, to bolster the population. Now, for one species at least, it seems the results are paying off as the […]

Tripping on magic mushrooms causes brain activity to become less organized and more random, with these effects lasting for several weeks. Having observed this phenomenon in action, the authors of a new brain-imaging study suggest that this scrambling of connectivity patterns may lead to more flexible cognition, which could explain how psychedelics help to alleviate […]

In the annals of history, few names inspire as much awe and fear as Genghis Khan. And that’s for good reason: he was arguably the greatest conqueror in history, building what would become the largest continental empire ever seen out of a group of squabbling nomadic tribes in central Asia. Advertisement That’s not the kind […]

As sea ice melts, it creates feedback that warms the Earth. New research shows that feedback is happening faster than previously estimated. As a result, there has been a 13-15 percent reduction in the cooling effect of global sea ice since the early 1980s, more than the loss of ice itself. Advertisement Ice plays an […]

Over the last decade or so, beards have enjoyed a prominent place in men’s fashion. What was once deemed a temporary resurgence among hipsters in the late 2000s has now become a staple feature of chins across the land. But regardless of whether you think beards are hot or not, those with them have various […]

In our quest to understand if there is life elsewhere in the universe, we start with the only example we have: life on Earth. So, a good bet to find aliens is to find another Earth. Of the over 5,000 exoplanets known, we are yet to find Earth’s twin. However, this might change very soon. […]

New images show members of an uncontacted tribe in the Peruvian Amazon living in an area “dangerously close” to parts of the forest being eyed up by logging companies. Survival International, who released the footage, and local Indigenous organizations say the images starkly highlight the need to revoke all the logging licenses in the region […]

Observations of the gravitational lensing of galaxies have thrown up a new mystery for our best understanding of cosmology; how galaxies are held together with dark matter. Advertisement In 1933, Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky studied the Coma Cluster – a large galaxy cluster more than 20 million light-years in diameter, containing thousands of galaxies – […]

A new study that left data to interact in a digital “primordial soup” has found that self-replicating patterns emerge. Advertisement In 1970, British mathematician John Horton Conway created a zero-player videogame, dubbed Conway’s Game of Life. The game takes place on a grid of squares, and the only input a user can have is setting […]

The internet is full of hacks and tips on how to best pack your suitcase for a vacation, but what about those of us who crave chaos? Is there a way to rationally and systematically fill a space in the worst way possible? The answer is yes – and thanks to a recent proof, we’re […]

When Elon Musk took over X (then known by the much more recognizable name of Twitter), he made a big deal out of getting rid of the bots. But nearly two years down the line, according to analysis by the Queensland University of Technology, bots are still very much active on the platform. X users […]

The animal kingdom is full of spectacularly colored creatures. From bright blue tarantulas to the stripes and spots on a tiger cat,  just about every kind of pattern and hue can be found somewhere. Problems arise, however, when those who admire these bright colors want a closer look. Research has revealed that a bat species […]

A new planet has been discovered that has the most elongated orbit of any of the 5,600 we have found. On top of that, it’s going the wrong way. Strange as this is, it could provide the missing link between planetary formation, and the category that made up most of our initial discoveries of planets […]

Springtime in Canada. Its large lakes have spent many many months completely frozen, but they are finally starting to thaw. From the shore it may not look like much, but a little prodding reveals that the ice is made up of tightly-packed, vertically floating candle-shaped ice sticks. Not something you see every day. Advertisement Candle […]

AI images are now omnipresent online. While some are absolutely ridiculous, dubbed by Gen Z and Gen Alpha as “Boomer Art”, others can fool even people paying close attention. This is particularly important when it comes to deep fakes, the made-up images of real people. Advertisement Counteracting the spread of these images is extremely important […]

The chopped-up carcass of a giant armadillo shows that humans were in South America much earlier than previously realized. Dating to around 21,000 years old, the butchered remains also show some of the earliest archaeological evidence of people in the southern stretches of the continent. The fossilized bones were discovered along the banks of the […]

A microcontinent has been discovered in the Davis Strait between Canada’s southeastern Baffin Island and southwestern Greenland. In a new study, researchers from the UK and Sweden mapped the microcontinent using gravity data, and seismic reflection data to create a plate tectonic reconstruction of the region. Advertisement Though the geology of the region has been […]