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Editing the genes of a human embryo remains highly controversial, particularly after Chinese scientist He Jiankui shocked the world eight years ago by doing just that using the popular gene-editing technique CRISPR — and then allowing the embryos to be carried to term and born. Proponents say the tech could allow us to treat diseases in powerful new ways, while critics liken it to eugenics, arguing it could set a dangerous precedent by allowing parents to select certain desirable traits. It should therefore come to no surprise that the most recent attempt to edit human zygotes, embryos at their earliest...

A son who was told his ‘missing’ dad had died more than 40 years ago has exhumed the body – and found they buried the WRONG person. Mark Wells, 52, has spent decades wondering what really happened to his dad, Dale Wayne Wells, who disappeared aged 38 in February 1985. After becoming frustrated at a lack of answers from the authorities, he paid to get his dad’s remains exhumed in the hope that new DNA could help solve the mystery. But Mark was stunned when the results came back — and revealed the man he buried and mourned as a...

David Walker from Norfolk, Va., was 19 years old when Japanese torpedoes sunk his battleship at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Walker was presumed dead following the attack on the Hawaii naval base, but his body was never recovered — that is, until recently. Officials announced on Thursday that Walker's remains were finally accounted for, thanks to scientists at the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) whose mission is to recover and return missing service members from past conflicts. In a news release, the DPAA said that in 2018, military officials exhumed the unidentified remains of 25 people who were from Walker's...

Is it free woolly? Scientists were flabbergasted after discovering that the mammoth backbones that had been housed in an Alaskan museum for 70 years actually belonged to a whale, per a study published in the Journal of Quaternary Science. This archaeological case of mistaken identity began way back in the 1950s, when archaeologist Otto Geist happened upon some bones while traveling through the Alaskan interior, roughly 10 miles North of Fairbanks in a region formerly known as Beringia, The Smithsonian Magazine reported. He assumed the remnants, a pair of growth plates, belonged to the plush pachyderm mammoth based on their...

TUCSON, Ariz. (KVOA) — A 79-year-old woman has been arrested and charged in connection with a 1975 cold case. According to the Pima County Sheriff's Department, Carol Ann Beall, 79, was arrested on May 28. PCSD Homicide and Cold Case Unit detectives located the woman in the 7800 block of N. Starr Grass Drive. She faces a first-degree murder charge in the 1975 death of 73-year-old William Reginald Sipfle. Play Video Carol Ann Beall, 79, has been arrested and charged in connection with a 1975 cold case. The victim was identified as 73-year-old William Reginald Sipfle. In October 1975, a...

In A Nutshell A single octopus collected nearly a mile deep near the Galápagos Islands has been identified as a new species, Microeledone galapagensis, overturning a recent definition that placed its entire family exclusively in the cold Southern Ocean. Small enough to fit in the palm of a hand and vivid blue on top with a deep purple-to-maroon underside, the animal displays an unusual reversed color pattern that extends inside its body, a feature researchers think may help hide the glow of bioluminescent prey. Because the DNA samples were lost and no second specimen has been collected, the entire species...

Since humans developed the ability to study DNA extracted from fossils, we have uncovered a mystery that until now had no answer. In the DNA of some human species, including our own, Homo sapiens, there were "super-archaic" markers, vestiges of older, unknown species with which we had interbred and produced offspring. Unable to determine who these genomic intruders were, some scientists called them ghost populations...Researchers in China have analysed proteins from the tooth enamel of six fossils dating back around 400,000 years -- five men and one woman -- found at sites across much of the country from north to...

“Backward evolution” spawns ape-like people Feb. 21, 2006 Special to World Science An editor of a noted scientific journal says he has discovered a genetic defect that seems to set back the clock on human evolution by more than a million years.     Walking patterns of victims of Uner Tan syndrome. (Courtesy Uner Tan) Its victims walk on all fours and mouth a primitive language, the scientist reported. He added that the syndrome may literally undo eons of human evolution, and thus reflect with some accuracy what our ape-like ancestors were like. The researcher, Uner Tan of Cukurova University...

A U.S. Navy sailor who died at age 17 aboard the battleship USS West Virginia during the 1941 Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor will be buried May 30 in his Arkansas hometown. Fireman 3rd Class Royle Luker will be buried with full military honors at New Bethel Cemetery in Plainview, where he was raised before enlisting in June 1941, according to a Navy news release Wednesday. He was the son of George Luker, a World War I veteran, and Nettie Estelle David Luker. He is survived by two nephews and a niece, according to his obituary on the Cornwell...

Charlotte Heimann, a 27-year-old mother with ties to Clermont County, Ohio, disappeared on Oct. 30, 1981, after leaving the Rochester Psychiatric Center in New York. More than four decades later, her granddaughter, Shyla Jump, is working to uncover what happened. "I didn’t actually know the story behind it. I didn’t actually know my grandmother. I didn’t know who she was until now," Jump said. Charlotte left her 4-year-old daughter, Jump’s mother, with her own mother in Ohio while she moved to New York to be closer to her father and attend Monroe College. Records and family accounts describe Charlotte's struggles...

A genetic study of the remains of four 2,000-year-old dogs recovered from two archaeological sites on the Korean Peninsula suggests that the canines belonged to a lineage separate from other dog populations in East Asia, according to the Korea JoongAng Daily. It had been previously thought that dog populations in East Asian shared a single lineage. Hyeongcheol Kim of the Gaya National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, Suyeon Kim and A-reum Yu of the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, and their colleagues determined that ancient Korean dogs resembled the Australian dingo and the New Guinea singing dog. Korean dogs...

As scientists study Earth's oceans, they come across some intriguing mysteries. Among them are some of the strangest deep-sea discoveries, including a "golden orb" measuring about 4 inches in diameter in the Gulf of Alaska in 2023. Referred to as a "yellow hat" by one of the videographers at the time, researchers were stumped about what it could be; coral, an egg casing, or a dead sponge attachment were some of the initial guesses. Since then, they've been able to determine that it's dead cell remains from a huge deep-sea anemone. The golden specimen was found about 2 miles beneath...

Ancient DNA extracted from human remains in Peru shows that long-distance migration along the Pacific coast began centuries before the Inca Empire expanded into the region. A study published in Nature Communications traces this movement to at least the 13th century, offering new insight into how coastal communities formed and connected long before any imperial force arrived. Jacob L. Bongers, an archaeologist at the University of Sydney and lead author of the study, analyzed genome-wide data from 21 individuals buried in the Chincha Valley of southern Peru. The results show that early inhabitants carried genetic ancestry from populations living about...

After 40 years, police made an arrest in the rape and stabbing death of Roberta Walls. Charles Randall Berry, the 66-year-old suspect, was arrested Monday in Newington, Connecticut. Virginia Beach police said advancements in technology combined with investigative work helped detectives solve the case. ... In the spring of 1986, the body of Walls, a 22-year-old volunteer at the Bayside Area Library, was found on a baseball field behind Old Donation School, near Independence Boulevard north of Town Center.

Could this bring species back from egg-stinction? Texas firm Colossal Biosciences, which has dedicated itself to resurrecting lost species, including the dire wolf and woolly mammoth, has hatched live chicks from an artificial egg for the first time — a crucial, “Jurassic Park”-esque step in its mission to bring back the moa and other giant, long-gone avians. The first-of-its-kind artificial egg allows a bird embryo to develop completely outside of a biological shell while scientists oversee every aspect from early embryo to hatching. The team hatched 26 “healthy” chickens, which “will live out their natural lives” at the company’s avian...

An incredible outpouring of love and respect as hundreds of strangers filled St. Joseph the Worker Church in Hanson to bid farewell to World War II U.S. Navy veteran John Bernard Arnold III. A veteran group put out the call for the public to attend the funeral to help honor Arnold, an East Bridgewater man who had no known family. "When the veterans service officer from Hanson put out the call that he had outlived everyone, he didn't even imagine this level of support. It's just fantastic," said Dr. Andrea Gayle-Bennett, the deputy secretary for the Executive Office of Veteran...

In 1995, a human skull emerged from the Atlantic Ocean and landed on a beach in Longport, New Jersey. More bones followed over the next 18 years, surfacing across three different Jersey Shore towns. For three decades, investigators called the unidentified remains "Scattered Man John Doe." Now, genetic genealogy researchers have given him back his name: Captain Henry Goodsell, a 29-year-old schooner commander who died in a winter storm 181 years ago.The identification, confirmed in April 2025 and announced by the Ramapo College of New Jersey's Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center in May, marks one of the oldest cold cases ever...

DNA testing has finally revealed that two mysterious individuals -- a young boy and a teenage girl entombed together in a rare Anglo-Saxon double burial -- were brother and sister, according to a report by The Independent. The pair initially drew attention two years ago when they were discovered in Cherington, Gloucestershire, because of the unusual way they were laid to rest. Both children had been placed gently on their sides. The young girl faced her brother and had been propped up in a way, perhaps on pillows, that made it look like she was watching over her younger sibling...

A DECADES old cold case involving a teen girl who was found beaten and stabbed to death has come to an end thanks to a DNA link. Bobby Charles Taylor Sr., 60, was arrested in connection to the brutal rape and murder of Deanna Ogg who died in 1986 at the age of 16. Deanna Ogg was found dead in 1986, and now 40 years later authorities have arrested a man in connection with her murderCredit: Handout Mugshot of Bobby Charles Taylor Sr., who was arrested for the 1986 murder of Deanna Ogg. Bobby Charles Taylor Sr. was arrested and...

For 4,200 years, the Y chromosome of a Yakutian warrior has quietly echoed in Siberia's Arctic peoples. His extraordinary Stone Age grave was discovered in Russia's far northeast near Yakutsk in 2004 by scientists. The middle-aged hunter's skeleton was found on its back with arms at its side. Dozens of elk-bone plates were laid as a shield over the chest. Analysis of the radiocarbon data hints that the person died nearly 4,000 years ago. The person is presumed to be from the Ymyyakhtakh cultural horizon. This cultural horizon contains the nomadic hunter-gatherers who used more sophisticated bone and antler weapons......