This May Be The Oldest Fragment of Modern Humans in Europe, Or Something Even Rarer

Paleontologist Matt Friedman was surprised to discover a remarkably detailed 319-million-year-old fish brain fossil while testing out micro-CT scans for a broader project. "It had all these features, and I said to myself, 'Is this really a brain that I'm looking at?'" says Friedman from University of Michigan. "So, I...

An analysis of the residue on ceramics found in an ancient embalming workshop has given us new insights into how ancient Egyptians mummified their dead. Even more astonishingly, a team of scientists has been able to link different substances to the specific parts of the body on which they were used. This discovery is, in part, thanks to the residues themselves, which were studied using biomolecular techniques; but many of the vessels were intact, including not just the names of their contents, but instructions for their use. "We have known the names of many of these embalming ingredients since ancient Egyptian writings were...

The link between ancient volcanic eruptions and the most severe extinction event the world has ever seen just got even stronger. A new analysis of mercury isotopes has provided evidence that a quarter of a billion years ago, far-flung places in Earth's Southern Hemisphere were blanketed with debris from volcanic eruptions in Siberia.

Weighing in at just 1.2 milligrams, a new robot called FAIRY – that's short for Flying Aero-robots based on Light Responsive Materials Assembly – is the first flying bot we've seen based on soft materials that respond to light. The robot was inspired by dandelion seeds, and ultimately...

The genetic make-up of the iconic Australian black swan (Cygnus atratus) leaves it extremely vulnerable to viruses such as avian flu, research from the University of Queensland reports. The threat is thought to be so severe that it could wipe out the species entirely. The discovery comes after the distinctive bird's genome was sequenced for the first time in 2021. Ordinarily, this achievement would be something to celebrate from a scientific perspective – but a comparison with closely-related northern hemisphere white swans has revealed that certain key immune genes are missing from its DNA. That's likely to be, at least partly, down to...

Editor's note (5 February 2023): The veracity of the study discussed below came into question after its original publication, with a subsequent analysis suggesting the study had likely misinterpreted aspects of the historical evidence available, including oral narratives, and asserting that "Antarctic voyaging by pre-European Polynesians seems most unlikely". Some further discussion of the issue is reported here. ScienceAlert regrets re-publishing the article without drawing attention to this new information and the broader context of debate in this area of research. The original text of our story from June 2021 is presented below: When we think of Antarctic exploration, the narrative...

Through a complex chemical process, scientists have been able to develop versatile, synthetic 'cyborg' cells in the lab. They share many characteristics of living cells while lacking the ability to divide and grow. That non-replication part is important. For artificial cells to be useful, they need to be carefully controlled,...

We have a new exoplanet to one day scour for potential signs of life. Just 31 light-years away, astronomers have identified an incredibly rare Earth-sized world orbiting at a distance from its star that should be hospitable to life as we know it. If, that is, the exoplanet itself has the right conditions to be conducive to life's emergence.

Scientists have a problem when it comes to modeling space events inside laboratories: Earth's gravity tends to get in the way, making it difficult to replicate environments away from our planet. A recently proposed solution takes the form of a tiny glass ball a mere 3 centimeters (just over an...

The violent fingers of electricity that struck a sand dune in Nebraska have left behind a configuration of crystal rarely found in nature. Inside a piece of fulgurite – or 'fossilized lightning' – created by a powerful bolt of electricity traveling into and fusing sand, scientists have found a quasicrystal, an arrangement of matter once thought to be impossible.

A gargantuan effort by a huge international team of scientists has just given us the most precise map of the all matter in the Universe obtained to date. By combining data from two major surveys, the international collaboration has revealed where the Universe does and doesn't keep all its junk – not just the normal matter that makes up the planets, stars, dust, black holes, galaxies, but the dark matter, too: the mysterious invisible mass generating more gravity than the normal matter can account for. The resulting map, showing where the matter has congregated over the 13.8-billion-year lifespan of the...

Living in an arid region is a precarious business. Harsh conditions make growing tough for plants, meaning every shoot and leaf is all the more precious, even when they're dead and decaying. A new study conducted at Boolcoomatta Station Reserve in outback South Australia has demonstrated the importance of vegetative leftovers in fueling a desert ecosystem – and revealing an unintuitive alliance between termites and dingoes. "A lot of research in arid ecosystems has focused on the green food webs that follow 'boom periods' prompted by large rainfall events," says University of New South Wales (UNSW) conservation biologist Mike Letnic. "These 'boom...

Scientists have found a clever way to generate hydrogen straight from salty seawater. This could be another step towards a clean energy future, if renewables power the process. The new device makes a few chemical modifications to existing technologies, making it possible to extract hydrogen from untreated, unpurified seawater –...

As much as we all desperately want it to be over, experts have concluded the COVID-19 pandemic remains a global health emergency. However, they're hoping we're reaching a transition point. "In the past eight weeks, more than 170,000 people have lost their lives to COVID-19," World Health Organization Director-General Tedros...

If you've played the video game The Last of Us, or watched any of the recent TV adaptation, you'll be familiar with the idea of a mutated fungus infecting most of humanity – and there's now some science to match up with that science fiction. While we're not quite...