Sometimes, good memory can be bad news.It turns out fat cells have excellent memory. Researchers published a study in Nature that explains how that memory works and why it is so persistent. The work describes the genetic and cellular mechanisms that make the "Yo-Yo effect," a common phenomenon where a person can lose weight, but it returns right away.The Persistence of Fat CellsThis result has especially profound implications in the U.S. where about 40 percent of adults are either overweight or ...read more

You are what you eat — a case especially true for the prehistoric creatures that roamed Earth before us. According to a recent study published in Nature, which analyzed fossilized dinosaur poop, or coprolites, the key to survival in prehistoric times was a diet of plants instead of meat. An international team from Uppsala University in Sweden and researchers from Norway, Hungary, and Poland examined hundreds of dinosaur coprolites and identified the different plants and animals these creature ...read more

The holidays are full of delicious and indulgent food and drinks. It’s hard to resist dreaming about cookies, specialty cakes, rich meats, and super saucy side dishes.Lots of the healthy raw ingredients used in holiday foods can end up overshadowed by sugar and starch. While adding extra sugar may be tasty, it’s not necessarily good for metabolism. Understanding the food and culinary science behind what you’re cooking means you can make a few alterations to a recipe and still have a delici ...read more

It can be difficult to clock the speeds of animals that lived over 66 million years ago. There’s no speedometer to know how fast they could run or even any muscular soft tissue to fully understand the anatomy of the most speedy predators. Still, paleontologists do have some ideas about how fast our favorite dinosaur predators could run.The only direct evidence we have of dinosaur locomotion comes from trackways or the fossilized footprints of dinosaurs, says Scott Persons, an assistant profess ...read more

The almost perfectly preserved skull of a prehistoric bird could be a sort of “Rosetta Stone” for understanding the evolution of avian intelligence — a process that has been a mystery until now. The research team determined the bird — Navaornis hestiae — was from the Mesozoic Era (about 252 million to 66 million years ago) and was roughly the size of a starling. The bird likely lived around 80 million years ago and died out before the fifth mass extinction event that wiped out most no ...read more

Duck-billed dinosaurs, also called Hadrosaurs, were common during the Cretaceous period in Europe, North America, and Asia. Often called the “cows of the Cretaceous,” they were herbivores who lived close to bodies of water and fed on overland vegetation. Their duck-bill was an obvious characteristic, but they also boasted distinctive crests, which were almost certainly for social display. There is also some thought that they could use the crests to produce sound, but that’s yet unproven.� ...read more

If you look at a map, it would appear obvious that the neighboring Norse folks settled both Iceland and the Faroe Islands. After all, Norway is the closest country to Iceland at around 900 miles, while it is also the nearest neighbor to the Faroe Islands — an archipelago of 18 islands in the North Atlantic — at around 350 miles.However, new evidence says the truth is more complicated. A genetic analysis shows that Icelandic people come from a relatively similar gene pool, while residents of ...read more

For decades, films have relied on computer-generated imagery (CGI) to create fantastical foreign landscapes.But there are still occasions when Hollywood goes for the real deal. When ancient temples or ruins appear in films, scholars describe the setting as real places, meaning they exist as seen on TV.Real places have led to film-inspired tourism, in which travelers take off to see on-screen favorites in real life. Here are four historical locations tourists can see for themselves.1. Ta Prohm (T ...read more

Deinosuchus lived during the late Cretaceous period, from 82 million years to 73 million years ago. This monster croc, whose habitat consisted of areas in North America from Montana to northern Mexico and New Jersey to Mississippi, would have seen a world that looked much different than it does today. At the time, the continent was much warmer, with a coastal, tropical, and subtropical climate similar to Florida or Georgia. And although Deinosuchus lived in freshwater, it could also be found in ...read more

Mount Everest is the tallest mountain in the world. Impressive as that is, there is plenty more to know about Everest. Think about this for a minute: The top of the mountain is covered with limestone that, a few hundred million years ago, was on the floor of the ocean. “It’s a remarkable example of how dynamic the planet is over geologic time,” says Sean Gallen, an Earth scientist at Colorado State University who studies, among other things, how mountains are formed.And then there’s the ...read more