An asteroid impact triggered the K-Pg mass extinction, wiping out the non-avian dinosaurs, ending the Age of Reptiles, and ushering in the Age of Mammals. But why was it the mammals who triumphed?

Scientists have been trying to solve the mystery of why plate tectonics works the way it does for over a hundred years. And they might have just uncovered a key to cracking it.

Spiders and their ancestors have been driving an arms race that began before either stepped foot onto land and resulted in the first powered flight on Earth. But how did this competition of webs versus wings drive such a massive...

How did a relative of the red panda end up in North America? What can this tell us about how long ago – and how many times – North America was connected to Europe and Asia?

Unlike in fiction, giant whales do not emerge fully-formed from the ocean deep. So, where did Livyatan melvillei come from? How did such a large predator live? And what caused the titan to die out? The answer may lie in an appetite so...

This is the hundred-year tale of how an unlikely bunch of bottom-dwelling marine critters helped reveal that ocean basins are basically reincarnated every few hundred million years.

After having solved the small matter of evolution by natural selection - becoming one of the most famous scientists in the world in the process - Charles Darwin turned his focus to a different personal obsession…

Where are all the east coast dinosaurs? Why don’t we find famous species like Triceratops in Central Park? Turns out, evolution and geology came together to make the east coast into an ancient lost world of weird dinosaurs.

This is the story of how our planet rescued itself from extreme conditions in the Cretaceous Period, at the cost of essentially suffocating the oceans for half-a-million years.

What graptolites tell us is a story of incredible changes in the ocean, of periods where the oceans became poisonous and suffocating before eventually clearing up again. They unlock extinctions and recoveries that scientists didn't see....

Turns out, instead of having bats to thank for the existence of butterflies, the groups we should actually be thanking are…bees and beans.

To get fire, which exists only on Earth, it took billions of years of photosynthesis – which means fire can’t exist without life. And fire and life have been shaping each other ever since.

Researchers have discovered a piece of a weird, but critical, time in the deep past…a time when the first-ever mass extinction may have turned Planet Earth into Sponge World.

What did life look like when the Amazon watershed flowed backwards? How did its direction shape the evolution of life around it? And what force could have possibly been strong enough to up-end one of the world’s mightiest rivers between...

The James Webb Telescope just took a photo of a newly discovered exoplanet. Exciting stuff but the raw image just looks like a small, faint dot—not a fully detailed world. The question is, just how big would a telescope need to be to...

Human language is an incredible thing: a combination of mouth sounds that we combine into words, sentences, poems, and constitutions. They carry meaning, emotion, and power. But underneath it all, language is really just physics. In this...

Scorpions are a frightening and deadly group of animals. But their venom is one of nature's most unique chemical cocktails. Here’s how scientists are using it for inspiration to design new medicines and pain killers.

Does any other creature on Earth undergo a life transformation as dramatic as the butterfly? I think not. Unfortunately, children's books about very hungry caterpillars skip all the COOL and WEIRD and GROSS stuff that happens along the...

Over 200 years ago, scientists were looking at sunlight through a prism when they noticed that part of the rainbow was missing. There were dark lines where there should have been colors. Since then, scientists have unlocked the secrets...

The idea of the lone genius creating everything isn’t just misleading. It’s harmful and wrong. Innovation thrives when people work together, and rather than nice linear paths, new ideas come from chance events and unexpected connections....

We may not know it, but averages affect our lives every day. Designers and manufacturers use averages to make our houses, cars, shoes and airline seats safer and more comfortable(ish). But calculating averages is way more complicated...

X is everywhere and it’s probably thanks to math. But why is x the symbol for the unknown?

At CERN, physicists are searching for answers to some of the biggest questions ever — like how the universe started and where everything comes from. To get one step closer to an answer, CERN scientists recreated the first moment after...

There are hundreds of billions of planets in our galaxy. Scientists now think hundreds of millions of them have conditions where life could arise. What do scientists think are the best ways of reaching out to them? And why do some...