Both sides of the discovered arrowhead – credit, Marlize Lombard / SWNS Scientists identified traces of a poison from the South African plant gifbol on Stone Age arrowheads dating back 60,000 years, making it the oldest known arrow poison discovered anywhere in the world. The researchers say the find shows that people in southern Africa … Read more
credit – Field Museum of Chicago Tiny plants, like moss, are easy to overlook. They’re often as small as an eyelash, and they tend to grow on the ground in dark, wet places. But these small plants sometimes turn out to be big clues in forensic cases. A team of scientists learned that firsthand in … Read more
Cphotos – via Unsplash+ Danish researchers have found a molecular switch that lets plants partner with nitrogen-fixing bacteria instead of fighting them, opening the way to self-fertilizing cereal crops like wheat and barley. Their new research highlights an important biological clue that could help reduce agriculture’s heavy reliance on artificial nitrogen fertilizer. Plants require nitrogen … Read more
Courtesy of Kiley Riffell / UW There are dozens of ways to implement mosquito control, but none have proved a cure-all against the deadliest animal on Earth. Now, researchers have genetically-engineered a natural enemy of the mosquito—with millions of years of evolution backing up its deadly design—to attract and kill the insects even when humans … Read more