From seed oils to olive oil, we now have an overwhelming choice of what to cook with. Here’s how they all stack up, according to the scientific evidence

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

From just listening to reframing the situation, there are a few ways you can help someone with a negative outlook, says advice columnist David Robson

Reaching net-zero emissions is essential for halting climate change - but even after we achieve this goal, parts of the planet will continue to warm. Delaying net zero will worsen these effects

Never underestimate what a single gopher can achieve in a day: one of the burrowing mammals helped boost soil fungi in an area blanketed by ash from the explosive eruption of Mount St Helens in Washington state

Voyager 2 flew by Uranus in 1986, giving us our only up-close look at the planet – but unusual space weather just before the craft arrived has given us a misleading idea about the planet’s magnetic field

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

An AI-assisted robot can listen to spoken commands and assemble 3D objects such as chairs and tables out of reusable building blocks

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

A Greek philosopher’s musings on pleasure, contained in ancient papyrus scrolls buried by Mount Vesuvius’s eruption 2000 years ago, have been rediscovered with the help of AI

3D mapping and artificial intelligence has helped decipher an ancient Herculaneum papyrus scroll which had been digitally scanned

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 2200-year-old burial ground in northern Italy includes people interred with dogs and horses, perhaps showing they had strong bonds with their animals

Archaeologists say a mysterious language inscribed on a 2000-year-old metal hand may be related to Basque, but linguists aren't convinced

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

Wooden tablets containing a language of glyphs called Rongorongo may be evidence that the people of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, created their own writing system without the influence of European language

Most people are too risk-averse when it comes to life's biggest choices. Learning how to overcome the cognitive biases at play can help you make better decisions - with no looking back

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

A settlement in the east of England burned down in a fire 3000 years ago, falling into a muddy waterway that preserved everything inside the houses including tools, fabric, cooking pots and more

Evidence from an archaeological site in Ethiopia suggests ancient humans adapted their diet during a dry spell after the Toba volcano eruption 74,000 years ago

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

Feedback is intrigued by new research into how major sports tournaments "were associated with increases in the number of babies born" nine months later - but only for supporters of the winning teams

Birthrates are projected to have fallen below the replacement level, of 2.1 per woman, in more than three quarters of countries by 2050

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

Can cultivating positive behaviours and tweaking our lifestyles lead to healthier, happier lives – even longer lives? Discover the daily choices that may make the difference in a fascinating new book

A modern butchery experiment using replicas of Stone Age tools raises new questions about how often prehistoric peoples hunted large animals such as bison or mammoths

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

Five years ago, a fossil found in the Philippines was determined to be from a new species of hominin called Homo luzonensis. Since then, we’ve learned a bit more about the newest member of the human family

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

The skull of Shanidar Z was found in the Shanidar cave in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, and has been painstakingly put back together

Outrunning prey over long distances is an efficient method of hunting for humans, and it was widely used until recently, according to an analysis of ethnographic accounts

Animal life on Earth existed for over half a billion years before hominins hit the scene – a complex combination of environmental changes, innovations in technology and competition may have led to us

Soil core samples show an ancient riverbed under the desert near many Egyptian pyramids, revealing an ancient waterway that dried up thousands of years ago

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

Cut marks on a 4000-year-old skull suggest ancient Egyptian doctors tried to treat a man with nasopharyngeal cancer

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 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

A fossil bone displaying features consistent with Down’s syndrome belonged to a Neanderthal child who survived beyond 6 years old, adding to evidence that these extinct humans cared for members of their community

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

The skeletons of ancient Egyptian scribes reveal the health toll of sitting on the floor while performing administrative tasks like writing

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