Deborah Bloomfield

A flowery mystery has been puzzling scientists at Shanidar Cave, a rocky outcrop located on Bradost Mountain within a long mountain range in the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq, where a Neanderthal grave was found stuffed full of pollen. While some believed it to be evidence of cultural funerary practices among Neanderthals, others thought it […]

The annual weigh-in is a big event for ZSL London Zoo, and 2023 marked the 100th year of the tradition. Each year, zookeepers pull out their best tricks to lure their unsuspecting residents onto the scales, something IFLScience got to witness in person as we were invited down to see what goes on. Armed with […]

In a first-of-its-kind procedure, scientists have successfully used stem cell therapy to treat arthritis in a gorilla. At 46 years old, Liesel is Budapest Zoo’s oldest gorilla. Staff at the zoo noticed that her old age may have started to take effect when she began finding it difficult to walk on her left leg. Suspecting […]

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been found to produce the hypernucleus known as hypertriton. If atomic nuclei that sound like electropop bands aren’t enough to get you excited, the production of the antimatter counterpart antihypertriton has also been announced. The quantities produced are quite small for two years of LHC operation, but they offer […]

If you’re interested in spurious ideas and outlandish thinking, then there is a chance you’ve come across a totally “out there” claim made by some people who believe it is possible to live off air alone.  Now we’re not talking about some fad diet or slimming program here. We’re talking about a deeply held ascetic […]

Staring down the toothy jaws of a wolf, you might not imagine it’s an animal that needs the help of us bald apes to get by – but across the world, we’ve seen that predator populations are declining. Protecting these species isn’t just crucial for their own survival, but also for the continued healthy function […]

The JWST has captured an incredible new image of the Whirlpool galaxy, a “grand-design” spiral galaxy locked in a tumultuous relationship with its neighbor, the dwarf galaxy NGC 5195. Astronomers have been waiting for this day ever since Hubble first imaged it, and it does not disappoint. Officially named Messier 51, M51 was the first […]

The face of a medieval man with dwarfism has been reconstructed from a skull that was discovered in Poland. Thought to have died between the ages of 30 and 45, the ancient individual lived some time between the ninth and 11th centuries CE and stood 115 centimeters (3 feet 9 inches) tall. Facial reconstruction techniques […]

Microplastics can accumulate in the brains of mammals and even lead to behavioral changes, according to a new study. This not only adds to the growing body of evidence about the harm that microplastics are doing to our environment, but crucially provides new insight into what they could be doing to our bodies as well. […]

Back in 1893, Belgian paleontologist Louis Dollo developed the principle that, once a structure is lost in evolution, then it is lost forever. It basically treats evolution like a one-way street and that evolution is not reversible. This simple concept became known as Dollo’s law. However, the law may not be as simple as you […]

Avi Loeb, the sometimes controversial Harvard physicist who believes aliens may have visited the Solar System, spent last month searching the Pacific Ocean for remnants of an interstellar object. The team was on the hunt for an object known as CNEOS 2014-01-08, or sometimes Interstellar meteor 1, which flew over Papua New Guinea in 2014. […]

India’s Chandrayan-3 lunar mission is proving a scientific success as well as a technical triumph, with its Pragyan rover successfully analyzing the composition of the Moon’s surface close to the lunar south pole. The data returned has value beyond that of previous missions, both crewed and robotic, because the area being studied is close to […]

Think of an extinction event, and your mind probably leaps to the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs – but Earth has been through five mass extinction events (so far) and is possibly going through our sixth. Of the extinction events, the Cretaceous mass extinction event that put an end to the non-avian dinosaurs is not […]

Doctors in Australia got the shock of their lives when they discovered that a 64-year-old woman’s troubling symptoms had a seriously unusual cause: an 8-centimeter (3-inch) worm. The worm was pulled out of the woman’s brain, alive and kicking, during a surgical procedure, in what is the first reported case of this particular parasitic infection […]

The history of medicine is filled with grisly stories that push the boundary between brave medicine and irresponsible cruelty. But one story doesn’t just strain that boundary, it stamps all over it. The story of Dr Roberts Bartholow and his pioneering work on the human brain is recognized as a terrible example of unethical conduct […]

A biological pathway through which myelin, the protective coating on nerve fibers, can be repaired and regenerated has been discovered in a new study. The ramifications of this finding could be far-reaching for those with neurological diseases affecting myelin, many of which are currently untreatable. If the axons that shoot out from the cell bodies […]

The words “sabertooth cat” might conjure up images of large-fanged felines prowling around the ancient world, but did these big predatory pussy cats roar or purr? New research has revealed that the answer could be hidden in just a few little bones beneath the throat. Vocalization in extant cat species is driven primarily by the […]

Our hopes for finding life on Mars have been downgraded significantly over the years, from the 1870s when many believed we’d find a complex system of canals up there (and presumably a creature intelligent enough to have invented barge holidays to build them too).  Now, we are on the hunt for microbial life on the […]

A team of geologists has recently found a way to locate where diamonds, one of the most expensive gemstones in the world, could form.  Diamonds, the hardest naturally occurring material we have found, can only be created at the immense pressure and high temperatures found deep within the Earth. We know that they are – […]

There’s no shortage of impressive examples of camouflage in the animal world. Whether it’s hiding on a branch, blending in with bird poop, or straight-up pretending to be someone else, nature has gifted us all manner of masters of disguise. Luckily for us, though, a group of scientists was recently able to spot the wood […]