Fascinating science stories overlooked this year

COVID-19 CONSUMED the world’s attention. On this week’s Babbage podcast (embedded below), ’s health-policy editor, Natasha Loder, unveiled some of the top stories she argues were missed amid the coverage of the pandemic. Highlights discussed on the show included a new polio vaccine, a blood-test for cancer and calculating the age of dogs. Her full list, published on her Twitter account at @natashaloder, is below. — Two million years ago, three hominin genera, including the earliest lineage, were contemporaries on the landscape of what is today South Africa. (Whether they all gathered to have a regular grunt at the local water hole is unknown.)