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Call in the forensic experts, for a crime has been committed (albeit, 76 million years ago). That’s according to an “exceptionally uncommon” fossil of a young pterosaur that shows it was bitten by some kind of ancient crocodilian way back in the Cretaceous period.  ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE There’s nothing we can do for the […]

California bees may be fish, but Colorado elephants are not people. At least, that’s the ruling of the state’s Supreme Court, who this week decreed that five elephants currently held at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs have no legal right to pursue their release from the establishment. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE It is, […]

The Omiltemi cottontail rabbit was thought to have been lost to science since the early 1900s. Last seen 130 years ago, the future looked bleak for this little brown rabbit, but an expedition in the Sierra Madre del Sur Mountain Range in Mexico has changed all that. Not only did the team successfully capture the […]

People with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may have a “deeply concerning” reduced life expectancy compared to those without it, a UK study of over 30,000 individuals with diagnosed ADHD has suggested. For male participants, ADHD was associated with a reduction in life expectancy of 4.5 to 9 years, and for female participants, the reduction […]

The world’s largest iceberg – A23a – continues to move along its collision course with the remote British island of South Georgia. If previous iceberg crashes are anything to go by, a bump with this icy behemoth could be a catastrophe for their resident seals, penguins, and other wildlife.  ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE A23a weighs […]

The Moon will soon get its first flapping flag, thanks to elementary school students from Changsha in central China’s Hunan Province. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE When the USA first sent astronauts to the Moon on Apollo 11, they wanted to plant an American flag on the surface. The problem was that a regular flag would […]

Failure to find the oldest dinosaur fossils may be because the areas in which they first evolved are now generally hard to explore like the Amazon rainforest or the Sahara desert, closer to the equator and not the far south of the Southern Hemisphere as previously thought, a team of paleontologists has proposed. ADVERTISEMENT GO […]

Life can get a bit lonely for the orchid Stigmatodactylus sikokianus. It grows in dark and secluded places where it’s easy to miss and rarely visited by pollinators, but a 130-year mystery has revealed how it manages to fertilize all on its lonesome. If nobody shows up, it simply does the job itself. ADVERTISEMENT GO […]

One of Earth’s seven quasi-moons has just got a new name: Asteroid 2004 GU9 is now known as Cardea, one of the Roman deities of doors and thresholds with a particular focus on hinges. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Cardea is not a real satellite of our planet like the Moon – it is not gravitationally […]

Bones from Grăunceanu, Romania have been interpreted as evidence early humans made it to Europe 1.95 million years ago, long before other accepted examples. However, the find is not a clear-cut case, and may face considerable dispute. The bones are not from our relatives themselves, but from potential prey that appear to have been cut […]

A nasal spray therapy for treatment-resistant major depressive disorder (MDD) has now been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use on its own, making it the first-ever approved standalone treatment for this condition. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE MDD is one of the most common mental health conditions in the US, affecting an […]

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, the scolding lava, ash, and gas that poured from its entrails converted the Roman city of Pompeii into a terrifying snapshot of death and destruction. Two millennia on, researchers have finally recreated a blow-by-blow account of the disaster, revealing exactly how the eruption progressed and dragged the city’s […]

West Greenland’s lakes have undergone an alarming change. Within just a couple of years, thousands of its great blue lakes have turned brown and become dominated by a stinking gunk that pumps out carbon emissions. According to a new study, atmospheric rivers might be to blame. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Scientists at the University of […]

Hopefully, you’ve never eaten any chunks of metal or chowed down on a coin, but you’ll no doubt have an idea of what metal tastes and smells like: musty, tangy, and sharp. We’re here to inform you that metal doesn’t actually have an innate odor; that aroma is basically a body odor.  ADVERTISEMENT GO AD […]

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LNNL) in California is now home to the fastest supercomputer in the world. Dubbed El Capitan and officially dedicated on January 9, it’s only the third exascale supercomputer in the world, and by far the fastest. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE It cost $600 million to build and it will handle […]

While there are a whole host of vitamins and minerals that are essential to our bodies being able to function properly, a critical one is iodine. Yep, that thing you used in high school to test for starch is actually good for more than just muddling through class. But are people getting enough of it? […]

In the first few hours of his second presidency, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that could pave the way for oil drilling in North Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of the last great wildernesses left in the US. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Shortly after announcing the US was set to “drill, baby, […]

Have you ever looked at a bath and thought “Nah, not today!”? Well, you are not alone, as bathing has been a very up-and-down trend across history and from culture to culture. Ancient Rome’s public baths could be a grand affair, with all classes of Roman society taking frequent hot soaks. This contrasts with people […]

Imagine this scenario: You are about to undergo an important and delicate surgical procedure. You’re lying on the operating table, waiting to be anesthetized. The room is sterile and quiet. In the past, you would expect to see nurses and surgeons setting up equipment and instruments for the operation, their movements bustling around in busy […]

We all know the tallest mountain: it’s Everest, of course. Or Mauna Kea. Okay, okay, or Chimborazo. Look, maybe that’s too controversial an item of trivia – let’s aim smaller. Where’s the steepest hill? ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE It’s difficult to know for sure, since, well, not all of them have been officially logged. Perhaps […]