Lasers and Chemistry Reveal How How an Ancient Empire Functioned
The Wari Empire, Peru’s earliest major civilization, spanned over a thousand miles across the Andes Mountains and the coastal region from 600-1000 CE. The remnants…
Field Museum News
Founded by Marshall Field in 1894, the Field Museum (Field Museum of Natural History/FMHN) boasts one of the world’s most impressive collections of cultural artifacts. Research is actively being conducted on museum contents to advance natural science initiatives. To learn more about Field Museum artifacts or research visit SciTechDaily.com.
Immense Power of an Empire Revealed in Colors on Ancient Pots
Color plays a huge role in our lives — the hues we wear and decorate with are a way for us to signal who we…
Why Do Some Cities Thrive for Millennia While Others Fade Away?
Cities often have vastly different lifespans, with some lasting just a century or two, while others endure for a thousand years or more. The reasons…
A Peculiar Case of “Virgin Birth” in Aquarium Sharks
Asexual reproduction is prevalent among animals such as starfish, deep-sea worms, and stick insects, but it is a rarity among vertebrates. Parthenogenesis is a process…
Meteorite Hunters Discover Extraordinary 17-Pound Space Rock in Antarctica
Antarctica is a tough place to work, for obvious reasons— it’s bitterly cold, remote, and wild. However, it’s one of the best places in the…
120-Million-Year-Old Fossil Shows Modern Bird Skull Evolved From a Mixture of Dinosaur and Bird Features
A new study from researchers at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Field Museum of Natural…
Prehistoric Superpredator: Weird Whatcheeria Was the “T. rex of Its Time”
Ancient Iowan superpredator got big by front-loading its growth in its youth. Fossils found only at the Field Museum reveal the growth history of Whatcheeria….
Hot-Blooded or Cold-Blooded? Chemical Clues Solve One of the Oldest Mysteries in Paleontology
Paleontologists have been debating for decades whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded, like modern mammals and birds, or cold-blooded, like modern reptiles. Knowing whether dinosaurs were warm-…
Lost South American Wildflower “Extinctus” Not Extinct After All – “Was It Really That Easy?”
Scientific names get chosen for lots of reasons — they can honor an important person, or hint at what an organism looks like or where…
Dense Bones Allowed Spinosaurus – The Biggest Carnivorous Dinosaur Ever Discovered – To Hunt Underwater
Its close cousin Baryonyx probably swam too, but Suchomimus might’ve waded like a heron. Spinosaurus is the biggest carnivorous dinosaur ever discovered—even bigger than T….
“Amazing” New Fossil Birds – From the Time of Dinosaurs – Discovered Near China’s Great Wall
Approximately 80 miles from the westernmost reach of China’s Great Wall, paleontologists found relics of an even more ancient world. Over the last two decades,…
Strange Animals That Lived Before the Dinosaurs Reveal the Evolutionary Origin of Tusks
A wide variety of animals have tusks, from elephants and walruses to five-pound, guinea pig-looking critters called hyraxes. But one thing tusked animals have in…
Spectroradiometer “Ray Guns” Let Scientists Use Light Instead of DNA To Tell Plants Apart
In Star Trek, characters carry a little handheld device called a tricorder that they can point at objects to analyze and identify them. When the show’s…
“Mystery of Manu” – A Strange Tree in the Amazon Rainforest Left Scientists Scratching Their Heads for 50 Years
“Mystery plant” from the Amazon declared a new species after nearly 50 years of flummoxing scientists. In 1973, a scientist stumbled upon a strange tree…
Scientists Studied Bird Poop and Found That When Birds Migrate, Their Gut Bacteria Change
The trillions of bacteria living in our guts play a crucial role in our ability to digest food and fight off disease. All other animals…
Three New Species of Hand-Standing Spotted Skunks Discovered
Redesignating an endangered subspecies as a separate species could help it get protected. Picture a skunk. You’re probably thinking of a stocky animal, around the…
Blood-Sucking Bugs Find Bats To Bite Thanks to Bacteria
Blood-sucking flies may be following chemicals produced by skin bacteria to locate bats to feed on. We humans aren’t the only animals that have to…
First US Case of Human-Led Insect Extinction Confirmed by DNA From 93-Year-Old Butterfly
The Xerces blue butterfly was last seen flapping its iridescent periwinkle wings in San Francisco in the early 1940s. It’s generally accepted to be extinct,…
