Deborah Bloomfield

Around 140,000 years ago, a Neanderthal and a modern human got it on. We know nothing about the situation that led to this interaction. We don’t know which parent came from which species, but we do know that they had a child who died around the age of five. A team of researchers from Tel […]

A resurrection ritual, the first sunrise, and a musical game are among the scenes that were painted onto the walls of a cave in Missouri by Native American communities 1,000 years ago. Known as Picture Cave, the site has been studied by archaeologists since the early 1990s, yet it is only now – and with […]

Prehistoric paintings found deep inside a perilously inaccessible cave in the French Pyrenees reveal how ancient hunter-gatherers risked their necks to conduct ritual activities in the bowels of the Earth. Known as Etxeberri Cave, the site is considered one of the most challenging caverns to have been explored by Palaeolithic humans, and may have been […]

Astronomers have for the first time tracked the transformation of a dying star for over a century. The subject in question is the so-called “spirograph” Planetary Nebula IC418, an aged star that is shedding off its outer layers, forming these beautiful patterns. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or […]

Pharma company Invivyd, Inc. just announced it is working with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on a pathway to rapid approval for a product it calls an “alternative” to COVID-19 vaccines. The novel monoclonal antibody-based treatment, catchily named VYD2311 for now, offers a different way of preventing COVID infections compared with the existing […]

New Jersey officials are currently investigating the origins of a malaria case in Morris County, after it was found that the person who fell ill had no recent history of international travel. A joint statement from the New Jersey Departments of Health (NJDOH) and Environmental Protection (NJDEP) released on August 18 announced the investigation, and […]

Let’s face it, the sea is full of proper freaky looking creatures, from Barbie lobsters to disco worms and everything in between. However, normally in the shark world, the species relies on sharp teeth and speed to make an impression. Well, one shark species has taken a rather different approach from stealthy gray. For the […]

JWST has spotted the 29th moon of Uranus, finding an object that’s probably the size of a small city 2.7 billion kilometers away. Within six years of discovering Uranus, William Herschel had found two moons. Although Herschel thought he had found four more, it took 64 years before the next two real discoveries. In the […]

Trails left in ancient rock have been attributed to fish getting the hang of the then-newfangled concept of crawling. If correct, this would push back the conquest of the land by vertebrates by 10 million years. That’s assuming these pioneers didn’t just nope it out back to the water (like whales later would), until braver […]

There are plenty of species that we know exist, but the finer points of their day-to-day lives, breeding behavior, and ecology have not been extensively studied. In the Paraguay River basin in Brazil, a species of catfish has been observed shimming their way up the side of waterfalls in great numbers, a behavior that has […]

Researchers have recently discovered an impressive hydrothermal system in the western Pacific Ocean, and according to the team, it’s “challenging long-held assumptions” about where hydrogen is generated beneath the waves. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. To say this newly found field […]

The Atacama Desert might be one of the driest places on the planet, but even this barren landscape can occasionally bloom into a sea of colorful flowers – and we won’t have to wait long until the next time it does. Speaking to UPI, Jorge Carabantes, the head of protected areas at Chile’s National Forestry […]

It’s strange, then, that we know so little about them. Oh, sure, we know how they looked – more or less, anyway – and what they ate, stuff like that. But how did they act? How did they move? A new study suggests the answer isn’t quite what we were taught – at least in […]

It’s something of a rite of passage for anyone who lives by the seaside to get pooped on by a bird, and now a new study has discovered that aerial pooping really does seem to be a preference among seabirds. Using cameras strapped to the bodies of streaked shearwaters, it recorded how the birds will […]

Astronomers have reported the discovery of an unlikely rainbow in the Solar System, showing that whenever there’s a bit of precipitation and light, rainbows appear. The celestial rainbow appears above Enceladus, the icy moon of Saturn, which is responsible for the formation of Saturn’s E ring. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. […]

While cleaning out a drawer during a recent house move, I found the diary I kept in high school. Obviously, I couldn’t resist the temptation of reading the things 14-year-old me had seen fit to document – friendship dramas and getting braces featured heavily – and while a lot of it made me cringe, it […]

A new study has used an alternative method to work out how much Mercury has shrunk since its formation, finding that the planet has gotten significantly cooler in its first 4.5 billion years. Back in 1974, NASA’s Mariner 10 mission flew by Mercury and discovered evidence that, already the smallest planet in the Solar System, […]

A sprawling landscape of some 6,00 salt wells can be found arranged in stepped terraces on the hillside of the Qaqawiñay mountain, Peru. Known as Salineras de Maras, or the Salt Mines of Maras, they are located 52 kilometers (32 miles) northeast of Cusco city and sit at an altitude of 3,200 meters (10,500 feet) […]

Meet one of the world’s newest feline breeds: the Highlander cat. Breeding of these unusual-looking felines began in 2004. The goal? To craft a domestic cat that resembled big wild cats without the wild behavior. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. Originating […]

Whatever your answer, there’s a very high chance it’s not as long as some divers out there. Whether through culture, evolution, or just one dude’s strangely specific obsession, there are plenty of people in the world who saw the classification of humans as a terrestrial animal and thought, “nah” – and sometimes, the limits they […]