The 2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine went to three scientists who turned a light-sensitive algae protein into optogenetics.

Coca leaves found stuck in the wool of sacrificed Inka llamas contradict Spanish chroniclers' accounts that the leaves were burned.

Modern forensic analysis of 46 ancient Egyptian skulls found 18 with fatal fractures, confirming a century-old sacrifice theory.

A 400-year-old shipwreck found during a German pipeline survey held tools matching those on Henry VIII's warship Mary Rose.

A 3,200-year-old inscription naming Horus as 'Lord of Mesn' may identify a long-lost Egyptian city, though experts remain divided.

Stanford researchers transplanted lab-grown human cortical organoids into mice genetically engineered to lack most of their own cerebral cortex. The resulting "xenocortical" mice offer a living platform for studying schizophrenia, epilepsy, autism, and cerebral palsy, not just the last of those.

X-ray scans reveal the fossil "Lizzie," long called the world's oldest reptile, actually had gills and a fish-like mouth.

At least 30 rock-cut tombs found near an ancient Turkish port may belong to soldiers who served Alexander the Great.

Four 1,000-year-old Nasca mummies found beside a Wari temple, rather than in the cemetery, hint at cooperation, not conquest.

A 10,500-year-old aurochs skull impaled on a wooden stake, found near northern Germany's oldest known grave, has no known match in Europe.

Twenty Anglo-Saxon coins found near the Vatican provide the first physical proof of England's medieval expat quarter in Rome.

A new study finds black hole jets reach hundreds of thousands of light-years, shaping whether galaxies keep forming new stars.

Glacial archaeologists in Norway found 48 prehistoric arrows in one season as the oldest ice, now melting fast, gives up the Stone Age.

A planned Roman city with an 8,000-seat amphitheater, possibly Claudivium, was abandoned around 180 AD with no signs of destruction.

A soldier clearing landmines in South Korea found a bronze cannon now confirmed as the country's oldest surviving gunpowder weapon.

Radiocarbon dating places an Iraqi irrigation canal near Eridu at 4540 BC, among the oldest scientifically dated canals in Mesopotamia.

Singapore physicists built a lutetium atomic clock accurate to 19 decimal places, a 41 percent improvement over the previous record.

Webb Space Telescope data shows violent star-system collisions split into silica-rich and silica-poor types, mirroring our solar system's past.

Divers recovered 10,500-year-old worked wood from Germany's Lake Arendsee, which may predate Europe's first farmers by 3,000 years.

A 4,300-year-old tomb at Saqqara, with two chapels for a judge and his father, has paintings that kept their original colors.

A diver found a 1,000-year-old dugout canoe, deliberately cached in sediment, in Wisconsin's Pewaukee Lake.

Inscribed roof tiles helped identify Chengba as the long-lost Han Dynasty city of Dangqu, with 20,000+ pieces of iron debris.

An archaeologist found a 13,000-year-old Clovis point inside an undisturbed hearth high in Montana's Beartooth Mountains, pending peer review.

Volunteers uncovered a sixth-century monastery on Lismore, Scotland, with metalworking finds unmatched anywhere else in the country.

La Trobe University researchers describe 18 new hominin fossils from Drimolen, including an adult Homo erectus fossil, DNH 127, that supports the species first appearing in southern Africa about 2 million years ago.

Researchers in Henan and Jilin built a 3D facial reconstruction of a man who died at 25 to 30 more than 8,000 years ago at the Jiahu site, a famous early Neolithic settlement known for bone flutes.

Ancient DNA from Theobroma cacao was found on two Etowah pottery sherds from 11th to 12th century feasting pits in Georgia, the first such evidence from the Mississippian world.

On September 22, the Coronagraph Instrument on NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope took its first observation, a faint star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, after the fine-guidance system passed its tests.

While clearing debris to protect tombs from flash floods in the Theban necropolis near Luxor, a Leiden-led team found a Ramesside-era tomb whose paintings show an official named Paser and his wife.

A strontium isotope study of 199 Bronze Age individuals from Greece finds that 5 to 10 percent were non-local, mostly young adults under 30, and that non-local women and men were about equally common.

Archaeologists in Germany's Taunus forest have identified the foundations of a Roman temple beside Kapersburg fort, with fragments of statues including a nearly complete torso of the goddess Victory and probably the hand of Mars.

Archaeologists found ASANAS, the Doric Greek name for Athena, among 2,300-year-old inscriptions at an Italic sanctuary in Italy.

NASA's DAVINCI Venus probe survived six rounds of heating to 869°F, the most complete Venus-heat test of US hardware since the 1970s.

University of Udine researchers mapped more than 800 acres around Nimrud's acropolis, the walled lower city where most of the Assyrian capital's people lived, using satellite images, a drone and geophysics.

A 57-centimeter, four-winged microraptor named Norellraptor barsboldi from China adds evidence that flapping flight evolved independently in non-avian dinosaurs and birds.

Excavations at Lake Tagua Tagua in central Chile found gomphothere bones with cut marks and stone tools dated to about 12,000 to 13,000 years ago, evidence that early Americans butchered giant tusked mammals.

University of Warsaw archaeologists think a life-size petroglyph at Miseeda in northern Sudan may depict a Kushite ruler. A church was built around it in the seventh century A.D.

A licensed metal detectorist near Wesseling, Germany, found 934 Roman silver denarii from Hadrian's reign, one of the country's largest hoards of that era. The oldest coin dates to 148 B.C.

NASA has selected PRIMA, a $1 billion cryogenic far-infrared space telescope, as its first probe-class astrophysics mission, aimed at planet formation, galaxy evolution and the origin of Earth's water.

Switzerland's hottest summer on record exposed parch marks over Roman Aventicum, revealing baths, houses, roads and a possible temple that archaeologists are now adding to the city map.

Archaeologists report 3,500 to 4,000-year-old ditches and ramparts at Oued Beht, Morocco, the oldest known defensive walls in North Africa outside the Nile Valley.

A UCF-led dig at Kurd Qaburstan in Iraq found 20 cuneiform tablets, some written within days of each other, and 17 unburied individuals in the ruins of ancient Qabra.

Restoration of Bath Assembly Rooms uncovered Roman ditches, coins, pottery and a fragment of a military helmet, expanding the known Roman suburb of Bath.

A face-down burial in Henan, China, holds the first skeletal evidence of punitive nose amputation. The woman survived the punishment for several years.

A Nature Communications study of nearly 300,000 km of Roman roads finds that Rome ranked behind cities like Byzantium and Antioch for overland connectivity.

Astronomers report the first microblazar in the Milky Way, a black hole about 12,000 light-years away that fires plasma toward Earth.

ALMA has imaged gas swirling around WISPIT 2b, a growing gas giant with five times Jupiter's mass, about 430 light-years away.

Archaeologists near Wrocław found a 5,000-year-old grave with a battle ax, two skulls and a necklace of 42 drilled teeth. Some may be human.

Archaeologists found the tomb of Sekhentio-Ptah, a pyramid-age official titled keeper of the secrets of royal decrees. His mummy was not identified.

A 72-year-old photo of a lost Egyptian seal may show a female ruler's name, though one Egyptologist disputes the reading.