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Categories: Offbeat: Paleontology and Archeology, Space: Structures and Features

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A study explores body proportions of Masai giraffes, lending insight into why giraffes have such long necks and how this trait might have evolved.

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The sharks we know today as the open ocean's top predators evolved from stubby bottom dwellers during a dramatic episode of global warming millions of years ago.

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One of Earth's most consequential bursts of biodiversity -- a 30-million-year period of explosive evolutionary changes spawning innumerable new species -- may have the most modest of creatures to thank for the vital stage in life's history: worms.

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A new study has uncovered a diverse array of microorganisms within the hot waters of the Roman Baths, regularly listed among the UK's most popular tourist attractions. Tests showed 15 of the isolated bacteria -- including examples of Proteobacteria and Firmicutes -- displayed varying levels of inhibition against human pathogens including E.coli, Staphylococcus Aureus and Shigella flexneri.

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This fossil looks like a lumpy, rounded rock with a couple of exposed teeth that are a little worse for wear, having been submerged and tumbled along the floor of the Gulf of Mexico for thousands of years before washing up on a beach. But when it was X-rayed a doctoral student saw there was more to the fossil that met the eye: a hidden canine tooth that had not yet erupted from the jaw bone. It was just what researchers needed to identify the fossil as belonging to a Homotherium, a genus of large cat that roamed much of the Earth for millions of years.

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New research demonstrated a possible formation mechanism of intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters, star clusters that could contain tens of thousands or even millions of tightly packed stars. The first ever star-by-star massive cluster-formation simulations revealed that sufficiently dense molecular clouds, the 'birthing nests' of star clusters, can give birth to very massive stars that evolve into intermediate-mass black holes.

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Over the last two years, scientists have used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to explore what astronomers refer to as Cosmic Dawn -- the period in the first few hundred million years after the big bang where the first galaxies were born.

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A large fossil discovery has helped shed light on the history of dinosaurs in Wales.

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A whaler's forgotten aerial photos from 1937 have given researchers the most detailed picture of the ice evolution in East Antarctica to date. The results show that the ice has remained stable and even grown slightly over almost a century, though scientists observe early signs of weakening. The research offers new insights that enhance predictions of ice changes and sea level rise.

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Researchers have applied the well-understood and highly verified quantum field theory, usually applied to the study of the very small, to a new target, the early universe. Their exploration led to the conclusion that there ought to be far fewer miniature black holes than most models suggest, though observations to confirm this should soon be possible. The specific kind of black hole in question could be a contender for dark matter.

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The African turquoise killifish lives in ephemeral ponds in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. To survive the annual dry season, the fish's embryos enter a state of extreme suspended animation or 'diapause' for approximately 8 months. Now, researchers have uncovered the mechanisms that enabled the killifish to evolve this extreme survival state.

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An exceptionally rare fossilized porcupine skeleton discovered in Florida has allowed researchers to trace the evolutionary history for one of North America's rarest mammals.

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Entomologists have solved the 250-year-old origin puzzle of the most prevalent indoor urban pest insect on the planet: the German cockroach. The team's research findings, representing the genomic analyses of over 280 specimens from 17 countries and six continents, show that this species evolved some 2,100 years ago from an outdoor-living species in Asia.

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Researchers have now seen the formation of three of the earliest galaxies in the universe, more than 13 billion years ago. The sensational discovery contributes important knowledge about the universe.

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Astronomers have discovered a planet between the sizes of Earth and Venus only 40 light-years away.

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While thousands of planets have been discovered around other stars, relatively little is known about them. A NASA catalog featuring 126 exotic, newly discovered worlds includes detailed measurements that allow for comparisons with our own solar system.

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The first scientific pictures from the Euclid satellite mission have revealed more than 1,500 billion orphan stars scattered throughout the Perseus cluster of galaxies.

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Astronomers have made the rare and tantalizing discovery of an Earth-like exoplanet 40 light-years away that may be just a little warmer than our own world. The potentially-habitable planet, named Gliese 12 b, orbits its host star every 12.8 days, is comparable in size to Venus -- so slightly smaller than Earth -- and has an estimated surface temperature of 42 C (107 F), which is lower than most of the 5,000-odd exoplanets confirmed so far. That is assuming it has no atmosphere, however, which is the crucial next step to establishing if it is habitable.

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Astronomers have a new way to measure how fast a black hole spins, by using the wobbly aftermath from its stellar feasting. The results offer a new way to probe supermassive black holes and their evolution across the universe.

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University of Copenhagen astrophysicists help explain a mysterious phenomenon, whereby stars suddenly vanish from the night sky. Their study of an unusual binary star system has resulted in convincing evidence that massive stars can completely collapse and become black holes without a supernova explosion.