Science

A team of researchers from the US, the UK and Australia has analyzed burn markers from the boundary of the impact site of the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatán Peninsula in the southern Gulf of Mexico and the surrounding ocean to determine what caused the impact winter, a prolonged period …

Paleontologists have found the remains of Mesopithecus pentelicus — an extinct species of Old World monkey that lived in Europe and Asia between 7 and 5 million years ago — in the Shuitangba lignite mine in northeastern Yunnan Province, China. The discovery indicates that this monkey species existed in Asia …

  SpaceX has made history too many times to count in the last few years, but the 2018 Falcon Heavy test stands out. Not only did SpaceX ace its first heavy-lift demonstration, but it also gave us all a good laugh by launching Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster into space. …

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) mission to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu is designed to return a carbon-rich sample of the asteroid to Earth. This 500-m-diameter body was chosen as the mission target due to its spectral similarity to primitive and organic-rich carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. In …

Paleontologists in Mongolia have found the fossilized skeletal remains from a new genus and species of two-fingered oviraptorosaur that walked the Earth during the Cretaceous period. Three individuals of Oksoko avarsan. Image credit: Michael W. Skrepnick. The newly-discovered dinosaur lived approximately 68 million years ago (Maastrichtian stage of the Late …

If the atmosphere of Venus was at any point thin and similar to Earth’s, then ancient asteroid impacts transferred potentially detectable amounts of Venusian surface material to the Moon, according to new research from Yale University. Recovery and isotopic analyses of Venusian surface samples from the lunar surface would determine …

While the cause of Alzheimer’s disease remains a mystery, amyloid plaques that are toxic to brain cells are known indicators of the disease. A team of researchers from Australia and Iceland has found that these plaques start in the same place and spread in the same way in the brains …

Archaeologists from Tel Aviv University, the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Geological Survey of Israel have excavated a Chalcolithic-period (5th millennium BCE) copper-smelting workshop at the site of Horvat Beter in Beer Sheva, southern Israel. Copper slag from Horvat Beter, Beer Sheva, southern Israel. Image credit: Anat Rasiuk, Israel Antiquities …

Catalase, a naturally occurring enzyme commonly used worldwide in food production and as a dietary supplement, holds potential as a low-cost therapeutic drug to treat the symptoms of the COVID-19 disease and suppress the replication of the SARS-CoV-2 virus inside the body. Proposed mechanism of action and synthesis of catalase …

Osteostraci, the jawless sister group to all jawed vertebrates, had adaptations for passive control of water flow around the body, according to new research led by the University of Bristol. Life restoration of Cephalaspis, a typical osteostracan, swimming over the substrate. Image credit: Hugo Salais, Metazoa Studio. Osteostraci (osteostracans) is …