The 36,000-year-old frozen specimen from Yakutia belongs to Homotherium latidens , a species of scimitar-toothed cat that inhabited Eurasia during the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs, and significantly differs from a modern lion cub in the elongated front legs, the unusual shape of the muzzle with a large mouth opening and small ears, the very massive

New research from the University of Birmingham explores the nature of photons — individual particles of light — in unprecedented detail. Ben Yuen & Angela Demetriadou define the precise shape of a single photon. Image credit: Ben Yuen & Angela Demetriadou. “The geometry and optical properties of the environment has profound consequences for how photons

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have captured high-resolution images of eight protoplanetary disks in Sigma Orionis, a star cluster irradiated by intense ultraviolet light from a massive star. To their surprise, they’ve found evidence of gaps and rings in most of the disks — substructures commonly associated with the formation of giant

Paleontologists have described a new species of pachypleurosaur from the Middle Triassic of southwestern China. The holotype of Dianmeisaurus mutaensis from the Guanling Formation, China: (A) the skeleton in dorsal view; (B) the counterpart of (A). Scale bars – 1 cm. Image credit: Hu et al., doi: 10.1186/s13358-023-00292-4. Dianmeisaurus mutaensis lived in what is now

Polar vortices are present in planetary atmospheres, from the Earth-like rocky planets to Jupiter- and Saturn-like gas giants. However, not much is known about their existence and characteristics on our Sun due to the present lack of direct observations at the poles. Unlike planetary atmospheres, the subsurface layers of the Sun are highly influenced by

Skiphosoura bavarica, a species of pterosaur that lived around 149 million years ago in what is now southern Germany, bridges the gaps between the early monofenestratan pterosaurs and the later pterodactyloids. Life restoration of two Skiphosoura bavarica in flight. Image credit: Gabriel Ugueto. For two hundred years, paleontologists split the pterosaurs into two major groups

In a new paper published today in the journal Optica, physicists describe how a laser beam can be made to cast a shadow that behaves as any other ordinary shadow. Photographic images of the shadow of a laser beam; a high-power green laser beam (the object), traveling through a cube of ruby, is illuminated from

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have discovered three ultra-massive galaxies — nearly as massive as our own Milky Way Galaxy — already in place within the first billion years after the Big Bang. Part of the JWST/FRESCO survey, this discovery indicates that stars in the early Universe grew much more rapidly than