16+ hour, 56+ min ago  (379+ words) A site in southwestern China holds a wide array of strange life-forms that emerged prior to the Cambrian explosion, and it pushes back the origin of complex life by millions of years. A newly discovered trove of fossils in southwestern…...

1+ day, 20+ hour ago  (665+ words) Between 2 million and 3 million years ago, humans appeared in Africa " but identifying them in the fossil record is turning out to be surprisingly difficult. For 60 years, the earliest known human species has also been one of the most mysterious. Homo…...

4+ day, 11+ hour ago  (371+ words) Two researchers snorkeling in a subterranean stream in Texas discovered fossils from the Late Pleistocene epoch, revealing new details about what lived in this ancient ecosystem. While exploring a cave in central Texas, scientists unearthed a long-lost ice-age ecosystem, including…...

1+ week, 2+ day ago  (729+ words) The ancestor of apes was long thought to come from East Africa, but newly discovered fossils in Egypt may prompt a rethink. The discovery of an enigmatic ape's 18 million year-old fossils in Egypt hints that the ancestors of all living…...

1+ week, 6+ day ago  (544+ words) Pupil shapes vary widely across the animal kingdom, from the W-shaped pupils of cuttlefish to the bar-like pupils of goats. But why are animal pupils shaped so differently? In a perfect optical system, the shape of the pupil shouldn't matter…...

2+ week, 1+ day ago  (437+ words) Potential explanations abound, yet recent research has shed new light on the question. Humans are the only species with a chin " a feature absent from even our closest relatives. Indeed, it's such a unique anatomical quirk that it's one of…...

2+ week, 4+ day ago  (479+ words) A landmass that once connected Britain to mainland Europe had temperate forests that could have sustained Stone Age people for millennia before the landmass was flooded, a new study suggests. A sunken landmass that connected Britain to mainland Europe until…...

2+ week, 5+ day ago  (733+ words) A geoscientist explains how the first plants came to exist on Earth, long before the dinosaurs, and how their growth shaped life on our planet as we know it. Long before dinosaurs roamed the land, Earth looked very different from…...

1+ mon, 1+ day ago  (554+ words) Scientists have described Tanyka amnicola, a newly identified species of prehistoric creature that lived 275 million years ago and had a bizarre twisted jaw with sideways-facing teeth. Night Sky This Week Paleontologists have revealed a bizarre prehistoric creature with a twisted…...

9+ mon, 2+ week ago  (303+ words) By Charles Q. Choi published 18 June 25 How did Homo sapiens manage to leave Africa around 50,000 years ago, when earlier treks out of the continent had ended in failure? By Kristina Killgrove published 18 June 25 Scientists have determined that a giant skull from…...