Deborah Bloomfield

A study of DNA sequences from almost 10,000 ancient individuals has revealed six children with Down Syndrome. By following the trail to data about their remains and burial sites, scientists can start to piece together the history of these children, and the position they may have held within their communities. Most humans are born with […]

Egypt is the home to the oldest mummies in Africa, right? That at least is the assumption most of us likely have – but there is evidence challenging this. Deep in the desert mountains of southwest Libya, researchers uncovered the mummified remains of a long-dead child, known as the Tashwinat mummy, that predates Egyptian mummies […]

It happens to the best of us. You are sat there, innocently doomscrolling your phone, when the device slips from your grip and into the toilet bowl. Before you can say, “My phone is wet,” a friend, family member, or casual acquaintance will tell you that you should immediately plunge it into rice. And if […]

Calling those with an interest in photographing the skies, and the backyard equipment to do it; your electricity grid needs you. A forthcoming approach to the Sun by a relatively modest comet could provide an opportunity to learn about the solar wind close to the peak of the Sun’s cycle, and your help is being […]

Two hundred years ago, a dinosaur was given a scientific name for the first time. It was named Megalosaurus, and it’s a strange moment in history to contemplate with the benefit of hindsight because, at the time, nobody knew what a dinosaur was. The word “dinosaur” wasn’t used until around 20 years later, so what […]

Usually, you want your flying vehicles to be extremely visible because you want other aircraft to know where you are using radar and other wavelengths of light. The exception is military aircraft, which very much don’t want to be seen, and so various technologies have been employed to reduce the reflection and emission of both […]

Being the driest place in North America, Death Valley probably isn’t the first place that springs to mind when thinking about lakes – but that doesn’t mean you won’t find one there. After Hurricane Hilary brought heavy rainfall to the region last year, a lake popped up in Badwater Basin and though at first it […]

An ancient bronze hand inscribed with a mysterious ancient language may help to illuminate the backstory of the Basque language, a fascinating “language isolate” that has no living relatives.  It’s said to be a “miracle” that the Basque language is still used today. It’s spoken by just under 1 million people who live in the […]

The US officially has a new national park. Amache National Historic Site near Granada, Colorado, has officially joined the likes of Yellowstone and Yosemite, the National Park Service announced last week.  Amache – also known as the Granada Relocation Center – has a dark past, having been one of 10 incarceration sites established by the […]

We get it okay, the ocean is frankly one of the weirdest habitats the Earth has to offer, with everything from tiny octopuses to giant whales swimming below the surface. While you might have come across scallops on the menu at the local seafood restaurant, what exactly are they and what do they get up […]

If you’ve ever made the mistake of gaming online, and then made the further mistake of enabling chat and/or messages from strangers, you may have noticed gaming has a misogyny problem. Surveys have found that around 50 percent of women overall have experienced harassment of some kind, with 75 percent of women aged between 18 […]

The Amazon rainforest hosts the largest and heaviest (although not longest) snake species on Earth: the green anaconda. However, what was thought to be a single species covering a vast area has now been revealed as two, with a little help from Will Smith and an accompanying documentary crew. Professor Bryan Fry of the University […]

Plans to build the largest monkey-breeding facility in the US have attracted anger and concern from animal welfare groups and local residents in Georgia. The giant complex is set to eventually house up to 30,000 macaques – twice the human population of the local city – which will be sold to universities and pharmaceutical companies […]

Quartz is one of the world’s most abundant materials – and one of humanity’s oldest fascinations. From ancient myths to modern science, quartz has played a part in pretty much every aspect of human development – and it’s pretty to boot. But have you ever wondered what’s going on behind the twinkling gem at the […]

“Giant”, “sea”, and “spider” are perhaps not words best seen in combination – but unfortunately for any arachnophobes and thalassophobes out there, giant Antarctic sea spiders have crawled straight out your nightmares and into existence. Although not technically spiders, these strange, spindly creatures certainly look like their namesake (that’ll be the legs), and they hide […]

When you hear the word “mummy”, we bet your mind goes straight to the dried and bandaged remains of long-preserved Egyptian pharaohs. However, despite their fame, these specimens are not the oldest mummies in the world. That title belongs to the Chinchorro people of Chile’s Atacama Desert who mummified their dead 7,000 years ago. The […]

This cluster of pink loveliness might have put you in mind of a sea of cherry blossom, or a juicy raspberry compote just waiting to ooze over your pancakes. Well, you can shelve these delightful images immediately, we’re afraid. What you’re looking at here are bacteria, and though these structures might be called “pink berries”, […]

A new paper has taken a look at panspermia and the suggestion that dust particles could escape the gravity of host planets and make their way across the galaxy, seeding life on other planets. There are a number of ideas about how life began on Earth, with the most likely being that it emerged in […]

The dance of the continents could be about to take a new turn, with the Atlantic moving from a growth to a contraction phase. This, some geologists predict, will be caused by the breaking of tectonic plates, causing lines of volcanoes along the coastlines of Africa and Iberia. Over billions of years, the Earth’s continents […]

A new analysis of human activities at two prehistoric sites in the Colombian Amazon has revealed that people were well established in the region by around 13,000 years ago. By studying layers of soil, researchers were able to tease out the long-term history of both settlements, indicating that the ancient inhabitants began producing rock art […]