A 240-Million-Year-Old Tusked Beast Sat in a Museum for 60 Years and Just Rewrote Dinosaur History
The Fossil That Waited Six Decades The story began in 1963, when a British expedition collected a large number of synapsid fossils — mammal-lineage vertebrates that were widespread and diverse long before dinosaurs came to dominate terrestrial ecosystems — from what is now Tanzania. The…
Dinosaur Poop Holds a 66-Million-Year-Old Secret About Bird Survival
An Unlikely Fossil From the Most Unlikely Place About 66 million years ago, a dinosaur — maybe a T. rex or a Nanotyrannus — ate a bird. The record of that meal, in the form of fossilized poop, has survived to today, preserving the best…
Europe Launches Two Satellites That Will Track Plant Health and Ocean Conditions
Two European Earth-observing satellites successfully reached orbit after launching aboard a Vega C rocket on September 14. The FLEX and Copernicus-3C spacecraft lifted off at 9:21 p.m. ET from a launch site in South America. Both satellites are part of Europe’s ongoing efforts to monitor and study the Earth from space.
Scientists Discover Unknown Minerals That Could Lock Water Deep Inside Earth
Scientists believe Earth may be hiding a massive reservoir of water deep beneath its surface, as far down as 1,800 miles underground. This hidden water could have significant implications for our understanding of the planet’s geology and the conditions that make life possible. Water remains essential to all known life on Earth.
A High School Teacher’s Knee Surgery Walk Led to History’s First T. Rex Trackway
An Accidental Discovery in the Badlands In 2025, high school teacher and amateur fossil hunter Kent Hups was recovering from knee replacement surgery while volunteering with paleontologist Tyler Lyson in the rugged badlands of North Dakota. Looking for an easier route out of a narrow,…
South Dakota’s Famous Mammoth Graveyard Is Way Older Than Scientists Thought
A Prehistoric Mystery, Rewritten Deep within an ancient sinkhole lie the remains of dozens of mammoths — prehistoric wanderers who waded into warm springs to their deaths. For decades, those deaths were accepted as having occurred roughly 26,000 years ago. But new research published in…
Scientists Used Earth’s Own Magnetic Field to Hunt Dark Matter and Found Dozens of Strange Signals
The World’s Biggest Detector Was Here All Along For decades, physicists have built enormous, expensive machines to hunt for dark matter, the invisible substance thought to make up most of the matter in the universe. Now, a team of researchers has found a way to…
Australia’s Iron-Rich Outback May Be Sitting on a Clean Energy Jackpot
A Discovery Hidden in Plain Sight As the world searches for sources of low-emission energy, researchers at Edith Cowan University (ECU) have uncovered a potential clean energy game-changer beneath Western Australia’s red soil — a new study revealing a way to generate naturally occurring hydrogen…
Rocket Lab Challenges NASA’s $700 Million Mars Orbiter Award to Blue Origin
Rocket Lab is challenging NASA’s decision to award Blue Origin a $700 million contract to build a Mars orbiter, arguing the selection process violated eligibility rules set by Congress. The company claims NASA’s award was inconsistent with the criteria lawmakers mandated, suggesting the agency may have overlooked or misapplied the requirements when choosing Blue Origin for the mission.
Lab-Made Planetary Ice Reveals Secrets Hidden Inside Uranus and Neptune
Scientists have discovered a new form of ice that may exist deep inside planets like Neptune and Uranus. Since retrieving samples from these distant planets is impossible, researchers recreated the extreme conditions found in their interiors here on Earth. The findings could offer valuable new insights into the internal structure and behavior of these ice giant planets.
