If you’ve ever wondered how geologists know so much about ancient beaches and shallow oceans, they owe it all to the sand particles bound together by microbes, forming structures known as microbial mats.

The post Why Geologists Love Pond Scum ap

New research suggests that infrasound -- very low-frequency sound below 20 Hz -- can increase cortisol levels and irritability, offering a scientific explanation for why some ‘haunted’ places feel unsettling.

The post Infrasound Can Subtly Raise

Massive, soft-bodied cephalopods up to 19 m (62 feet) long rivaled -- and perhaps hunted -- the ocean’s fiercest reptiles in the Cretaceous period, according to new research led by Hokkaido University paleontologists.

The post In Cretaceous Ocea

A new analysis of honeybee vision suggests their ability to distinguish quantities is not a trick of visual patterns, but evidence of genuine numerical cognition shaped by how their brains see the world.

The post Honeybees Can Process Numerical

The Dark Energy Camera has captured the iconic Sombrero Galaxy in unprecedented detail, exposing faint stellar streams and a glowing halo that hints at a turbulent past shaped by galactic mergers.

The post Sombrero Galaxy Shines in Stunning New

New research led by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History suggests the ‘golden orb’ is the remains of a rarely seen species of anemone.

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Paleontologists in Brazil have identified a new genus and species of hyperodapedontine rhynchosaur -- an extinct lineage of beaked, herbivorous reptiles -- based on a partial skull and lower jaws recovered from Triassic rocks.

The post New Fossi

In a large clinical trial, Tufts University researcher Bess Dawson-Hughes and colleagues found that vitamin D supplements reduced diabetes risk only in people with certain genetic variants, pointing toward a more personalized approach to prevention.…

Using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have detected water-ice clouds swirling through the atmosphere of Epsilon Indi Ab, a cold super-Jupiter that challenges existing models of giant planet atmospheres.

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New experiments with rice suggest that the acoustic vibrations of falling droplets can jolt dormant seeds into growth, offering the first direct evidence that plants can sense natural sound.

The post Sound of Rain May Help Plant Seeds Decide Whe

A new high-precision calculation of a key component underpinning the magnetic moment of the muon, a heavier cousin of the electron, brings theory and experiment into rare alignment, reinforcing the Standard Model and dimming hopes of new physics.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected more than 20 carbon-containing compounds -- including seven never before seen on Mars -- in a sample collected from 3.5-billion-year-old clay-bearing sandstones in Gale crater.

The post Curiosity Reveals Riche

New research led by Max-Planck Institute of Geoanthropology and University of Cambridge scientists suggests malaria did more than sicken ancient populations, it steered where early humans could live, fragmenting groups and influencing the genetic map o

Using data from the ChemCam instrument on NASA’s Curiosity rover, planetary scientists found minerals with high amounts of iron, manganese, and zinc in preserved ripple beds in Gale Crater rocks, indicating the high likelihood that a shallow lake exist

Paleontologists have identified a new genus and species of soft-bodied, tubicolous polyp medusozoan from well-preserved specimens found about 50 km northeast of Quebec City in Canada.

The post 450-Million-Year-Old Fossils Reveal Strange, Tube-Dw

New research led by University College Cork scientists suggests that both caffeinated and decaf coffee reshape the gut microbiome in ways tied to lower stress and improved psychological well-being, offering clues to the drink’s long-suspected health ef

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from eight fossils found in Stajnia Cave in Poland reveals a tight-knit group of Neanderthals who lived about 100,000 years ago, offering one of the clearest genetic snapshots yet of a single community in prehistoric Europe.…

CT scans of a decades-old specimen from the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History show a new species of short-snouted crocodylomorph with unusually strong jaws, offering a rare snapshot of ecological specialization in the Late Triassic epoch.

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A new anniversary image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals surprisingly fast evolution in a turbulent stellar nursery called the Trifid Nebula, where newborn stars sculpt gas and dust on human timescales.

The post Hubble’s 36th Bir

A continent-like shelf beneath the Martian surface hints that a vast ocean once covered up to a third of Mars, reshaping the long-running debate over its watery past.

The post Newly-Identified Geological Feature Points to Vast, Long-Dried Up Oce

By studying almost 900 parrots living with humans, a team of researchers found evidence that some birds don’t just mimic speech, they may assign and use names to identify specific individuals.

The post Study: Parrots Use Names in Flexible, Somet

New research suggests some black holes formed before the Big Bang and survived a cosmic ‘bounce,’ potentially explaining dark matter, gravitational-wave backgrounds, and the early growth of supermassive black holes and galaxies.

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A new genus and species of carnivorous herrerasaurian dinosaur has been described from an incomplete but well-preserved skull found in northern New Mexico, the United States.

The post New Triassic Dinosaur Species Identified in New Mexico appear

Astronomers using the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) on NSF’s Nicholas U. Mayall 4-m telescope have produced the largest high-resolution 3D map of the Universe, tracing the positions of more than 47 million galaxies and quasars.

The

Hominins at the Acheulian site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov in Israel relied on driftwood gathered along a lakeshore to fuel their hearths, according to new research led by archaeologists from the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social an

The TOI-201 system consists of a super-Earth, a warm Jupiter, and a more massive brown dwarf at 5.8-, 53-, and 2,900-day orbital periods, respectively.

The post Astronomers Observe Shape-Shifting Planetary System: TOI-201 appeared first on Sci.N

New research shows that the large-bodied ornithopod dinosaur Muttaburrasaurus langdoni from the mid-Cretaceous of Australia was no ordinary herbivore.

The post Big-Nosed Herbivorous Dinosaur May Have Been Picky Eater appeared first on Sci.News:

New research from Rice University suggests sulfur keeps Mercury’s interior molten at lower temperatures, offering new clues to how the planet’s strange crust and mantle evolved.

The post Mercury’s Sulfur-Rich Magma May Rewrite How Solar System’s

A new ‘agnostic biosignature’ method searches for patterns across exoplanets, suggesting alien life could be detected by how it spreads and reshapes entire planetary systems.

The post Astronomers Propose New Way to Find Alien Life without Knowin

In a new paper published in The Alcheringa, an Australasian Journal of Palaeontology, paleontologists described a partial skull of the Owen’s giant echidna (Megalibgwilia owenii) from southeastern Australia.

The post Giant Echidnas Once Roamed A

Observations from the Subaru Telescope on January 7, 2026, revealed a surprisingly low carbon dioxide-to-water ratio, suggesting the composition of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS changed as it heated up near the Sun.

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New trace fossil discoveries from the half-billion-year-old Cambrian tidal flats of Wisconsin at a site called Blackberry Hill continue to paint the picture of some of the earliest animals to set foot on land and what they might have been eating.

New research from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem shows that large language models (LLMs) form structured ‘trust’ assessments much like humans do, yet apply them more mechanically and, sometimes, with stronger, more consistent demographic bias.

New Webb observations of two exoplanets TRAPPIST-1b and TRAPPIST-1c show blistering days and frozen nights, offering the first detailed climate maps of rocky exoplanets and dimming hopes for habitability.

The post Two Earth-Size Worlds in TRAPPI

A newly-identified visual protein lets dragonflies detect deep red and near-infrared light using a mechanism strikingly similar to that in human eyes, an unexpected case of parallel evolution with potential medical applications, according to new resear

Using data from over one billion proton-colliding events collected at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), physicists have measured the mass of the W boson with record accuracy.

The post CERN Physicists Pin Down W Boson Mass with Unprecedented Pr

In new research, scientists studied a hybrid honeybee population in Southern California, a genetic mix of Western European, Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and African lineages.

The post Californian Hybrid Honeybee Population Has Evolved Natur

A new statistical analysis of archival sky surveys from the early Cold War has found that mysterious, short-lived bursts of light in the night sky were more likely to appear around the time of above-ground nuclear weapons tests and to increase alongsid

Using high-resolution CT and synchrotron scanning, paleontologists confirmed that the fossilized specimen from the Early Triassic of the South African Karoo Basin contains an unborn dicynodont Lystrosaurus, resolving a long-standing mystery about wheth

An experiment in Germany offers the first evidence of a long-predicted pairing between a nucleus of carbon-11 and η’ meson (eta prime meson), shedding light on how the strongest force in nature helps generate mass.

The post Physicists Detect Elu

Paleontologists have examined 289-million-year-old specimens of the early reptile Captorhinus aguti that preserve a covering of three-dimensional skin, a complete shoulder girdle and ribcage with cartilages, and protein remnants that predate the previo

New evidence from Germany suggests Neanderthals captured European pond turtles (Emys orbicularis) around 125,000 years ago, likely valuing their shells as tools rather than their modest meat yield.

The post Neanderthals Hunted Pond Turtles, But

New images from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope reveal two young stars surrounded by planet-forming disks, Tau 042021 (left) and Oph 163131 (right), offering a rare edge-on glimpse into how worlds like our own may take shape.

The pos

Pohlsepia mazonensis, a cephalopod species first described in 2000 from a 300-million-year-old specimen and featured in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s oldest octopus, has been reclassified as a distant relative of nautiluses, reshaping pal

A protist species called Stentor coeruleus appears to navigate by sensing physical shapes -- a discovery that suggests even the simplest life forms can exploit geometry to survive.

The post Trumpet-Shaped Unicellular Microorganism, Drawn to Corn

New simulations suggest Jupiter’s powerful magnetism carved a gap in its early disk, helping capture and preserve major moons like Io and Ganymede, while Saturn’s weaker field left its system sparsely populated.

The post Jupiter’s Strong Magneti

Colorado State University archaeologist says Native Americans were crafting dice and playing games of chance as far back as 12,000 years ago, long before such practices were thought to exist outside the Old World.

The post Before Casinos, Before

Using the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) onboard the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have characterized the atmosphere of TOI-5205b, an extrasolar gas giant orbiting a small, dim red dwarf star.

The post Giant Exoplane

An assemblage of more than 700 Ediacaran fossils from the end of the Ediacaran period indicates that key animal groups -- including early relatives of vertebrates -- were already diversifying millions of years earlier than long believed.

The pos

A new nanoscale analysis of the Bennu sample OREX-800066-3 returned by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission shows that organic compounds and minerals cluster into distinct regions, suggesting water once altered the asteroid in uneven, localized ways.

The p