The extra legs caterpillars have appear have origins in the primitive crustaceans that insects evolved from during the Ordovician period over 400 million years ago. | Continue reading
New observations with the James Webb Space Telescope reveal a never-before-seen jet stream near Jupiter's equator moving twice as fast as a Category 5 hurricane . | Continue reading
Ancient caves mark the beginning of recorded burial rituals, but there's still so much we don't know about the history of human graves. | Continue reading
Oct. 22, 2023: Our weekly roundup of the latest science in the news, as well as a few fascinating articles to keep you entertained over the weekend. | Continue reading
Jupiter's moon Io, the most volcanic world in the solar system, was imaged from just 7,260 miles away. | Continue reading
Orcas have their own dialect, greeting ceremonies and even wore salmon as hats in a weird fad during the 1980s. | Continue reading
From sinking boats and feasting on shark livers to dining on whale tongue and tossing porpoises around for fun, orcas are displaying some fascinating — and sometimes terrifying — behaviors. | Continue reading
Very few gems can withstand the intense pressure of Earth's mantle, but some require it to crystallize. | Continue reading
A tattoo referencing Christ was found on the 1,300-year-old body of an individual in what is now Sudan. | Continue reading
Researchers used DNA analysis and traditional knowledge to learn about an orca named Old Tom and his family's remarkable relationship with humans. | Continue reading
These weird-looking stocky mammals roam Alpine zones and forested valleys in Asia, using their specially adapted split hooves help them traverse the steep, rocky terrain. | Continue reading
Experts across public health, microbiology and biochemistry agree that we'll still have antibiotics in 50 years, but the drugs may take a different form than those we have today. | Continue reading
The leading group is so diverse that it represents one in every three animal species on Earth. | Continue reading
Coming down with a cold or the flu can muffle your hearing, but why? | Continue reading
Aurora records in royal chronicles from Korea show that during the 'Maunder Minimum' between 1645 and 1715, the sun's solar cycles became several years shorter than they are today. | Continue reading
The gold and platinum that came from giant space rocks should have sunk into Earth's core instead of rising to the crust. Scientists have now worked out how this happened — and it may explain some really weird blobs deep in our planet's mantle. | Continue reading
Scientists have performed a necropsy on a great white shark that washed up in Nova Scotia — the fifth unexplained stranding of its kind in a year — but were unable to determine the cause of death. | Continue reading
Nature must think willies are funny, too. | Continue reading
The exoplanet WASP-17b's atmosphere is full of quartz clouds, according to a new James Webb Space Telescope observations. | Continue reading
Researchers are conserving a rare snakehead from the Aztecs that still retains its painted colors from hundreds of years ago. | Continue reading
A new computational tool has allowed scientists to map how microbes interact in the gut, and it could one day be used to develop more-targeted therapies for diseases. | Continue reading
Ancient Egypt had far more venomous snakes than the country does today, according to a new study of a scroll. | Continue reading
In addition to finding a Crusader sword, archaeologists in Finland have discovered a cemetery that could potentially contain hundreds of graves. | Continue reading
A large population of snow crabs in the eastern Bering Sea collapsed after a marine heat wave in 2018 and 2019 that multiplied the crabs' caloric needs and drove them to starvation. | Continue reading
Astronomers traced a mysterious radio source to three merging galaxies 8 billion light-years away. Studying it could help uncover the universe's missing matter. | Continue reading
Scientists identified a new strain of a parasite that causes the disease leishmaniasis, and they mainly found it in people who had not recently traveled outside the U.S. | Continue reading
The severely decayed remains of a marine creature recently washed up on a beach in Papua New Guinea. Experts can't agree on what the ghostly white lump is, but it is most likely the remains of a marine mammal. | Continue reading
Horsehair worms flood their hosts' minds with proteins made from copied chunks of their own genomes. | Continue reading
Orcas have been feasting on sharks' livers off the coast of South Africa for several years and could now be doing the same in Australia, the carcass of a great white suggests. | Continue reading
Researchers restored an ancient painting of the gods depicted at New Year's during restoration work at the Temple of Esna in Egypt. | Continue reading
The strongest recorded Marsquake, which rattled for six hours in May 2022, left no visible traces on the Red Planet surface. Now, scientists think they know what caused it. | Continue reading
The hellish super-Earth '55 Cancri e' may be constantly losing and re-growing its atmosphere, a new study of the planet's strange transit signals suggests. | Continue reading
Fossil's Gen 6 smartwatch looks amazing, and you can save almost $100, too. | Continue reading
Get the LG UltraPC for $300 off at Amazon right now. | Continue reading
Fitbit's latest and greatest is available for less than usual right now. | Continue reading
Most chemical compouds are still unknown to science. How many new ones can we make by combining elements from the periodic table? | Continue reading
Modern Europeans have a smaller proportion of Neanderthal genes in their genomes than East Asians do. New research suggests the reason lies at the feet of migrating early farmers. | Continue reading
Archaeologists have dated Bronze Age artifacts unearthed in Switzerland to roughly 1500 B.C. | Continue reading
Naturally occurring superheavy elements beyond those listed in the periodic table could potentially explain why asteroid 33 Polyhymnia is so dense, new research suggests. | Continue reading
Heart murmurs are extra, unusual sounds heard during a heartbeat — but why do they happen? | Continue reading
The "law of increasing functional information" says that complex systems in nature evolve to become more complex. | Continue reading
Irukandji jellyfish, which are around the same size as a dime, have a venom-filled sting that can trigger an extremely painful and occasionally deadly syndrome. | Continue reading
A tooth unearthed in Spain and dating to the Pliocene is the latest evidence of a crocodile ever found in Europe and supports the idea crocs crossed over from Africa about 6.2 million years ago. | Continue reading
Paleontologists have discovered the first molecular evidence of pheomelanin, a pigment that causes red hair, in the fossil record. | Continue reading
Excavations of the tomb of ancient Egyptian queen Meret-Neith reveal she was an influential figure with "unusually high levels of authority," but experts are divided about whether she actually reigned. | Continue reading
See Mars' geology up close, thanks to decades of stunning images from the Mars Express satellite, in a new visualization of Noctis Labyrinthus, the 'Labyrinth of Night'. | Continue reading
Stars could be sliced in half by "relativistic blades," or ultra-powerful outflows of plasma shaped by extremely strong magnetic fields, an unpublished paper claims. | Continue reading
Did you hit "snooze" this morning? You're not alone, and the extra sleep may improve your brain function after getting up, a study suggests. | Continue reading