A new wave of archaeological investigations is reconstructing intimate details of our ancestors’ lives from fossilised footprints. They give us glimpses of everything from parent-child relationships to the thrill of a giant sloth hunt. Image: Bernard Spragg
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A bone found at an archaeological site may encode numerical information. And if that’s correct, anatomically modern humans might not have been alone in developing a system of numerical notations: Neanderthals might have begun to do so, too. Image: F. d’Errico
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With the archaeology of our coastal waters largely unexplored, we are missing a huge piece of human history. Now, however, that is changing. Image: NOAA’s National Ocean Service
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In the past few years we have learned to read the signals in other organic molecules that tend to survive longer than DNA and persist even in warm environments. Now, some think they could reveal how archaic humans like H. naledi evolved and interacted. Image: hape662
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There is now a new kind of scientific machine on the horizon: a trimmed down particle accelerator that is small enough to fit on a tabletop. Diminutive they may be, but these table-top accelerators are still bursting with the power and versatility. Image: milkisprotein
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As unlikely as it might sound, our future health and happiness might be secured by humble bacteria that can pull carbon dioxide from the air, grow greener food and clean up pollution. Image: NIAID
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Since 2014, when news first broke of its discovery, Patagotitan has frequently been described as the most massive animal ever to walk the Earth. Except it isn’t. Weighing up such giants isn’t simple, but new calculations indicate that other dinosaurs from the same family were at least as massive. Image: Zachi Evenor
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Look at a packet of Quorn mince and you’ll discover that a 75g serving contains 10.9g of protein, 3.4g of carbohydrates and 0.4g of saturated fat. Later this year, a glance at the packet will tell you something else: that producing the 75g serving released the equivalent of 0.16kg of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Image: Roxnstix
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The story of that first alphabet has long been a mystery, but over the past 25 years we have made enormous progress towards pinpointing when and where it was invented. Most astonishing, the consensus today is that the alphabet didn’t emerge from a state-sponsored initiative as was long believed. Image: byorori.t
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Strange microbes called the Lokis have reignited an argument about the shape of the tree of life, one of biology’s most fundamental ways of describing the rise of life on Earth, with implications for all of us. Image: david.mclanahan
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The Cambrian explosion is one of the most significant moments in life’s history on Earth because it is the point at which species that are clearly related to today’s animals first appeared. It is seen as evolution’s big bang. But over the past few years, geologists have begun to have second thoughts about whether it happened.
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Some 15,000 years ago, a small band of pioneers stood on the threshold of a new world. To the south were the Americas, 40 million square kilometres of virgin territory including wide-open prairies, dense rainforests and high mountain chains. An epic journey was about to begin – but only because a remarkable adventure had just ended. Image: TFM
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