A bird flu virus that has been circulating in dairy cattle for months has now been found in a pig in the US for the first time, raising the risk of the virus evolving to become more dangerous to people

Running, swimming, HIIT or walking – what is the best way to work out? The answer is complicated, and depends on the person, finds Grace Wade

DNA analysis suggests Pando, a quaking aspen in Utah with thousands of stems connected by their roots, is between 16,000 and 81,000 years old

The focus is on finance at the UN climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, this month, but countries are a long way from any kind of consensus

Although the COP16 summit in Colombia ended with some important agreements, countries still aren’t moving fast enough to stem biodiversity loss

Before Mesopotamian people invented writing, they used cylinder seals to press patterns into wet clay – and some of the symbols used were carried over into proto-writing

Experiments where vampire bats were made to run on a treadmill have revealed how they extract energy from protein in their latest blood meal

This year’s average global temperature is almost certain to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial times – a milestone that should spur urgent action, say climate scientists

The Impossible Man by Patchen Barss salutes Roger Penrose's groundbreaking work in physics and mathematics while challenging the idea that a genius should be exempt from ordinary obligations

We are living in a vaccine-hesitant moment, with conspiracy theories thriving on social media. We need to push back, says Simon Williams

Our Future Chronicles column explores an imagined history of inventions and developments yet to come. In our latest glimpse into the near future, Rowan Hooper tells how seaweed was a game changer when it came to getting carbon out of the atmosphere in the 2030s

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

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

The brain pathway that causes hairy mammals like mice and dogs to shake themselves dry appears to have more to do with pressure than temperature

Shortlisted for the Close-up Photographer of the Year contest, these images zoom in on animals in all their glory

Genetic analysis of five individuals preserved as plaster casts in the ruins of Pompeii contradicts established beliefs about the people and their relationships

Asian elephants at Berlin Zoo show impressive skill when using a hose as a tool, and even appear to sabotage each other by stopping the flow of water

An analysis of thousands of cognitive tests carried out by chimpanzees finds that the number of spectators influenced their performance in different ways depending on the difficulty of the task

Four-legged robot dogs learned to perform new tricks by practising in a virtual platform that mimics real-world obstacles – a possible shortcut for training robots faster and more accurately

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

A stellar cast play leaders of G7 countries facing an existential crisis in Rumours, a smart film about communication, diplomatic nonsense and not coping, says Simon Ings

Our ancestors probably used a wide range of plant-based tools that have since been lost to history. Now we're finally getting a glimpse of this Botanic Age

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

Extreme weather and a growing population is driving a food security crisis. What can we do to break the vicious cycle of carbon emissions, climate change and soaring food costs – or is it already too late?

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

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

Droplets of fluid have been known to hover above a hot surface, but a new experiment suggests the same can happen to tiny jets of liquid too

AI and Google Street View have created 'digital twins' of living trees in North American cities – part of a huge simulation that could help make urban tree planting and trimming decisions

Samantha Harvey has won the UK's top fiction prize for a novel that takes place over 24 hours on the International Space Station

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

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

Fossil evidence shows that humans have been practising cannibalism for a million years. Now, archaeologists are discovering that some of the time they did it to honour their dead

New archaeological evidence shows that ancient humans ate each other surprisingly often - sometimes for compassionate reasons. The finds give us an opportunity to reassess our views on the practice

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

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

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

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

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

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

Around 3000 years ago, several empires and kingdoms in the Mediterranean collapsed, with a group of sea-faring warriors implicated as the culprit. But new evidence shows that many of our ideas about this turbulent time need completely rethinking

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

Analysis of pollen in sediment cores from a large lake in Greece shows that nomadic livestock herders took over the region after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire

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

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