Humans likely butchered 6-foot-long armadillo-like animals over 20,000 years ago, according to a report in PLOS ONE. These findings not only represent an interesting dietary choice (and make one wonder just what ancient armadillo must have tasted like), but they also bump back the time of known human occupation of South America by about 6,000 years.Pleistocene ButchersScientists analyzed cut marks on parts of the pelvis, tail, and body armor of a creature called glyptodont, also referred to as N ...read more

Isaac Newton would never have discovered the laws of motion had he studied only cats.Suppose you hold a cat, stomach up, and drop it from a second-story window. If a cat is simply a mechanical system that obeys Newton’s rules of matter in motion, it should land on its back. (OK, there’s some technicalities — like this should be done in a vacuum, but ignore that for now.) Instead, most cats usually avoid injury by twisting themselves on the way down to land on their feet.Most people are not ...read more

When I was in middle school, my biology teacher showed our class the sci-fi movie “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.”The plot drew me in, with its depiction of the “Genesis Project” – a new technology that transformed a dead alien world into one brimming with life.After watching the movie, my teacher asked us to write an essay about such technology. Was it realistic? Was it ethical? And to channel our inner Spock: Was it logical? This assignment had a huge impact on me.Fast-forward ...read more

The problem of misinformation isn’t going away – and may be getting worse, in the wake of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Internet platforms like Facebook and X have taken some steps to curb its spread and say they are working on doing more. But no method yet introduced has been completely successful at removing all misleading content from social media. The best defense, then, is self-defense.Misleading or outright false information – broadly called “misinform ...read more

Blue whales are the Earth’s largest species and can stretch beyond 100 feet in size — even their young measure at above 20 feet on average. Great white sharks, meanwhile are quick, powerful, and highly efficient predators. What happens when these two face off and do great white sharks actually pose a threat to these true titans of the ocean? The short answer, says Chandra Salgado Kent, marine ecologist and associate professor at Edith Cowan University, in most cases, likely not. Fit adult bl ...read more

In the wild, animals fight over mating, food, territory, and to protect their young. Even when living in the same environment, not all animals fight each other. We couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if these animals interacted on the battlefield. Let’s look at how some formidable animals in the wild might do in a matchup based on their skills and strengths.1. Tiger vs. Lion(Credit: Volodymyr Burdiak/Shutterstock) Tigers are found in Asia, while most lions primarily live in Africa. Wh ...read more

During the summer of 1998, shifting sands on a beach on the east coast of England exposed an ancient monument. Fifty-five oak posts had been situated in a 15-foot-wide circle, and an upturned tree stump was planted in the middle.Scientists were able to date the monument to 2050 B.C.E. during the Bronze Age. While the monument has been nicknamed Seahenge, scholars referred to it as Holme I, named after the location where it was found.“It is not a henge, neither is Stonehenge for that matter, a ...read more

As a science communication scholar, I’ve always supported vaccination and trusted medical experts – and I still do. As a new mom, however, I’ve been confronting new-to-me emotions and concerns while weighing decisions about my son’s health.Vaccines are incredibly effective and have minimal risks of side effects. But I began to see why some parents may hesitate because of the flood of content, especially online, about potential vaccine risks.Part of what makes vaccine misinformation persu ...read more

Sometimes it looks as if Therizinosaurus couldn’t have been real — as if Dr. Frankenstein sewed together parts from a hump-backed giraffe, a giant ground sloth and the X-Men character Wolverine to make one of the weirder dinosaurs of the Late Cretaceous.“It’s really hard to picture how they made a living,” says James Kirkland, a state paleontologist with the Utah Geological Survey who studies these creatures.But they did exist, for millions of years in the Cretaceous, and they were rat ...read more

Storm-chasing for science can be exciting and stressful – we know, because we do it. It has also been essential for developing today’s understanding of how tornadoes form and how they behave.In 1996 the movie “Twister” brought storm-chasing into the public imagination as scientists played by Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton raced ahead of tornadoes to deploy their sensors and occasionally got too close. That movie inspired a generation of atmospheric scientists.With the new movie “Twisters� ...read more