Genetic analysis reveals new evidence of Homo sapiens interbreeding with Denisovans, an extinct species closely related to Neanderthals and known from a handful of fossils, such as this toe bone. (Credit Bence Viola/Wikimedia Commons)
Hey, sex happens. And apparently, whenever our ancestors met up with other members of the genus Homo, it happened a lot. New genetic analysis published today reveals previously unidentified evidence of interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Denisovans, a branch of ...read more
More than a decade ago, Discover reported on an $85 million project to restore what was formerly one of the world’s biggest inland bodies of water: the Aral Sea.
An oasis on the Silk Road trading route, the sea once covered more than 26,000 square miles across the heart of Central Asia, including parts of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. This all changed in the 1950s, when a Soviet irrigation project diverted river water to rice and cotton fields miles away. The system leaked, and the sea began ...read more
A researcher investigating how the stress levels of people in non-industrialized societies differ from those of modern Americans found himself in a different kind of stressful situation when he came face-to-face with a killer.
Biological anthropologist Samuel Urlacher left the urban jungle of Boston, where he was a graduate student at Harvard University, for the actual jungle of Papua New Guinea. Since 2013, he’s worked among the Garisakang, an isolated clan of about 500 foragers and garde ...read more
United States Geological Survey photo of the 1982 eruption of Indonesia’s Galunggung. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
When a volcano erupts, it can spew a cloud of ash miles into the stratosphere. It makes for an impressive sight, and an even more impressive amount of sheer material — large eruptions can loft cubic miles of rock and ash skyward.
And, to add to the wow factor, the clouds sometimes spawn their own lightning. As the cloud swirls chaotically in its journey s ...read more
(Credit: Kim et al., Sci. Robot. 3, eaar2915 (2018))
We all know drones offer unique views from above, but give ‘em a hand and they can do a whole lot more. With a functioning arm they could better enter tight areas or lend a hand in gathering samples.
Taking inspiration from origami, a team of researchers from Seoul National University in Korea created a deployable arm that easily attaches to a drone and unfurls when needed. In the past, origami-inspired designs were limited because ...read more
Does the human brain continue creating new neurons throughout adult life? The idea that neurogenesis exists in the adult human hippocampus has generated a huge amount of excitement and stimulated much research. It’s been proposed that disruptions to neurogenesis could help to explain stress, depression, and other disorders.
But a new study, published in Nature, has just poured cold water on the whole idea. Researchers Shawn F. Sorrells and colleagues report that neurogenesis ends in humans ...read more
In 2008, Stephen Hawking delivered a lecture on “why we should go into space” in honor of NASA’s 50th anniversary. (Credit: NASA/Paul. E. Alers)
When I look at the night sky, I often view the stars not just in space but also in terms of their places in time. Light moves at a finite speed (299,792 kilometers per second, to be precise), so the journey from star to star is a very long one even for a beam of light. When astronomers talk about light years of distance, they are lit ...read more
A provocative paleontology paper out today suggests researchers can be in too much of a rush to name new species from highly fragmentary fossils, citing traits in ichthyosaurs (above) that could be interpreted as natural variation within a species, rather than the defining characteristics of separate species. (Credit James McKay)
In 2015, astrophysicist and science commentary go-to guy Neil Degrasse Tyson, flubbing an answer on a quiz show, quipped: “I love b ...read more
