Titanosaurs, a diverse group of long-necked sauropod dinosaurs, were found on every continent, including Antarctica, in their Cretaceous heyday. They lived right up until the end of all other non-bird dinosaurs, when the Chicxulub asteroid struck the Yucatan Peninsula about 66 million years ago.Paleontologists have discovered dozens of distinct titanosaurs, many of them relatively recently in fossil beds in South America. Nearly all of the group are massive, but like other sauropods, these giant ...read more

Science has long accepted that people are affected by their social environment – a term researchers use to describe day-to-day surroundings, interactions and stresses. For example, people with money, a robust social life and access to safe outdoor spaces are often going to have better long-term health outcomes than those without. Our four-legged friends, whose lives in many ways mirror our own, are also thought to be influenced by their social environment. But the specifics of how and why have ...read more

The divine blend of spices needed to make curry first reached Southeast Asia about 2,000 years ago, when the region began trading with the Indian subcontinent, according to an analysis of ancient spice residue.The new project analyzed 12 different spice grinding tools unearthed at the ancient trading port of Oc Eo, in modern-day Vietnam, by washing them with water and chemicals. This produced hundreds of tiny fragments that the researchers painstakingly identified (to a reasonable degree of cert ...read more

King Charles III, who assumed the throne of the United Kingdom in 2022 upon the death of Queen Elizabeth II, has a reputation as an environmental activist. What's more, some political commentators see his reign as an opportunity to enact the large-scale change needed to fight global warming. When he first entered public life at age 20, the then-Prince of Wales used his celebrity to sound the alarm. “Conservation or problems about pollution should not be held up as separate concepts from housin ...read more

With forty wild feline species scattered across the globe, cats boast an array of adaptations that allow them to thrive in some of Earth’s harshest environments. Here, we marvel at some of the extremes of the cat world – smallest, fluffiest and more – and see what evolution has done with these magnificent mammals. 1. Cheetah: The Speed Demon(Credit: Elana Erasmus/Shutterstock)Holding the records for the world's fastest cat and fastest land animal, cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) can reach spee ...read more

Natural disasters, such as tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, floods and volcanic eruptions, have caused devastating effects. However, human-caused disasters can have equally devastating impacts on the lives of countless people. Here are five of the biggest human-caused disasters to occur in modern history. 1. Chernobyl Disaster(Credit:JoRanky/Shutterstock)In 1986, an explosion at the Number 4 nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant released massive amounts of radioactive ...read more

Who was this girl, and why was her burial so special?Those are the questions archaeologist Hala Alarashi and her colleagues ask in a new paper published in PLOSONE that details the burial of an 8-year-old girl in an ancient Jordanian town sometime between 7,400 and 6,800 B.C. Interred with her bones in the village of Ba‘ja, they found the piecemeal remains of some sort of intricate jewelry that had no precedent at this point in neolithic history.“The making of the necklace appears to have in ...read more

Click-clack, click-clack! It’s a sound that many of us may have heard whenever our dogs walk or run across any surface that isn’t carpeted. If you have hardwood, your first thought might be, I hope he didn’t scratch my floors! But instead of worrying about that, maybe your first thought should be, is it time to clip my dog’s nails?The answer is probably yes. For many dogs, when their claws are so long that you can hear them tap-tap-tapping across any hard surface in the house, it’s oft ...read more

The Science Near Me blog is a partnership between Discover magazine and ScienceNearMe.org.Summer’s not over yet! Though many families are already wrapping up summer road trips and looking toward the beginning of another school year, there’s still ample time for curious people — of any age — to squeeze in some more summer fun (and learning) before temperatures drop.With Science Near Me, a free resource that gathers STEM opportunities from around the country, you can browse science-based a ...read more

Freshwater dolphins are some of the most unique mammals on the planet. Like bats, the dolphins use echolocation to forage for prey in the cloudy waters of the Orinoco and Amazon River basins. Now, researchers are using their clicks, buzzes and squeaks to monitor the species' movement within its habitat.Read More: River Dolphins Are Truly Unique and DisappearingWhat's Happening to the Freshwater Dolphin?A new study published in Scientific Reports looked at two different species of freshwater dolp ...read more