Ancient amber reveals how ants lived and interacted in the age of dinosaurs

Tiny insects trapped in fossilized tree resin are offering scientists a rare window into life on Earth millions of years ago. A new study of...

6 million years ago something slammed into modern-day Brazil

Giant impacts on Earth's surface can be cataclysmic events with far-reaching consequences. They can excavate massive craters like the Vredefort Crater. There's also growing evidence...

Ancient love stories: How Neanderthal–human relationships shaped our DNA

Our DNA carries the history of ancient migrations, encounters, and relationships between different human groups. A new study suggests that intimate connections between modern humans...

Ancient eggshell engravings reveal early humans’ surprising math skills

More than 60,000 years ago, early humans in southern Africa were carving patterns onto ostrich eggshells—and new research shows these designs were far more...

Scientists find one of the smallest dinosaurs ever found in South America

Scientists have discovered a remarkably complete fossil of a tiny dinosaur that is helping to solve a long-standing puzzle about a strange group of...

Iron age mass grave reveals targeted killing of women and children in Europe

Archaeologists have uncovered chilling evidence of a large-scale massacre from about 2,800 years ago in what is now northern Serbia. The discovery, made at the...

40,000-year-old symbols may be humanity’s first step toward writing

Long before the first known writing systems appeared in ancient Mesopotamia, early humans were already carving mysterious symbols into tools, ornaments, and sculptures. A new...

Scientists create a “cloud in a box” to unlock weather’s biggest mysteries

In a laboratory at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, scientists recently witnessed something remarkable: the birth of a cloud inside a...

Scientists discover new Spinosaurus species deep in the Sahara

Scientists have discovered a new species of the famous dinosaur Spinosaurus in the central Sahara Desert, revealing surprising details about how these unusual predators...

Why so many space rocks look like snowmen

Far beyond Neptune, at the cold edge of our solar system, millions of icy objects drift quietly in a region called the Kuiper Belt. These...