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Our outer ears may have come from ancient fish gills, scientists discoverScientists have traced the evolutionary origin of humans' outer ears to the gills of ancient fish through a series of gene-editing experiments.
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What's inside Earth quiz: Test your knowledge of our planet's hidden layersQuiz How's your knowledge of Earth's geology? Flat, round or global?
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Giant reserves of 'gold' hydrogen may be lurking beneath at least 30 US states, 1st-of-its-kind map revealsUSGS researchers have unveiled the first map of prospective locations for hydrogen gas in the contiguous United States — and there's a lot more than they previously thought.
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Giant ice age landforms discovered deep beneath North Sea revealed in amazing detailNew images from the North Sea show never-before-seen landforms that were carved by a single, colossal ice sheet 1 million years ago and subsequently buried beneath a thick layer of mud.
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The Bungle Bungles: Towering domes in the Australian outback that contain traces of the earliest life-forms on EarthThe Bungle Bungle Range in Western Australia is a collection of rock domes forged from ancient seabeds and flanked to the northeast by a prehistoric meteor impact crater.
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2,800-year-old structure unearthed in Israel was likely used for cultic practices and sacrifice, archaeologists sayArchaeologists have unearthed a unique stone structure in East Jerusalem, providing evidence of cultic activity and possibly animal sacrifice in the Kingdom of Judah during the First Temple period.
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'I was shaking when I first unearthed it': 11th-century silver coin hoard unearthed in EnglandArchaeologists have discovered 321 silver coins still wrapped in a cloth and lead pouch from a time in English history marked by upheaval due to the coronation of a new Anglo-Saxon king.
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Antarctica 'pyramid': The strangely symmetrical mountain that sparked a major alien conspiracy theoryAntarctica is home to a peak shaped like a perfect pyramid — but contrary to what conspiracy theorists say, the mountain's four symmetrical faces were forged through natural processes.
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Giant funnel-web spider with fangs so big it could bite through a human fingernail arrives at Australian zooHemsworth, a colossal funnel-web spider recently donated to the Australian Reptile Park, could make significant contributions to the park's life-saving venom-milking program, keepers say.
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Scientists examine bloody mating wounds to reveal details of sharks' secret sex livesShark sex is a bitey business, with males grasping females with their teeth during the act. The resulting wounds are helping scientists to figure out when and where sharks are doing the deed.
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Tristan da Cunha: The most remote inhabited island on Earth, forged from a supercontinent breakupTristan da Cunha is a group of islands in the South Atlantic that formed from the breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana. Today, it's home to a tiny and extremely isolated farming community.
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The 8 most controversial science stories of 2024From a piece of cloth that may have belonged to Alexander the Great to an image of our galaxy's central black hole, here's our pick of controversial science stories in 2024.
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Kawah Ijen: The volcano in Indonesia that holds the world's largest acidic lake at its heartKawah Ijen is an active volcano on the island of Java with an extremely acidic crater lake and gas emissions that produce blue flames upon contact with oxygen in Earth's atmosphere.
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The most important and shocking climate stories of 2024Soaring carbon emissions, an unexpected new source of global warming, and collapsing ocean currents shocked scientists in 2024. Here are our picks for this year's top climate change stories.
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Denmark Strait cataract: The world's largest waterfall, hidden underwater and unlike any other on landThe Denmark Strait cataract is a sloping portion of the seafloor between Iceland and Greenland that funnels cold water from the Nordic Seas into the Irminger Sea, fueling Atlantic Ocean currents.
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Scientists say sprinkling diamond dust into the sky could offset almost all of climate change so far — but it'll cost $175 trillionThe geoengineering scheme, known as stratospheric aerosol injection, would not be cheap, but scientists say it could buy us some time until we reach net-zero carbon.
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Just a fraction of the hydrogen hidden beneath Earth's surface could power Earth for 200 years, scientists findTrillions of tons of hydrogen gas are likely buried in rocks and reservoirs beneath Earth's surface, but researchers aren't sure where it is yet.
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Marble Caves: Chile's ethereal turquoise caverns with 'mineral ice cream' on the wallsThe Marble Caves sit on the shores of a turquoise glacial lake in southern Chile. Light bounces off the water onto the walls, creating a magical, ever-changing display inside the caverns.
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Male humpback whale crossed 3 oceans for sex, inadvertently breaking distance record for speciesA male humpback whale swam 8,106 miles (13,046 km) from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, mingling with other whale populations and potentially having sex with them along the way.
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Fossil Forest, Dorset: England's 145 million-year-old tree stump fossils preserved by ancient microbesThe Fossil Forest in Dorset is a stretch of southern English coastline peppered with living mounds of limestone that hide the remains of cypress trees from the late Jurassic period.
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Hailin impact crater: China's newly discovered meteor pit born from a 'nuclear explosion level' eventThe Hailin impact crater is a newly-discovered scar in the mountains of Northeast China left behind by a meteor impact, but geologists aren't sure exactly when this happened.
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Orcas start wearing dead salmon hats again after ditching the trend for 37 yearsOrcas off the coast of Washington State are balancing dead fish on their heads like it's the 1980s, but researchers still aren't sure why they do it.
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Squirting cucumbers thicken and stiffen to eject seeds with 'remarkable speed and precision,' study findsSquirting cucumbers shoot their seeds up to 33 feet (10 m) away from the mother plant to avoid overcrowding and competition, but exactly how they do it has long remained a mystery.
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ISS dodges its 39th piece of potentially hazardous space junk. Experts say it won't be the last.The ISS performed its 39th ever space junk collision avoidance maneuver on Nov. 19. Although it was the first such maneuver in 2024, it may not be the last, experts say.
