(Credit: Shutterstock)
Some 4,000 years ago in the Russian steppe, the relationship between man and dog was, you could say, complicated.
It seems in that time and place, as a rite of passage into manhood, teenage boys were sent to a ritual site to “transform” into dogs by eating their flesh.
This is the new interpretation, presented in an upcoming paper in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, of roasted and chopped bones from at least 64 dogs and wolves, found at the Bronze ...read more
A demonstration of the icebreaking testing taking place at the National Research Council of Canada in St. Johns, Newfoundland and Labrador. Credit: CNW Group/National Research Council Canada
Imagine your childhood bathtub playtime magnified into large model ships plowing through an ice-filled tank with a length that rivals the Statue of Liberty’s height. That 300-foot ice tank in the Canadian city of St. John’s is currently helping the U.S. Coast Guard cond ...read more
Solar eclipse. Credit: Luc Viatour (CC-BY-SA)
On August 21st, millions of people across the U.S. will have the opportunity to witness a total solar eclipse. But we won’t be the only ones taking notice—there is a good chance animals, and even some plants, will be affected by the event, too.
It is not as farfetched as you might think. Many animals and plants respond to daily changes in light and temperature. Birds sing at dawn while fireflies come out at twilight. Flowers like m ...read more
A collection of helminth eggs seen under a microscope. (Credit: By Jarun Ontakrai/Shutterstock)
In Germany, treatments for disease may entail adding a vial of parasitic worms to a meal or beverage.
The country’s food and consumer safety organization is set to weigh in on the relative merits of parasitic worms as a treatment for a range of autoimmune disorders. So called “helminthic therapies” have been slowly gaining ground in the past two decades or so, although the scientif ...read more
1. Is your daily slog through a non-equilibrium system of interacting particles — how physicists define vehicular traffic — getting you down? Us too, especially when it slows for no apparent reason.
2. According to a study in the New Journal of Physics, traffic jams develop spontaneously when vehicle density exceeds a critical level, beyond which minor fluctuations in the flow of individual vehicles destabilize the whole thing.
3. In fact, even construction or an accident isn’t ...read more
This August, the sky will dim until the daytime world becomes dark. The bright disk that usually lights everything, burns skin, feeds plants and tells animals when to sleep will become a blank circle, surrounded by the shifting haze of its atmosphere.
This scene will pass over the United States, from Oregon to South Carolina, potentially capturing an audience even larger than the Super Bowl. And these people — including you, I hope — will likely react emotionally, not scientifically. ...read more
“It’s the first direct evidence of how the tools were used,” says Nowell. “All of a sudden, a wealth of information is unlocked.”
Detecting species by protein residues on stone tools is especially important for once-marshy sites, like Shishan, which are not conducive to bone preservation.Although the Shishan excavations have yet to determine which species of hominin was at the site, Nowell’s team found that they were eating everything from Asian elephant and r ...read more
The full text of this article is available to Discover Magazine subscribers only.
Subscribe and get 10 issues packed with:
The latest news, theories and developments in the world of science
Compelling stories and breakthroughs in health, medicine and the mind
Environmental issues and their relevance to daily life
Cutting-edge technology and its impact on our future
...read more
Long before recent political turmoil across the pond came to a head, Britain made a literal break for it and physically separated from mainland Europe. Now, researchers have an idea of how the process went down some 450,000 years ago.
A new study from Imperial College London and other European institutes supports the claim that before the English Channel existed, a large chalk ridge connected Britain and France. The ridge acted as a dam, holding back a lake that had formed in front of a nearby g ...read more
