If there is one thing our universe makes a lot of, it is water. This isn’t an immediately obvious property based solely on the universal inventory of stuff. Hydrogen utterly dominates normal matter throughout the cosmos, and despite some 13 billion years of stellar nuclear fusion only a small number of these primordial protons have [...]

RALEIGH—Twenty years ago, paleontologist Mary Schweitzer made an astonishing discovery. Peering through a microscope at a slice of dinosaur bone, she spotted what looked for all the world like red blood cells. It seemed utterly impossible—organic remains were not supposed to survive the fossilization process—but test after test indicated that the spherical structures were indeed [...]

Your everyday cockroach might not seem terribly intelligent. But new fossil evidence from 520 million years ago suggests that this insidious insect might have had some surprisingly smart early ancestors. Cockroaches and other insects belong to a group called the arthropods, which arose some 540 million years ago. A new Chinese fossil is yielding new [...]

A recently described swarm of fossil insects unearthed from a 100 million-year-old South American formation are a Frankensteinian riot of mismatched parts: lengthy praying mantis-like front legs; long, slim wings like a dragonfly; and wing-vein patterns to match those of modern-day mayflies. So unusual is their form that scientists are cataloguing the creatures into a [...]

Paleoanthropology is a discipline known as much for its feuds as for its findings. Among the best known of these clashes is a longstanding one between two of the field’s most famous scientists, Donald Johanson and Richard Leakey. Both have led expeditions that made such extraordinary fossil discoveries as the 3.2-million-year old "Lucy" skeleton from [...]

At some point in the past five million years or so, our human ancestors traded in an arboreal existence for a dedicated two-legged life on the ground. A patchy fossil record, however, has frustrated researchers hoping to pinpoint the emergence of more modern human upright walking.  Even the gait of the well-studied "Lucy" species, Australopithecus [...]

The large leviathan that was the bane of Ahab’s existence in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick has a new ancient relative that might have lived up to the fictional beast’s monstrosity. Leviathan melvillei, a giant toothed whale, is described in a new paper, published online June 29 in Nature (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing [...]

One of the most popular fields of science with children and adults alike is paleontology. And there’s a very good reason for this. Since the first fossil was recognized and found, it inspired imaginations to envision what the animal was like when it was alive. From the myths of giant cyclops to sinewy dragons, fossils [...]

Following our SciArt of the Day tradition of having something silly on the weekends (we’ve only been doing this 3 weeks – we have traditions?!?) I bring you Raven Amos’s Cretaceous Critter Coffee Company, starring the lovely caramel-brown Tropeognathus that also features as Raven’s blog banner. This image makes me crave coffee on a hot dusty day. [...]

  Ancient technologies on the human scale can be in danger of being lost, buried under the sedimentary layers of modern life. Blacksmiths like Darrell Markewitz of The Wareham Forge keep these technologies alive, not just in words and study, but in his hands. An expert in blacksmithing including Bronze Age and Viking technologies, Darrell [...]

  I’ve seen a lot of shades of blue in Craig Dylke’s artwork over the last few years – the powerful blues in this piece just make this moment of action, frozen in time leap out at the viewer. An admitted mosasaur-fan, Craig explores ancient oceans and forests in his 3D images, and here shows [...]

The great Symbolist draughtsman Max Klinger created this image as one of ten in a narrative series of etchings called, Paraphrase on the Discovery of a Glove, which follows the dreamy travels of a single lost glove. This second-last panel, The Seizure is remarkable in a couple of ways. Symbolists, like their artistic descendants the [...]

Science-art can take us to surprising places. It’s not always the product of a lab or research, but the seeds of understanding can have a large impact on different facets of culture.  It’s one of the ways we know that science is woven into all of our lives, and not just kept in the gee-whiz [...]

Merry Merry from Glendon and Kalliopi! Still thinking I need to paint a Candy Cane Crinoid Forest. For  more Holiday Science-Art with a paleo-theme, check out Clever Girl, Love in the Time of the Chasmosaurs, The Flying Trilobite, Dinosaur Tracking and Green Tea and Velociraptors (Portions of this post originally appeared on The Flying Trilobite.)

Spooky paleo-papercraft from Tiffany Miller of deadraccoon.com ! (edit:) Here’s  a bit more about papercraft from Tiffany: The paper sculptures are created with found specialty papers. Minimal altering of color and pattern may be done. A drawing is carefully made, and the papers are cut and formed by hand to create a three dimensional collage. [...]

Several weeks ago here on Symbiartic, I posted the promotional image for the Robots & Dinosaurs science-art exhibit by artists Raven Amos and Scott Elyard. Rockstar science-blogger Maggie Koerth-Baker of Boing Boing also featured the show. From all accounts on Raven and Scott’s blogs, the show has gone quite well!  So well in fact, they’ve [...]

Technology in art supplies moves fast, and there are tons of amazing ways to enable new creative explorations appearing all the time. Wacom Inkling Pen. Lytro Light-Field Cameras. Terraskin paper made from stone. Innovations, especially digital ones, leave a swath of devastatingly outdated art materials in their wake. The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies curated [...]