One of the most important controversies about human evolution and expansion is when and by what route the first hominids arrived in Europe from the African continent. Now, geological dating techniques at the Orce sites (Baza basin, Granada) place the human remains found in this area as the oldest in Europe, at approximately 1.3 million years old. These results reinforce the hypothesis that humans arrived in Europe through the south of the Iberian Peninsula, through the Strait of Gibraltar, instead of returning to the Mediterranean via the Asian route.

Domestic cats will do almost anything to avoid contact with water. Not so for their wild cousins, though. Lions, tigers and jaguars have had to adapt to water and sometimes take the plunge for survival.

Scientists have used state of the art 3D imaging technology to piece together the life—and probable death—of a 2.2 meter-long crocodile mummified by the ancient Egyptians.

A duo of interacting galaxies commemorates the second science anniversary of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which takes constant observations, including images and highly detailed data known as spectra. Its operations have led to a "parade" of discoveries by astronomers around the world.

Scientists from Trinity College Dublin have created a computer program that "paints" the structure of molecules in the style of famous Dutch artist, Piet Mondrian, whose beautiful artworks will be instantly recognizable to many.

Neutrinos have a quantum mechanical property called "flavor." This flavor can transform as neutrinos move through space. A major challenge is to keep track of both the physical movement of the neutrinos and their change of flavor in astrophysical systems such as core-collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers. The complicated arrangement and large number of neutrinos in these systems make it nearly impossible to follow all or even a subset of the neutrinos.

The ability of salmon hatcheries to increase wild salmon abundance may come at the cost of reduced diversity among wild salmon, according to a new University of Alaska Fairbanks–led study.

You can think of our atmosphere as a big chemistry set, a global churn of gaseous molecules and particles that constantly bounce off and change each other in complicated ways. While the particles are very small, often less than 1% of the thickness of human hair, they have outsized impacts. For example, particles are the seeds of cloud droplets, and the abundance of the particles changes the reflectivity and the amount of clouds, rainfall and climate.

In a revelation that highlights the fragile balance of our planet's atmosphere, scientists from China, Germany, and the U.S. have uncovered an unexpected link between massive wildfire events and the chemistry of the ozone layer. Published in Science Advances, this study reveals how wildfires, such as the catastrophic 2019/20 Australian bushfires, impact the stratosphere in previously unseen ways.

Light can be used to activate drugs in specific parts of the body through photopharmacology. This innovative approach involves modifying the chemical structure of a drug by adding a light-activated molecular switch, such as azobenzene. This allows the drug to be activated only when exposed to a specific color of light, rather than in the dark.