5 Diseases With Surprising Animal Reservoirs — And How They Can Affect Humans

Learn more about the diseases that live in certain animals and if they can be transferred to humans. 

Asteroid 2024 YR4’s Possible 2032 Moon Impact — What the Aftermath Could Look Like

Learn about 2024 YR4, the asteroid with a 4 percent chance of hitting the Moon in 2032, and the possible timeline of effects that could follow.

Fire-Loving Fungi Have Learned to Eat Charcoal — A Useful Skill for Dealing With Industrial Waste

Learn more about how exploring the genes of fungi thriving on charcoal could help revive ecosystems after severe fires and industrial pollution.

Brown Bears Look Alike to the Human Eye — An AI Program Is Helping to Observe Their Differences

Learn about the AI program that's recognizing individual brown bears in Alaska by their faces and poses. 

430,000-Year-Old Discovery Reveals Earliest-Known Evidence of Humans Using Wooden Tools

Learn how two wooden tools discovered in Greece mark the earliest known evidence of humans shaping wood, moving the timeline back roughly 40,000 years.

The Atlantic Ocean May Have Its Own Grand Canyon — and It Might Be Even Bigger

Learn more about how Earth’s crust unzipped beneath the Atlantic Ocean, creating a giant underwater canyon.

Jurassic Predators Feasted on Baby Long-Necked Dinosaurs 150 Million Years Ago

Learn how fossils from Colorado’s Morrison Formation helped researchers reconstruct a Late Jurassic food web and uncover the role of young sauropods.

Social Media Habits Are Easy to Form — And Easier to Break Than You Might Think

Learn more about how and why we form social media habits and some ways you can break your own social media habits.

Landslide Causes 1,500 Residents to Evacuate Small Sicilian Town

Learn more about the landslide that’s left some homes teetering on the edge of a cliff.

Adult Polar Bears in Svalbard Are Gaining Fat Even as Arctic Sea Ice Shrinks

Learn how polar bears in the Arctic’s Barents Sea are maintaining healthy fat reserves despite sea ice loss in a warming climate.

This Popular Culinary Mushroom Turns Meals into Visions, Making People See “Little Elves”

Openly sold in and widely eaten in Asia, Lanmaoa asiatica can cause bizarre, highly specific hallucinations, challenging what we know about fungal toxins.

First Direct Evidence Suggests the Universe’s Primordial Soup Behaved Like a Liquid

Learn how physicists recreated the early universe’s primordial soup, known as quark-gluon plasma, and discovered how it responds when particles race through it.

Why Do Humans Get Acne, and Is it Unique to Us? Here’s What to Know

Learn more about what causes acne in humans and how it can sometimes impact animals, too.

A New Vaccine Platform Could Cut Development Timelines From Months to Weeks

Learn how doctors are developing a new platform that uses bacteria and protein design to speed early vaccine testing and production.

Bright Streaks on Mercury Suggest That It's Not a Dead Planet, but Geologically Active 

Learn about the bright streaks that may represent recent geological activity on Mercury, which has been considered a dead planet in the past.

Hidden Underwater Volcanoes May Explain Half of Earth’s Triassic Extinctions

Learn how geological clues preserved in ancient oceans link repeated volcanic eruptions to Triassic marine extinctions.

Animal Offerings and Painted Walls Reveal Secrets of the Ancient Roman Cult Site Nida 

Learn about the cult district of Nida, an ancient cult site uncovered under Frankfurt that archaeologists are calling one of the most significant Roman discoveries in Europe.

Listening to Angry Human Voices Could Throw Off a Dog's Balance

Learn more about how human voices, whether happy or angry, can impact a dog's balance. 

Cats Rarely Meow at Other Cats — Do They Save Their Voices for Us? Here's What We Know

Learn more about the complicated ways cats communicate and how new research is trying to understand the power behind the meow. 

160,000-Year-Old Stone Tools Reveal Advanced Tool Making in East Asia

Learn how archaeologists dated stone tools from central China and what they reveal about when early humans in Asia began using complex tools.