Nature

Deep within the hearts of Neptune and Uranus, it could be raining diamonds. Now, scientists have produced new experimental evidence showing how this could be possible. The hypothesis goes that the intense heat and pressure thousands of kilometres below the surface of these ice giants should split apart hydrocarbon compounds, with the carbon compressing into

Deep in the cold, dark water, on the seafloor west of Greenland, a quiet ecosystem thrives. For the first time, a garden of soft corals and sponges has been found in these waters, sprawling across an area a little bigger than the City of San Jose. The discovery highlights not only how little we understand

As our planet’s permafrosts continue to melt in record-breaking heat, we can expect to find astonishing things from the ancient past. Like this huge wolf head, preserved since the last ice age and unearthed in incredible condition in Siberia in 2018, an estimated 40,000 years since being entombed in frozen wilderness. The giant head, discovered

The Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins of Shark Bay in Western Australia have an unusual way of obtaining food. They chivvy fish into a large, empty marine gastropod shell. Then they carry the shell and captured fish up to the surface, and shake it upside down. Slurp! go the fish, straight down into the dolphin’s belly. It’s

Scientists confirmed that the submerged land mass, named Zealandia, was its own continent in 2017. But they hadn’t been able to map its full breadth until now. On Monday, researchers from GNS Science in New Zealand announced that they’d mapped the shape and size of the continent in unprecedented detail. They put their maps on an interactive website so that

The current pandemic isn’t just affecting humans, it’s also impacting wildlife. As the world locks down to avoid further spread of the devastating coronavirus, there are suddenly far fewer cars on the road, planes in the sky and ships in the water. And nature has surely noticed. Recently, pumas have been spotted ambling down the

The assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE triggered a nearly two-decade power struggle that led to the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire. Historic records say the period was marked with strange sightings in the sky, unusually cold weather and widespread famine – and a new study suggests

With the help of 3D modelling and machine learning, scientists think they’ve solved the mystery of the tiny earthquakes that regularly rumbled under Cahuilla, California from early 2016 to late 2019 – a period of almost four years. Some sort of natural fluid, such as water or liquid carbon dioxide, is likely to be the

Somewhere out there in the deep lies a huge jellyfish, just waiting to unleash a complex cocktail of venom via its many long tentacles. Weighing up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds), the giant jellyfish Nemopilema nomurai, more commonly known as Nomura’s jellyfish, is one of the largest jellyfish species in the world, and it stings

Three-quarters of new and emerging infectious diseases in humans originate in wildlife. COVID-19, SARS and Ebola all started this way. The COVID-19 global pandemic has drawn new attention to how people think about wild animals, consume them and interact with them, and how those interactions can affect public health. Any activity that puts people in

Perhaps the most iconic dinosaur is Tyrannosaurus rex, a massive predator that lived in what is now North America. We have now discovered that carnivorous dinosaurs of a similar size existed in ancient Australia as well. Following the footprints We learned about these carnivores by studying fossils that were discovered up to 90 years ago.

Thunderstorms are common across North America, especially in warm weather months. About 10 percent of them become severe, meaning they produce hail 1 inch (2.5 centimeter) or greater in diameter, winds gusting in excess of 50 knots (57.5 miles per hour), or a tornado. The US recently has experienced two rarer events: organized lines of thunderstorms

Scientists have discovered an unprecedented system of underwater rivers flowing hidden from view along the continental shelf of Australia, on a scale unknown anywhere else in the world. This phenomenon – called Dense Shelf Water Cascades – appears to surround most of the country, according to new data recorded by ocean glider submersibles, which so

Scientists had nicknamed it “The Thing” – a mysterious football-sized fossil discovered in Antarctica that sat in a Chilean museum awaiting someone who could work out just what it was. Now, analysis has revealed that the mystery fossil is in fact a soft-shelled egg, the largest ever found, laid some 68 million years ago, possibly

The most severe extinction in Earth’s history looks to have been preceded and enabled by a colossal coal fire lit by volcanism over 250 million years ago, according to new research. The Permian-Triassic extinction, also known as the ‘Great Dying’, constitutes the deadliest of all our planet’s mass extinction events. When it took place, approximately

Diego the giant Galapagos tortoise whose tireless efforts are credited with almost single-handedly saving his once-threatened species, was put out to pasture Monday on his native island after decades of breeding in captivity, Ecuador’s environment minister said. Diego was shipped out from the Galapagos National Park’s breeding program on Santa Cruz to remote and uninhabited

Hummingbirds can perceive colours that the human eye cannot, thanks to the addition of an extra cone in the hummingbird’s eye that we don’t possess, new research reveals. The findings, demonstrated in experiments with wild broad-tailed hummingbirds (Selasphorus platycercus) in Colorado, suggest that the ability to discriminate non-spectral colours (including ultraviolet wavelengths) could play a

For humans, getting whacked in the face by heavy raindrops is a mere annoyance. But for tiny and delicate organisms – like butterflies – drops of rainwater are the equivalent of a person being pummelled by bowling balls falling from the sky. Ouch. “[Getting hit with] raindrops is the most dangerous event for this kind

Don’t you just hate it when you discover bits of yourself that seem to have a mind of their own? Like when you decide you really don’t want to like someone, but some other part of you does anyway. Well, bad news for all you fellow egg-bearers out there – turns out our ova make

Blobs of hot, dense material that curl around Earth’s core are much more widespread than previous research suggests. A new method of analysing earthquake data has found even more of the previously detected continent-sized zones at the boundary between the planet’s core and mantle. We still don’t know what these blobs are – they could be

It’s a process that can take billions of years, but mountains do indeed grow – and exactly what factors control that growth has been the subject of an ongoing debate between scientists. Now it looks as though we may finally have a definitive answer. According to a new study, tectonic forces underneath mountains – rather

A crater lake in India’s western Maharashtra state has turned pink overnight, delighting nature enthusiasts and surprising experts who attributed it to changing salinity levels and the presence of algae in the water. Lonar lake, formed some 50,000 years after a meteorite crashed into Earth, is located 500 kilometres (310 miles) from India’s financial capital

Scientists have developed a human embryo “blueprint” using human stem cells, in a breakthrough that could provide vital insight into the early stages of infant development, new research showed Thursday. Teams from the University of Cambridge and the Netherlands-based Hubrecht Institute said their model will allow them to observe never-before-seen processes underlying the formation of

Slithering through their subterranean aquarium, three “baby dragons” have gone on display in a Slovenian cave, where they hatched in 2016 in a rare successful breeding, officials said Thursday. Only 30 visitors per day will be allowed to visit the so-called baby dragons – ancient underwater predators that can live up to 100 years and

Two separate studies have identified the elusive brain ‘switches’ that send mice into a hibernation-like state of torpor. This discovery could lead us closer to figuring out how to put other animals – even humans – in the same suspended state, which can be incredibly useful for an organism to do. When an animal goes

The hailstone is so massive it even stunned meteorologists. “It’s incredible,” said meteorologist Matthew Kumjian from Penn State University in the US. “This is the extreme upper end of what you’d expect from hail.” The hefty ice lump smashed down from a supercell thunderstorm in Argentina two years ago, in the heavily populated town Villa Carlos

A single tail from one of the largest and most enigmatic dinosaur species looks to have solved a longstanding mystery about these extinct creatures: whether they could swim. The discovery of a giant fossilised tail belonging to the theropod Spinosaurus aegyptiacus suggests these huge predators were aquatic animals after all, using tail-propelled locomotion to swim

It’s not every day that scientists uncover an entirely new species of mammal, let alone a creature whose shrouded origins lie so far back in time, they emanate from the mysterious supercontinent of ancient Gondwana. In a new study, researchers have unveiled the fossilised remains of a new genus and species discovered in Madagascar. Dubbed

A strange, undulating blob found in the waters of Ørstafjorden in Norway has turned out to be a rare sight: a giant mass of squid eggs. The otherworldly ball, floating mysteriously in the darkness of the fjord, was discovered by captain Nils Baadnes and diver Ronald Raasch with the research vessel REV Ocean. It wasn’t

There’s a fish that can live on land. Georgia officials want you to kill it immediately. A northern snakehead fish was caught earlier this month in a Gwinnett County pond, according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Wildlife Resources Division, and it’s the first time the species has been reported in Georgia waters, the

A seemingly strange demise has befallen five cattle on the Silvies Valley Ranch in remote eastern Oregon. Reports from NPR and the Associated Press paint a bewildering scene, free from tracks, predator activity, poison, shot wounds and even blood. But it might just be the latest instalment in a long line of ‘mysterious cattle death’ stories

Over millions of years, humans have developed a talent for transforming bits of nature into objects that make daily tasks easier. We got so good at it, we started to think tool-use among animals was a rather exclusive club – as it turns out, we were wrong. Adding to the long list of animals that

Humans have been mining diamonds for a long time, but a new stone hauled from the belly of the Earth could very well be a first. The diamond itself is hollow – and inside is another diamond, freely moving around. It was discovered in a Russian mine in Siberia, and has been named the Matryoshka

When the last of Earth’s woolly mammoths expired, they were isolated on Wrangel Island in the frigid Arctic Ocean, north of Russia. We’ve known of the species’ last resting place for years; now, we finally know more about their survival and ultimate death. Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) died out 4,000 years ago over a remarkably short

Six elephants died while trying to save each other after a baby elephant fell from a waterfall in a Thai national park, officials said. Staff at Khao Yai National Park, about 85 miles northeast of Bangkok, found the roughly 3-year-old baby elephant drowned on Saturday. Five more dead elephants also were discovered at the bottom

Not unlike the movie “Okja,” where a company breeds massive pigs to maximize profits, some Chinese farmers are growing larger and larger hogs to keep up with pork shortages. In Nanning, the capital of the Guangxi province, one farm owner is breeding pigs that weigh over 1,100 pounds – making them the size of polar

Scientists have been able to teach birds simple songs they’ve never heard before by selectively activating specific neurons in their brains – effectively implanting false memories. Using the process of optogenetics, where light is used to control living tissue, the team was able to activate certain neuron circuits in the birds and get them to

The most significant pterosaur fossil ever discovered in Australia has been unearthed in the Winton area of central western Queensland. The newly discovered species, which my colleagues and I have named Ferrodraco lentoni, had a wingspan of about 4 metres (13 feet). It lived around 96 million years ago, and was surprisingly similar to other

They may not have the muscles and reflexes of the animal kingdom, but that doesn’t mean plants just passively sit around when something starts chewing them up. We know damage triggers a signal that spreads through the plant, mounting its defensive response. And we know part of that response is the release of smelly volatile

A rare and deadly fungus, the only one that can poison a human from mere touch, has just showed up where nobody expected – in suburban Queensland, in the far north of Australia. Originally discovered in China in 1895, the reddish-orange poison fire coral (Podostroma cornu-damae) is predominantly encountered in Asia, including Korea, Japan, and

Half a billion years ago, when trilobites ruled and dry land was a barren wasteland, Earth was having a terrible time making a decision. North and south had switched places nearly 80 times in just a few million years, making it one of the most geomagnetically turbulent moments in history. Geologists from the Russian Academy

Weird and wonderful, the microscopic tardigrades are sometimes colloquially known as ‘water bears’ and ‘moss piglets’. In all fairness, though, no bear or piglet ever dreamt of doing the amazing things these uniquely gifted creatures are capable of. Tardigrades are know for their incredible resilience, as they’re able to survive all manner of extreme conditions. When the going gets tough,

Like most people, something called a theory of mind allows me to mentally step into another’s shoes and imagine their thoughts. But whether we share this talent with other primates is still a matter of debate. A new study adds even more evidence to the view that apes are able to anticipate the others’ actions

Back when you were just a fingernail-sized blob in your mother’s uterus, your tiny baby flippers had far more in common with the paws of ancient reptiles than you might be comfortable with. Special immunostaining techniques carried out by scientists from Washington’s Howard University and Sorbonne University in Paris have revealed new human atavisms –

The Tyrannosaurus rex had the strongest bite of any known land animal – extinct or otherwise. The king of the dinosaurs was capable of biting through solid bone, but paleontologists had long been baffled as to how it accomplished this feat without breaking its own skull. In a new study published in the journal The

Some people can’t sleep if they know there’s a spider in their house. Imagine being in Beaumont, Tex., and thinking that the largest alligator ever caught in the United States was on the loose there. Fortunately, after a nerve-racking few days, that gator has been found. It was a tense week for neighbors of Gator

As Tropical Storm Karen withers away, Hurricane Lorenzo has become “one of the largest and most powerful hurricanes of record for the tropical central Atlantic,” according to the National Hurricane Center. Now packing 140 mph winds, Lorenzo became a Category 4 storm Thursday farther east than any other previous storm on record, save for Julia

You ever watch your pets sleeping? When they twitch their paws and whiskers, and yip and mewl? Well, cats and dogs experience REM sleep, which means they’re probably dreaming. And, while evidence of REM sleep has so far not been seen in octopuses, they do have a kind of sleep twitch of their own. Sleeping