The biggest beasts to walk the Earth had humble beginnings. The first dinosaurs were cat-sized, lurking in the shadows, just waiting for their moment. That moment came when four major…
Author: ID
This is the oldest fossil evidence of spider moms taking care of their young
Long before Tyrannosaurus rex walked the Earth, sap engulfed a spider guarding her egg sac. Her corpse, preserved alongside her offspring in amber for 99 million years, is the oldest…
Fossil tracks may reveal an ancient elephant nursery
Fossilized footprints found on a beach in southern Spain betray what may have been a nursery for an extinct species of elephant. The track-rich coastal site, which scientists have dubbed…
Fossils and ancient DNA paint a vibrant picture of human origins
In The Descent of Man, published in 1871, Charles Darwin hypothesized that our ancestors came from Africa. He pointed out that among all animals, the African apes — gorillas and…
This big-headed pterosaur may have preferred walking over flying
In 2013, a police raid at Santos Harbor in Brazil recovered about 3,000 smuggled fossils, including the most intact specimen of a type of big-headed pterosaur ever found. A new…
A deep look at a speck of human brain reveals never-before-seen quirks
A new view of the human brain shows its cellular residents in all their wild and weird glory. The map, drawn from a tiny piece of a woman’s brain, charts…
FDA approved a new Alzheimer’s drug despite controversy over whether it works
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a controversial Alzheimer’s treatment, the first that promises to slow the disease’s destruction in the brain, not just improve symptoms. The drug,…
A sweet father-son bond inspires tasty new molecule models
Thirteen-year-old Noah Shaw loves planets and has perfect pitch. He wants to be a scientist like his father Bryan Shaw, a biochemist at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. But Noah’s…
Playing brain training games regularly doesn’t boost brainpower
It’s an attractive idea: By playing online problem-solving, matching and other games for a few minutes a day, people can improve such mental abilities as reasoning, verbal skills and memory.…
A gene-based therapy partially restored a blind man’s vision
A new type of gene therapy that rewires nerve cells in the eye has given a blind man some limited vision. The 58-year-old man has a genetic disease called retinitis…
