Edmontosaurus annectens , a large herbivore duck-billed dinosaur that lived toward the end of the Cretaceous period, was discovered back in 1908 in east-central Wyoming by C.H. Sternberg, a fossil collector. The skeleton, later housed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and nicknamed the “AMNH mummy,” was covered by scaly skin imprinted in the surrounding sediment that gave us the first approximate idea of what the animal looked like.

More than a century later, a team of paleontologists led by Paul C. Sereno, a professor of organismal biology at the University of Chicago, got back to the same exact place where Sternberg dug up the first Edmontosaurus specimen. The researchers found two more Edmontosaurus mummies with all fleshy external anatomy imprinted in a sub-millimeter layer of clay. For the first time, we uncovered an accurate image of what Edmontosaurus really looked like, down to the tiniest details, like the size of its scales and the arrangement of spikes on its tail. And we were in for at least a few surprises.

Evolving images

Our view of Edmontosaurus changed over time, even before Sereno’s study. The initial drawing of Edmontosaurus was made in 1909 by Charles R. Knight, a famous paleoartist, who based his visualization on the first specimen found by Sternberg. “He was accurate in some ways, but he made a mistake in that he drew the crest extending throughout the entire length of the body,” Sereno says. The mummy Knight based his drawing on had no tail, so understandably, the artist used his imagination to fill in the gaps and made the Edmontosaurus look a little bit like a dragon.

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Wrapping up 204 days in orbit, three Chinese astronauts flew back to Earth aboard a Shenzhou spacecraft Friday, leaving three crewmates behind on the Tiangong space station with a busted lifeboat.

Commander Chen Dong, concluding his third trip to space, and rookie crewmates Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie touched down inside their spacecraft at the Dongfeng landing zone at 1:29 am EST (06:29 UTC) Friday. The parachute-assisted landing occurred in the mid-afternoon at the return zone, located in the remote Gobi Desert of northwestern China.

Chinese space officials upended operations on the country’s Tiangong space lab last week after astronauts found damage to one of two Shenzhou return capsules docked at the station. The China Manned Space Agency, run by the country’s military, announced changes to the space station’s flight plan November 4, the day before three crew members were supposed to depart and fly home.

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A young woolly mammoth now known as Yuka was frozen in the Siberian permafrost for about 40,000 years before it was discovered by local tusk hunters in 2010. The hunters soon handed it over to scientists, who were excited to see its exquisite level of preservation, with skin, muscle tissue, and even reddish hair intact. Later research showed that, while full cloning was impossible, Yuka’s DNA was in such good condition that some cell nuclei could even begin limited activity when placed inside mouse eggs.

Now, a team has successfully sequenced Yuka’s RNA—a feat many researchers once thought impossible. Researchers at Stockholm University carefully ground up bits of muscle and other tissue from Yuka and nine other woolly mammoths, then used special chemical treatments to pull out any remaining RNA fragments, which are normally thought to be much too fragile to survive even a few hours after an organism has died. Scientists go to great lengths to extract RNA even from fresh samples, and most previous attempts with very old specimens have either failed or been contaminated.

A different view

The team used RNA-handling methods adapted for ancient, fragmented molecules. Their scientific séance allowed them to explore information that had never been accessible before, including which genes were active when Yuka died. In the creature’s final panicked moments, its muscles were tensing and its cells were signaling distress—perhaps unsurprising since Yuka is thought to have died as a result of a cave lion attack.

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Our best friends come in a fantastic array of shapes and sizes; a Borzoi looks nothing like a Boston terrier, except for a certain fundamental, ineffable (except to taxonomists) doggyness about them. And it’s been that way almost from the beginning. A recent study of dog and wolf skulls from the last 50,000 years found that dogs living just after the last Ice Age were already about half as varied in their shape and size as modern dogs.

“ Shaped like a friend” means a lot of different things

Biologist and archaeologist Allowen Evin, of CNRS, and her colleagues compared the size and shape of 643 skulls from dogs and wolves: 158 from modern dogs, 86 from modern wolves, and 391 from archaeological sites around the world spanning the last 50,000 years. By comparing the locations and sizes of certain skeletal landmarks, such as bony protrusions where muscles attached, the researchers could quantify how different one skull was from another. That suggested a few things about how dogs, or at least the shapes of their heads, have evolved over time.

The team’s results suggest that dogs that lived during the Mesolithic (before settled farming life came into fashion in the Middle East) and the Neolithic (after farming took off but before the heyday of copper smelting; 10,000 BCE is a general starting point) were a surprisingly diverse bunch, at least in terms of the size and shape of their skulls.

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A Chinese plant scientist at the University of Michigan, who drew national attention in June 2025 when she was arrested and accused along with another Chinese scientist of smuggling a crop-damaging fungus into the US, pleaded guilty on November 12, 2025, to charges of smuggling and making false statements to the FBI. Under her plea agreement, Yunqing Jian, 33, was sentenced to time served and expected to be deported .

Her arrest put a spotlight on Fusarium graminearum , a harmful pathogen. But while its risk to grains such as wheat, corn, and rice can be alarming, Fusarium isn’t new to American farmers. The US Department of Agriculture estimates it costs wheat and barley farmers more than $1 billion a year .

Tom Allen , an extension and research professor of plant pathology at Mississippi State University, explains what Fusarium graminearum is and isn’t.

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Third series of TV drama spiked interest in anti-anxiety drug amid warnings over illicit production of ‘benzos’

In the third series of the hit TV show The White Lotus, the entitled North Carolina housewife Victoria Ratliff is often shown reaching for her lorazepam . Now researchers say internet searches for the anti-anxiety drug surged after the show’s release.

Lorazepam, also known by its brand name Ativan, is a type of drug known as a benzodiazepine, or “benzo”. It is thought to work by boosting the effect of a neurotransmitter called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in the brain.

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Officials urge vaccination against mutated strain of virus that may be more transmissible than usual

Hospitals are bracing for a once-in-a-decade flu season, with a mutated version of the virus that is spreading widely in younger people expected to drive a wave of admissions when it reaches the elderly.

The threat has prompted NHS managers to redouble efforts to vaccinate staff and communities, expand same-day emergency care and treat more patients in the community to reduce the need for hospital stays.

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The rocket company founded a quarter-century ago by billionaire Jeff Bezos made history Thursday with the pinpoint landing of an 18-story-tall rocket on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

The on-target touchdown came nine minutes after the New Glenn rocket, built and operated by Bezos’ company Blue Origin, lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, at 3:55 pm EST (20:55 UTC). The launch was delayed from Sunday, first due to poor weather at the launch site in Florida, then by a solar storm that sent hazardous radiation toward Earth earlier this week.

“We achieved full mission success today, and I am so proud of the team,” said Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin. “It turns out Never Tell Me The Odds (Blue Origin’s nickname for the first stage) had perfect odds—never before in history has a booster this large nailed the landing on the second try. This is just the beginning as we rapidly scale our flight cadence and continue delivering for our customers.”

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While it can be seen as a luxury, massages are often part of healthcare – here’s how it affects physical and mental health

Massages can feel great. But are they actually good for you?

In one study, researchers observed that 8.5% of Americans reported using massage for “overall health” in the 2022 National Health Interview Survey. However, definitions of health tend to vary widely, explains the study’s first author, Jeff Levin, an epidemiologist and distinguished professor at Baylor University. For instance, does it refer to physical health, mental health or both? That makes it tough to study, but may explain why it has such broad appeal, Levin explains.

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