Science

Citrus fruits such as citrons and lemons were clear status symbols for the ancient Roman ruling elite, according to new research from Tel Aviv University. Still life with glass bowl of fruit and vases. Roman painting from the House of Julia Felix in Pompeii, 63-79 CE. “Today, citrus orchards are …

Fossils discovered in Turkey represent a new species that is a previously unknown relative of modern-day marsupials, according to a new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE. An artist’s reconstruction of Anatoliadelphys maasae. Image credit: Peter Schouten. Named Anatoliadelphys maasae, the new species is an unusual, cat-sized carnivorous metatherian …

Solar eclipses happen every so often, but the one taking place on August 21st will be a first-of-its-kind event. That’s not because of the eclipse itself, but because of what the people in its path are doing. Various universities and scientific organizations are working to unite fans of science to …

There are many hurdles a potentially useful antibiotic compound has to clear before it’s used in humans. Many substances can kill bacteria, but they come with unacceptable side effects. Others simply lose their effectiveness in the human body or are difficult to deliver where they are needed. Researchers from the …

The rapid rise of marine planktonic algae 659-645?million years ago (Cryogenian period), between the Sturtian and Marinoan ‘snowball Earth’ glaciations, created food webs with more efficient nutrient and energy transfers, driving ecosystems towards larger and increasingly complex organisms, according to new research. Cryogenian Earth. Image credit: NASA. The study, published …

In a paper published recently in the journal Palaeodiversity, U.S. paleontologists described a new species of angiosperm flower, Tropidogyne pentaptera, found in seven pieces of 99-million-year-old (mid-Cretaceous) amber excavated from a mine in Myanmar (also known as Burma). Tropidogyne pentaptera, holotype. Scale bars -1 mm. Image credit: George O. Poinar, …

NASA’s Cassini mission has shared an amazing close-up portrait of Saturn taken from the Cassini robotic probe. This is a false color image of Saturn, with exaggerated colors to enhance subtle variations in color to bring out details of the cloud structure. The view is centered on 46 degrees north …

An international team of archaeologists led by the University of South Florida is the first to successfully excavate the 5,000 m2 Roman villa of Durrueli in Italy. The Roman villa of Durrueli is located off the southern coast of Sicily. Image credit: University of South Florida. The Roman villa of …

A research team at the University of Bristol, UK, has developed a relatively cheap and small acoustic levitator that is capable of holding samples of interest in mid-air. The TinyLev system is composed of the driver board and the single-axis levitator with 72 transducers (arranged as two surfaces, each containing …

Chilesaurus diegosuarezi, a peculiar dinosaur that roamed the Earth some 145 million years ago and looked like a raptor but was in fact a plant-eater, fills in a large gap between herbivorous dinosaurs and theropods, the group that includes Tyrannosaurus rex. Chilesaurus diegosuarezi was up to 3 meters long; the …