A Labrador-Sized Scorpion Once Roamed Britain
The fossils sat in London for 155 years, classified as the wrong animal entirely. What they actually were is considerably more alarming.
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Latest Stories
A Lung Transplant Came With An Allergy
A transplanted lung brought its previous owner's food issue along for the ride.
A Diamond Swallowed a Speck of Seafloor. Then It Came Back Up.
Geologists usually toss out this kind of mineral pocket as contamination. This one was sealed tight, and it may explain where some of the ocean's water ends up.
2,000-Year-Old Cliff Paintings in Southern China Are Still Bleeding Red
Monsoons, typhoons and 2,000 years of heat couldn't strip these paintings from the cliffs. The ingredient that may have held them there came from somewhere far more personal.
Something Barely Bigger Than Jupiter Formed Like a Star and May Be Building Planets of Its Own
An object barely twice Jupiter's mass formed like a star — and may now have the raw material to build planets around itself. What, exactly, is a planet anymore?
Family Cat Looked Like a 3-Pound Leopard. It Was a New Wildcat Species.
It lived in a family home before anyone realized what it was. Its lineage had already been going its own way for 1.4 million years.
Earth’s Building Blocks Are Local, Not Imported
Jupiter may have blocked almost everything from the outer solar system. Somehow, Earth still ended up with the ingredients that mattered.
Glowing Blob’s Nervous System May Have a Separate Origin Story
Some of the comb jelly's neurons are fused instead of connected. It's either a shortcut or evidence nature had to invent nervous systems more than once.
84 Objects Are Hiding in Nearby Galaxies. They Vanish When You Look Too Hard.
Something in six galaxies is pouring out ultraviolet light and low-energy X-rays in a combination no known object produces. Nobody knows what it is yet.
King Tut’s Sky-Iron Dagger Makes Ancient Iron a Lot Harder to Explain
Ancient smiths may have destroyed the very signature modern researchers use to identify metal from space. So what else have we been calling ordinary iron?
Demon Fish Overlooked for 40 Years
Scientists had been crawling through this Alabama cave monthly since the 1990s. Whatever lived in the deeper pools apparently knew the schedule.
The Color Missing From Your LED Bulbs Completely Prevented Nearsightedness in Animal Tests
Standard LEDs leave out a wavelength abundant in sunlight. In tree shrews, adding it back changed what happened to their developing eyes.
A Gel That Talks the Brain Into Making New Neurons
An IV-delivered nanogel crossed one of medicine's toughest barriers and triggered something researchers have struggled for years to reproduce.
A Trebuchet Left 160 Fractures in a Medieval Skeleton. The Closest Modern Match Is a Car Crash.
A forensic pattern so specific it crosses seven centuries. What leaves that kind of signature on a medieval skeleton buried under a Scottish castle?
This Critter’s House Is a 22,000-Foot Volcano With Scarce Food, Little Oxygen and Near-Freezing Temps
The cold demands constant heat. The thin air makes producing that heat harder. Somehow, the highest-living mammal on Earth solved both problems at once.
The Beetle That Turned Itself Into a Flower
These larvae aren't wearing any single flower's scent. They built their own from scratch, and the bees can't tell the difference.
A Tooth Pinpoints T. rex’s Body Temp
For 66 million years, the answer sat locked inside fossilized enamel. Now one T. rex tooth has given scientists a number they never had before.
DNA From a Single Male Can Create Both Mom and Dad
One male genetic sample can now take two very different reproductive paths. The second path shouldn't exist.