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Categories: Energy: Alternative Fuels, Paleontology: Fossils

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Using ancient DNA, researchers have determined cattle were imported from Africa to the Americas much earlier in the process of European colonization than documented. The first records of African cattle in the Americas date back to the 1800s, leading some historians to conclude that early colonists relied entirely on a small stock of European cattle initially shipped to the Caribbean Islands. DNA from archaeological specimens pushes the introduction of African cattle back by more than 100 years.

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A research team recently developed a stable artificial photocatalytic system that is more efficient than natural photosynthesis. The new system mimics a natural chloroplast to convert carbon dioxide in water into methane, a valuable fuel, very efficiently using light. This is a promising discovery, which could contribute to the goal of carbon neutrality.

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Royal Ontario Museum announces the oldest swimming jellyfish in the fossil record with the newly named Burgessomedusa phasmiformis. This 505-million-year-old swimming jellyfish from the Burgess Shale highlights diversity in the Cambrian ecosystem.

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Earth's oldest craters could give scientists critical information about the structure of the early Earth and the composition of bodies in the solar system as well as help to interpret crater records on other planets. But geologists can't find them, and they might never be able to, according to a new study.

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Earth is rapidly warming and scientists are developing a variety of approaches to reduce the effects of climate change. An astronomer has proposed a novel approach -- a solar shield to reduce the amount of sunlight hitting Earth, combined with a tethered, captured asteroid as a counterweight. Engineering studies using this approach could start now to create a workable design that could mitigate climate change within decades.

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The origin of bees is tens of millions of years older than most previous estimates, a new study shows. A team led by Washington State University researchers traced the bee genealogy back more than 120 million years to an ancient supercontinent, Gondwana, which included today's continents of Africa and South America.

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Researchers are making progress on the design of a solar battery made from an abundant, non-toxic and easily synthesized material composed of 2D carbon nitride.

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Heat load mitigation is critical to extending the lifetime of future fusion device. Researchers have found a way to explain the rotational temperatures measured in three different experimental fusion devices in Japan and the United States. Their model evaluates the surface interactions and electron-proton collisions of hydrogen molecules.

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An international team of linguists and geneticists has achieved a significant breakthrough in our understanding of the origins of Indo-European, a family of languages spoken by nearly half of the world's population.

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Miyako Islands are home to various native species of snake and lizards. How these species came to call these islands home has long puzzled scientists. A group of researchers have compiled the latest geological and biological data, proposing that an island once facilitated migration between Okinawa and Miyako Islands.

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Newly identified plant fossils found in Argentina suggest that a group of spurges long thought to have Asian origins may have first appeared in Gondwanan South America.

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Chemists have demonstrated that water remediation can be powered in part -- and perhaps even exclusively -- by renewable energy sources.

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An exquisitely preserved fossil forest from Japan provides missing links and helps reconstruct a whole Eurasia plant from the late Miocene epoch.

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Sabertooth cats make up a diverse group of long-toothed predators that roamed Africa around 6-7 million years ago, around the time that hominins -- the group that includes modern humans -- began to evolve. By examining one of the largest global Pliocene collections of fossils in Langebaanweg, north of Cape Town in South Africa, researchers present two new sabertooth species and the first family tree of the region's ancient sabertooths. Their results suggest that the distribution of sabertooths throughout ancient Africa might have been different than previously assumed, and the study provides important information about Africa's paleoenvironment.

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Engineers have created a device that turns sunlight into hydrogen with record-breaking efficiency by integrating next-generation halide perovskite semiconductors with electrocatalysts in a single, durable, cost-effective and scalable device.

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Scientists have described an unusual fossil from around 125 million years ago in China that shows a dramatic moment in time when a carnivorous mammal attacked a larger plant-eating dinosaur. The two animals are locked in mortal combat, and it's among the first evidence to show actual predatory behavior by a mammal on a dinosaur. The fossil's presence challenges the view that dinosaurs had few threats from their mammal contemporaries during the Cretaceous, when dinosaurs were the dominant animals.

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A bifacial perovskite solar cell, which allows sunlight to reach both sides of the device, holds the potential to produce higher energy yields at lower overall costs.

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No, oxygen didn't catalyze the swift blossoming of Earth's first multicellular organisms. The result defies a 70-year-old assumption about what caused an explosion of oceanic fauna hundreds of millions of years ago.

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In an exciting scientific development, an international team of researchers have officially named a newly discovered 145-million-year-old pterosaur. The animal had enormous 2-meter wingspan and was nicknamed 'Elvis' when the fossil was first unearthed in Bavaria, Germany because of the giant pompadour-like bony crest on its skull. Now the animal has been given a formal scientific name of Petrodactyle wellnhoferi. The name translates as 'Wellnhofer's stone-finger' honouring legendary German palaeontologist Peter Wellnhofer who spent his career working on German pterosaurs. Petrodactyle is a very complete skeleton with nearly every bone preserved and in remarkable detail.

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Researchers have found a way to significantly improve the operational stability of perovskite solar cells at high temperatures, which is necessary for their use in terawatt power grids.