Smithsonian
Potato, tomato: Today’s French fries linked by evolution to tomatoes 9 million years ago
Ketchup and fries make a tasty pair. But the connection between tomatoes and potatoes may go beyond making a good ...
Even before the dinosaur era, mammal characteristics had begun to emerge
Mammals are familiar beasts. From a squirrel on a power line to a blue whale swimming through the sea, we ...
Scientists edge closer to perfecting bioprinting of human organs
Scientists have been fantasizing about the potential of precise 3D bioprinting for years. Just imagine, for example, if doctors could ...
Can depression be contagious?
The contagious nature of bacterial or viral infections like strep throat or influenza is well understood. You’re at risk of ...
A.L. 288-1, better known as Lucy, was unearthed 50 years ago. Here is how a pile of bones reshaped our knowledge of human evolution
In 1974, researchers unearthed fossil AL 288-1, more commonly known as “Lucy”, in a 3.2-million-year-old deposit in the Hadar region of ...
This medieval woman was buried among 22 male soldiers. Was she a warrior too?
Buried at a castle in Spain, a woman was found alongside the remains of 22 men who likely died on ...
Genghis Khan has over 16 million descendants today — but he’s not alone. 10 other men have massive genetic legacies
A 2015 study showed that ten other men have a lot of descendants. The paper is just one of several ...
Technology and mental illness: ‘New wave of tools offers quicker, more objective assessments to help patients and doctors’
Whoever said the eyes are the windows to the soul probably didn’t imagine them being a key to diagnosing severe ...
Gene-edited bacon could be on your breakfast menu as early as next year
A company in the United Kingdom is editing the genes of pigs used for commercial pork production to make them ...
Human evolution roundup: Here are last year’s 13 most fascinating findings on human ancestry
Smithsonian paleoanthropologists reveal thirteen of the year’s most fascinating findings about human origins ...
When was North America colonized by prehistoric humans? These New Mexico fossils upend the timeline
Fossilized ancient footprints found at White Sands National Park humanize them, revealing the actions of their lives in ways that ...
Video: Communication of the future? Brain implant allows paralyzed woman to speak through an AI avatar
After Ann Johnson suffered a stroke 18 years ago, she became paralyzed and lost the ability to speak. Now, with ...
Cold snap: How plummeting temperatures a million years ago almost killed off Europe’s earliest humans
A period of extreme cooling in western Europe may have driven away the continent’s earliest human species, researchers say ...
‘It ages the brain by a decade’: Long COVID symptoms including extreme fatigue and brain fog take severe health toll
Scientists tested the cognitive function of more than 3,000 participants and found those with longer-lasting Covid symptoms had the strongest ...
How searching for food in trees drove ancient human ancestors to evolve to walk upright
When human ancestors evolved to walk upright, they may have done so in trees, suggests new research published [11 January ...
Evolution research: What were the top discoveries of 2022?
Telling us more about our food, our health, our close relatives and ancestors, and even our animal friends, these 14 ...
‘Unseen connections’: Iconic 3-million-year-old hominim Lucy marks 48th anniversary with a selfie
The iconic ancient hominin gets her hands on a smartphone in anticipation of the museum’s upcoming exhibition exploring the global ...
Lactose tolerance: Early humans couldn’t easily process milk and cheese. How, why and when did that change?
Just 5,000 years ago, even though it was a part of their diet, virtually no adult humans could properly digest ...
Evolution of lactose tolerance: How humans (recently) became able to digest milk, cheese and other dairy products
In a study published [July 27] in Nature, researchers compared archaeological evidence for 9,000 years of European milk use with genetics, and found ...
Mmmm, kelp burgers! Would you swap meat for seaweed?
Consider, if you will, the possibility that we left our most promising resource behind in the ocean. Will you swap ...
Edible metamaterials: The world’s most ‘perfect chocolate’ was 3-D printed
Think about biting into a piece of chocolate. What makes it enjoyable? Is it the sweetness? The way it melts ...
Is vanilla hard-wired to be our favorite scent?
From a list of ten unique scents, survey respondents from a variety of cultural backgrounds all ranked vanilla the most ...
Rare bird phalluses: Stories of sexual variation in nature
Ninety-seven percent of all bird species have no phallus. Those that did, including ostriches, emus and kiwis, sported organs quite ...
Winners and losers in plant evolution: How humans are driving hundreds of species to extinction
A new analysis spanning more than 86,000 plant species from John Kress, botany curator emeritus at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of ...
‘Venice of the stone age’: Why this ancient Chinese city was abandoned
Some 4,000 years ago, a sophisticated society that built a city of canals known as “China’s Venice of the Stone ...
Mystery of 3.7 million year old footsteps solved
In the 1970s, a set of 3.66-million-year-old human footprints preserved in volcanic ash turned the paleontology field upside down. They ...
How new advances in archaeology are illuminating mysteries of the Hebrew Bible
Far from any city, ancient or modern, Timna is illuminating the time of the Hebrew Bible—and showing just how much ...
Over a third of strawberries harvested are discarded due to their short shelf life. Here’s how CRISPR could help them last longer
More than a third of all fresh strawberries that consumers buy end up getting tossed out because they're bruised, moldy ...
