
A Bar at the Heart of the Milky Way
Kate Wong is an award-winning science writer and senior editor for features at Scientific American, where she has focused on evolution, ecology, anthropology, archaeology, paleontology and animal behavior. She is fascinated by human origins, which she has covered for nearly 30 years. Recently she has become obsessed with birds. Her reporting has taken her to caves in France and Croatia that Neandertals once called home to the shores of Kenya’s Lake Turkana in search of the oldest stone tools in the world, as well as to Madagascar on an expedition to unearth ancient mammals and dinosaurs, the icy waters of Antarctica, where humpback whales feast on krill, and a “Big Day” race around the state of Connecticut to find as many bird species as possible in 24 hours. Wong is co-author, with Donald Johanson, of Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins. She holds a bachelor of science degree in biological anthropology and zoology from the University of Michigan. Follow her on Bluesky @katewong.bsky.social

A Bar at the Heart of the Milky Way

Flexible 'E-skin' Could Endow Robots with Humanlike Sense of Touch

Footprints to Fill
Flat feet and doubts about makers of the Laetoli tracks

Desert Island
How climate can promote speciation

Monkey Hear, Monkey Count

Cave Bear DNA Sequencing Could Be Boon for Human Evolution Studies

Hormone Spray Elicits Trust in Humans

Stellar Tantrums Beget More Stars

The Morning of the Modern Mind
Controversial discoveries suggest that the roots of our vaunted intellect run far deeper than is commonly believed

New Views of Dinosaurs Take Center Stage

"Extinct" Woodpecker Flies Back from the Beyond

Rooting the River Horse
A new analysis weighs in on where hippos come from

Brain Study Bolsters Case for Smart Bantam Human Species

Saturn Submits to a Planetary Paparazzo

HIV Protein's Protean Prowess Revealed

Starless Galaxy Said Found

Edacious Deer Endanger Ginseng

Chunk of Universe's Missing Matter Found

The Littlest Human
A spectacular find in Indonesia reveals that a strikingly different hominid shared the earth with our kind in the not so distant past

In Precontact Hawaii, the Swift Birth of a Temple System--and a Religious State

Voracious Black Hole Generates Most Powerful Explosion Known

Fast Food Linked to Obesity, Diabetes

A Mini Human Species

Digging Deeper: Q&A with Peter Brown
A discoverer of an extinct dwarf species of human reflects on one of the most startling paleoanthropological revelations in living memory