Comrade Trilobites Marched in Tandem 480 Million Years Ago
Arthropods from ants to lobsters migrate in orderly fashion but the emergence of the collective had been a mystery
Ruth Schuster
Ruth Schuster is Senior Editor at the Haaretz-TheMarker English Edition.
Schuster has worked in writing, editing and translation for English and Hebrew-language publications for more than two decades. She holds a BSc in biology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
She lives in Tel Aviv with her daughter and multiple pets and in her spare time, promotes animal rights.
Stressed Mothers Have More Girls — a Lot More Girls
New paper supports empiric discovery that after major quakes and terror attacks, more girls are born than boys
Flash In the Pan-Sahara World’s Fastest Ant Speeds Across Sahara at a Record-breaking 3 Kilometers an Hour
Science discovers how the silver ant survives and thrives in Tunisian mid-day heat of 70 degrees Celsius when seeking its deceased prey
Early Humans Reached Greek Island 200,000 Years Ago, Changing Picture of Spread From Africa
Nobody looked for Neanderthals or early Homo sapiens on islands because it was thought they weren’t seafaring – but back then, the Aegean wasn’t a sea
Doctors Against Dairy: Cheese Linked to Breast Cancer Risk
Petition signed by 12,000 American doctors calls on FDA to require warning labels on cheeses
Prehistoric Downton Abbey: Bronze Age Germans Had Earliest Known Household Staff
The foreign brides imported en masse were also treated as elites, going by their grave goods, but they had lowly local staff buried with nothing
Paleontological Surprise: Gigantic Predator Dinosaur May Have Arisen in Asia
Meet Siamraptor: Bigger than T-rex and cousin to allosaurs, a previously unknown, primitive form of Carcharodontosaurus was found in Thailand for the first time
Bone Appétit : Early Humans in Israel Invented Food Storage 400,000 Years Ago, Scientists Find
Earliest sign of hunger anticipation? The hominins living in Qesem Cave in central Israel during the early Palaeolithic preserved marrow-rich bones of fallow deer
The Science of Yom Kippur Fasting
Our bodies can handle 24 hours without food perfectly well, though our minds may find it taxing. There are ways to make it all easier.
Scientists Find Second Crocodile Species in New Guinea, Thought to Host Only One
Discovery based on skulls sitting in museum for 90 years
Rise of Tyranny in Prehistoric Ukraine May Have Killed Off Its Mega-settlements
Over 6,000 years ago, hamlets in the Dnieper Valley coalesced to form giant settlements in which it seems democracy arose far earlier than in Greece - for awhile
Why Archaic Humans in Israel Collected Feathers 420,000 Years Ago
A swan wing found at Qesem Cave has marks that can only be from defeathering: Like among the ancient Owl People of Louisiana, feather-based ritual may have been a mark of respect, says Tel Aviv University’s Ran Barkai
Pavlov’s Amoebas: They May Not Have Brains, but They Have Memory
Unicellular animals can remember where food is for up to 90 minutes and will overcome obstacles to get to it, Israeli-Spanish collaboration shows
Magnetized Dead Cockroaches Study Wins Ig Nobel — and It’s Amazingly Interesting
Quantum physicists were shocked that live and dead cockroaches evinced strikingly different magnetic properties, and then they figured it out
What’s That Cat Spraying on Your Shoes? Not What You Thought
Everything you ever wanted to know about feline anal secretions, courtesy of scientists at UC Davis
What Happened to the Unique Icelandic Walrus? The Vikings Ate It
The smoking harpoon behind the mysterious disappearance of the Icelandic walrus is the timing, archaeologists say: The unique pinniped vanished shortly after the Norse arrived
Neolithic Britons Ate Dairy 6,000 Years Ago, Fossil Tartar Shows
The earliest-ever direct evidence of milk consumption has been found, in Britain – though whether the Neolithic farmers could actually digest the dairy or were stoic about the results of eating it is not clear
Electrician Stops Car on Northern Israeli Road, Finds 4,500-year-old Dagger and Burial Vessels
The items had been in a burial cave dating to the middle Bronze Age
Newly Identified 8-foot Electric Eel Delivers Strongest Shock in Animal Kingdom
It isn’t that nobody realized there were huge, dangerous electric fish in the Amazon rivers, just that science thought they were a single species — until now
Sheep of Skara Brae Have Been Eating Seaweed for 5,500 Years, but Never Learned to Like It
Utilizing seaweed as fodder may have been key to ovine husbandry in prehistoric northern Scotland, and the sheep of Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands just had to adapt
French Neanderthals Had Lots of Kids, Fossil Footprints Show
No less than 257 footprints by Neanderthals were found in Normandy, shedding light on their height, flat feet and predilection for procreation
Denisovan Finger Muddies Picture of Human Evolution
Lost fragment of the finger on which the discovery of the whole Denisovan species was based resurfaced, was measured, and everybody was in for a big surprise
This Creature Marched to Its Death Half a Billion Years Ago
An animal that looked like a cross between a trilobite and a wheat sheaf scurried around 550 million years ago, died and was fossilized in its tracks — thus throwing back the dawn of segmented Animalia
Unknown Mini-whale That Japanese Knew About All Along Discovered in Pacific
The diminutive Berardius minimus is shorter and darker than other beaked whales and there may be another unacknowledged species out there too
Plague of Flies Infests Pakistan's Karachi: ‘The City Stinks, Hard to Breathe’
Residents of the seaside Pakistani city wade through clouds of flies following a perfect storm of circumstances, including extreme monsoon weather probably driven by climate change
Looking Into the Face of Our Oldest Ancestor After 3.8 Million Years
Discovery of crested skull from most primitive australopithecine at the same place and time that the Lucy-type australopithecine walked the earth contradicts the traditional model of linear human evolution
Heatwaves in the Mediterranean Sea Are Bigger, Hotter and Last Longer
Water temperature anomalies can cover half the Mediterranean basin and last for weeks, decimating animals and fish – but in deep water, it’s even worse, a new study shows
Neanderthals May Have Invented Glue, but That Doesn’t Mean They Were Smart
They may have been as smart as us, or not, but using burned resin to haft weapons turns out not to have been complex process: take bark, add fire on a rock and wait
Luck of the Vikings: Their Arrival Reversed Ireland's Decline, Say Archaeologists
Study debunks notion that Ireland had been populous when the Nordic migrants arrived in the 10th century: The island had been in decline for 200 years by then
Climate Change Will Endanger the Hajj, New Study Warns
Extreme weather – including intolerable heat and unexpected cold snaps –could pose extreme dangers for pilgrims visiting Saudi Arabia, cautions MIT study