Smithsonian
Were Neanderthals wiped out by icy climate change?
About 40,000 years ago, Neanderthals began disappearing from Europe, but exactly why they died out is a mystery. … Researchers propose ...
Gut microbes could be the key to universal blood
Blood transfusions must match the blood type of a donor to that of the recipient; otherwise, the recipient’s immune system ...
Alpha: Examining Hollywood’s tale of dog domestication
Long ago, before your four-legged best friend learned to fetch tennis balls or watch football from the couch, his ancestors ...
Why other primates can’t talk: It’s all in the brain
Compared to humans, most primates produce a limited range of vocalizations: At one end of the spectrum, there’s the Calabar angwantibo, ...
Video: Ancient corn variety that makes its own nitrogen could lead to more sustainable farming
In the 1980s, Howard-Yana Shapiro, now chief agricultural officer at Mars, Incorporated, was looking for new kinds of corn. He ...
No link found between Flores Island pygmies and ancient ‘hobbits’ in study
Geneticist Serena Tucci sat in the small Indonesian village of Rampasasa on Flores Island, the only woman in a room full of ...
Preparing for motherhood: Do the father’s genes play a role?
[A] father may have the ability to dictate a mother’s attentiveness to their offspring—before it’s even born. The paternal genes ...
Sperm carries more than just a father’s genetics
Eat poorly, and your body will remember—and possibly pass the consequences onto your kids. In the past several years, mounting ...
Does your dog have what it takes to be a hero?
[I]n the journal Learning and Behavior, scientists report that the dogs most likely to come to the aid of their owners are those ...
Authenticity of Romanov remains confirmed through DNA analysis
Today [July 17] marks the 100th anniversary of the execution of Nicholas II and his family, an event that toppled ...
Thinking like mom: Fatherhood makes male brains more maternal
The amount of time bat-eared fox fathers spend monitoring their young is an even bigger predictor of pup survival than maternal investment ...
Nimble human fingers evolved to smash animal bones in search for marrow
Scientists have long linked the evolution of the human hand—unique for its lengthy opposable thumbs and dexterous fingers—to the rise ...
Pandemic prevention: Researchers find bats with new virus that could spread to humans
To prevent the next pandemic, pinpoint it at the source. That’s the idea behind PREDICT, a global surveillance program that has ...
‘Evolution of hugeness’: Massive dinosaurs appeared more than once in earth’s history
[T]he remains of an unusually-large-for-its-time dinosaur found in Argentina provides new insight into the evolution of hugeness—and suggest that the ...
Smarter than we thought: Neanderthals hunted in groups, ancient deer skeletons show
A group of Neanderthals used their hand-crafted wooden spears to kill two male fallow deer, both in the prime of ...
Jurassic Park showed how ‘science and science fiction can collide in the real world’
The prestigious science journal Nature published [a] breathtaking new discovery [about the oldest DNA ever recovered] in June 1993, a single day before ...
Viewpoint: Why you shouldn’t clone your dog: Costs ‘go far beyond money’
If you spend enough time reading about pet cloning, you’ll see that adjective come up over and over again: beloved ...
Herpes is rampant but there’s no vaccine in sight. Is it next on the gene editing cure list?
The fact is, almost everyone has herpes. Just so we’re defining our terms, genital herpes refers to the incredibly common ...
Tracing human evolution through the foods we eat
You aren’t what you eat, exactly. But over many generations, what we eat does shape our evolutionary path. “Diet,” says ...
‘Jean editing’: Genetically engineered bacteria could reduce denim’s environmental impact
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley are trying to make the process of making blue jeans greener, by engineering ...
Should you test your baby for genetic disease risks at birth?
Before Cheryl Connolly gave birth to her first child, Loudon, she ran through the checklist of all the things expecting ...
Your DNA may have been altered by childhood stress and traumas
[W]e’re finding out that our DNA isn’t always set in stone. Now, a team of researchers from Northwestern University led ...
Genetically engineered coral might bring bleached coral reefs back to life
A coral reef takes thousands of years to build, yet can vanish in an instant. The culprit is usually coral ...
‘Abortion pill’: How it works
While abortion is still legal, many states have since passed laws that restrict access to abortion to varying degrees...Now some ...
Evidence of ancient cancer case found in fossil on storage shelf in Panama City
[O]ne day Nicole Smith-Guzmán, a bioarchaeologist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) opened the box and ...
From kale to cows: Modern supermarket full of foods genetically modified by humans
Here are just a few of the modern supermarket offerings that we have been genetically modifying for centuries: Cow and ...
Smartphone app diagnoses genetic diseases with a snapshot
[When Omar Abdul-Rahman, a clinical geneticist at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, had to provide a diagnosis for a young ...
‘Living bandage’ may revolutionize repair of difficult knee injuries
Anthony Hollander, the head of the Institute of Integrative Biology at the University of Liverpool...and his team have finally completed ...
