Ari Daniel
Appearances
NPR News Now
NPR News: 03-04-2025 3PM EST
The machine is about the size of a water bottle, and it was built to detect different elements, including the chemical signatures of life. Yusuf Salam is a PhD student at the University of Bern.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 03-04-2025 3PM EST
Salam used the instrument on a piece of gypsum he harvested from northern Algeria, gypsum that he knew contained fossilized microbes.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 03-04-2025 3PM EST
Since gypsum is present on Mars as well, perhaps one day the instrument could be used to look for ancient microbes on the red planet, too. The study highlights the intimate interconnection between minerals and microbes on our planet, and perhaps beyond. For NPR News, I'm Ari Daniel.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 01-15-2025 8PM EST
For much of human history, societies have been centered around kinship, so couples have had to decide whose community they're going to live with. Most of the time, it's been the man's, which is why researchers were surprised when they sequenced the ancient DNA of a burial site of a Celtic tribe dating from 100 BCE to 100 CE in what's now southern England.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 01-15-2025 8PM EST
The group was related along the female line, meaning that the men had left their families to live with their wives' community. Laura Cassidy is a geneticist at Trinity College Dublin.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 01-15-2025 8PM EST
The same thing was true among hundreds of Iron Age genomes from cemeteries across Britain, suggesting it's a custom dating back centuries. For NPR News, I'm Ari Daniel.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 01-09-2025 8PM EST
Sam Arman took a detailed look at the teeth of more than 900 kangaroos from both fossils and modern animals.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 01-09-2025 8PM EST
Armin, who's a paleontologist at a natural history museum in central Australia, used those scratches to figure out what the ancient kangaroos ate. His answer, a mix of shrubs and grasses, suggesting that a changing climate that wiped out a single group of plants likely wasn't behind the extinctions. Rather, he thinks humans who arrived in Australia around this time had something to do with it.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 01-09-2025 8PM EST
Other paleontologists disagree, citing evidence that climate change did play more of a role. For NPR News, I'm Ari Daniel.