Did you know? Your camera (or smartphone) is a fantastic tool you can use to help scientists better understand the world and answer big questions affecting us and our planet.Next time you’re taking a walk, visiting a local park, heading out on an outdoor adventure or even just exploring your own basement, you can aid REAL scientific research by photographing plants, animals, fungi and more!Need help getting started? Watch the recording of our June 20 SciStarter LIVE! event: Photography 101: H ...read more

A raccoon-sized bear that lived a short and painful life some 32 million years ago has suddenly risen to prominence thanks to a new paper that has declared it a new species, Eoarctos vorax. The so-called “dawn bear the voracious eater” helps to establish North America as an important venue for the evolution of early bears, a process scientists have largely relegated to Europe.Paleontologists first unearthed the skeleton in 1982 from the Fitterer Ranch site in southwestern North Dakota, but p ...read more

Imagine a future in which humans have built advanced spacecraft, capable of traveling at a significant percentage of the speed of light. Scientists have also become aware of a large black hole in our galactic neighborhood — now well within our reach.When a team of researchers assemble to travel to the black hole, one curious question might rise above all others: “What would happen if we flew straight into it?”For now, this hypothetical scenario is still a long way off. Yet for as long as w ...read more

What, exactly, is science? It's something people in lab coats do, right? Science has been a potent tool, providing us with technology we once never dreamt possible. It has also helped us answer questions that have sat dormant in the human psyche for millennia.The history of science, however, is filled with revolutions or modifications of accepted theory. Newton described gravity as an immutable background entity, an ever-present force that permeated the cosmos. That was until Einstein came along ...read more

If you've ever watched an ice cube melt or stirred creamer into a pool of black coffee, you've witnessed a fundamental truth about the universe: The "arrow of time" always marches forward. Time flows from past to future. What we call the present is a never-ending series of inflection points, where the collection of events that have already happened (the past) meets the collection of events that have yet to happen (the future). And while time doesn’t ever stop, it can slow down.Slowing Down Tim ...read more

With words like "unprecedented" "remarkable," and "utterly unbelievable," scientists are raising the alarm about climatic developments that have already been unfolding in 2023."This is getting to be utterly unbelievable," University of Miami researcher Brian McNoldy said of sizzling sea surface temperatures. In a Twitter post, he noted that "North Atlantic SSTs have just set a new record anomaly on June 20, beating the previous one from June 10." The chances of this occurring are more than one i ...read more

Tanystropheus, a strange marine reptile that lived alongside dinosaurs, has puzzled paleontologists since its discovery in the mid-1800s. At first, scientists mistook the species for flying reptiles, due to their extremely elongated neck bones. Only later did they realize that the vertebrae framed a neck so long that it looked like evolution was trying to create a cartoon.Now, a new paper seeks to answer a nearly 170-year-old question: Wasn’t such a long and awkward neck a liability?Just How L ...read more

Determining what is and isn’t art is tough. Determining who did and didn’t make a particular art piece is tougher. That’s the problem that torments the paleoarchaeologists and paleoanthropologists who study prehistoric paintings, anyway. And though they typically agree about which ancient scrapes, scratches and marks were made by human artists and which were not, they sometimes struggle to attribute those ancient markings to specific human species.According to a new paper in PLOS ONE, howe ...read more

Dinosaurs roamed Earth for millions of years, during a major geologic era known as the Mesozoic. Fossils, scientific discoveries and tireless research efforts have gradually unveiled the mesmerizing tapestry of the dinosaur timeline. Their captivating tale begins in the Triassic period, reaches its peak during the well-known Jurassic period and comes to a dramatic end in the late Cretaceous period. Discover how each of these distinct periods served as a stage for the evolutionary dramas that unf ...read more

Whether you’re at the dog park or just taking a stroll around the block, you’ve surely seen this before: A pup who looks — almost uncannily — like a miniature version of the human holding its leash.Maybe it’s the muscular pit bull who resembles its similarly-buff owner. Or the prim-and-proper poodle whose coiffed fur is a perfect match for its human's stylish hairdo. You may have even suppressed a chuckle at the basset hound whose mellow demeanor mirrors that of its droopy-eyed handler ...read more