Nature

Archaeologists in hard hats and face masks carefully remove earth from around enormous bones at the site of Mexico City’s new airport, where construction work has uncovered a huge trove of mammoth skeletons. The remains of dozens of the extinct giants and other prehistoric creatures have been found in Zumpango on the northern edge of

To the innocent eyes of animals, the appearance of humans on the horizon represents more of an existential threat than the vast environmental upheaval of previous climate change up until now, new research suggests. According to a new study, mammal extinctions tracing back as far as 126,000 years ago have had more to do with

It often seems impossible to know what’s going on in Fido’s head as he lounges on his dog bed. But a handful of new studies offer surprising insights about how our canine companions age, perceive human speech, and find their way home. A study published last month showed that dogs understand verbal communication just like we

A little baby horse named Kurt is a symbol of renewed hope for the survival of his kind. Born on 6 August 2020, he is the world’s first ever successfully cloned Przewalski’s horse, an endangered wild horse native to the steppes of central Asia. What makes Kurt even more exciting is that he was cloned

Two hundred ancient mammoth skeletons have been discovered beneath an airport construction site north of Mexico City – the largest collection of mammoth bones ever found. Archaeologists at Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History first realised the area might hide mammoth remains after they found two human-dug mammoth traps in November as part of

Hearing loss in humans can make life challenging in our hustle-bustle landscape. But when your world is literally as silent as a grave, being hard of hearing just might be something of a superpower. For naked mole rats and their cousins, the loss of genes that would usually amplify noises is another extraordinary adaptation in

Humans wouldn’t survive two minutes in space, but in 2007, two species of tardigrades were released into space and then collected again – still alive. Tardigrades are a group of tiny invertebrate species that live all over the world – you can probably find one yourself on a piece of moss in your back garden

A shark with teeth as big as your hand has to be huge. But when teeth are all you have to go on, you’ll need to think outside the box to work out what the rest of the long-extinct monster looked like. It turns out the pelagic terror referred to as Megalodon might have looked

While mighty oaks do fall, there are a rare few that can stand for nearly a millennium, even under harsh conditions.  Radiocarbon dating has now revealed the oldest temperate hardwood tree in the world sits atop a steep rocky slope in a remote mountain belt of the Mediterranean. Here, on this rocky precipice in Italy, lives

When an earthquake struck the Italian mountain town of L’Aquila in April 2009, few people would have been thinking that carbon dioxide had anything to do with it. But geologists were on the case straight away. Immediately after the L’Aquila earthquake, a team from the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology started measuring the

Several years ago, a remotely operated vehicle was descending down into a freshwater cave system, hidden deep under the Czech Republic, when it came to an abrupt end. Not the end of the cave, that is, but the end of its cable. Now, new estimates taken from up at the surface suggest we’d need more

A bubble of methane gas, swelling beneath Siberia’s melting permafrost for who knows how long, has burst open to form an impressive 50-metre-deep (164-foot-deep) crater. The giant hole was first spotted by a TV crew flying overhead, and, according to The Siberian Times, when scientists went to investigate, they found chunks of ice and rock thrown hundreds

Animals have been hibernating for a long, long time, a new study shows. Researchers have analysed 250 million-year-old fossils and found evidence that the pig-sized mammal relation, a genus called Lystrosaurus, hibernated much like bears and bats do today. Finding signs of shifts in metabolism rates in fossils is just about impossible under normal conditions – but

There’s an enormous variety of life thriving deep beneath Earth’s surface. A new analysis of two major groups of subsurface microbes has now revealed that their evolutionary path to life in the dark has been more curious than we expected. In our planet’s first 2 billion years of existence, there was no oxygen in the

For a single cell, the human body is a gargantuan maze of tissues, chemicals and capillaries, crammed full with trillions of other cells all bustling about like commuters at the world’s busiest train station. Somehow, amidst all this hubbub, most cells still manage to reach their destinations. How do they do it? Many cells have a trick

As a source of clean energy, wind farms come with many benefits - but they can be a danger to local birds. A new study suggests a small tweak to the turbine design could make a big difference in terms of avian safety, and all it takes is a paint job. In an experiment run on

An 80-million-year-old embryo has revealed some unexpected features of the most titanic animals to ever have walked the Earth. Sauropods, such as Brontosauruses, which lumbered their way through the Jurassic and Cretaceous ages, are well known for their impressive size and long necks. But very little is known about their young. “The preservation of embryonic

Just before a tiny pup died during the last ice age, it ate a piece of meat from one of Earth’s last woolly rhinos.  Researchers made this discovery while doing a necropsy (an animal autopsy) on the mummified remains of the ice age puppy. After finding an undigested slab of skin with yellow fur in the puppy’s stomach, researchers

Sometimes our eyes play tricks on us, and sometimes, we play tricks on them. Optical illusions have entranced neuroscientists for decades, but these false messages have probably been going on much longer than we’ve been studying them. New research has found the eyes of fruit flies are just as easily fooled by static visual patterns

At some point in Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history, its entirely liquid iron core cooled enough to form a solid ball in the centre. Today, our planet’s core consists of a solid iron inner core surrounded by a molten iron outer core, but pinning down exactly when this change occurred has proven quite difficult. Estimates range from

A chance discovery during a hike in Grand Canyon National Park in 2016 ended up revealing strange footprints left by something that also walked there once, long, long ago. So long ago, in fact, that these ancient tracks – left approximately 313 million years ago – represent the earliest footprints ever found in this epic,

For half a century scientists feared that the Somali elephant shrew had vanished from the face of the Earth. No one had seen so much as a whisker. But the tiny mammal with its probing trunk-like nose was quietly thriving in the arid, rocky landscape of the Horn of Africa, researchers said Tuesday. The elusive,

The mantis shrimp is quite a fearsome foe. While they’re neither shrimp nor mantis, this marine crustacean, measuring about just 10 centimetres (4 inches) long, has incredible eyes that can see cancer, and a club-like hand that can throw the fastest punches in the ocean. We’re talking 23 metres per second, and creating 1,500 newtons of

For all the little creatures out there, falling water can be a big hazard. When water drops are a large percentage of your body size, you need clever adaptations to survive even commonly occurring phenomena such as rain. So even greater volumes of falling water, like a waterfall, may as well be a wall to

Radiation that would reduce the DNA inside our own cells into genetic confetti is no match for the microscopic tough-guy known as a tardigrade, and we just got closer to understanding just how these critters are so tough. Their protection works in part due to the shielding provided by a special ‘damage suppression’ protein called

While bacteria are often associated with icky germs, they really are so much more than that. They help us digest things, feed trees nitrogen, play a huge role in cycling Earth’s nutrients, and survive staggering extremes. Recently, we discovered some of these incredibly tough and tiny packages of life can even live off air alone.

A gigantic fleet of floating rocks, spewed up from an underwater volcano in the Pacific Ocean, floated across the waves for thousands of miles. Eventually, it made it all the way to Australia, then started on a new project: revitalising the world’s largest (and very threatened) coral reef system. This unlikely chain of events may sound

An international team of marine scientists have discovered 30 new species of invertebrates in deep water surrounding the Galapagos, the Ecuadoran archipelago’s national park authorities announced Monday. The deep-sea experts discovered fragile coral and sponge communities including 10 bamboo corals, four octocorals, one brittle star and 11 sponges – as well as four new species

If you’ve ever looked up during a thunderstorm and glimpsed a red jellyfish sitting high in the sky, you weren’t hallucinating. These tentacle-like spurts of red lightning are called sprites. They’re ultrafast bursts of electricity that crackle through the upper regions of the atmosphere – between 37 and 50 miles (60 and 80 kilometres) up

A species of frog from the Brazilian rainforest has become the first amphibian shown to live in a harem, where one male mates with two females who remain loyal to him. So-called polygyny is thought to be the most common mating system among animals and has previously been found in bony fishes, reptiles, mammals, birds,

There are some days when the rain falls peacefully and gently, nourishing the Earth. But on some other days the rain comes down in a torrential downpour that meteorologists like me call a cloudburst. Standing outside in one of these intense rainstorms can feel like being smothered in a heavy, wet towel. These storms can

Fans of nature’s horror shows will no doubt be familiar with those tongue-eating parasites known for tapping into the blood supply of fish, sometimes attaching themselves to the tongue, causing it to die and eventually replacing it altogether. Normally, we get to experience these finds as unnerving photos of isopods peeking out the mouth of a

Say hello to a new theropod dinosaur species, Vectaerovenator inopinatus. Discovered after a series of serendipitous fossil finds on the Isle of Wight in the UK, it’s thought to date from around 115 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period. The Latin name of the new dino roughly refers to ‘unexpected air-filled hunter from the

A single locust is just bigger than a paper clip. But when these solitary critters attract others into a growing swarm, billions of locusts wind up flying together, forming a moving carpet that can block out the sun and strip the landscape of plants and crops. Giant swarms like this have devastated large swaths of

Something strange has happened in the voice boxes (or larynxes) of primates: these organs have evolved much faster than in other types of mammals, based on a comprehensive new study of 55 different species. The research – the first of its type into the evolution of the larynx – also shows that primate voice boxes

It was a different time. Towards the end of the Cretaceous period, North America was cleaved in two by a giant inland sea. Dinosaurs, nearing the end of their reign, still abounded in this hot, wet place. But they had to watch their step, especially by the water’s edge. In the shallows lurked Deinosuchus: the

We think of sharks as solitary creatures. Lurking silently beneath the waves, each single toothy predator operating alone, coming together only temporarily as feasting or mating dictates. We may, however, be totally wrong. According to new research, sharks could be forming large social groups from which smaller numbers break off to forage, and then return

The English town of Lyme Regis is part of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site. It was here in the 1830s that William Buckland, better known for the discovery of the first dinosaur, Megalosaurus, collected fossils with another pioneering palaeontologist, Mary Anning. One of their discoveries was the remains of fossilised crinoids, sometimes known as

Earthquakes come and go, often leaving a trail of devastation in their wake. What they don’t usually do, thankfully, is turn around immediately and come back for another pass. Except… it looks like they can, in exceedingly rare circumstances. In a new study, scientists have found evidence of an unusual and virtually unprecedented ‘boomerang’ earthquake

The predation of livestock by carnivores, and the retaliatory killing of carnivores as a result, is a major global conservation challenge. Such human-wildlife conflicts are a key driver of large carnivore declines and the costs of coexistence are often disproportionately borne by rural communities in the global south. While current approaches tend to focus on

For the first time, the innovative CRISPR gene editing method has been used on squid, marking a milestone in the scientific study of these creatures – and opening up many new areas of potential research. CRISPR enables very precise, speedy, and low-cost DNA edits. Put simple, the ingenious molecular workings of the method are often

In the evolutionary tree of life, the lizard-like tuatara from New Zealand is on a branch all to itself. In the time of the dinosaurs, this extraordinary animal had lots of relatives all around the world, and yet now, there’s nothing else like it on Earth. According to new sequencing of the tuatara’s entire genome

Make a crocodile out of taffy. Take its head and tug on it until its neck extends a good few metres from its body. If you squint, this could be what one odd-looking Triassic reptile called Tanystropheus looked like. More or less. This animal’s assortment of ludicrously long fossilised neck bones has confused the heck

A long-extinct lineage of insect, known fondly as the ‘hell ant’, has been discovered frozen in 99-million-year-old amber, with its scythe-like jaw still pinning its prey. According to scientists, this fierce predator is a newly identified species of prehistoric ant, known as Ceratomyrmex ellenbergeri, and it’s the first time we’ve ever seen a hell ant actively

As if spiderwebs weren’t already icky enough, some spiders have gone and made them poisonous as well, a new study reveals. The unique properties of spiderwebs have long fascinated materials scientists. They’re constructed from one of the toughest known natural materials: lighter, yet five times stronger than steel, and bacteria resistant to boot. Spider silk is also

Sperm is critical for the fertilisation of almost every living organism on our planet, including humans. To reproduce, human sperm have to swim a distance equivalent to climbing Mount Everest to find the egg. They complete this epic journey simply by wiggling their tail, moving fluid to swim forwards. Though over 50 million sperm will

A palaeontologist, a medical pathologist, and an orthopaedic surgeon walk into a museum. No, it’s not the start of a joke, but the research team that has now diagnosed the first confirmed case of aggressive bone cancer in a dinosaur. The specimen in question is a fossilised shin bone from Centrosaurus apertus, a plant-eating horned

At a time when we crave good news, the giant panda is a beacon of environmental optimism. Since becoming an icon for the conservation movement in the 1980s, 67 panda reserves and countless wildlife corridors have been created in the bamboo forested mountain ranges of central China. The most recent census suggests all that effort