A lonely island in the middle of the South Atlantic conceals Charles Darwin's best-kept secret. In his twenties, Charles Darwin explored the world aboard HMS Beagle. Two hundred years ago, Ascension Island was a barren volcanic edifice. Today, its peaks are covered by lush tropical "cloud forest". What happened in the interim is the amazing [...]
The theory that the great beasts living in North America 13,000 years ago were killed off by a space impact can now be discounted, a new study claims. North American mystery: At least 17 groups of large animals die out in a very short space of time. Mammoths, giant bears, big cats and the like [...]
(Image: Kenneth Garrett/NGS) Collecting tribal artefacts in the late 19th century, Harvard University's Peabody Museum sought to preserve a span of American history that 18th-century frontiersmen had tried to obliterate. By the end of the 20th century, the tribes wanted their things back. Thousands of ceremonial objects were returned before curators realised that earlier conservators [...]
Önder Bilgi talks about his discovery of a razor-sharp 4000-year-old scalpel and what it was originally used for Sophisticated skull surgery (Image: Istanbul University) Where are you digging? At an early Bronze Age settlement called Ikiztepe, in the Black Sea province of Samsun in Turkey. The village was home to about 300 people at its [...]
Researchers found that the average size of the humped conch increased in conjunction with a growing human population. (Credit: Image courtesy of North Carolina State University) ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2010) — In a counter-intuitive finding, new research from North Carolina State University shows that a species of shellfish widely consumed in the Pacific over the [...]
Scientific American Streamlined designs have passengers comfortably moving faster than a steamboat on still water Editor's note: We celebrate Scientific American's 165th anniversary on August 28 with this reproduction of what amounts to the cover story. Interestingly, the story states that passengers would comfortably be "flying" at 30 to 40 miles per hour; contrast that [...]
Trevor Cox reveals how the acoustic footprint of the world's most famous prehistoric monument was measured Ready to rock (Image: Richard Nowitz/National Geographic/Getty) 3 more images Just after sunrise on a misty spring morning last year, my fellow acoustician at the University of Salford, Bruno Fazenda, and Rupert Till of the University of Huddersfield, UK, [...]
Imagine opening a soda can and hearing the carbon dioxide begin to escape. Then imagine opening it quickly, and seeing the beverage foam and fizz out of the bottle. Then, imagine the pressure equalizing and the beverage being ready to drink. Marine scientists say that something very similar happened on a grand scale over a [...]
Gorely Crater. (Credit: Agnes Samper) ScienceDaily (Aug. 25, 2010) — Two French scientists are travelling to one of the remotest places on Earth, the Kamchatka peninsula, to piece together the complex life story of two volcanoes. Kamchatka is one of the most volcanically active places on Earth. It is part of the Ring of Fire [...]
Artist Richard Bizley’s view of life on the Isle of Wight during the Early Cretaceous based on information and ideas provided by Dr. Sweetman. (Credit: Copyright Richard Bizley) ScienceDaily (Aug. 24, 2010) — Fires and floods which raged across the Isle of Wight some 130 million years ago made the island the richest source of [...]
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