Animals sporting elongated curved canine teeth have appeared twice in the fossil record, millions of years apart. One lineage, the nimravids, went extinct about in North America about 23 million years ago. Then the saber-toothed tiger vanished about 8,000 years to 10,000 years ago. More recently, saber teeth have also evolved in “true” cats of the Felidae family.Scientists have long wondered why saber teeth emerged over different times and places, vanished, then re-appeared. A new study in C ...read more

Sometimes one clue at a crime scene can provide the key to unlocking an entire mystery. Such is the case with a single gold earring found inside a building that burned to the ground about 2,200 years ago in Catalonia, according to a report in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology.The fact that the earring was hidden — both in a pot and in a nook inside a wall — suggests that its owners knew Hannibal’s Carthaginian army was heading their way. Because the earring was in one of the several b ...read more

Many people understand the concept of bias at some intuitive level. In society, and in artificial intelligence systems, racial and gender biases are well documented.If society could somehow remove bias, would all problems go away? The late Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, who was a key figure in the field of behavioral economics, argued in his last book that bias is just one side of the coin. Errors in judgments can be attributed to two sources: bias and noise.Bias and noise both play important r ...read more

With the new Amy Winehouse biopic “Back to Black” in U.S. theaters as of May 17, 2024, the late singer’s relationship with alcohol and drugs is under scrutiny again. In July 2011, Winehouse was found dead in her flat in north London from “death by misadventure” at the age of 27. That’s the official British term used for accidental death caused by a voluntary risk.Her blood alcohol concentration was 0.416%, more than five times the legal intoxication limit in the U.S. – leading her ...read more

There’s an old saying that you can’t step in the same river twice. But a group of researchers have now retraced an ancient, buried Nile tributary — allowing historians to walk in the dried-up waterway path that probably proved instrumental in the construction of the 31 pyramids it once flowed past.A report in Communications Earth & Environment employed satellite imaging, ground-penetrating radar, and soil samples to show that these famous structures — including the Giza complex — m ...read more

Exoplanets, or planets far from our solar system, are always exciting to discover. With each one, researchers learn more about how these exoplanets form and whether they can support life and star systems across the universe. A team of researchers from various universities just identified another exoplanet about the same size as Earth, 55 light-years away, which is very close when compared to cosmic scales. The exoplanet, dubbed SPECULOOS-3 b, is only the second of its kind currently known and ta ...read more

One of the big contributors to the record-breaking global temperatures over the past year – El Niño – is nearly gone, and its opposite, La Niña, is on the way.Whether that’s a relief or not depends in part on where you live. Above-normal temperatures are still forecast across the U.S. in summer 2024. And if you live along the U.S. Atlantic or Gulf coasts, La Niña can contribute to the worst possible combination of climate conditions for fueling hurricanes.Pedro DiNezio, an atmosphere an ...read more

The side of a highway outside Gloucester, U.K. might not be the place you’d expect to find thousands upon thousands of archaeological wonders. Yet in recent years, that's exactly where researchers from the archaeological group Oxford Cotswold Archaeology (OCA) have uncovered thousands of historical artifacts dating back 12,000 years ago.Ancient Artifacts from Different AgesIn advance of a highway restoration project that started in March 2023, archaeologists have discovered over 10,000 artifa ...read more

Some dinosaurs may have been essentially warm-blooded, which contradicts how we once thought of the ancient creatures, according to a new study in Current Biology.“Up until the ‘70s, dinos were considered cold-blooded reptiles — basically over-grown crocs,” says Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, an author of the study and a researcher at University College London (UCL). That conception has shifted some in the past decade, when researchers discovered that some dinosaur skeletal features more re ...read more

Getting enough sleep is essential to your physical and mental health. Sleep deprivation is linked to certain health issues, including heart and kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and depression. In the course of history, people have used opium, valerian, cannabis, and alcohol as natural sleep aids. In modern times, doctors may prescribe sleep aids. However, some people prefer supplements to address insomnia — and magnesium is a popular choice.Insomnia Is Pretty Common and Magnesium ...read more