Some ancient crocodiles preferred salad over steak
Modern crocodiles have a reputation as ravenous beasts that crave flesh. While it’s certainly true that crocodiles today are more than happy to feast on …
history
Ancient saber-toothed cats could crush a skull with their teeth
If you were transported back in time some 100,000 years there’s a good chance you’d run into any number of creatures that could rapidly end …
Newly-discovered fossilized school of fish is like a snapshot in time
Finding a single fossil of an animal that died some 50 million years ago is cool. Finding two? That’s just plain awesome. But what about …
Scientists suggest a nearby supernova may have prompted human ancestors to walk upright
For scientists studying the history of human evolution, determining when certain changes happened and what may have prompted those changes are very important questions to …
Discovery of billion-year-old fungi changes our understanding of life on Earth
When scientists search for species that lived hundreds of millions of years ago they’re not always just looking for ancient animals. Life on Earth has …
Archaeologists discover bizarre ‘Jars of the Dead’ hidden in Laos
Just like today, people who lived hundreds of years ago had rituals and traditions associated with death. Methods of burial or tributes to deceased individuals …
Atmospheric CO2 levels just hit the highest point in the history of our species
The Earth is dealing with something that it hasn’t faced in at least the last 800,000 years. It’s a dramatic shift in the levels of …
Scientists found a tree in North Carolina that’s a jaw-dropping 2,624 years old
Humans have a habit of shortening the lifespan of trees. We just love to cut them down, and we do so with startling efficiency, damaging …
Radioactive remnants of decades-old nuclear bomb tests have settled on the ocean floor
Nuclear weapons testing dates back to the mid 1940s and ramped up significantly starting in the early 1950s. Several countries, including the U.S., Soviet Union, …
Archaeologists found 1,000-year-old cocaine in an ancient drug stash
Humans who lived 1,000 years ago could never have imagined the incredible advancements the subsequent centuries would bring. What we consider to be our mundane …
Newly-discovered ancient crab species is like nothing science has seen before
When researchers discover fossils of species that are new to science it’s only natural that they attempt to find a place for them in the …
Americans would be more comfortable in Africa than anywhere else on Earth
If you find yourself constantly tweaking your home’s thermostat in search of the perfect temperature, you might save some time by just moving to eastern …
Scientists bring woolly mammoth cells back to life
The woolly mammoth is long gone, having been pushed to extinction thousands of years ago, but in recent years, there have been no shortage of …
Great white sharks likely pushed the massive megalodon to extinction
Taking a dip in the ocean and coming face to face with a predator of the deep would be enough to scare anyone. Modern day …
New fossils might be the earliest moving organisms on Earth
If you go back far enough in the fossil record — past the cavemen, dinosaurs, and even the earliest creatures to crawl out of Earth’s …
Collision between young Earth and Mars-sized planet might be why we’re all here today
Humans have tamed (or utterly destroyed) much of the planet in our brief time here, but there’s still plenty we don’t know about Earth’s history. …
Oops! ‘Ancient’ stone circle was actually built by a farmer in the 1990s
Finding an ancient monument that has been sitting for thousands of years is a special thing, but when it’s been “hiding” in plain sight, its …
‘Galagadon’ shark named after ’80s arcade game due to its oddly shaped teeth
Sharks have been around for a long, long time, and of all the creatures that roam the Earth today they’re one of the few that …
Mega-shark Megalodon may have died off because it got too hot
The sharks that roam today’s oceans can be fearsome, but they don’t really compare to some of the species that dominated the seas millions of …
You can now bid on Stephen Hawking’s old wheelchair, if that’s your thing
Stephen Hawking, world-famous physicist, writer, and thinker, passed away back in March (on Pi day, no less), but his body of work will live on …
Ancient humans may have been better at breathing than we are today
It might be tempting to imagine our ancient ancestors as simply less sophisticated versions of ourselves, but scientists know that there are some very big …
Archaeologists found a child who was given a ‘vampire burial’ to keep them from becoming a zombie
When archaeologists discover remains that have been hidden for hundreds and hundreds of years there’s a few things they might expect. Brittle bones, loose teeth, …
NASA crammed 60 years of achievement into just 60 seconds
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is celebrating its 60th anniversary, and it’s been a wild six decades for the many scientists, researchers, and engineers, …
Humans didn’t speed up the drying of the Sahara, and in fact they may have delayed it
Today the Sahara desert is a dry, dusty, sandy land that stretches for millions of miles, but it wasn’t always this way. Go back at …
Freezing temperatures likely contributed to the extinction of Neanderthals
The amount of information we have about the human family tree is steadily growing, but there are still plenty of unanswered questions. One of the …
Brazilian government sends drones to spy on tribes that have never seen the outside world
Modern technology makes it so easy to connect with people all over the world that it might sound crazy to think that there are still …
Scientists stumble upon baby horse frozen in time for 40,000 years
Finding the remains of animals that have been dead for tens of thousands of years isn’t easy. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a handful of …
Does evolution favor the lazy? Scientists think it might
If you’re sitting on the internet and reading this story instead of doing something more important that you KNOW you should be doing, I have …
Scientists are tracing the age of the ancestor of life on Earth, and they just released their findings
Today, the Earth is covered with life in countless forms, but four billion years ago there was no life on our rocky world. So, it …
This nearly 100-million-year-old beetle is preserved so well it practically looks alive
Fossilized tree sap, called amber, is an absolutely amazing substance. It lasts for an incredibly long time, and it has yielded some of the most …
