How Do Scientists Identify New Species? For Neanderthals, It Was All About Timing and Luck
Even the most remarkable fossil find means nothing if scientists aren’t ready to see it for what it is
How Soviet Bomb Tests Paved the Way For U.S. Climate Science
The untold story of a failed Russian geoengineering scheme, panic in the Pentagon, and a Nixon-era effort to study global cooling
Why Scientists Name Species
From the Beyonce fly to the David Attenborough possum, the names we bestow on animals have real conservation impacts
How to Talk With Evangelicals About Evolution
For two years, researchers from the Smithsonian traveled the country explaining the science of our shared origins
There’s No Such Thing as a Hypoallergenic Cat
With its short tight curl, many claim that the Cornish Rex is proof that cats can be allergen-free. Nope
Rare 85,000-year-old Finger Bone Complicates Our Understanding of African Migration
The fossil builds on the theory that humans left Africa in multiple waves, and suggests they made it as far as the Arabian Desert
Why Prime Numbers Still Surprise and Mystify Mathematicians
2300 years later, new patterns continue to show up in these indivisible tricksters
How Children’s Books Reveal Our Evolving Relationship With Whales
Storybooks feature a fair amount of factual errors—and those errors can be revealing
Climate Change Can Also Transform Language
As our world warms, warps and melts, metaphors of the past take on new meaning
The Great Feather Heist
The curious case of a young American’s brazen raid on a British museum’s priceless collection
Colored Pigments and Complex Tools Suggest Humans Were Trading 100,000 Years Earlier Than Previously Believed
Transformations in climate and landscape may have spurred these key technological innovations
The Math Behind the Perfect Free Throw
A basketball computer program simulates millions of trajectories in search of the ideal shot
The Proliferation of Happiness
A professor of consumer culture tracks the history of positive psychology
How Cheese, Wheat and Alcohol Shaped Human Evolution
Over time, diet causes dramatic changes to our anatomy, immune systems and maybe skin color
No, Getting a Hole Drilled in Your Head Was Never a Migraine Cure
The ancient and controversial procedure was used for a slew of reasons, but to ‘let the headache out’ was not one of them
Were Neanderthals the Earliest Cave Artists? New Research in Spain Points to the Possibility
Archaeologists pushed back the date of cave paintings at three sites to 65,000 years ago—20,000 years before the arrival of humans in Europe
When Scientists “Discover” What Indigenous People Have Known For Centuries
When it supports their claims, Western scientists value what Traditional Knowledge has to offer. If not, they dismiss it
Why the Shift to Farming Ruined This Ancient City’s Health
The switch from a hunter gatherer society to a farming one appears to have resulted in a more sedentary lifestyle for the inhabitants of Catalhoyuk
A Doomed Aircraft Is Left to Fly Until It Runs Out of Fuel
Learjet 35 was a doomed plane, flying miles off course and with passengers and crew presumed dead
Evidence Suggests Stonehenge Was an Elite Cemetery
Scientists have little doubt that Stonehenge functioned as a Neolithic cemetery
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