The planet’s largest and most powerful driver of climate changes from one year to the next, the El Niño Southern Oscillation in the tropical Pacific Ocean, was widely thought to have been weaker in ancient times because of a different configuration of the Earth’s orbit. But scientists analyzing 25-foot piles of ancient shells have found […]
DURHAM, N.C. — Modern humans appear in the fossil record about 200,000 years ago, but it was only about 50,000 years ago that making art and advanced tools became widespread. A new study appearing Aug. 1 in the journal Current Anthropology finds that human skulls changed in ways that indicate a lowering of testosterone levels at around […]
Julie Hagelin needed a fake bird. She found one in an unexpected place. The biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is studying the mysterious olive-sided flycatcher, known for its piercing “quick, three beers!” heard above black spruce bogs throughout Alaska. The bird, which weighs as much as a dozen pennies and migrates […]
A new study led by an Adelaide scientist has revealed how massive, meat-eating, ground-dwelling dinosaurs − the theropods − evolved into agile flyers: they just kept shrinking and shrinking, for over 50 million years. Today, in the prestigious journal Science, the researchers present a detailed family tree of these dinosaurs and their bird descendants which maps […]