It all started in the small town of Lyme, Connecticut. For years, doctors had been diagnosing children with a type of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis that had begun popping up in the area. But it wasn’t until 1975 that the condition was conclusively identified as something separate, and named after the town where it was first observed.In the decades since this discovery, the tickborne pathogen has spread to a number of new states and into Canada. In the U.S., Lyme disease is (by far) the most co ...read more
In 1931, geologists excavated skull fragments from a fossil bed along the Solo River in Java, an Indonesian island under Dutch colonial rule. Over the next two years, they uncovered 10 more skull specimens and two pieces from a tibia. The geologists identified the bones as belonging to a previously undiscovered ancient human, Homo soloensis.Who Was Solo Man?Solo Man, as the specimen came to be known, has been a point of curiosity among archaeologists ever since its discovery. The hominid rese ...read more
The first of several global climate analyses for the month of September is now in, and the warmth it documents is simply astonishing. As Zeke Hausfather of Berkeley Earth put it on Twitter: "This month was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist – absolutely gobsmackingly bananas."During September, the average air temperature at the surface was 0.5 degrees C (1.674 degrees F) above the 1991-2020 average for the month, according to the European Copernicus Climate Change Service. That ...read more
Human footprints found in an ancient lakebed in White Sands National Park, New Mexico date to between 21,000 years and 23,000 years ago, according to new findings that bolster a much-debated study from 2021.The lightning-rod paper ran counter to the generally held scientific position that humans didn’t arrive in the Americas until between 13,000 years and 16,000 years ago. Prior to that – during the Last Glacial Maximum – massive glaciers would have impeded human migration from modern-day ...read more
Despite their public image as torpid, lumbering creatures, many dinosaurs were evidently warm-blooded, highly active animals, capable of prolonged and strenuous aerobic exercise.In new research, my colleagues and I determined how much energy minibus-sized dinosaurs called Maiasaura used while growing to adulthood.Our results, published in the journal Paleobiology, show Maiasaura was capable of taking in huge amounts of energy and nutrients and using them for rapid growth and levels of activit ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine