Deborah Bloomfield

How do you spot pregnant individuals in the archaeological record? With great difficulty, it turns out. But that could be about to change, as a test capable of identifying hormones in skeletons breaks new ground in our understanding of ancient pregnancy. For the first time, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone have been detected in multiple human […]

While snooping around one of the world’s most remarkable archaeological sites, researchers peeled away layers of dusty earth to reveal a large, stony human face staring back at them. With further digging, archaeologists realized they had uncovered the first human face carved onto a T-shaped obelisk ever found at this magnificent site. The rest of […]

Adult women with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) receive their diagnosis on average five years later than men do, even when their symptoms arose at the same age and despite the fact that women’s symptoms tend to have a more negative impact on their wellbeing. New research looked at a sample of 900 adults with ADHD receiving […]

Bigfoot, Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster, Mothman, the list of cryptids goes on. But what exactly is cryptozoology, and how is it related to the “monsters” that we can’t explain? What is cryptozoology? Cryptozoology is the study of hidden or unknown animals, often referred to as cryptids. The field takes into account evidence from witnesses […]

A new study has looked into the so-called “red sky paradox” and the puzzling observation that intelligent life has sprung up on Earth so early in the Stelliferous Era of the universe. Analyzing the problems using Bayesian statistics, the suggested solutions are not pretty. The only intelligent life we have observed lives around a G-type […]

Uranus and Neptune are the two furthest planets in the Solar System and have been visited only once by human spacecraft – by Voyager 2 over 30 years ago – so there is a lot about them that we do not know. One thing we thought we knew, however, was what type of planet they […]

The effects of a COVID-19 infection can sometimes persist for months or years after the initial symptoms have gone, but could some of the impact even be transferred to the next generation? Scientists studying male mice infected with SARS-CoV-2 discovered that it could alter their sperm, leading to behavioral changes in their offspring. It remains […]

Usually, it’s the number of legs and that strange scuttling motion that sets off arachnophobes. But with all eight legs motionless when you find an unfortunate deceased spider behind the sofa, we ask the question: why do their legs curl up when they die?  The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign […]

If you only ever saw the leaves or flowers of the Decaisnea fargesii shrub, you might not be tempted to give it a second glance – they look a lot like plenty of other leaves and flowers do. But come the fall, something happens to this plant that you’d be hard-pressed to miss. It grows […]

The Earth’s magnetic field has a giant weak spot roughly aligned with the south Atlantic, and 11 years of observations show it has grown dramatically in that time. The cause of the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) is still debated, but the changes show it is dynamic on a relatively short timescale, considering evidence it has […]

In 1965, the US Air Force and the Lincoln Laboratory at MIT launched two Lincoln Experimental Satellites (LES) into orbit around the Earth: LES-1 and LES-2. These were the first super-high-frequency satellites, using the X-band of the electromagnetic spectrum. “Lincoln Laboratory’s space communications program after Project West Ford began in 1963 with a charter to […]

Declared extinct in the wild decades ago, a newborn Spix’s macaw hatchling at a European zoo is offering the species fresh hope. The Spix’s macaw (Cyanopsitta spixii) is a brilliantly blue parrot once native to the dry tropical forests of northeastern Brazil. With its vivid cerulean plumage and paler gray-blue head, this striking bird is […]

Interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is a comet and an extremely interesting one at that. Despite the overwhelming amount of evidence of its cometary nature, however, erroneous claims that it could be an alien spacecraft and even that the aliens have nefarious intentions* are getting a lot of media coverage. We thought, hey, if they are rolling […]

Every now and then, somebody with a lot more self-belief than is warranted will set out to the “end” of the Earth in order to “prove” we are living not on an oblate sphere, but a pancake. They have traveled to Antarctica for a “final experiment” and attempted to sail to the edge, always ending […]

Earth has reached its first climate tipping point, according to an official new update, marking a “new reality” for our natural world. The tipping point concerns the world’s warm-water coral reefs, which have recently been facing repeated, unprecedented die-offs due to relentlessly rising ocean temperatures. With global temperatures already about 1.4°C (2.52°F) above pre-industrial levels, […]

What do you get when you propose to someone at a cheesemaking facility? Hopefully a yes, if they’re not too put off by the smell – but as a new study has shown, you might also end up with the ability to witness evolution in real time. That’s what happened in 2016, when Tufts University […]

Human embryo models capable of synthesizing their own blood have been developed, in an advance that could lead to new treatments for blood disorders as well as the production of stem cells for transplants. The 3D structures, named “hematoids”, are similar to embryos but differ in several important ways. They don’t have the capacity to […]

Sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing – these are the senses we’re probably all familiar with. But we humans may not be limited to just five: some scientists argue for a “sixth sense” – though there are several contenders for what this might be – while others suggest we have way more. One candidate for […]

Viewed from space, modern Earth looks like a blue marble, decorated with swirls of wispy clouds and slabs of green and brown land. But in our home planet’s freshman years, it might not have been dominated by greenish-blues, but soft purple hues.  This is what’s known as the “Purple Earth Hypothesis”, an idea first proposed […]

These days, the humble hippo is found exclusively in sub-Saharan Africa, but that hasn’t always been the case – thousands of years ago, the river horse also inhabited central Europe, for far longer than we once thought. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full […]