Paleontologists on Wednesday unveiled the fossilized bones of one of the strangest whales in history. The 39-million-year-old leviathan, called Perucetus, may have weighed about 200 tons, as much as a blue whale — by far the heaviest animal known, until now.

While blue whales are sleek, fast-swimming divers, Perucetus was a very different beast. The researchers suspect that it drifted lazily through shallow coastal waters like a mammoth manatee, propelling its sausage-like body with a paddle-shaped tail.

Continue reading “This Ancient Whale May Have Been the Heaviest Animal Ever” →

It’s a question on every new parent’s exhausted mind: Why are babies born so helpless? In 1960, an American anthropologist laid out an influential explanation rooted in human evolution.

As our early ancestors began walking upright, Sherwood Washburn argued in 1960, they evolved a narrower pelvis to make walking long distances more efficient. At the same time, those hominins were evolving larger brains. And babies with big heads could get stuck in a tight birth canal during delivery, threatening the lives of mothers and babies alike.

Continue reading “A Theory of Childbirth’s Evolution May Not Be What You’re Expecting” →

On a muggy June night in Greenwich Village, more than 800 neuroscientists, philosophers and curious members of the public packed into an auditorium. They came for the first results of an ambitious investigation into a profound question: What is consciousness?

To kick things off, two friends — David Chalmers, a philosopher, and Christof Koch, a neuroscientist — took the stage to recall an old bet. In June 1998, they had gone to a conference in Bremen, Germany, and ended up talking late one night at a local bar about the nature of consciousness.

Continue reading “2 Leading Theories of Consciousness Square Off” →

The New York Times, June 26, 2023 (with Benjamin Mueller and Noah Weiland)

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Efforts to develop the next generation of Covid vaccines are running up against bureaucratic hassles and regulatory uncertainty, scientists say, obstacles that could make it harder to curb the spread of the coronavirus and arm the United States against future pandemics.

The Biden administration, after months of delay, has now addressed at least a shortfall in funding, hurrying to issue the first major grants from a $5 billion program to expedite a new class of more potent and durable inoculations.

Continue reading “U.S. Vaccine Program Now Flush With Cash, but Short on Key Details” →