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The Odyssey of the World’s Largest Freshwater Pearl
The gem, which was was recently bought at auction, was likely found in China in the 1700s and was once owned by Russia’s Catherine the Great
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Oldest Footprints Show When Life On Earth Got Legs
Tiny fossil tracks found in South China firmly date appendages back to the Ediacaran period
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High-Tech Scanning Shows Picasso’s Blue Period Evolution
A new study of “La Soupe” reveals it underwent as many as 13 layers of revision
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“Lost” John Coltrane Album to Be Released
Both Directions At Once was recorded in 1963 by the classic quartet and reveals Coltrane’s journey from melodic standards to avant-garde jazz
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This 4,000-Year-Old Jar Contains Italy’s Oldest Olive Oil
Traces of oleic and linoleic acid found on a central Italy jar pushes the timeline of the substance in the region back an estimated 700 years
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Oldest Lizard Fossil Shows These Reptiles Are The Ultimate Survivors
The 250-million-year-old specimen from the Alps suggests that lizards evolved before Earth’s largest mass extinction—and thrived after it
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Archaeologists Uncover 20,000-Year-Old Kangaroo Cook Out
The site in Pilbara is one of many helping to define human movements in Australia
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“Holy Grail” of Spanish Treasure Galleons Found Off Colombia
The San José went down in 1708 filled with gold, silver and gems now worth billions of dollars
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Astronomers Find Signature From the Universe’s Earliest Known Stars
The first lights may have winked to life just 250 million years after the Big Bang
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Is This Backwards-Orbiting Asteroid an Interstellar Visitor?
The space rock could have been captured from another star system during the early days of our solar system
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The Case for Charles Dickens, the Science Communicator
A new exhibition dives into the Victorian novelist’s passion for science
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Archaeologists Discover They’ve Been Excavating Lost Assyrian City
Cuneiform tablets revealed the site in Iraqi Kurdistan is the legendary city of Mardaman
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People Lived in This Cave for 78,000 Years
Excavations in Panga ya Saidi suggest technological and cultural change came slowly over time and show early humans weren’t reliant on coastal resources
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Rare Technicolor Snippets of Lost Films Discovered
The fragments from the 1920s films were found taped to the beginnings and ends of other movies
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The Legendary Sultan Saladin Was Likely Killed by Typhoid
Reviewing historical accounts of his death, doctors and historians believe his sweating fits and weakness were brought on by the bacterial infection
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Digital Forensics Reconstructs Seven Lost Masterpieces
Artwork by Van Gogh, Klimt, Monet and more have been painstakingly remade by Factum Arte for a new television series
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No, the Bone of Saint Clement Was Probably Not Just Found in London’s Trash
A waste hauler found the bone fragment in a case sealed with red wax and tied with red cords. It included a faded label reading: “Ex Oss. S Clementis PM”
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Some of Hobby Lobby’s Smuggled Artifacts May Come From Lost Sumerian City
Among the 3,800 artifacts being repatriated to Iraq today include pieces believed to be from Irisagrig, a site archaeologists have yet to find
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Comet “Snowstorm” Swirling in This Stunning GIF Is a Tricky Illusion
“Things are not quite as they seem,” explains astronomer Mark McCaughrean
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Fossil Tracks May Record Ancient Humans Hunting Giant Sloths
The tracks suggest a human—perhaps in search of food—closely followed the movements of the massive creature
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