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Science

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Whatever Happened to Kenyanthropus platyops?

Scientists disagree over whether a 3.5-million-year-old skull is a flat-faced species of hominid or just a distorted example of Australopithecus afarensis

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Turn Your Favorite Words of Wisdom into Beautiful Art

A new company called Epic Frequency turns historic audio files into artwork

A reconstruction of Patagonykus, one of South America’s alvarezsaurs.

Did Dinosaurs Eat Ants?

The weird alvarezsaurs look perfectly-adapted to eating termites, but how can we find out what they really ate?

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The Saddest Dinosaur Cartoon Ever

Mountain of Dinosaurs, from 1967, uses extinction as a metaphor for Soviet oppression

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What Is the Most Annoying Sound in the World?

A new study examines the neurological basis for unpleasant noises—and finds exactly which sounds are the most irritating

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The Marshmallow Test Gets More Complicated

A new study finds that in a study of self control, the perception of trustworthiness matters

This X-ray of a human skull highlights the main nasal cavity (orange) and the sinuses: frontal (pink), ethmoid (yellow), maxillary (green) and sphenoid (purple). Asian apes do not have frontal or ethmoid sinuses.

Clues to Ape (and Human) Evolution Can Be Seen in Sinuses

Would sinus headaches be more bearable if humans had descended from Asian apes instead of African apes?

A skeletal reconstruction of Agujaceratops

A is for Agujaceratops

Though little-known to the public, Agujaceratops plays an important role in tracing one particular episode in dinosaur evolution

Meet the Qube drone, specially designed for police departments.

Drawing the Line on Drones

A lot of police departments will soon have their own flying robots. How far should they be allowed to go in shooting video from the sky?

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Jurassic Park 4′s Discharged Dinosaur Soldiers

Some scrapped Jurassic Park 4 designs show the movie’s insane ideas for dinosaur soldiers

Art.sy’s mission is to make all of the world’s art accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.

Mapping the Art Genome

A new Web site called Art.sy recommends art based on a visitor’s preference for a particular artist or artwork

An MIT study reveals that carbon dioxide directly reduces the strength of ice, regardless of temperature.

Bad News Chemistry: Carbon Dioxide Makes Ice Weaker

An MIT study reveals that carbon dioxide directly reduces the strength of ice, which has troubling implications for climate change

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The Bat-Winged Dinosaur That Never Was

Just when naturalists began to suspect that birds might be dinosaurs, one researcher put forward a truly strange idea of what early bird ancestors would have looked like

Chemistry set manufacturing for children began in the early 20th century and peaked popularity in the 1950's.

The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Chemistry Set

Banning toys with dangerous acids was a good idea, but was the price a couple generations of scientists?

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Painting Portraits With Bacteria

Microbiologist Zachary Copfer has created detailed portraits of famous artists and scientists in petri dishes

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Doing the T. rex Stretch

Did T. rex use its tiny arms to do push-ups?

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The Top Ten Human Evolution Discoveries from Ethiopia

Home to Lucy, Ardi, the oldest stone tools, the first fossils of modern humans and many other discoveries, Ethiopia deserves the title of Cradle of Humankind

The Hestia Project provides comprehensive visualizations of a city’s greenhouse gas emissions.

New Technology Maps Greenhouse Gas Emissions at the Street and Neighborhood Level

The Hestia project draws on a variety of data sources to paint a comprehensive picture of a city’s greenhouse gas metabolism

A second specimen of the troodontid Mei, preserved in a bird-like sleeping position.

How Did Dinosaurs Sleep?

A lovely little fossil shows how some dinosaurs said goodnight

A new study debunks the idea that friendships are influenced by shared genes.

Cracking the Code of the Human Genome

Do We Really Pick Our Friends Based On Genetic Similarities?

A new study debunks the idea that friendships are influenced by shared genes

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