How much can the written records of ancient civilisations tell us about the animals they lived alongside? Our latest research, based on the venomous snakes described in an ancient Egyptian papyrus, suggests more than you might think. A much more diverse range of snakes than we’d imagined lived in theContinue Reading
The "coal-like" material from Bennu. Nasa / Erika Blumenfeld & Joseph Aebers On September 24 this year, a Nasa capsule parachuted down to Earth carrying a precious cache of material grabbed from an asteroid. The space agency has now revealed images and a preliminary analysis of the space rocks itContinue Reading
Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock There are estimated to be nearly 8 million species of animals living today, making up the majority of Earth’s documented biodiversity and inhabiting almost all of its environments. However, for most of Earth’s history animals were completely absent. The date of the first animals marks a shift in theContinue Reading
A player in Fortnite visiting the Holocaust museum and learning about the Jews of Tunisia. Luc Bernard If you’ve played Fortnite, you’ll probably know it as a battle royale game in which you fight it out with around 100 other players until there is only one left standing. And youContinue Reading
Hiring algorithms could filter candidates before interviews even take place. fizkes / Shutterstock There are risks and harms that come with relying on algorithms to make decisions. People are already feeling the impact of doing so. Whether reinforcing racial biases or spreading misinformation, many technologies that are labelled as artificialContinue Reading
Dan Negureanu/Shutterstock Centenarians, once considered rare, have become commonplace. Indeed, they are the fastest-growing demographic group of the world’s population, with numbers roughly doubling every ten years since the 1970s. How long humans can live, and what determines a long and healthy life, have been of interest for as longContinue Reading
Excavators found part of a structure formed by two overlapping logs. Barham et al. Nature (2023), Author provided To most people, complex technologies separate modern humans from their ancestors who lived in the Stone Age, thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago. In today’s fast changing world, older technologies,Continue Reading
The footprints come from a group of people of different ages. National Park Service When and how humans first settled in the Americas is a subject of considerable controversy. In the 20th century, archaeologists believed that humans reached the North American interior no earlier than around 14,000 years ago. ButContinue Reading
Roman Tarasevych/Shutterstock One difference between men and women has been well documented by economists, psychologists and biologists – that women are tend to be more cautious and take fewer risks. Evidence has also been gathered about how this difference affects women’s lives, particularly with regard to careers and earnings. ForContinue Reading
Hemachatus nyangensis in Nyanga National Park, Zimbabwe Donald Broadley, Author provided Around the world, natural history museums hold a treasure trove of knowledge about Earth’s animals. But much of the precious information is sealed off to genetic scientists because formalin, the chemical often used to preserve specimens, damages DNA andContinue Reading
