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Scientists at Stanford have unveiled the first-ever global map of rare earthquakes that rumble deep within Earth's mantle rather than its crust. Long debated and notoriously difficult to confirm, these elusive quakes turn out to cluster in regions .. ...

For decades, scientists have believed that complex life began when two very different microbes joined forces, eventually giving rise to plants, animals, and fungi. But one major puzzle remained: how could these organisms have met if one depended on . ...

A giant virus discovered in Japan is adding fuel to the provocative idea that viruses helped create complex life. Named ushikuvirus, it infects amoebae and shows unique traits that connect different families of giant DNA viruses. Its unusual way of . ...

A major breakthrough could help save the world's bananas from a devastating disease. Scientists have discovered the exact genetic region in a wild banana that provides resistance to Fusarium wilt Subtropical Race 4 -- a destructive strain that ...

Ancient DNA from a Stone Age burial site in Sweden shows that families 5,500 years ago were more complex than expected. Many individuals buried together were not immediate family, but second- or third-degree relatives. One grave held a young woman .. ...

A massive, centuries-long drought may have driven the extinction of the "hobbits" of Flores. Climate records preserved in cave formations show rainfall plummeted just as the small human species disappeared. At the same time, pygmy elephants they ...

Scientists have developed a powerful new way to forecast where some of the world's most dangerous scorpions are likely to be found. By combining fieldwork in Africa with advanced computer modeling, the team discovered that soil type is the strongest ...

Ocean waves are a vast and steady source of renewable energy, but capturing their power efficiently has long frustrated engineers. A researcher at The University of Osaka has now explored a bold new approach: a gyroscopic wave energy converter that . ...

Life on Earth may have learned to breathe oxygen long before oxygen filled the skies. MIT researchers traced a key oxygen-processing enzyme back hundreds of millions of years before the Great Oxidation Event. Early microbes living near oxygen ...

A 125-million-year-old dinosaur just rewrote what we thought we knew about prehistoric life. Scientists in China have uncovered an exceptionally preserved juvenile iguanodontian with fossilized skin so detailed that individual cells are still visible ...