Dec 16th, 2025 - Hundreds of yards of dinosaur tracks with toes and claws have been found in the Italian Alps in a region that will host the 2026 Winter Olympics, authorities said Tuesday. "This set of dinosaur footprints is one of the largest collections in all of Europe, in the whole world," Attilio Fontana, head of the Lombardy region in northern Italy, said during a news conference. The tracks, which are over 200 million years old, were discovered in the Stelvio National Park, in an area between the towns of Bormio and Livigno, which host part of the Games. Nature photographer Elio Della Ferrera first ... [Read More]

Dec 16th, 2025 - A revolutionary quantum sensing project that could transform cancer treatment by tracking how immune cells interact with tumors has been awarded a prestigious £2 million Future Leaders Fellowship. The four-year fellowship, funded by UK Research and Innovation, focuses on a critical problem: immune cells often fail when they encounter cancer tissue because the tumor environment disrupts their metabolism. The pathbreaking project could enable the development of improved patient-tailored cancer therapies and provide tools for earlier diagnosis and evaluation of anti-cancer drugs. Dr ... [Read More]

Dec 15th, 2025 - Reading time 2 minutes People around the world have been adorning their bodies with tattoos for thousands of years. While one of the most famous ancient tattoo wearers is Otzi the Iceman—the prehistoric man whose 5,300-year-old remains were discovered by tourists on the Italian-Austrian border in 1991—scholars have started to pay more attention to an ancient region on the other side of the Mediterranean. In a study published today in the journal PNAS, researchers investigated over 1,000 human remains from the Nile River Valley, once part of ancient Nubia. Their survey revealed ... [Read More]

Dec 15th, 2025 - CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A stray comet from another star swings past Earth this week in one last hurrah before racing back toward interstellar space. Discovered over the summer, the comet known as 3I/Atlas will pass within 167 million miles (269 million kilometers) of our planet on Friday, the closest it gets on its grand tour of the solar system. NASA continues to aim its space telescopes at the visiting ice ball, estimated to be between 1,444 feet (440 meters) and 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) in size. But it's fading as it exits, so now's the time for backyard astronomers to catch ... [Read More]

Dec 15th, 2025 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . A mong Earth's creatures, brown bears are pretty undesirable to run into as you stroll through the woods. But if you're hiking through the mountains of central Italy, it might not be so bad. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. It's not like you could sit down and have an espresso with one, but at least in a small corner of Italy, bears have evolved to become less dangerous than they used to be, according to a study published today in Molecular Biology and Evolution. And the change may have been spurred by humans. Apennine brown bears ... [Read More]

Dec 15th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Wood warblers stop people in their tracks. They flash yellow, red, orange, blue, and even pink as they move through trees and shrubs across North America. There are more than a hundred species, and many look so different that it is hard to believe they are closely related at all. For years, bird lovers and scientists alike have asked the same simple question: How did so much color arise in such a short slice of evolutionary time? New research suggests the answer is not as straightforward as slow, isolated change. Instead, some warblers appear to have picked up color ... [Read More]

Dec 15th, 2025 - Scientists recently discovered a 2,000-year-old ancient Egyptian pleasure boat off the coast of Alexandria. The wild part? It was an estimated 115 feet long and 23 feet wide, which was massive for its time. It also matches a description of the first-century Greek historian Strabo, The Guardian "These vessels are luxuriously fitted out and used by the royal court for excursions; and the crowd of revellers who go down from Alexandria by the canal to the public festivals; for every day and every night is crowded with people on the boats who play the flute and dance without restraint and with ... [Read More]

Dec 15th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google The Hjortspring boat – a sleek wooden warcraft pulled from a Danish bog in the early 1900s – is widely seen as the remains of a failed Iron Age raid, sunk as an offering after its crew was defeated. Yet one crucial question has lingered since its discovery: where did those warriors come from? Now, a new study led by Mikael Fauvelle of Lund University brings fresh clarity by looking not at the boat's planks or weapons, but at what held it together. By analyzing overlooked scraps of tar and cordage, the researchers have uncovered chemical clues that point far ... [Read More]