Scientists say the Earth will warm in response to increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, but since the 1970s, they have not made much headway in narrowing down exactly how much it will warm.
Amber from 100-million-year-old deposits in Northern Spain has preserved and revealed the first ever record of insect pollination, scientists say. Specimens of tiny insects covered with pollen grains in two pieces of Cretaceous era amber are the first record of pollen transport and social behavior in this group of animals, researchers said. The amber featured…
Fully fledged quantum computers are still a long way off. But devices that can simulate quantum systems are proving uniquely useful.
A new species of small nocturnal primate has been discovered by scientists in Borneo. The primate is a type of slow loris, a small cute-looking animal that is more closely related to bushbabies and lemurs than to monkeys or apes. Uniquely among primates, they have a toxic bite, belying their appearance. Two previously known subspecies of slow…
The sandy dunes of the Sahara may seem an unlikely place for a dairy farm, but about 7,000 years ago, herders tended and milked cattle in what is now desolate desert, new research shows. About 10,000 years ago, the Sahara desert went through a phase called the Holocene African Humid Period. Fossilized bones show that…
Poisoned-tipped arrows and jewelry made of ostrich egg beads found in South Africa show modern culture may have emerged about 30,000 years earlier in the area than previously thought, according to two articles published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research shows that the 44,000-year-old artifacts are characteristic of the…
Given the dramatic difference in the size and sequence of the human X and Y chromosomes, it’s hard to imagine that they were once a perfect matching pair. But in fact all sex chromosomes start out that way. New research published in Science examines the early phase of sex chromosome evolution in a strain of…