How the Famous Lucy Fossil Revolutionized the Study of Human Origins
Half a century after its discovery, this iconic fossil remains central to our understanding of human origins
Tardigrade Fossils Reveal When ‘Water Bears’ Became Indestructible
The resulting family tree recalibration allowed the researchers to calculate when the two tardigrade lines that perform cryptobiosis could have diverged—putting a latest date on the likely acquisition of that…
Iron Chompers
There aren’t many scenarios in which getting a good look at a bunch of Komodo dragon teeth ends well. The massive lizard’s mouth holds 60 serrated teeth, each up to…
Tiny Babies Who Can Smell Their Mother Recognize Faces Better
Babies experience a torrent of sensory information from the moment they are born. Knowing nothing about the world, they must learn to sort this deluge into categories of things—especially faces.…
Cave Fish Adolescence Means Sprouting Taste Buds in Weird Places
In eastern Mexico’s underground caverns and streams, a blind fish undergoes a peculiar adolescence: as it approaches maturity, taste buds begin to sprout under its chin and on top of…
Earthquakes May Forge Large Gold Nuggets
Solid gold bars stacked in bank vaults, plating on the summer’s Olympic medals, or even your own pieces of gold jewelry could owe their existence to earthquakes. The stress and…
Enlisting Microbes to Break Down ‘Forever Chemicals’
Scientists had previously demonstrated that a microbe called Acidimicrobium sp. strain A6 could break down carbon-fluorine bonds and completely degrade two of the most ubiquitous perfluoroalkyls. This microbe grows slowly,…
Birds Practice Singing in Their Sleep
Scientists had previously observed sleeping birds making movements that resembled lip-syncing. In earlier work, Mindlin and his colleagues implanted electrodes in two Zebra Finches; for a recent study in Chaos, they did the…
There Is Little Evidence That Mass Transit Poses a Risk of Coronavirus Outbreaks
“many have blamed subways and buses for coronavirus outbreaks, but a growing body of research suggests otherwise.” The piece noted that epidemiologists use the term “cluster” to describe major coronavirus…