Titanoboa has long been heralded as the largest of large snakes. Slithering through the Paleocene at an estimated 45 to 50 feet, this ancient snake appears in almost every list of large snakes, and almost always at the top. But now another ancient snake is sliding up those lists. Named Vasuki indicus, and identified in a new paper published in Scientific Reports, this new snake slunk through the Eocene at an estimated 36 to 50 feet. If accurate, these estimates establish this new snake as an equ ...read more

For people going through menopause or seeking birth control options, medications that help replace and supplement key sex hormones — known as progestogens — are an essential part of treatment.  However, new research published last month suggests that these types of medications are associated with higher risk of a common type of brain tumor. Now, scientists are urging caution and pursuing further research on progestogens as a form of contraception and gynecological treatment. What Are Prog ...read more

Netflix's 3 Body Problem has been generating a lot of buzz since its premiere last month, and it's not hard to see why: The hit new series is being helmed by Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, along with screenwriter Alexander Woo, and adapts a bestselling sci-fi book trilogy by Chinese writer Liu Cixin. Both series explore thorny theoretical ideas posed by quantum mechanics, and don't skimp on the science, either. In fact, the series namesake — the titular three-body pr ...read more

Indonesia is possibly the most volcanically-active country in the world. It is the home of 127 potentially active volcanoes and one any given day it isn't surprising to see that 5-6 of them are erupting. Now, most of these eruptions are small puffs of ash or maybe the slow extrusion of lava at the summit. However, Indonesia is also home to some of the largest explosive eruptions in the historical record and beyond. Krakatoa in 1883, Tambora in 1815 and Toba around 73,800 years ago were massive b ...read more

Since the 1920s, anyone luckless enough to experience a stomach bug or digestive ailment — along with the attendant symptoms of diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and stomach upset in general — was likely to hear about the BRAT diet. It was a recommendation for specific kinds of bland foods that were thought to be easily digested and less irritating to tender tummies.Although components of BRAT can be beneficial, current medical and nutritional thinking has raised some concerns about the diet, whil ...read more

Of all our emotions, anger can be the most difficult to control. It can cause us to do all sorts of things that we regret, like saying something terrible to someone we love or sending a nasty email to a colleague. And in some cases, it can make people do things that change the course of their lives. Road rage is a great example. According to AAA, road rage incidents have increased by 7 percent annually since 1996. Anger, in general, seems to be on the upswing. Social media may be playing a role ...read more

The biggest hole formed from a collapsed star in the Milky Way Galaxy resides 2,000 light years away from Earth in the Aquila constellation. Researchers spotted the black hole when they noted the wiggle of a nearby orbiting star. "No one was expecting to find a high-mass black hole lurking nearby, undetected so far," said Pasquale Panuzzo, an astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris, and one of the study authors, in a press release. "This is the kind of discovery you make once in your research li ...read more

In evolution, competition is thought to be a zero-sum game. One species adapts and survives. Another doesn’t and dies off. A new study in Nature Ecology & Evolution posits that human ancestors might be an exception.Conventional wisdom in evolutionary theory has held that climate has driven the rise and fall of various hominin species. In most vertebrates, interspecies competition also plays an important role. That role has been discounted in human ancestors, according to the study.“We ha ...read more

A father and daughter, searching for fossils on an English beach, found more than they expected: the jawbone of what may be the largest known marine reptile. Scientists estimate that the giant ichthyosaur, from which the jawbone came, measured 80 feet long and lived during the late Triassic period. A report in the journal PLOS details the find. When Justin Reynolds and Ruby Reynolds (then 11) were combing the beach at Somerset in 2020 and came upon a giant bone chunk, they knew they were on to s ...read more

Taking the tube in modern London means using the subway system for transportation. Going down the tube in Holocene-Era Saudi Arabia probably referred to employing underground tunnels for temporary shelter. A new study in the journal PLoS One paints a picture of how human herders lived over the past 7,000 years in a sometimes harsh desert environment. That lifestyle has remained relatively unknown due to poor preservation of organic remains in the region’s arid conditions, until the recent stud ...read more