Scientists at a leading laboratory in the United States are using a cutting-edge form of X-ray to scan inside an Egyptian mummy that has never been unwrapped since its excavation a century ago. This is the first time that such a high intensity synchrotron X-ray will have been used on a mummy, with the aim …

An “exceptional” 530-million-year-old fossil contains what could be the oldest eye ever discovered, according to scientists. The remains of the extinct sea creature include an early form of the eye seen in many of today’s animals, including crabs, bees and dragonflies. Scientists made the find while looking at the well-preserved trilobite fossil. These ancestors of …

Traffic pollution poses health risks for older people and unborn babies according to two separate studies published today. Research in the journal The Lancet has found that the dose of air pollution older people received when taking a two hour walk in a congested city street stiffens the arteries and impaired lung function. Walking is …

Scientists just found a very huge, very young supermassive black hole. As far as we know, it shouldn’t be able to exist, and it just might re-write our understanding of the early universe. It is the most distant black hole ever seen by scientists. And it is so far away that we are seeing something …

Palaeontologists have found a dinosaur with a highly unusual array of features, including flippers, sickle-shaped “killer claws” and a swan-like neck. Halszkaraptor escuilliei, a relative of the infamous Velociraptor, is thought to have been a semi-aquatic predator that used its flipper-like forelimbs to manoeuvre in the water like a penguin. The discovery is the first …