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1 week ago | 
discovermagazine.com | Sam Walters
Rocks on the coast of Iceland couldn't possibly tell us anything about the Roman Empire. Or could they? According to a study in , a collection of rocks on Iceland's coast reveals the severity of the Late Antique Little Ice Age - a period of climate change that may have contributed to the Roman Empire's collapse.
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1 week ago | 
discovermagazine.com | Sam Walters
Ask any geologist about the magma reservoir beneath Yellowstone, and they'll tell you that it's there. But where, exactly, is a lot tougher to explain. Though the existence of the magma reservoir beneath Yellowstone has been well-established, its location and contents are a lot less clear.
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1 week ago | 
discovermagazine.com | Sam Walters
Made of chopped cabbage that is fermented in salt, sauerkraut is full of fibers, vitamins, and minerals that support the body, according to a 2014 analysis in Integrative Medicine & Health . In fact, among these nutrients are vitamins C and K, which support the immune system and aid in healthy healing.
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1 week ago | 
discovermagazine.com | Sam Walters
Humans love to take liberties when we talk about our heights. But Afruca tangeri fiddler crabs don't have that luxury. Looking and listening in on the members of this species as they tried to attract mates, a team of researchers found that the males' mating songs are shaped by their size, and are thus accurate signals of their fitness as mates, according to a press release , at least from the perspective of female fiddler crabs.
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2 weeks ago | 
discovermagazine.com | Sam Walters
Modern rhinos aren't Nebraskan animals. And they aren't North American animals, either. But millions of years ago, rhinos were. In the Middle Miocene, Teleoceras major rhinos lived across Nebraska and across much of North America, too. Analyzing an assembly of T. major remains, which were buried in volcanic ash in northeastern Nebraska around 12 million years ago, a team of researchers recently revealed that these rhinos lived relatively social and sedentary lives.
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2 weeks ago | 
discovermagazine.com | Sam Walters
According to the study authors, the altar is a testament to the tensions within the ancient world and reveals important insights into the Maya's response to Teotihuacan influence in Tikal. Tikal Versus Teotihuacan Researchers discovered a buried altar that was built around the late 300s A.D. (Image Courtesy of Amanda McGregor, Image by Edwin Román Ramírez)The Maya city of Tikal arose in modern-day Guatemala around 850 B.C.E. It started out small and uninfluential.
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2 weeks ago | 
discovermagazine.com | Sam Walters
Ultimately, the results reveal that the regions of our brain that control our cognition and emotion influence our levels of political passion - a result with clear cultural and clinical implications. Of course, there are all sorts of factors that are tied to our interest in politics, and the brain itself is one of them. But the brain regions that are involved in increasing or decreasing our political passion aren't well-recognized.
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2 weeks ago | 
discovermagazine.com | Sam Walters
Humans are adept combiners. As it turns out, so, too, are bonobos. According to a new study in , bonobos can combine their calls a lot like humans can, indicating that a hallmark of human communication - an ability called compositionality - is just as much a hallmark of the communication of our closest relatives .
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3 weeks ago | 
discovermagazine.com | Sam Walters
The stars in our galaxy are serenading us with songs, that is, if we take the time to translate them. Studying 27 separate stars in our galaxy's Open Cluster M67, the authors of the paper found that a star's acoustic frequencies stop fluctuating at a specific point in its lifespan, allowing scientists to identify the age of a star with a stagnating sound. Though they seem quiet in the sky, the stars in our galaxy are always making music.
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3 weeks ago | 
discovermagazine.com | Sam Walters
Life looked different after an asteroid crashed into the planet around 66 million years ago. The dinosaurs died out, the arboreal mammals declined, and the terrestrial mammals thrived. The traditional story that's told is that the asteroid decimated the dinosaurs and that the decimation of the dinosaurs allowed mammals to trade the treetops for the ground. But what if that traditional story is wrong?
