As Woolly Mammoths trekked across Alaska thousands of years ago, hunter-gatherers followed their every step. New research on the journey of a 14,000-year-old mammoth named Élmayųujey’eh — Elma, for short — has further illustrated the travels of beast and human alike throughout this prehistoric expanse.Researchers at the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility learned of Elma’s odyssey by analyzing isotopes from her tusk, which was first identified in 2009 at the Swan Point archaeological site i ...read more

Few things in the universe compare to the mystifying reputation of black holes, and a special one of these gravitational titans has just been recognized as the oldest among them all.An international research team led by the University of Cambridge has detected the oldest known black hole through the James Webb Space Telescope. Its appearance more than 13 billion years ago — 400 million years after the big bang — has twisted traditional beliefs about black hole formation and growth. The resul ...read more

Most settings in everyday life seem ordinary — your house, the office, a local restaurant you frequent after work. You never truly know, though, the entire history that surrounds the environments you visit. Archaeological rarities occasionally hide in the soil beneath these places, even popping up in people’s backyards. Many of these artifacts strewn across the world are at risk of being lost to time, but there is a way they can be saved. Construction, climate change, and conflicts summon a ...read more

Did you know that whales express emotional loss? Or that they use distinctive clicking sounds to identify and recognize other whales, as we would use a name? Experts link their intelligence to their large brain size, but a big brain isn’t the only thing that makes these marine mammals so special. They have characteristics that show advanced levels of intelligence, including reasoning, problem-solving, and strong memory skills.What Types of Animals are Whales?Whales are cetaceans, as are por ...read more

The mighty megalodon keeps its crown as one of the largest sharks to have ever lived. It was an apex predator of prehistory, reigning the seas and raining teeth on ocean floors, until its ultimate extinction around a couple million years ago.Despite having died out far before any of our lifetimes, megalodons manage to live on, swimming and zipping through the depths of our fantastical imaginations. Here’s what to know about this ancient superpredator, who dwarfs today’s great whites and kill ...read more

In 1975, Swiss restoration workers started rehabbing the Barfüsserkirche, a Medieval church built in 1256 by Franciscans. The building had been in use for more than 700 years. It was initially a church before it was converted into a salt warehouse in 1795. Eventually, it became a museum.The years of salt storage damaged the floors, and as workers began demolition, they hit a surprise. There were two coffins near where the choir once stood. One of the coffin’s occupants was a pile of bones. Th ...read more

In the shadow of the world's most infamous volcanoes, history has been shaped by fire and ash. From the catastrophic eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815, which forged a nearly four-mile caldera and altered global temperatures, to the thunderous explosion of Krakatoa in 1883, these titanic forces of nature have left indelible marks on both the Earth's surface and humanity's memory.Here are five of the most explosive volcanic disasters throughout history and where they rank on the volcanic explosivi ...read more

In 1959, Colonel Remy Van Lierde of the Belgian Royal Air Force was on helicopter patrol. He had flown in over 400 missions, his eyes trained to spot friend and foe below. That skillset that would help him with the ensuing ordeal over the Katanga region of the Congo, for what he saw next shocked him and his copilot: A truly gargantuan snake, estimated by his account to be over 50 feet in length.  This measurement would easily have made it the largest snake alive on Earth, dwarfing today's tit ...read more

From Moon missions to new uses of biotechnology and technological developments, 2024 will be packed with science missions and anniversaries. Here are a 12 science events and missions to mark on your calendars. Space Missions and Events for 2024 For space, all eyes are on the Moon. There are various uncrewed missions planned to land on the Moon in preparation for the Artemis II missions for the global Artemis program led by NASA. Artemis aims to create a long-term human presence on the Moon event ...read more

The southern polar regions are a forbidding place. Antarctica’s harsh climate and thick ice coverage have made archaeological explorations — or explorations of any kind — exceptionally challenging. This has added a sense of mystery to various theories that humans could once have occupied the continent as a permanent civilization.Scientists, however, have given a decidedly chilly reception to the prevailing hypotheses. Let’s go through them one-by-one. Historic (and Hypothetical) MapsThi ...read more