Author: Tara Djokic, Scientific Officer, Palaeontology, Australian Museum; UNSW Sydney Hidden beneath farmland in the central tablelands of New South Wales lies one of Australia’s most extraordinary fossil sites – McGraths Flat. It dates back between 11 million and 16 million years into the Miocene epoch, a time when many of today’s familiar plants and […]
When did something like us first appear on the planet? It turns out there’s remarkably little agreement on this question. Fossils and DNA suggest people looking like us, anatomically modern Homo sapiens, evolved around 300,000 years ago. Surprisingly, archaeology – tools, artefacts, cave art – suggest that complex technology and cultures, “behavioural modernity”, evolved more […]
The cover of this post probably shows the world’s most famous carnivorous plant (Figure 1). It´s name is Audrey II and it appeared in the music film “Little shop of horrors”, directed by Franz Oz in 1986 adapting the film “The Little Shop of Horrors” directed by Roger Corman in 1960. Audrey II is a […]
The idea of a living fossil is rather intuitive. We think that a kind of organism deserves that denomination if it has been living in the planet during a very large period of time apparently without any change. A well known example of living fossil is the Ginkgo tree (Ginkgo biloba) because, although it is […]
Authors: Crisbel Cardenas 1, Eduardo Torre-Pascual 1,2 , Maite de Blas 1,2 , Estíbaliz Sáez de Cámara 1,2, Erlantz Lizundia 1,3 & Ion Agirre-Arisketa 1,2 1 Repsol Foundation Classroom on Energy Transition & Circular Economy. Bilbao School of Engineering. University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). Bilbao. España 2 Chemical and Environmental Engineering Department. Bilbao School […]
Our planet has experienced dramatic climate shifts throughout its history, oscillating between freezing “icehouse” periods and warm “greenhouse” states. Scientists have long linked these climate changes to fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide. However, new research reveals the source of this carbon – and the driving forces behind it – are far more complex than previously […]
Some 445 million years ago, life on Earth was forever changed. During the geological blink of an eye, glaciers formed over the supercontinent Gondwana, drying out many of the vast, shallow seas like a sponge and giving an “icehouse climate” that, together with radically changed ocean chemistry, ultimately caused the extinction of about 85% of […]
In September 2023, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft brought home a remarkable gift: the first pristine sample ever collected from a carbon-rich asteroid called Bennu. After two years of careful study in laboratories worldwide, scientists have confirmed that Bennu’s dust and pebbles contain many of the very same small molecules life on Earth relies on as its […]
There’s always a touch of melancholy when a chapter that has absorbed years of work comes to an end. In the case of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), those years amount to nearly 20—and now the telescope has completed its mission. Yet some endings are also important beginnings, opening new paths for the entire scientific […]
DIPC Advanced materials • DIPC Electronic Properties • Materials
Picture this: Your home’s walls don’t just keep out the rain—they soak up warmth from the sun during the day, slowly release it to keep you cosy at night, and even convert some of that heat into a trickle of electricity to power your lights or charge your phone. This isn’t science fiction; it’s the […]