Few can identify our common plants amid a lack of education and more focus on animals and birds on natural history showsHow many people know our common wildflowers? The charity Plantlife commissioned a poll by YouGov two years ago to find out if people could identify wildflowers and discovered a shocking lack of knowledge. Most could not identify, or mis-identified, the common dog-violet, one of...

Analysis of birch tar describes a female hunter-gatherer with dark skin and blue eyesAt the dawn of the Neolithic era, a young woman discarded a lump of ancient chewing gum made from birch tar into a shallow, brackish lagoon that drew fishers to the coast of southern Denmark.Nearly 6,000 years later, researchers excavating the site spotted the gum amid pieces of wood and wild animal bone and from...

Scientists believe galloping may have first emerged in crocs’ ancient cat-sized ancestorsCrocodiles have never had a friendly reputation, but they may just have become even scarier. Veterinary scientists have discovered that a surprising number of species are capable of galloping when they reach their top speeds.Previously it was thought that only a couple of crocodile species were able to use...