Discovery of a "remarkably complete" cranium  (MRD-VP-1/1, shortened to MRD) in February 2016 from a 3.8-million-year-old early human ancestor from the Woranso-Mille paleontological site, located in the Afar region of Ethiopia, represents a time interval between 4.1 and 3.6 million years ago when early human ancestor fossils are extremely rare, especially outside the Woranso-Mille area.

In recent Pew Survey data, 75 percent of moderate Democrats believe global climate change is a major threat to the well-being of the United States while 94 percent of Democrats who skew farther left believe that, up 30 percent from 2013.

Overall, more Americans feel that way, 57 percent this year versus 40 percent in 2013, but that increase is almost all on the left. Among the right, Republicans and people who vote Republican, that belief was 27 percent in 2019, up from 22 percent in 2013.

The salty ocean is the last place you'd expect to find fresh water but a remote-controlled vehicle deployed from the research vessel G.O. Sars found, collected and measured just that during a Norwegian Sea expedition in 2017. 

The Norwegian Sea is near the Arctic, between the North Sea and the Greenland sea, separated from the Atlantic Ocean by Iceland. 



The leakage likely originated from a large pocket of fresh water, otherwise known as an aquifer, hidden beneath the sediment of the seabed, a remnant of the last ice age.

If you insist your baby has to breastfeed for a year you have a cultural heritage to justify it. Extinct species such as Australopithecus africanus likely breastfed for that long.

How could scholars determine how long A. africanus  breastfed? Like trees, teeth contain growth rings that can be counted to estimate age. Teeth rings also incorporate dietary minerals as they grow. Breast milk contains barium, which accumulates steadily in an infant's teeth and then drops off after weaning. In a new study, researchers analyzed trace minerals in two sets of fossilized A. africanus teeth from the Sterkfontein Cave outside Johannesburg, South Africa.

The microbiome is the collection of microorganisms in an environment and plays an important role in human health. An imbalance of 'good' microbes compared to 'bad' is linked to adverse health outcomes. A person's gut microbiome with a higher number of different bacterial species is considered a marker of gut health but no one is really sure what that means.

If marijuana has analgesic properties, people will try it to potentially manage their pain, but it is unclear if it does or not. Fortunately, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration signaled it is expanding its marijuana research program will draft guidelines for producing the drug for scientific and medical research. 

Until there are science answers it is people trying all of the above, and that creates confounders for other kinds of research. A new study says adults who take prescription opioids for severe pain are more likely to have increased anxiety, depression and substance abuse issues if they also use marijuana. But did marijuana cause the depression or is it being used to mitigate it?