3.8-million-year-old fossil cranium unveils more about human ancestry
In 2016, researchers in the Afar region of Ethiopia discovered a nearly complete cranium of an early human ancestor, Australopithecus anamensis, that dates to...
New study pinpoints when humans began to dominate the Earth
Archaeologists have identified with unprecedented precision the turning point when humans began to transform the Earth beyond recognition, tracing it to around 3,000 years...
People arrived in North America thousand years earlier than thought
Stone tools and other artifacts unearthed from an archeological dig at the Cooper's Ferry site in western Idaho suggest that people lived in the...
Scientists discover an ancient die-off greater than the dinosaur extinction
When significant oxygen entered the atmosphere, ancient life multiplied.
But after a few hundred million years, Earth’s oxygen plummeted, resulting in a die-off likely...
Scientists find an extrasolar moon with active volcanoes
A rocky extrasolar moon (exomoon) with bubbling lava may orbit a planet 550 light-years away from us.
This is suggested by an international team of...
The amazon rainforest has been burning for weeks. Here’s why that matters.
It’s a giant air filter nearly as vast as the contiguous U.S. And it’s been burning for weeks.
Covering extensive territory in Brazil, Peru, Colombia,...
Super-deep diamonds reveal Earth’s ancient past
Scientists have long suspected that an area of the Earth's mantle, somewhere between the crust and the core, contains a vast reservoir of rock,...
Arctic could be iceless in September if global temperatures increase 2 degrees
Arctic sea ice could disappear completely through September each summer if average global temperatures increase by as little as 2 degrees, according to a...
Natural-gas leaks are important source of greenhouse gas emissions in Los Angeles
In discussions of anthropogenic climate change, carbon dioxide generally gets the spotlight, but it is not the only greenhouse gas spewed into the atmosphere...
Earth may have been pummeled with asteroids much earlier than we thought
Welcome to the early solar system.
Just after the planets formed more than 4.5 billion years ago, our cosmic neighborhood was a chaotic place.
Waves of...