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A partial skull from China represents the earliest human with a “modern” brain size. It could represent an unknown group of ancient humans, or perhaps one of the enigmatic Denisovans Humans 26 January 2022 By Michael Marshall Fragments of a large ancient human skull known as Xujiayao 6 Xiu-Jie Wu,Christopher J.Bae, Martin Friess, Song Xing, … Read more
Because we can’t see black holes, it’s hard to know exactly how many are out there in the big, wide Universe. But that doesn’t mean we have no means of trying to figure it out. Stellar-mass black holes are the collapsed cores of dead massive stars, and new research incorporating how these stars and binaries … Read more
The gigantic and slow sauropod dinosaurs like Diplodocus had small two-legged ancestors – and one, Thecodontosaurus, was quick and nimble 19 January 2022 By Christa Lesté-Lasserre Thecodontosaurus antiquus Stocktrek Images, Inc. / Alamy An early ancestor of large, long-necked, four-legged dinosaurs like Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus was a quick, nimble biped that probably used its forelimbs … Read more
A rare script from a language in Liberia has provided some new insights into how written languages evolve. “The Vai script of Liberia was created from scratch in about 1834 by eight completely illiterate men who wrote in ink made from crushed berries,” says linguistic anthropologist Piers Kelly, now at the University of New England, Australia. … Read more
Cut marks on animal bones suggest ancient hominins butchered them for their meat, and that they were first on the scene instead of having to scavenge from carnivores like big cats Humans 11 January 2022 By Michael Marshall Notches on a bone left by human butchering activity Jennifer A. Parkinson, Thomas W. Plummer, James S. … Read more
The characters used to write the Vai script, which was invented in Liberia in 1833, have become visually simpler over time, reflecting the evolutionary pressures acting on writing Humans 11 January 2022 By Colin Barras A character representing the syllable “bi” in Vai script Kelly et al The symbols we use to write words evolve … Read more
By Jessica Hamzelou Bottlenose dolphins are “hypersexual creatures” imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo Patricia Brennan has forged a controversial career in studying the twist and turns of the evolution of animal genitalia. A biologist based at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, her latest research suggests that bottlenose dolphins have clitorises that have evolved … Read more
By Jacob Aron You can run a safe theme park. Or you can unleash chaos. Which is more fun? Frontier Developments Game Jurassic World Evolution 2 Frontier Developments THE original Jurassic Park was released in 1993, and as a dinosaur-obsessed 7-year-old, I simply had to see it. I badgered my parents to take me, even … Read more
Following the time of the dinosaurs, it might well be that the evolution of flowering plants drove the explosion in the diversity of life on Earth, according to a 2021 paper. Most of the plants we now eat, drink, wear, and build with are of the flowering variety. They’re called angiosperms, which roughly translates from … Read more
A strain of the antibiotic-resistant bacterium MRSA seems to have colonised the skin of hedgehogs more than 200 years ago – and many other similarly evasive bugs might exist in nature Life 5 January 2022 By Jessica Hamzelou A European hedgehog Coatesy/Shutterstock A strain of the antibiotic-resistant bacterium MRSA seems to have evolved in hedgehogs … Read more