Data collected by the Zhurong rover and orbiting satellites suggests the existence of an ancient shoreline in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars

The climate impact of flights taken by the super-rich rose sharply from 2019 to 2023, fuelling calls for a carbon tax on private aviation

When it comes to the survival of animals living in the wild, the characteristics of the group can matter as much as the traits of the individual, according to a study in marmots

Oil and water can be separated efficiently by pumping the mixture through thin channels between two semipermeable membranes

Dangerous radiation reaches Mars at levels we aren't exposed to on Earth, which makes the Red Planet a particularly dangerous place to be during pregnancy

From nuclear strikes to giant spikes, discover the systems in place to prevent a collision and test your decision-making to see if you could avoid a catastrophic impact

The controversies surrounding football’s video assistant referee (VAR) system highlight our troubled relationship with uncertainty – and point to potential solutions

Seven major datasets used to train audio-generating AI models are three times more likely to use the words "man" or "men" than "woman" or "women", raising fears of bias

Experiments show that illuminating the underside of a decoy seal reduces attacks by great white sharks, revealing a possible strategy to protect surfers and swimmers

Campaigners are calling for stricter controls on rodenticides after finding that birds of prey in England are increasingly being exposed to high doses of rat poison

Most assessments of global warming use 1850-1900 as a baseline, but researchers have now established a new pre-industrial reference by using Antarctic ice cores to estimate the average temperature before 1700

SpaceX is preparing for the sixth test flight of Starship, the world's most powerful rocket. Next week's launch – if successful – will be the fastest turnaround yet

You might have heard about plans to establish a self‑sustaining city on Mars. Here’s what life would really be like on the Red Planet

Eurasian reed warblers don’t just get a sense of direction from Earth’s magnetic field – they can also calculate their coordinates on a mental map

DNA from bones found in a cave in Germany has been identified as from Homo sapiens, showing that our species endured frigid conditions there as they expanded across the continent

Experiments with a replica suggest that a piece of mammoth ivory with carved holes found in a cave in Germany was used by ancient humans to make ropes

Our hominin ancestors originated in Africa and the consensus is that they didn't leave there until about 1.8 million years ago, but stone tools found in Jordan challenge the idea

A stone wall nearly a kilometre long found under the Baltic Sea may have been built by ancient hunters to channel deer into a confined space

Korolevo, a site in Ukraine where early humans made stone tools, has been dated to 1.4 million years ago, suggesting early humans moved from Ukraine into the rest of Europe

Lake sediments reveal the ancient history of Aboriginal people’s use of fire to manage the landscape, a tradition that has benefits for biodiversity

A southern mammoth skeleton found in Spain bears cut marks from stone tools and bite marks from carnivore teeth, suggesting that both hominins and felids feasted on its meat

Intact human brains 12,000 years old or more have been found in unexpected places such as shipwrecks and waterlogged graves, but it is unclear what preserved them

Italian canoes capable of transporting people and goods have been dated to the Neolithic period, suggesting there was a bustling trade across the Mediterranean Sea

Isotopic analysis of horse teeth from a medieval burial site suggest that the animals were imported to England from Scandinavia or the Alps, perhaps for use in battle or jousting

A unique site in Brazil features rock carvings closely associated with dinosaur tracks, suggesting prehistoric people saw the footprints as meaningful

Why childhood is so protracted has long been mysterious, now a spate of archaeological discoveries suggest an intriguing explanation

An excavation on an island in the Coral Sea shows that Indigenous Australians were producing ceramics long before the arrival of Europeans

In the foundations of a Maya temple, researchers found the charred bones of royal individuals – possibly evidence of a fiery ritual to mark the end of one dynasty and the beginning of another

A site in Siberia has evidence of human presence 417,000 years ago, raising the possibility that hominins could have reached North America much earlier than we thought

Underground tunnels created by lava flows provided humans with shelter for thousands of years beneath the hot desert landscape of Saudi Arabia

An experiment inspired by Homer’s description of combat in The Iliad tested the capabilities of the Dendra armour suit from Greece’s Bronze Age

An excavation on Timor reveals humans first settled on the island 44,000 years ago, long after the earliest occupation of Australia – suggesting migration to the latter took another route

Several psychological biases undermine our ability to make new friends. Understand them and you’ll know the secrets to building meaningful relationships that last

Rock art along the Orinoco river in South America is made up of some of the largest etchings we know of and could date back 2000 years

Babies cannot tell us what they are experiencing, so it is hard to know what they are conscious of. But new research suggesting they perceive the world consciously could change how we care for them, says Claudia Passos-Ferreira

Rock art is a truly global phenomenon, with discoveries of cave paintings and etchings on every continent that ancient humans inhabited – but how many times was it invented over human history?

An urn found in a tomb in Spain contained the cremated remains of a man, a gold ring and about 5 litres of liquid, which has been identified as now-discoloured white wine

Historians have claimed the people of Easter Island overexploited natural resources, causing a population crash, but new evidence suggests they lived sustainably for centuries

Pictograms and petroglyphs depicting abstract lines and shapes offer a rare glimpse into the culture of people who lived in South America thousands of years ago

Wooden sticks found in an Australian cave appear to match the accounts of a 19th-century anthropologist, suggesting the GurnaiKurnai people practised the same ritual at the end of the last glacial period

Remote sensing, including lidar, reveals that the Amazon was once home to millions of people. The emerging picture of how they lived challenges ideas of human cultural evolution

Thousands of bones found in a Tibetan cave have been analysed to learn how mysterious ancient humans known as Denisovans lived

A new radiometric dating technique reveals that cave paintings on Sulawesi, Indonesia, are even older than previously thought, pushing back the earliest evidence of storytelling

Anthropologists have been arguing for 20 years about whether Sahelanthropus, a hominin that lived about 7 million years ago, was one of the first bipedal apes

DNA evidence from tombs in Sweden and Denmark suggests major plague outbreaks were responsible for the Neolithic decline in northern Europe

Prehistoric mammal bones found at a construction site in Argentina appear to have been cut with stone tools, suggesting that humans lived in the region much earlier than previously thought

An analysis of 20,000 metal objects from Bronze Age Europe suggests human economic behaviour may not have changed much over the past 3500 years

Fossils found 50 and 100 years ago seemed to pinpoint the moment humanity emerged – but defining a human has turned out to be far trickier than we thought

We know that modern humans took one of two routes to first reach Australia, and now an ancient chunk of plant resin has tipped the evidence towards the northern option

The nearest source of the altar stone at the centre of Stonehenge has finally been identified – and it is at least 750 kilometres away in north-east Scotland