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Ancient DNA from China's vast 4,000-year-old Shimao settlement is revealing how one of East Asia's earliest complex societies was organized. Researchers found that its people were largely descended from local Yellow River farming communities, but ...

Scientists studying decades of pygmy sperm whale strandings have uncovered three previously unknown types of Helicobacter bacteria hiding in the animals' stomachs. All four infected whales showed serious digestive damage, including inflammation, ...

Two elephant-sized South American sauropods were unusually well built for standing on their hind legs. Digital tests showed that their robust femurs handled the enormous forces better than those of larger species, especially while the dinosaurs were ...

Oxygen is disappearing from oceans, lakes, rivers, and coastal waters at an alarming rate, threatening aquatic life and weakening the natural processes that help regulate Earth's climate. Scientists warn that this widespread deoxygenation is closely ...

Fossils from Queensland suggest a newly recognized marsupial order may have survived in Australia for around 35 million years, rewriting part of the story of how the continent's unique mammals evolved. The discovery challenges the idea that Australia ...

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was likely an exceptionally rare CO chondrite from a distant region of the solar system. Its unusual chemistry suggests that planet-cooling dust and debris, rather than sulfur inside the asteroid, may have .. ...

A catastrophic asteroid breakup may have triggered a huge wave of impacts across the inner solar system about 800 million years ago. The debris was launched from near a gravitational gateway controlled by Jupiter, sending fragments toward Earth, the ...

Seismic waves have revealed that the oceanic plate beneath the Ontong Java Plateau was dramatically transformed by the colossal volcanic activity that created it more than 100 million years ago. Researchers found a complex structure of horizontal ...

Tiny plastic particles in drinking water may be doing more than contaminating the environment. New research suggests nanoplastics can actually help harmful bacteria survive by strengthening the slimy biofilms they form inside water systems. These ...

A major DNA study has rewritten the koala's evolutionary story, revealing that the species suffered a dramatic population collapse about 100,000 years ago, long before humans arrived in Australia. By calculating the koala's mutation rate for the ...