New fossils in amber have revealed that beetles fed on the feathers of dinosaurs about 105 million years ago, showing a symbiotic relationship of one-sided or mutual benefit.
Vikings occupied Greenland from roughly 985 to 1450, farming and building communities before abandoning their settlements and mysteriously vanishing. Why they disappeared has long been a puzzle, but a new paper from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences (EPS) determines that one factor – rising sea level – likely played a major role.
Long obscured in the shadows of history, the world’s first nomadic empire - the Xiongnu - is at last coming into view thanks to painstaking archaeological excavations and new ancient DNA evidence.
To better understand the inner workings of the seemingly enigmatic Xiongnu empire, an international team of researchers at the Max Planck Institutes for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) and Geoanthropology (MPI-GEO), Seoul National University, the University of Michigan, and Harvard University conducted an in-depth genetic investigation of two imperial elite Xiongnu cemeteries along the western frontier of the empire: an aristocratic elite cemetery at Takhiltyn Khotgor and a local elite cemetery at Shombuuzyn Belchir.
A researcher at the University of Kentucky is helping solve a mystery on the coast of North Carolina: Where did coal found on the shipwrecked Queen Anne’s Revenge come from? About 300 years ago, a band of pirates captured a French slave ship. Among those pirates was a man named Edward Thatch (also spelled as Teach) who would be better known as Blackbeard.
The disastrous flood that hit Durban in April 2022 was the most catastrophic natural disaster yet recorded in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) in collective terms of lives lost, homes and infrastructure damaged or destroyed and economic impact.
University of California, Irvine writers and scholars Roland Betancourt and Héctor Tobar have been awarded 2023 Guggenheim Fellowships. They join 169 other American and Canadian scientists and scholars in the social sciences and humanities, as well as writers and artists of all kinds, receiving the prestigious grants this year.
“Horses have been part of us since long before other cultures came to our lands, and we are a part of them,” states Chief Joe American Horse, a leader of the Oglala Lakota Oyate, traditional knowledge keeper, and co-author of the study.
Simon Fraser University researchers are learning more about ancient graffiti—and their intriguing comparisons to modern graffiti—as they produce a state-of-the-art 3D recording of the Temple of Isis in Philae, Egypt.
Scientists often look to the past for clues about how Earth’s landscapes might shift under a changing climate, and for insight into the migrations of human communities through time.
The largest-yet analysis of ancient DNA in Africa, which includes the first ancient DNA recovered from members of the medieval Swahili civilization, has now broken the stalemate about the extent to which people from outside Africa contributed to Swahili culture and ancestry.
Bruce Lieberman, professor of ecology & evolutionary biology and senior curator of invertebrate paleontology at the KU Biodiversity Institute & Natural History Museum, sought to use steam-engine history to test the merits of “competitive exclusion,” a long-held idea in paleontology that species can drive other species to extinction through competition.
Research by Gregory Girolami, the William and Janet Lycan Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, uncovered previously unknown details about the enigmatic English scholar Margaret Bryan, including her family background and the names of her husband and two daughters.
Chemical and isotopic analysis of copper artifacts from southern Africa reveals new cultural connections among people living in the region between the 5th and 20th centuries according to a University of Missouri researcher and colleagues.
UWF Sea3D Lab recently partnered with The Mariners' Museum and Park, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NOAA Monitor National Marine Sanctuary to create artifact replicas recovered from the shipwreck of the USS Monitor.
Walter Isaacson, the renowned bestselling biographer, Tulane professor of history and co-chair of the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University, will be awarded a National Humanities Medal by President Joe Biden at a White House ceremony on March 21 at 3:30 p.m. CDT. The event will be livestreamed here.
Tulane University School of Liberal Arts will release a new podcast miniseries, Anti-Racism and the Disciplines, that explores the complex histories of liberal arts majors with the aim of identifying more accurate and effective practices in higher education. The podcast series premieres on Tuesday, March 21, in observance of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
The Harriet Tubman Center for Freedom and Equity at Binghamton University, State University of New York unveiled the first of 12 markers on the Downtown Binghamton Freedom Trail. The markers will identify key Binghamton locations on the iconic Underground Railroad and other notable abolitionist sites.
Baseball statistics seem to place higher values on the achievements of players from past eras, particularly pre-integration. Lifelong baseball fan and statistics professor Daniel Eck, grad student Shen Yan, & history professor Adrian Burgos developed an era-adjusted statistical method.
As the pandemic enters its fourth year, the medical historian whose team's work on the 1918 flu influenced the "flatten the curve" approach in 2020 reflects on what lessons for the future can be drawn by studying recent pandemic history.
The U.S. economy is on people's minds as the government prepares for a showdown on the deficit and government spending. Find the latest research and expert commentary on money issues here. Below are some of the latest headlines in the Economics channel on Newswise.
Krista Goff, an associate professor of history in the College of Arts and Sciences, is a 2023 recipient of the prestigious Dan David Prize for her work in illuminating the past in bold and creative ways.
In 2011, scientists recorded a previously unknown feeding strategy in whales around the world. Now, researchers in Australia think they may have found evidence of this behaviour being described in ancient accounts of sea creatures, recorded more than 2,000 years ago.
The second annual New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University announced its full schedule and lineup for its 2023 event, which features over 130 renowned and rising authors participating in 78 panels, book signings, a culinary symposium, family day festivities and a musical performance.
The news of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter entering hospice care brought messages of love and support from around the world. The legacy of the 39th president will endure for decades to come.
Regional differences in the spread of Japan’s two main ancestral groups have been revealed, thanks to new research at the University of Tokyo. Japanese people are generally thought to descend from two main groups: Jomon hunter-gatherers and immigrant farmers from continental East Asia.
It is called Radiocarbon 3.0: it is the newest method developments in radiocarbon dating, and promises to reveal valuable new insights about key events in the earliest human history, starting with the interaction between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals in Europe.
By: Bill Wellock | Published: February 15, 2023 | 12:03 pm | SHARE: The recent incursion of a Chinese spy balloon and other flying objects into American airspace evoked memories of aerial reconnaissance missions from the Cold War era. After a U.S. Air Force fighter downed the balloon, officials sent its antenna array to a Federal Bureau of Investigation lab.
At least 830 men, women and children were coercively sterilized in Utah, approximately 54 of whom may still be alive. They were victims of a sterilization program that lasted for fifty years in the state and targeted people confined to state institutions. Many were teenagers or younger when operated upon; at least one child was under the age of ten.
Aetosaurs had a small head and a crocodile-like body. The land dwellers were up to six meters long and widely distributed geographically. They died out about 204 million years ago, at the end of the Triassic.
Descriptions and phrases used in the Revelation of John are similar in terminology to those appearing on curse tablets produced in antiquity and the associated sorcery rituals.
The collapse of the Hittite Empire in the Late Bronze Age has been blamed on various factors, from war with other territories to internal strife. Now, a Cornell University team has used tree ring and isotope records to pinpoint a more likely culprit: three straight years of severe drought.
To mark the occasion of Black History Month, we asked some of the CSU's African American university presidents to share their journey, what inspires their work and how they use their platforms to affect change in their communities. Read thoughts from CSU Dominguez Hills President Thomas Parham, Cal Poly Humboldt President Tom Jackson, Jr. and Cal Poly Pomona President Soraya Coley.
New research has revealed that the process of ‘peopling’ the entire continent of Sahul — the combined mega continent that joined Australia with New Guinea when sea levels were much lower than today — took 10,000 years.
A team of researchers led by a Texas A&M University professor has identified the Manis bone projectile point as the oldest weapon made of bone ever found in the Americas at 13,900 years.
Christopher Tounsel, associate professor of history at the University of Washington, found multiple connections between Sudan and Seattle while researching his upcoming book. The most prominent was the late Andrew Brimmer, a UW alum who in 1966 became the first Black member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
The Latest Permian Mass Extinction (LPME) was the largest extinction in Earth’s history to date, killing between 80-90% of life on the planet, though finding definitive evidence for what caused the dramatic changes in climate has eluded experts.
Fans of science history can now access a new gem: a 20-minute video interview with the father of the Big Bang theory, Georges Lemaître. European broadcast network VRT found the 20-minute recording that is thought to be the only video of Lemaître. His interview, originally aired in 1964 and conducted in French, has now been transcribed and translated into English by physicists at Berkeley Lab and the Vatican Observatory.
Two sister species of near-primate, called “primatomorphans,” dating back about 52 million years have been identified by researchers at the University of Kansas as the oldest to have dwelled north of the Arctic Circle.
An array of 350 radio telescopes in the Karoo desert of South Africa is getting closer to detecting “cosmic dawn” — the era after the Big Bang when stars first ignited and galaxies began to bloom.