Arguably, one of the defining features of humanity is our curiosity. We’ve built microscopes to peek into the world of the very small, and we’ve built telescopes to see the world of the very large.And though the natural world is often the subject of our curiosity, so are other people — and even ourselves. When someone tells you they have a secret, for example, you can’t help but wonder what they might be concealing.But is our propensity for curiosity really that unique? Isn’t curiosity ...read more
The most significant paleological discovery to hit Maryland in 100 years – the uncovering of a historic "bone bed" – was announced earlier this month.But getting to the bottom of the fossil collection and documenting it all took researchers about 10 years.Discovering the FossilsIn 2013, an employee at Dinosaur Park – a small fossil preserve in Laurel, Maryland – first spotted something blue-green buried in the ground. The former riverbed and mining site had a long history of fossil finds ...read more
English, like the vast majority of languages, is spatially egocentric. We speak of bending over backward, walking forward, turning left and right — whenever we describe space, we do so with relation to ourselves.Grammatically, we take for granted our own centrality. But not all languages operate this way.If you were to ask the way to the supermarket in Hopevale, Australia, the Aboriginal residents wouldn’t dream of offering a confusing series of “lefts” and “rights.” In their native ...read more
Sabretooth cats, known for their elongated and sharp teeth resembling a canine, were found across the planet from the Eocene to the Pleistocene Epoch, between 56 million years to 11,700 years ago. And now, paleontologists discovered two new species of sabretooth cat after re-analyzing a collection of fossils in Langebaanweg, South Africa.The collection is the largest global assortment of Pliocene fossils containing various late Cainozoic fossil vertebrates and invertebrates. They are housed at t ...read more
In some of their earliest iterations, they were considered to be responsible for natural disasters or destructive forces like thunder and lightning. In other tales, they appear as grotesque, loincloth-clad ogres with sharp teeth and horns. Sometimes, they are depicted as mountain-dwelling crones shunned by society. In some modern iterations, they can even be cute and gentle. These entities can all be categorized as oni — supernatural figures that appear across Japanese literature, folklore, ar ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
