natural history news stories on Newser

Scientists Map DNA of Woolly Mammoth

Ambreen Ali — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:42:01 CST

Scientists have pieced together the nearly complete genome of the woolly mammoth from a hair strand found in Siberia, National Geographic reports. It's the first time scientists have decoded the nuclear DNA of an extinct species. The development makes it theoretically possible for the mammoths to roam the earth again...

Canyon Older Than Thought?

Nick McMaster — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:56:13 CST

The Grand Canyon might be three times older than previously thought, the Washington Post reports. A study in Science claims that a river—not the Colorado, but a smaller one—began carving the oldest part of the canyon 17 million years ago. It contends that the canyon-building greatly accelerated 5...

Volcanoes Helped Doom Dinos

Ryan Riley — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:42:32 CST

Not one but two catastrophic events may have spelled destruction for the Age of Dinosaurs, previously thought to have ended when an asteroid or comet struck the earth. New research suggests the prehistoric giants died off in “an unfortunate coincidence of a one-two punch—of Deccan volcanism and then a...

Creationists Open History Museum

Dustin Lushing — Thu, 24 May 2007 17:40:37 CDT

A $27 million museum opening in Kentucky next week promises a different kind of take on natural history: a biblical one. At the Creation Museum, the Earth is 6,000 years old, evolution is a yarn, and dinosaurs were booked on Noah's Ark.