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Stories from Margherita Bassi

The swell shark pup at Louisiana's Shreveport Aquarium

Shark Pup Mysteriously Hatches in Aquarium Tank With Only Females. How Could This Birth Happen?

Experts say the case is either a rare form of asexual reproduction or an instance of (very) delayed fertilization

The fossil find, dubbed Danekræ DK-1295, contains regurgitated fragments of sea lilies.

Fossil Hunter Discovers 66-Million-Year-Old Vomit in Denmark, Offering a Clue to the Cretaceous Food Chain

A marine animal snacked on some sea lilies that did not agree with its stomach—and we now know what happened next

The Tesla Roadster and the mannequin "Starman" on the SpaceX Falcon Heavy upper stage, with Earth in background.

An Amateur Astronomer Seemingly Spotted a New Asteroid. It Turned Out to Be a Tesla in Space

The car, launched in 2018 on a SpaceX rocket’s upper stage, is one of many human-made objects in deep space that could potentially be mistaken for natural celestial bodies

A self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity rover, taken on June 15, 2018

Curiosity Rover Spots Ancient Water Ripples on Mars, Hinting at a Past With Shallow, Ice-Free Lakes

The 3.7-billion-year-old formations in the planet’s Gale Crater suggest the presence of long-gone bodies of liquid water, with no ice covering the surface

The head of Bathynomus vaderi, a newly described species of giant isopod found in Southeast Asian waters

Researchers Identified a New ‘Supergiant’ Crustacean With 14 Legs—and They Named It After Darth Vader

In recent years, the deep-sea giant isopod has also become a seafood delicacy in Vietnam, where it was discovered

An artist’s visualization of WASP-127b

Astronomers Discover Supersonic Winds on a ‘Puffy’ Exoplanet, Forming a Record-Breaking Jet Stream

Moving at roughly 20,505 miles per hour along the distant world’s equator, it’s the fastest known jet stream that wraps around a planet

Hand-drawn illustration of two of the seven sampled molars from Australopithecus

Ape-Like Human Ancestors Were Largely Vegetarian 3.3 Million Years Ago in South Africa, Fossil Teeth Reveal

Scientists suggest meat consumption was pivotal to humans’ development of larger brains, but the transition probably didn’t start with Australopithecus, according to a new study

A section of the new photomosaic of the Andromeda Galaxy, which features 600 fields of view in total from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Check Out the Hubble Space Telescope’s Stunning New View of the Andromeda Galaxy

The full image includes some 2.5 billion pixels compiled from observations spanning more than 1,000 orbits around Earth

Starship lifts off on January 16, before undergoing a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" roughly eight and a half minutes into the flight.

SpaceX’s Starship Explodes in Its Seventh Test Flight, With Falling Debris Putting on a Fiery Show

The Super Heavy booster, meanwhile, was successfully caught in the launch tower’s mechanical arms for only the second time

Homeowners found star-shaped debris outside their home on Prince Edward Island, Canada, after a meteorite strike in July.

Meteorite Crash in Canada Is Caught by Home Security Camera in Likely World-First Video Footage

The space rock—recorded with visuals and sound—landed where the homeowner had been standing just minutes earlier

A baby rusty-spotted cat, born at a French zoo in 2010. The newly discovered fossil is thought to belong to the same genus as modern rusty-spotted cats, which are among the smallest felines in the world.

Rare Jaw Fossil Found in China Might Belong to the World’s Smallest Cat

Scientists placed the extinct species, which may date back more than 300,000 years, in the same genus as modern leopard cats in Asia

A new crayfish species called Cherax pulverulentus has a bright blue color.

A New Crayfish Species Was Hiding in Plain Sight Among Common Aquarium Pets, Researchers Find

Native to Indonesian New Guinea, the crustacean comes in two color forms and is a popular pet choice in Europe, Japan, the United States and Indonesia

Craters at Mercury's poles contain permanently shadowed areas that are some of the coldest sites in the solar system, despite their proximity to the sun.

New, Stunning Images of Mercury’s North Pole Will Help Scientists Study the Planet’s Mysterious Permanent Shadows

The BepiColombo spacecraft captured the photographs during its last flyby of Mercury, a maneuver necessary to propel the mission into orbit around the planet

Two newly discovered, spiky creatures from the Silurian period—nicknamed Punk and Emo—are helping scientists reveal the early history of mollusks.

Meet Punk and Emo, Two Angsty-Looking Fossils From 430 Million Years Ago That Shed Light on Early Mollusk Evolution

The prehistoric creatures look to be sporting a punk hairstyle and emo bangs, and one of them seemingly moved like an inchworm

The glymphatic system moves a clear liquid called cerebrospinal fluid around the brain to flush out toxic proteins accumulated during waking hours.

In a Study on Mice, Scientists Show How the Brain Washes Itself During Sleep

The brain’s waste-removal process is “like turning on the dishwasher,” a neurologist says, but common sleep medications may harm it

A composite of enhanced color images of Pluto (lower right) and Charon (upper left), taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, 2015.

A Novel ‘Kiss and Capture’ Event Gave Pluto Its Largest Moon, Charon, New Study Suggests

Researchers accounted for the previously overlooked structures of the dwarf planet and moon in computer simulations of a celestial collision

A cast of a Neanderthal skull at the Chemnitz State Museum of Archaeology in Germany. New research delves into when humans and Neanderthals interbred.

Researchers Track Down When Neanderthals and Early Modern Humans Interbred Using Ancient Genomes

Two studies came to a similar conclusion, highlighting a single, sustained event of mixing DNA. The findings could impact our understanding of when modern humans reached regions like East Asia and Australia

From these upper hip bones, researchers extracted an ancient genome of the bacteria that causes syphilis.

Ancient DNA Offers Crucial Hints to the Origin of Syphilis, a Decades-Long Mystery That Has Divided Scientists

Researchers found evidence that early versions of syphilis-causing bacteria existed in the Americas long before the arrival of Columbus

A recently excavated mastodon tooth found in a backyard, still embedded in the jaw

A Homeowner Found Huge, Fossil Teeth While Mowing the Lawn. Then, Excavations Revealed a Complete Mastodon Jaw

The new discovery is the first of its kind in New York state for at least 11 years and appeared in a county rich with mastodon remains

Happiness "lights up" similar areas on both modern and ancient body maps, with the exception of the liver, which was more significant for the ancient Mesopotamians.

Ancient Texts Reveal How Mesopotamians Felt Emotions—From Happiness in the Liver to Anger in the Feet

Researchers found that ancient Mesopotamians associated body parts with emotions, just as we do—but they discovered some hilarious differences

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