A buried ancient altar at the center of the Maya city of Tikal points to the tensions between the Maya and their neighbors in the late 300s C.E. According to a new study in Antiquity, the altar wasn’t made by artisans trained in Tikal. Instead, it was made by artisans trained in Teotihuacan, an ancient city around 630 miles away that had a heavy influence — and a heavy hand — over Tikal in the fourth century C.E. “It’s increasingly clear that this was an extraordinary period of turbule ...read more

Dinosaurs were living their best life, so legend goes, until the unwelcome arrival of a killer asteroid — Chicxulub — triggered an extinction-level event 66 million years ago. That was until more recent research suggested dinosaurs were already in a state of decline and the asteroid was just the final nail in the coffin. Now, new findings turn this theory on its head once again, arguing that the dinosaurs’ supposed decline may, in fact, be the result of a poor fossil record.“It’s been ...read more

Anyone who has witnessed a total solar eclipse has likely also noticed the sounds of silence accompanying “totality”. People have long reported anecdotally that birds stop chirping as the day suddenly darkens.Recording the Sounds of an EclipseA study examining how birds responded to the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, systematically confirms that trend and expands upon it. The birds don’t go completely silent until 99 percent of the sun is obscured, according to a study published in ...read more

All galaxies (including our own) are thought to exist inside a giant cosmological structure called a dark matter halo — a cloud-like phenomenon made up of invisible matter that forms a scaffold to the visible universe.These halos are key to the formation of stars, which are created as gas is pulled into the halos. Cool temperatures cause the gas to clump together. Over time, some of these clumps grow in size until gravity causes them to collapse, creating friction, which in turn creates heat a ...read more

Parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may someday see relief from disruptive behaviors associated with ASD, thanks to cannabidiol (CBD) extract treatments, according to research presented at the 2025 European Congress of Psychiatry (EPA).Learning About Autism TreatmentsAbout 1 in 100 children are estimated to have ASD. Children and teens with the disorder often have difficulty interpreting language and expressing emotions. They also sometimes cause disruptions, for instance, by ...read more

The Roman Empire and the Chinese Han Dynasty may have stood at opposite ends of the Eurasian continent, but they did experience one thing in common — high levels of income inequality.A team of researchers has demonstrated how large-scale resource extraction and redistribution across vast territories led to steep levels of income inequality on both counts — particularly in Han China.Not only does this present its own ethical questions, but the study’s authors argue that higher levels of ine ...read more

Time to trade your soda for a cold brew? There’s the old saying “you are what you eat,” but new research suggests your drink choice really could be affecting your mental health.A study recently published in the Journal of Affective Disorders found that regularly consuming drinks sweetened with sugar and artificial flavors was linked to an increased risk of developing conditions such as anxiety and depression in young and middle-aged adults. More positively, drinking coffee and fruit juice ...read more

If an expansive Mesozoic menu was laid out in front of you, what would you order? Tyranno tenders or triceratops-burgers with triple cheese? Would you go for a slow-cooked stegosaurus steak or the velociraptor ribs — the Cretaceous fast-food option? Determining what dinosaurs tasted like is not an easy question to answer.“I don’t know if you can really say too much definitively about it,” says David Varricchio, a paleontologist at Montana State University.But there may be some clues abou ...read more

When searching for signs of life on planets outside our Solar System, sometimes nothing is almost as good as something. Even a lack of biosignatures on examined exoplanets can still tell us a lot about the probability of life on the billions of planets we haven’t checked out yet, according to a study in The Astronomical Journal. The study employed a sophisticated statistical analysis to determine the minimum number of exoplanets that would need to be observed to generate useful answers about h ...read more

In the world today, it seems that politics are always at the top of mind. But some people are more political and more politically passionate than others — partially thanks to the brain itself. According to a paper published in the journal Brain, there are circuits in our minds that contribute to our levels of political intensity, and researchers recently revealed these circuits, identifying which brain regions are involved. “We didn’t find brain networks tied to liberal or conservative ide ...read more