Meet ‘Lucy’s hunter’: Scientists discover a 15-foot crocodile that lived alongside early humans in Ethiopia |

In the dry storytelling of palaeontology, certain discoveries tend to arrive with a kind of quiet disruption. Not the sort that rewrites textbooks overnight, but one that shifts the edges of what was assumed about a landscape long gone. In Ethiopia’s Afar region, a set of fragmented crocodile fossils has done something like that. The…

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Scientists discover plastic-eating bacteria that can break down PVC, one of the world’s hardest plastics to recycle |

Plastic has a habit of staying around long after its useful life has ended. Some materials can be collected and recycled with relative ease, while others prove far more stubborn. Polyvinyl chloride, commonly known as PVC, sits firmly in the latter category. Used in products ranging from pipes and electrical cables to flooring and medical…

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The ‘Heaven Sword’ of Taiwan: How scientists found East Asia’s tallest known tree hidden in ancient forests |

For centuries, one of the most extraordinary living giants in Asia stood unnoticed among the remote mountains of Taiwan. Hidden within rugged forests and protected by difficult terrain, the colossal tree escaped scientific documentation despite its immense size. Now, after years of painstaking exploration, researchers have finally located and measured what is recognised as the…

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Quote of the day by Nikola Tesla: “If your hate could be turned into electricity, it would…” |

Nikola Tesla (Image: Wikipedia) Some quotes survive because they explain an idea. Others survive because they make people stop and think.This remark from Nikola Tesla belongs to the second category.Hatred is not something people usually measure. Nobody talks about it in terms of units, numbers, or output. Yet most people know how exhausting it can…

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Before humans learned to make fire, they may have carried it: Study reveals 1.7 million-year-old evidence |

Inside the limestone chambers of South Africa’s Wonderwerk Cave, small fragments of bone have been telling a story that is only now becoming legible. The material itself is unremarkable at first glance, scattered, fragile, long stripped of any obvious context. Yet when placed under particular wavelengths of light, some of it behaves differently, as though…

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San Andreas Fault stress reaches highest level in 1,000 years: What scientists discovered beneath California |

The San Andreas Fault, long embedded in California’s public imagination, has once again drawn scientific attention after new analysis suggested it may be holding more accumulated stress than at any point in the past thousand years. The finding does not come with any reliable sense of timing, but it has reopened questions among researchers who…

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German startup unveils solar panel that produces hydrogen without electricity; here’s how it works |

Producing green hydrogen has always required two separate machines: solar panels to generate electricity and an electrolyser to split water using that electricity, both of which add cost, maintenance, and often a grid connection. A four-person spin-off from Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology says it has found a way to skip the middle step entirely….

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Ancient ocean ice reveals radioactive stardust falling on Earth; should we be worried |

Radioactive specks buried deep inside ancient ocean crust are forcing scientists to rethink what Earth has been quietly passing through in space. These traces are not ordinary geological leftovers. Instead, they appear to be fragments of radioactive stardust material forged in violent cosmic events and scattered across the galaxy. What makes the discovery even more…

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Quote of the day by English physician Edward Jenner: “The joy I felt at the prospect before me of being the instrument destined to take away from the world one of its greatest calamities was so excessive that…” |

Edward Jenner (Image: Wikipedia) Imagine being so happy about your work that you lose yourself in a daydream while walking through a field. That is exactly what happened to an English country doctor more than 200 years ago. His name was Edward Jenner, and the work that filled him with such joy went on to…

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