After more than a decade traveling through space, a robotic lander built by the European Space Agency has made the first-ever soft landing of a spacecraft on a comet. Mission controllers at ESA’s mission operations center in Darmstadt, Germany, received a signal confirming that the Philae lander had touched down on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Wednesday, […]
While computer models churn out bleak forecasts for the planet’s future, we also have a more conceptual understanding of what is happening as humans pump carbon dioxide into the air. But the conceptual understanding of carbon dioxide wrapping the planet in a blanket that traps more heat is not quite right. A new study from […]
Paleontologists have discovered an almost complete skull of a previously unknown mammal that likely resembled a large modern-day groundhog and lived alongside dinosaurs. The species, found on Madagascar, is shaking up theories of early mammal evolution and diversity. Stony Brook University paleontologist David Krause led the research team, which reports its findings in today’s issue […]
DNA recovered from a 36,000 year old fossil skeleton found in Russia shows early divergence of Eurasians once they had left Africa, and the deep shared ancestry of Europeans. The new study, carried out by an international team of researchers, also reveals when Neanderthals and early modern humans out of Africa interbred – around 54,000 […]