The fossil record of early vertebrates is particularly patchy, largely due to the fact that most of these primitive creatures were soft bodied and, as a result, didn’t readily fossilise. On the rare occasions when squishy early vertebrates did become fossils, their remains were so squashed that their original state became almost unrecognisable. This has
Complex prehistoric tools unearthed at an archaeological site in central China are upending long-standing assumptions about human evolution, scientists claim in a new study. Excavations at the Xigou site in the Danjiangkou Reservoir Region in central China have revealed evidence of advanced stone tool use by early human ancestors dating back 160,000–72,000 years ago. This
In the animal kingdom, one of the most bizarre discoveries of all-time was the platypus. When reports of the platypus reached the western hemisphere, most leading naturalists at the time assumed it was a hoax, including the first European scientists to examine a specimen in 1799. It was an animal that laid eggs, yet it
Scientists studying an amber collection from the Goethe National Museum in the German town of Weimar have made a remarkable discovery. Held within two pieces of the fossilised tree resin are three exceptionally well-preserved animals: a fungus gnat, a black fly and, most notably, an ant. Now extinct, the ant species (†Ctenobethylus goepperti) is commonly found in
SpaceX launched an advanced, jam-resistant GPS satellite for the U.S. Space Force from Florida on Tuesday night (Jan. 27). A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the GPS III-SV09 spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Tuesday at 11:53 p.m. EST (0453 GMT on Jan. 28). SpaceX and the Space Force had been targeting Monday
The patient: A 34-year-old man in Mexico The symptoms: Within seconds of drinking a “smoky” alcoholic beverage at a bar, the man felt an intense pain in his stomach. What happened next: The man was admitted to an emergency department. In addition to experiencing abdominal pain, he was sweating profusely and had become lethargic. His
Grafting-mediated rescue of nrpd1 pollen defects Using CRISPR–Cas9, we previously generated a knockout mutant in Capsella rubella NRPD1, in which the induced deletion caused a frameshift and resulted in a truncated protein without the catalytic site22. Loss of Capsella NRPD1 causes pollen arrest at the microspore stage, connected with depletion of 21- to 24-nucleotide siRNAs
If you’re in the space business long enough, you learn there are numerous ways a rocket can fail. I’ve written my share of stories about misbehaving rockets and the extensive investigations that usually—but not always—reveal what went wrong. But I never expected to write this story. Maybe this was a failure of my own imagination.
A group of researchers from Spain and Germany believe that dark matter could be made of fermions that exist in a warped fifth dimension, offering an explanation for decades of failed detection efforts. This bold idea could change how scientists search for dark matter, which makes up nearly 75% of all matter in the universe.
Using a quantum simulator cooled to near absolute zero, researchers revealed that magnetic order persists even in conditions previously believed to be disordered. Their results offer a striking insight into how quantum materials behave as they approach the superconducting state. The finding centers around the pseudogap, a mysterious phase in the electronic structure of materials