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Long before agriculture, humans were transforming Europe's wild landscapes. Advanced simulations show that hunting and fire use by Neanderthals and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers reshaped forests and grasslands in measurable ways. By reducing ...

A new scientific review challenges the headline-grabbing claim that Yellowstone's returning wolves triggered one of the strongest trophic cascades on Earth. Researchers found that the reported 1,500% surge in willow growth was based on circular ...

Scientists studying a rock sample collected by NASA's Curiosity rover have uncovered something tantalizing: the largest organic molecules ever detected on Mars. The compounds -- decane, undecane, and dodecane -- may be fragments of fatty acids, which ...

Coral reefs, worth an estimated $9.8 trillion a year to humanity, are in far worse shape than previously realized. A massive international study found that during the 2014-2017 global marine heatwave, more than half of the world's reefs suffered ...

Even when Earth was locked in its most extreme deep freeze, the planet's climate may not have been as silent and still as once believed. New research from ancient Scottish rocks reveals that during Snowball Earth -- when ice sheets reached the ...

For the first time, deadly H5N1 bird flu has been confirmed as the cause of a wildlife die-off in Antarctica, killing more than 50 skuas during the 2023-2024 summers. Researchers on an Antarctic expedition found the virus ravaging these powerful ...

Life may have started in sticky, rock-hugging gels rather than inside cells. Researchers suggest these primitive, biofilm-like materials could trap and concentrate molecules, giving early chemistry a protected space to grow more complex. Within these ...

Avian malaria is spreading across Hawaii in a way scientists didn't fully grasp until now: nearly every forest bird species can help keep the disease alive. Researchers found the parasite at 63 of 64 sites statewide, revealing that both native ...

Your cat's purr may say more about who they are than their meow ever could. Scientists discovered that purrs are stable and uniquely identifiable, while meows change dramatically depending on context. Domestic cats, in particular, have evolved highly ...

Hundreds of millions of years ago, the first animals to crawl onto land were strict meat-eaters, even as plants had already taken over the landscape. Now scientists have uncovered a 307-million-year-old fossil that rewrites that story: one of the ...