Tardigrades can survive remarkable doses of ionizing radiation, up to about 1,000 times the lethal dose for humans. How they do so is incompletely understood. In a new study, scientists from the University of North Carolina found that a tardigrade species called Hypsibius exemplaris suffers DNA damage upon gamma irradiation, but the damage is repaired….
Archaeologists from Necmettin Erbakan University say they have discovered the world’s oldest known bread, dating back to 6600 BCE, at Çatalhöyük, a renowned Neolithic settlement in central Anatolia, Türkiye (formerly Turkey). The 8,600-year-old bread found at Çatalhöyük in Türkiye. Image credit: Necmettin Erbakan University. Çatalhöyük is one of the largest and best preserved Neolithic settlements…
Spraying urine on vertical objects by raising the tail is a commonly observed functional behavior for chemical communication in felids, including domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus). The sprayed urine is recognized as a chemical signal for territorial ownership of their habitats. Previous studies reported that sprayed urine emits a more pungent odor than urine excreted…
Bergmann’s rule is a scientific principle stating that animals in high-latitude, cooler climates tend to be larger than close relatives living in warmer climates. A pair of adult Nanuqsaurus tyrannosaurs, standing in the background, and pachyrhinosaurus, skull in the foreground, were among the dinosaur species included in the study that calls into question Bergmann’s rule….
Very large unidentified elongate and rounded fossilized bones of uncertain origin recovered from different Late Triassic localities across Europe have been puzzling the paleontological community since the second half of the 19th century. Different hypotheses have been proposed regarding the nature of these fossils: giant amphibian bones, dinosaurian long bone shafts, and giant ichthyosaurian jaw…
Nelson Mandela University researcher Charles Helm and his colleagues have found an intriguing rock about 30 km (18.6 miles) east of the South African Blombos Cave, which is renowned for its paleoart. The object is unusually symmetrical and is shaped like a stingray (minus the tail). According to the archaeologists, the object may be oldest…
Toothed whales have developed specialized echolocation abilities that are crucial for their underwater activities. Acoustic fat bodies — the melon in the whale forehead, extramandibular fat bodies alongside the jawbone, and intramandibular fat bodies within the jawbone — are vital for echolocation. In a new study, researchers at Hokkaido University analyzed DNA sequences of genes…
Astronomers using CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope (Murriyang) have detected unusual radio signals from XTE J1810-197, a radio magnetar (ultra-magnetic neutron star) located 8,100 light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius. An artist’s impression of the radio magnetar XTE J1810-197. Image credit: Carl Knox, OzGrav / Swinburne University of Technology. Magnetars are a type of neutron…
The Forward Search Experiment (FASER) at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is designed to search for extremely weakly interacting particles. Such particles are predicted by many theories beyond the Standard Model that are attempting to solve outstanding problems in physics such as the nature of dark matter and the matter-antimatter imbalance in the Universe. Another…
Wooden tools rarely survive in the Paleolithic record limiting our understanding of Pleistocene hunter-gather lifeways. With 187 wooden artifacts, the so-called Spear Horizon of the lakeshore site of Schöningen in Germany represents the largest Pleistocene wooden artifact assemblage worldwide. Wooden tools include at least 10 spears and seven throwing sticks used in hunting next to…
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