SciGlow | All Science News In One Place
SciGlow is a newsletter of science stories from the major research labs. Headlines link to in-depth articles and editorials. SciGlow keeps scientists and others up-to-date on current research.
The mystery surrounding dinosaur footprints on a cave ceiling in Central Queensland has been solved after more than a half a century. University of Queensland palaeontologist Dr Anthony Romilio discovered pieces to a decades-old puzzle in an unusual place – a cupboard under the stairs of a suburban Sydney home. The research has been published in … Read more
Information on what our ancestors ate is based mainly on carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses of the structural protein collagen in bones and dentin. Nitrogen isotope analysis, in particular, helps scientists determine whether animal or plant food was consumed. Since collagen, like proteins in general, is not easily conservable, this method cannot be used to … Read more
The left and right side of our brain are specialized for some cognitive abilities. For example, in humans, language is processed predominantly in the left hemisphere, and the right hand is controlled by the motor cortex in the left hemisphere. The functional lateralization is reflected by morphological asymmetry of the brain. Left and right hemisphere … Read more
The tropical region of South America is one of the world’s hot spots when it comes to animal diversity. The region’s extinct fauna is unique, as documented by fossils of giant rodents and crocodylians -including crocodiles, alligators, caimans and gavials – that inhabited what is today a desert area in Venezuela. Five to ten million … Read more
A new skeleton discovered in the submerged caves at Tulum sheds new light on the earliest settlers of Mexico, according to a study published February 5, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Wolfgang Stinnesbeck from Universität Heidelberg, Germany. Humans have been living in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula since at least the Late Pleistocene (126,000-11,700 years ago). … Read more
From the long necks of giraffes that help them reach treetops to the flexibility of a cheetah’s spine that help it go from zero to sixty in three seconds, mammals not only have the figurative backbone to do amazing things but, more importantly, they have the literal one. But they weren’t always that way. A … Read more
When the first Neanderthal genome was sequenced, using DNA collected from ancient bones, it was accompanied by the discovery that modern humans in Asia, Europe and America inherited approximately 2% of their DNA from Neanderthals – proving humans and Neanderthals had interbred after humans left Africa. Since that study, new methods have continued to catalogue … Read more
In southern Africa, dinosaurs and synapsids, a group of animals that includes mammals and their closest fossil relatives, survived in a “land of fire” at the start of an Early Jurassic mass extinction, according to a study published January 29, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Emese M. Bordy of the University of Cape Town … Read more
Ancient skulls from the cave systems at Tulum, Mexico suggest that the earliest populations of North America may have already had a high level of morphological diversity, according to a study published January 29, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Mark Hubbe from Ohio State University, USA, Alejandro Terrazas Mata from Universidad Nacional … Read more
Humans began transporting and growing banana in Vanuatu 3000 years ago, a University of Otago scientist has discovered. The discovery is the earliest evidence of humans taking and cultivating banana in to what was the last area of the planet to be colonised. In an article published this week in Nature Human Behaviour, Dr Monica … Read more