Nature

We know that true polar wander (TPW) can occasionally tilt whole planets and moons relative to their axes, but it’s not entirely clear just how often this has happened to Earth. Now a new study presents evidence of one such tilting event that occurred around 84 million years ago – when dinosaurs still walked the

A grizzly bear attacked a photographer’s camera and ended up starring in a grisly photo that has won the photographer an award. Zack Clothier, a professional photographer based in Montana, set up a camera trap pointing at an elk carcass hoping to get some shots of scavenging wildlife. He returned to find his camera setup trashed and

A “tsunami of lava” is pouring from the Cumbre Vieja volcano La Palma, the Canary Islands, which has forced 300 people to evacuate their homes. A spokesperson from the Canary Islands Volcanology Institute said the latest eruption had caused a “lava tsunami”, which they caught on camera on Friday. Uno de nuestros equipos ha podido

Microalgae and special types of bacteria have the power to puff vast amounts of oxygen into the atmosphere. In fact, these organisms are thought to be the main reason our planet first began hosting oxygenated air. New research suggests that this life-giving respiration works on a much smaller scale, too. When green algae and cyanobacteria

When dinosaurs went extinct, they left big shoes to fill in pretty much every ecosystem on our planet. Even without feet, snakes stepped up to the challenge. Shortly after the asteroid impact, some 66 million years ago, new models suggest several slithery survivors quickly slid into the uncontested space. The dominance of dinosaurs had come to

A newly discovered hippo tooth reveals prehistoric hippopotamuses roamed Britain as early as 1.5 million years ago, far earlier than we thought, giving us new insights into the land’s ancient climate. “The tooth closely matches other fossils belonging to the extinct species Hippopotamus antiquus,” said University of Leicester paleobiologist Neil Adams on Twitter. Today’s Britain

In rocky, frosty landscapes, specific patterns of stones can end up forming – it’s like human hands have formed them, but without any gardener being anywhere near them. A new study shows how these formations can be created with needle ice – spikes of ice that rise up from the earth and are formed with

You probably wouldn’t pick microscopic roundworms as the nurturing kind, but here’s a fun fact for your day – these commonly studied nematodes squirt a kind of egg-milk out of their vulvas to feed their young. Caenorhabditis elegans larvae that feed on this yolk milk grow more quickly than those that don’t, a new study

The close of the Eocene roughly 33 million years ago marks a time of great change on Earth. In a slow reversal of what we’re seeing today, temperatures dropped and glaciers stretched their icy fingers towards the equator. The loss of life across the Asian continent was profound. But Africa’s biodiversity, sheltered by the warmth

A giant ground sloth that lived during the last ice age was not largely vegetarian like its modern-day tree-dwelling relatives, but enjoyed munching on meat, according to a new study that has found telltale signs of its diet in fossilized hair samples. Mylodon darwinii went extinct some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago along with most

The tenebrous oceanic depths are not exactly welcoming to land-dwelling creatures. In addition to the lack of light to see by, and air to breathe, the weight of all the water above creates crushing pressure. But this lightless part of the world is teeming with life of its own; life that has evolved to thrive

Within one of the lushest places on our planet, an unobtrusive green plant grows amongst many other… green plants. Although long used by the Indigenous Machiguenga people, the plant’s strange mish-mash of characteristics had scientists mystified for 50 years. “I didn’t really think it was special, except for the fact that it had characteristics of plants

The remnants of DNA may lurk in 125 million-year-old dinosaur fossils found in China. If the microscopic structures are indeed DNA, they would be the oldest recorded preservation of chromosome material in a vertebrate fossil.  DNA is coiled inside chromosomes within a cell’s nucleus. Researchers have reported possible cell nucleus structures in fossils of plants and

There’s a system of swampy red mangroves, deep in the rainforests of the Yucatan peninsula, that’s a long, long way from home. The nearest seashore lies 170 kilometers away (105 miles), and yet these salt-loving shrubs didn’t just get up and walk away from the coastline for a fresh drink on the banks of the

Seeing our world through the eyes of a migratory bird would be a rather spooky experience. Something about their visual system allows them to ‘see’ our planet’s magnetic field, a clever trick of quantum physics and biochemistry that helps them navigate vast distances. In early 2021, scientists from the University of Tokyo announced they had,

A fossilized tardigrade found in Dominican amber constitutes a rare branch of the family tree for these weirdly indestructible beasties. The specimen hails back to the Miocene, around 16 million years ago, and is only the third tardigrade preserved in amber to be fully described and named. Scientists say this scarcity is because they’re so

Do not adjust your screen, and do not reach for the soy sauce. What you see before you is a real, living, breathing marine animal currently on display in a Japanese aquarium – a creature that just happens to look exactly like a piece of salmon sushi. This snack of a sea creature is one

Not all ants are hard workers. Some in the colony slave away only so others can avoid pulling their weight. These freeloading hangers-on are known as social parasites, and they’ve essentially forged an evolutionary shortcut through the comforts of cooperative communities. Instead of building a communal network themselves, social parasites merely exploit ones that already

For the vast majority of animals on Earth, breath is synonymous with life. Yet for the first 2 billion years of our planet’s existence, oxygen was in scarce supply. That doesn’t mean Earth was lifeless for all that time, but that life was rarer, and vastly different from what we know today. It was only

A fossilized trilobite first studied by an amateur paleontologist half a century ago has provided researchers with a whole new way of seeing the world, in a very literal sense. X-rays taken of the ancient arthropod back in the early 1970s have been given a second look, revealing a structure of an eye that is

As the climate crisis threatens millions of species worldwide, biodiversity conservation is now an all-hands-on-deck operation. Natural history collections play a critical role in this effort as repositories holding records of historical biodiversity shifts, like libraries made of biological specimens. In response to the extinction crisis, the call is out to scour Australia’s collections for

Scientists just solved a 50-year-old geological puzzle: the mystery of ancient animal traces dating back to an era before animals had evolved on Earth. The traces in question are embedded in quartzite rock, discovered in Mount Barren in southwestern Australia, and they look a lot like the burrows that crustaceans make in sand. The only

At a laboratory in central Florida, biologist Aaron Gavin uses tiny pipettes to carefully feed shrimp to more than 700 corals living in huge saltwater tanks, with sunlight-mimicking lamps glowing above them. The work of the scientists here could be the last chance to save the species that make up the only coral reef in

Brains aren’t the easiest of organs to study, what with their delicate wiring and subtle whispering of neurotransmitter messages. Now, this research could be made a little easier, as we’ve learned we can swap some critical chemical systems with the host animal being none the wiser. In a proof-of-concept study run by a team of

Kilauea volcano is erupting, sending lava and thread-like pieces of volcanic glass, known as Pele’s hair, into Hawaii’s skies, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Weather Service. The eruption began at about 3:20 pm local Hawaii time Wednesday (Sept. 29), when the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory detected a glow from its

Paleontologists in the UK have found bones at the Isle of Wight that they believe belong to two new species of predatory dinosaur.  The bones suggest their owners were both species of spinosaurid – the family of theropods that includes the well-known Spinosaurus genus. Between 2013 and 2017, researchers unearthed a collection of over 50 bones, many

With powerful legs tipped by dagger-like talons, capable of eviscerating you with a single kick, cassowaries are the bird that most lives up to the moniker of a modern dinosaur. But surprisingly, these strikingly unique avians may have been humanity’s ‘chickens’ – long before we kept actual chickens. Eggshell remnants suggest that as far back

A huge seismic event that started in May of 2018 and was felt across the entire globe has officially given birth to a new underwater volcano. Off the eastern coast of the island of Mayotte, a gigantic new feature rises 820 meters (2,690 feet) from the seafloor, a prominence that hadn’t been there prior to

On the frozen surface of Lake Baikal in Siberia, nature makes art. There, on the frozen lake, stones can be found balancing atop narrow pedestals of ice in shallow cavities, as though carefully sculpted and placed. These are called ‘Zen stones’, and scientists have finally figured out how these formations occur – by reproducing the

An ecologist’s blunder led to the release of a ‘Russian doll’ set of stomach-bursting parasites onto a remote Finnish island, a new study has revealed. Thirty years ago, when ecologist Ilkka Hanski introduced Glanville fritillary butterflies (Melitaea cinxia) onto the island of Sottunga in the Åland archipelago, he planned to watch how a population of

Let’s face it. Sex isn’t always worth the effort. For many animals, the whole mating game is so inconvenient, going it alone and reproducing asexually is the best option. As appealing as it might sound, however, evolution puts a heavy price on a population that gives up sex for too long. Sooner or later, a

Researchers have managed to keep tabs on 1 million different neurons in the brains of mice at one time – taking scientists an impressive step closer towards one day being able to track the very-complex activity of human brains. The key is an innovation that’s being called ‘light beads microscopy’. It improves on current two-photon

The magnificently long, spined tails of ancient dinosaurs are unlike anything that’s alive today. New research suggests that they elegantly swished side-to-side while their owners walked, and enthusiastically wagged when they ran. It took around 80 million years for the bird lineage of dinosaurs to lose such lengthy tails, which they did in line with

Scientists are working on rechargeable, glow-in-the-dark plant life that could one day replace some of the inefficient, energy-intensive electric lights that we currently rely on for modern-day living. The technology works through embedded nanoparticles that sit near the surface of leaves. A charge from an LED light lasting 10 seconds is enough for the plant

The biodiversity of the deep ocean is difficult to track, given its inhospitality to us – soft, air-breathing land dwellers. Down in the darkness, there’s much more life than we have accounted for. Nevertheless, a new discovery is an exciting one: six new species and one previously unknown genus of glass sponge, at depths up

Apart from the global catastrophe that killed off most of the dinosaurs, some experts think almost all the mass extinctions in Earth’s history were followed by a proliferation of microbes in rivers and lakes. After the Permian extinction event 252 million years ago – the largest mass extinction event in Earth’s history – there appears

Researchers have observed it in the wild many times: Primates from baboons to apes carrying around their infants after they’ve died. This happens regularly across non-primate species as well, but what’s not clear is the motivation or reason behind it. In the largest analysis of this kind of behavior in primates so far, a new

The world’s longest known cave system just set a new record after surveyors spent hours mapping an additional 8 miles (13 kilometers) of the passageways at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. The corridors at Mammoth Cave now measure a whopping 420 miles (676 kilometers) in length, according to the National Park Service (NPS). That’s

The scars on dozens of Tyrannosaurus rex skulls suggest these apex predators repeatedly bit one another’s faces once they hit reproductive age. When paleontologists analyzed 202 T. rex fossils of various sizes and ages, they found evidence of tooth marks in 60 percent of the adult specimens. Some 66 million years ago, T. rex were

Nothing quite says ‘look at me!’ like an extravagant set of tail feathers. Plenty of modern birds sacrifice agility to a chance to grab attention, but examples of among relatives in the fossil record have been harder to come by. Scientists have now described the remains of a 120-million-year-old feathered dinosaur roughly the size of

Ancient New Zealand has been home to an incredible array of absurdly large birds. This has included a waist-high parrot, nicknamed Squawk-zilla (Heracles inexpectatus) – the largest parrot ever known on Earth, possibly hunting for flesh around 20 million years ago. Two-meter-high flightless Moa also made their home there, along with their predator, Haast’s Eagles

The natural world holds beauty even at a microscopic scale, and each year, Nikon’s Small World photo competition opens our eyes to a whole new realm of diminutive detail. In its 47th year, the contest continues to celebrate the intricacies of nature and the artistry of careful microscopic investigation. Whether it be a kaleidoscopic slice

Through a process known as RNA interference (RNAi), scientists have been able to modify the genetic make-up of the daddy long-legs arachnid so that its distinctive spindly limbs become twice as short. This process – which uses a gene’s own DNA sequence and small fragments of RNA to turn the gene off – was applied

 A nearly 28,000-year-old cave lion cub, discovered frozen in the Siberian permafrost, is so well preserved, you can still make out each and every one of her whiskers. Researchers in Sweden claim the cub, nicknamed Sparta, is probably the best preserved Ice Age animal ever uncovered and describe Sparta in Quaternary. Her teeth, skin, and

Plants thirst for water, just as we animals do, but exactly how they slurp it through their tissues has remained a bit of a mystery as attempting to see it happening impairs the process. By applying a gentle imaging technique in a new way, University of Nottingham physicist Flavius Pascut and the team were able

Some types of bacteria are hardy enough to survive in the most inhospitable of conditions – and that includes concrete, as a new study proves. Not only can microbes survive in this dry, inhospitable building material, they can actually thrive there too. The research shows that bacteria could provide early warnings of moisture-induced alkali-silica reactions

The Earth is rumbling beneath Yellowstone National Park again, with swarms of more than 1,000 earthquakes recorded in the region in July 2021, according to a new US Geological Survey (USGS) report. This is the most seismic activity the park has seen in a single month since June 2017, when a swarm of more than 1,100 rattled the area,

A long-lost piece of Stonehenge that was taken by a man performing restoration work on the monument has been returned after 60 years, giving scientists a chance to peer inside a pillar of the iconic monument for the first time. In 1958, Robert Phillips, a representative of the drilling company helping to restore Stonehenge, took the cylindrical