Nature, Published online: 21 April 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01257-6

Nature, Published online: 21 April 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01243-y

Nature, Published online: 21 April 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01255-8

Nature, Published online: 20 April 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01259-4

Nature, Published online: 20 April 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01278-1

CT scans of a decades-old specimen from the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History show a new species of short-snouted crocodylomorph with unusually strong jaws, offering a rare snapshot of ecological specialization in the Late Triassic epoch.

The post Museum Fossil Reveals Triassic Crocodile Cousin with Powerful Jaws appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

A new anniversary image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals surprisingly fast evolution in a turbulent stellar nursery called the Trifid Nebula, where newborn stars sculpt gas and dust on human timescales.

The post Hubble’s 36th Birthday Image Shows Trifid Nebula appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

A continent-like shelf beneath the Martian surface hints that a vast ocean once covered up to a third of Mars, reshaping the long-running debate over its watery past.

The post Newly-Identified Geological Feature Points to Vast, Long-Dried Up Ocean in Northern Plains of Mars appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

By studying almost 900 parrots living with humans, a team of researchers found evidence that some birds don’t just mimic speech, they may assign and use names to identify specific individuals.

The post Study: Parrots Use Names in Flexible, Sometimes Human-Like Ways appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

New research suggests some black holes formed before the Big Bang and survived a cosmic ‘bounce,’ potentially explaining dark matter, gravitational-wave backgrounds, and the early growth of supermassive black holes and galaxies.

The post Black Holes from Before Big Bang Could Still Exist Today as ‘Cosmic Fossils’ appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Where centralised societies excel at extraction, African fractal systems allow for circulation, reciprocity and return

- by Likam Kyanzaire

Read on Aeon

How humans built beautiful, lasting structures without science or mathematics, using only engineering rules of thumb

- by Aeon Video

Watch on Aeon

A brain fit for the 21st century is one that understands – and respects – its own bioenergetic foundations

- by Hannah Critchlow

Read on Aeon

Humans weren’t given souls by God or genes. We made them ourselves with language – turning sentience into something sacred

- by Nicholas Humphrey

Read on Aeon

The evolution of Paris across millennia – from Celtic fishing village to world capital – in three animated minutes

- by Aeon Video

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FLEE Project, book+CD, ISBN 978-2956967774, English, 166 pages, 2025, Switzerland

The African galaxy of media production has often been represented in Western societies, particularly in Europe, through exhibitions and initiatives that reveal theories and →

There is a bearable level of surveillance and then that which is unbearable. This threshold of what is bearable has shifted significantly over time to accommodate more surveillance. In the last 20 years, artists have explored the materialisation of the →

6CD – Auryfa | Metaphon

Poly-Art Recordings 1976-1982 is a 6-CD set curated by Auryfa and Metaphon. It brings together for the first time, a reissue of the series of self-produced cassettes and vinyl records by the Romanian-French composer Costin →

Studio Joost Rekveld, Brussels, KASK & Conservatorium Gent, ISBN 978-9491564185, English, 176 pages, 2025, The Netherlands

If you follow Joost Rekveld on social media, you will often be surprised not only by the complex technical →

Recently, artists’ interest in the ecology of energies has dramatically increased as they investigate scientific discoveries and work with their findings to produce engaging artworks. Sunjoo Lee’s Electric Garden belongs to these practices, using microbial fuel cells, which generate power →

Open letter urges Labor to reverse JRG scheme, introduced by Coalition in 2021, as cost of humanities degrees reaches more than $50,000

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Tim Winton knows what it’s like to be the first in a family to go to university – “what a breakthrough that is, the kind of opportunities it provides”.

It was at the Western Australian Institute of Technology, studying arts, that he wrote his first novel, An Open Swimmer, launching a four-decade writing career.

The future of public knowledge rests on building open-access LLMs driven by ethics rather than profit, writes Prof Dr Matteo Valleriani

Large language models (LLMs) have rapidly entered the landscape of historical research. Their capacity to process, annotate and generate texts is transforming scholarly workflows. Yet historians are uniquely positioned to ask a deeper question – who owns the tools that shape our understanding of the past?

Most powerful LLMs today are developed by private companies. While their investments are significant, their goals – focused on profit, platform growth or intellectual property control – rarely align with the values of historical scholarship: transparency, reproducibility, accessibility and cultural diversity.

Jim Endersby recalls how maths teachers responded to the arrival of cheap pocket calculators in the 1970s and likens it to current fears of AI use by university students

I agree with Prof Andrew Moran and Dr Ben Wilkinson (Letters, 2 March) that cheap and easy‐to‐use AI tools create problems for universities, but the reactions of many academics to these new developments remind me of the way some people responded to the arrival of cheap pocket calculators in the 1970s.

Reports of the imminent death of maths teaching in schools proved exaggerated. Maths teachers had to adapt, not least to teach students the longstanding rule “garbage in, garbage out”; if students had no idea of the fundamental principles and ideas behind maths, they would not realise their answer was meaningless. Today’s humanities teachers are going to have to adapt in similar ways.

Arts and humanities are being hit hardest by cuts in higher education, write Prof Thea Pitman and Prof Emma Cayley, and Dr Ronan McLaverty-Head and another letter writer comment on cuts at Cardiff and another Russell Group university

In response to the shocking news predicting up to 10,000 imminent job losses across the UK higher education sector (Quarter of leading UK universities cutting staff due to budget shortfalls, 1 February), we write to flag up a fact that the article largely misses: the degree to which arts and humanities subjects are bearing the brunt of these cuts.

While the article singles out the loss of nursing courses at Cardiff University and the closure of chemistry courses across the country, it mentions the humanities just once in passing. Last week it was ancient history, modern languages, music, religion and theology at Cardiff University. Not so long ago, it was subjects including English, history, music and theatre at Goldsmiths, and art history, music, philosophy and religious studies at the University of Kent, to name just two. And with each passing week more arts and humanities courses and departments are cut.

With degrees disappearing and reading rates plummeting, the arts face a critical moment in education and culture

The announcement that Canterbury Christ Church University in Kent is to stop offering English literature degrees has set several hares running, most of them in the wrong direction. The university said in effect that hardly anyone wanted to study English literature at degree level any more and the course was therefore no longer viable. If you can’t do EngLit in the city of Chaucer and Marlowe, where can you do it?

Canterbury’s tale is a familiar one. EngLit is in wholesale retreat at A level, with numbers down from 83,000 in 2013 to 54,000 in 2023, and there has been a decline at university, too, over the past decade, though statistics are disputed because the subject gets studied at degree level in many guises, including creative writing and linguistics. Overall, humanities subjects seem to be losing their appeal, with only 38% of students taking a course in 2021/22, down from nearly 60% between 2003/4 and 2015/16.