Reconstruction Yuan Zhang When fossils of the oldest known bird, Archaeopteryx, were first discovered almost 160 years ago, the find created a puzzle that has troubled palaeontologists ever since. These fossils were celebrated for their chimera-like combination of supposedly reptilian features (such as a bony tail and jaws with teeth)Continue Reading
Artist impression of a prehistoric woman hunting. Matthew Verdolivo (UC Davis IET Academic Technology Services) For a long time, it was assumed that hunting in prehistoric societies was primarily carried out by men. Now a new study adds to a body of evidence challenging this idea. The research reports theContinue Reading
El Nariz/Shutterstock The small town of Watton, Norfolk recently held the unfortunate title of having England’s highest rate of infection with COVID-19 relative to population size, following an outbreak at a food factory. Despite varying degrees of lockdown restrictions due to the pandemic, many people in the UK are stillContinue Reading
Charles R Knight/Wikimedia Around 600,000 years ago, humanity split in two. One group stayed in Africa, evolving into us. The other struck out overland, into Asia, then Europe, becoming Homo neanderthalensis – the Neanderthals. They weren’t our ancestors, but a sister species, evolving in parallel. Neanderthals fascinate us because ofContinue Reading
We all love a happy ending. Romanno/Shutterstock All’s well that ends well, wrote William Shakespeare in 1623. The words may still seem to ring true today, but turns out they don’t. We have just busted the old myth in a recent brain imaging experiment, published in the Journal of Neuroscience.Continue Reading
Shutterstock Whisky is big business in Scotland. In 2019, the golden liquid accounted for 75% of the nation’s food and drink exports, with a value of almost £5 billion to the Scottish economy. Iconic bottles have sold at auction for over £1 million. But if you are the lucky ownerContinue Reading
Denys Niezhientsev/Shutterstock Wouldn’t it be great if chocolate were good for you? It’s no wonder many news outlets leap on any scrap of research that appears to show potential benefits to eating the tasty treat. But the history of such coverage provides a cautionary tale about why we should beContinue Reading
2shrip/Shutterstock Why is the reported number of COVID-19 cases rising across Europe now? Many countries ended their full lockdowns at the start of the summer, but it wasn’t until the autumn that most places began to see a significant increase in the spread of the virus again. The re-opening ofContinue Reading
Two _Cimoliopterus_ pterosaurs, with 5m wing spans. Mark Witton/University of Reading, Author provided With a wingspan of 12m–15m, Quetzalcoatlus was one of the largest flying animals that ever lived. Indeed, it seems astonishing that such monsters could fly at all. Yet over a period of more than 150 million years,Continue Reading
We’ve known for some time that people from ethnic minorities in the UK are several times more likely to be admitted to hospital or die from COVID-19. A new report authored by Baroness Doreen Laurence and commissioned by the Labour Party has found that the disease has thrived among minorityContinue Reading
