Comment this story Comment Explorers sneaking into cramped, pitch-black caves in South Africa claim to have uncovered evidence that a human relative with a brain a third the size of ours used fire for light and cooking. a few hundred thousand years ago. The unpublished findings – which add new wrinkles to the story of …
An Ancient Human Relative Used Fire, Startling Findings Suggest Read More »
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news about fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. CNN — When NASA’s Viking 1 lander made history as the first spacecraft to touch down on Mars on July 20, 1976, it returned images of a landscape no one expected. These early images taken …
NASA Viking 1 may have landed at the site of an ancient Martian megatsunami | CNN Read More »
A six-foot-long fangy carnivore that haunted the lakes of what is now the American Midwest is said to have been one of the top predators of its freshwater ecosystem – a “T. rex of his time,” according to scientists who studied the creature. And she grew rapidly, according to new research. The predator, an early …
Ancient apex predator who lived 328 million years ago was ‘the T. rex of its time’ Read More »
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news about fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. CNN — A long time ago, gigantic sea turtles swam in the seas of the Earth. Until recently, these prehistoric giants, reaching lengths of over 3 meters (10 feet) from head to tail, were thought …
As the world heats up, vast slabs of permafrost are melting, releasing materials that have been trapped in its icy grip for years. This includes a host of microbes that have lain dormant for hundreds of millennia in some cases. To study emerging microbes, scientists have now resurrected a number of these “zombie viruses” from …
Scientists have resurrected ancient ‘zombie viruses’ frozen for eons in Siberia Read More »
The height of the Ediacaran Period, about 550 million years ago, was a boom time for life in Earth’s oceans. The feather-like petalamides sucked nutrients from the water, looking like slugs Kimberella were grazing on microbial mats, and the ancestors of jellyfish were just starting to make waves. But 80% of life on Earth has …
Scientists Just Discovered a Sixth Mass Extinction Hidden in Earth’s Ancient Past Read More »
A tattoo on the left hip bone of a mummified Egyptian woman buried in Deir el-Medina. (Image credit: Anne Austin/University of Missouri-St. Louis) Lower back tattoos may seem like an early 21st century fad popularized by celebrities wearing low-rise jeans, but new archaeological evidence from Egyptian mummies shows the practice is actually more than three …
Childbirth Protective Tattoos Found on Ancient Egyptian Mummies Read More »
