5+ day, 4+ hour ago   (846+ words) Long ago, the Devil stood on Howe Hill and hurled giant stones towards the town of Aldborough, roaring: “Borobrigg keep out o’ way, for Auldbro’ town I’ll ding down!” Fortunately for Aldborough, his aim was poor. The stones fell short,…...

1+ week, 21+ hour ago   (829+ words) Over the past 50,000 years, many of the world’s large mammals have gone extinct. Until recent decades, all we knew about them came from fossils. Now, analysis of ancient DNA is adding to the picture. Ancient DNA is damaged and degraded…...

1+ week, 3+ day ago   (740+ words) These early mammals looked like shrews do today. They were small and had a long body, eyes typical for nocturnal mammals and little spiky teeth for eating insects. But they were not shrews. They were the ancestors of all the…...

2+ week, 6+ day ago   (578+ words) My students and I encountered a mystery. We were partnering with the Missouri Department of Conservation to monitor for fish presence and abundance in the Missouri Ozarks. We visited half a dozen rivers and streams across the region and collected…...

3+ week, 4+ day ago   (946+ words) Take a walk in London’s Trafalgar Square this summer and wilting under the heat will be all sorts of body sizes, some tall, some short: a real mix of sizes. Picking just two from the crowd to represent the whole…...

3+ week, 5+ day ago   (801+ words) Erupting or silent, volcanoes have always captured our imagination. As volcanologists, we have seen how that fascination can collide with rolling news coverage and social media, amplifying false claims, misleading images and long-standing misconceptions about how volcanoes behave. We want…...

3+ week, 5+ day ago   (882+ words) Humanity’s family tree is long and tangled. Scientists sort our ancient relatives into three familiar groups: Homo, Australopithecus and Paranthropus. Each of these is a “genus”, the rank just above a species. (In Homo sapiens, Homo is the genus and…...