Nature

The Earth Biogenome Project, a global consortium that aims to sequence the genomes of all complex life on earth (some 1.8 million described species) in ten years, is ramping up. The project’s origins, aims and progress are detailed in two multi-authored papers published today. Once complete, it will forever change the way biological research is

A team of researchers hunting for the wreck of a lost WWII destroyer ship in the Philippine Sea returned to land with another, perhaps even more exciting discovery: video evidence of the deepest-swimming squid ever recorded. Cruising just above the floor of the Philippine Trench at a staggering 20,300 feet (6,200 meters) below the surface,

The question of how life first sparked into existence on our planet is one we haven’t yet fully answered, but science is getting closer all the time – and a new study identifies the structures of the proteins that may well have made it happen. To begin with, the team behind the study decided to

The signs of death are everywhere, if you look. For years, scientists have rung the alarm bell, warning that grave declines in animal biodiversity around the globe herald the onset of what will be Earth’s sixth mass extinction. Despite the looming weight of evidence to suggest this grim phenomenon is unfolding all around us, not

While most of us avoid creepy-crawlies at all costs, entomologists – scientists who study insects – need to actively go looking for them. “My colleague noticed a dead tree in the middle of our university campus,” entomologist Adrian Smith from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences told ScienceAlert. “If you’re an entomologist, when you see

A mesmerizing new video shows a “once-in-a-lifetime encounter” with a bizarre, bright red octopus swimming above the Great Barrier Reef in northeastern Australia.  The encounter, first reported by local Australian news website Bundaberg Now, was a rare sighting of a blanket octopus, named after the blanket-like fleshy cape between its arms. Jacinta Shackleton, a marine biologist and reef guide, filmed and photographed

The Kingdom of Tonga doesn’t often attract global attention, but a violent eruption of an underwater volcano on January 15 has spread shock waves, quite literally, around half the world. The volcano is usually not much to look at. It consists of two small uninhabited islands, Hunga-Ha’apai and Hunga-Tonga, poking about 100 meters (328 feet)

Scientists in China say they have found the oldest flower bud in the fossil record, finally aligning the fossil evidence with the genetic data suggesting flowering plants, or angiosperms, evolved tens of millions of years earlier than we initially thought. The team hopes their discovery will help “ease the pain” around a nagging, centuries-old mystery that Charles

When the full Moon rises, strange things can happen here on Earth. Oysters snap close. Corals spawn. Zooplankton dive deeper. Seabirds stick to the shore. And lions hunt less. Several of these behaviors are tied to moonlight; others, to tides. But some have no clear explanation at all. More than 50 years’ worth of shark attack

In 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that almost half the world’s population was at risk of malaria, while some 627,000 people died from the disease. Although a malaria vaccine may soon be available (the WHO recommended one for children last year), malaria is just one of several mosquito-borne diseases. And the total number

Reanalyzing fossils can often lead to new discoveries, as has been the case with a study of an 80 million-year-old Late Cretaceous Struthiosaurus austriacus skull. A new analysis reveals the dinosaur was likely sluggish in its movements and was probably largely deaf as well. Researchers used a high-resolution 3D scan of a partial braincase section –

Frightened Tongans fled to higher ground Saturday after a massive volcanic eruption sent tsunami waves crashing onto the South Pacific island and triggered warnings as far as the US West Coast.  Dramatic images from space showed the moment the latest eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai sent a mushroom of smoke and ash into the

Mesopotamians were using hybrids of domesticated donkeys and wild asses to pull their war wagons 4,500 years ago – at least 500 years before horses were bred for the purpose, a new study reveals. The analysis of ancient DNA from animal bones unearthed in northern Syria resolves a long-standing question of just what type of animals were

Scientists onboard an icebreaker in Antarctica were blown away when they spied a trove of 60 million icefish nests dotting the floor of the Weddell Sea. The bonanza of nurseries – each guarded by a ghostly looking parent – represents the largest known breeding colony of fish. Autun Purser of the Alfred Wegener Institute was on the bridge

It’s a common misconception that evolution has a sense of direction – a notion that biology nerds around the world are constantly trying to correct. But new research reveals there may be a semblance of truth to this misconception, at least more than we ever realized. While it’s not as straightforward as mutation with a

Goldfish may have short memories but, according to an Israeli university study, they might be able to drive. Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev found that a goldfish’s innate navigational abilities allowed it to steer a robotic vehicle towards a terrestrial target if given a food reward. To conduct their unusual experiment, the team

Wherever there is sand and an atmosphere, prevailing winds may whip the grains into undulating shapes, pleasing to the eye with their calming repetition. Certain sand waves, with wavelengths between 30 centimeters (almost 12 inches) and several meters (around 30 feet), are known as megaripples: they’re between ordinary beach ripples and full dunes in size,

The leader of Turkmenistan would like to finally close the “Gates of Hell” that have burned continuously in the nation’s Karakum desert for five decades, according to recent televised remarks. In a January 8 appearance on Turkmenistan’s state TV channel, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov urged officials to “find a solution to extinguish the fire”, citing concerns

For most of life on Earth, oxygen is essential, and sunlight is usually needed to produce that oxygen. But in an exciting twist, researchers have caught a common, ocean-dwelling microbe breaking all the rules. Scientists have found that a microbe called Nitrosopumilus maritimus and several of its cousins, called ammonia oxidizing archaea (AOA), are able to survive

An astonishing fossil of an extinct ‘sea dragon’ discovered by a wetland conservationist one day at work has been hailed as the largest and most complete fossil of its kind ever found in Britain. The fossil, identified as an ichthyosaur, an ancient marine reptile that swam in Earth’s prehistoric oceans when dinosaurs walked on land,

The bottlenose dolphin (Tersiops truncatus) appears to have a very large and well-developed clitoris, potentially better placed for coital pleasure than the clitoris of humans, according to new research. The visible tip of the human clitoris is but the size of a pea and located slightly north of the vagina and urethra (although much of

The air around us carries detectable traces of animals living in our midst, scientists have found, and the discovery stands to revolutionize the way researchers monitor and track populations of vulnerable or endangered species. In two new studies conducted by separate teams of scientists, researchers discovered that environmental DNA (eDNA) shed by living creatures can

A video by the team at Yellowstone national park shows the extraordinary sight of a grizzly bear hunting alongside a pack of wolves, only to make off with their prey.  The footage, posted to the National Parks Service Facebook page in December, shows the multi-species pack hunting a large herd of elks. A few wolves break away

Scientists have been doing some great work when it comes to peering back through billions of years to figure out what ancient Earth would have looked like, and a new study reveals that the earliest conditions on our planet were probably even more hostile than originally imagined. In particular, researchers now think that we’ve underestimated

Following the time of the dinosaurs, it might well be that the evolution of flowering plants drove the explosion in the diversity of life on Earth, according to a 2021 paper. Most of the plants we now eat, drink, wear, and build with are of the flowering variety. They’re called angiosperms, which roughly translates from

The arid heart of Australia may not easily support life now, but once, many aeons ago, it was lush and teeming. What is now arid desert and dry shrub- and grasslands was once thick with dense forests, alive with life. In one of these grasslands, in the Central Tablelands of NSW, paleontologists have found new

Bacterial colonies can organize themselves into complex ring-like patterns which have an “intriguing similarity” to developing embryos and were thought to be unique to plants and animals, new research suggests. Bacterial cells band together in clumps to form tightly packed colonies called biofilms that have a growing reputation for acting strangely like multicellular organisms. These

If you were to move to a new country with a different language and bring along the family dog, your pet would likely have a hard time understanding commands from the locals, according to a new study looking at how dogs’ brains react to different languages.  MRI scans revealed that dogs‘ brains can distinguish between familiar and

An evolutionary battle between fungi and bacteria on hedgehogs’ skin gave rise to a type of antibiotic-resistant bacteria long before humans started using the antibiotics that were thought to lead to such superbugs, a new study reveals. Researchers traced some lineages of the superbug MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, to a parasitic fungus found on

An accidental slingshot hit on a Cecropia tree in Panama has led to a surprising discovery: the Azteca alfari ants that live inside these trees are often ready to fix damage to their living homes. When high schooler Alex Wcislo fired the 9 mm (0.35 inch) clay ball through the tree, leaving clean entry and exit ‘wounds’,

Those two orbs we see in the sky during the day and night have even more of an influence on the animals and plants on Earth than you might think. The gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon really does appear to affect flora and fauna activity, although the exact mechanisms by which this happens

Chemical leftovers from the very earliest days of our planet could still be present near Earth’s core, according to new research, and the discovery could improve our understanding of plate tectonics phenomena happening today. The team behind the study compares these leftovers to clumps of flour at the bottom of a bowl of batter –

When you view the world a certain way, it’s easy to forget not everyone has the same vision. We do mean that quite literally. Aside from philosophical considerations of the subjective experience of color, different organisms have evolved to view the world differently, with eye structures and configurations optimized for various kinds of existence. There

Nature is an unstoppable force, and a beautiful one at that. Everywhere you look, the natural world is laced with stunning patterns that can be described with mathematics. From bees to blood vessels, ferns to fangs, math can explain how such beauty emerges. Math is often described this way, as a language or a tool

In a national park a four-hour drive north of Sydney in Australia, a fire is smoldering out of control – and it’s been doing so for at least 6,000 years. Known as ‘Burning Mountain’, the mysterious underground blaze is the oldest known fire on the planet. And some scientists estimate it may be far more

Our planet’s convoluted history of evolving life has spawned countless weird and wonderful creatures, but none excite evolutionary biologists – or divide taxonomists – quite like crabs. When researchers attempted to reconcile the evolutionary history of crabs in all their raucous glory just earlier this year, they arrived at the conclusion that the defining features

Until recently, one of the biggest myths in science was that all dinosaurs have been extinct for the past 65 million years. But thanks to new fossil discoveries that filled in our knowledge about avian dinosaurs, we now know that only some dinosaurs went extinct following an asteroid collision with Earth – others survived and gave

The pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus northropi is the largest known flying animal to have ever existed, living on Earth more than 67 million years ago. Now new research on the creature and its newly discovered smaller relative, Quetzalcoatlus lawsoni, gives us a better idea of how Q. northropi flew and got airborne to begin with. Our knowledge of Q. northropi

Recently, scientists in Hornsund, Svalbard – a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic ocean – witnessed a polar bear pursuing a reindeer into the sea before killing it, dragging it ashore, and eating it. The video that they captured was widely shared on news and social media platforms. Then, two days later, they saw the same

We sort of take for granted the depictions of prehistoric beasties illustrated in the books of our childhood. But piecing together Earth’s murky past is a lot harder than it sounds. Scientists have to rely on fragmentary bones, weathered footprints, impressions in rock – these don’t always capture the fine details of the complex, living,

It’s a question that has puzzled observers for centuries: do the fantastic green and crimson light displays of the aurora borealis produce any discernible sound? Conjured by the interaction of solar particles with gas molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, the aurora generally occurs near Earth’s poles, where the magnetic field is strongest. Reports of the aurora

Every geography schoolbook has them: maps that look like today’s Earth, but not quite, since all continents are merged into a single supercontinent. Those maps were used to explain why dinosaurs in South America and Africa, or North America and Europe looked so alike. Paleogeographic reconstructions like these provide context to study the processes that

A new type of weather condition has been observed, existing primarily in one particular part of the world: compact, slow-moving, moisture-rich pools. Researchers are calling these ‘atmospheric lakes’. This unique type of storm occurs over the western Indian Ocean and moves towards Africa. Unlike most storms – created by a vortex – the lakes are

A sea monster that lived during the early dinosaur age is so unexpectedly colossal, it reveals that its kind grew to gigantic sizes extremely quickly, evolutionarily speaking at least.  The discovery suggests that such ichthyosaurs – a group of fish-shaped marine reptiles that inhabited the dinosaur-era seas – grew to enormous sizes in a span of only 2.5 million

A new study has demonstrated crows can assign value to their tools just like we do. “Many of us will fuss about a brand-new phone, making sure it does not get scratched, dropped or lost. But we may handle an old phone with a cracked screen quite carelessly,” said behavioral ecologist Barbara Klump now at

Seconds count when it comes to tsunami alerts, and scientists may have found a warning sign that can be detected even earlier than sea level rises: the magnetic fields created by these gigantic rushes of waves. Even though the difference might only be a minute or two, that can save lives. Magnetic field data could

Bird watchers in Massachusetts have been given an early Christmas present in the form of an incredibly rare sighting – a Steller’s sea eagle, which is native to Asia almost 8,000 km (5,000 miles) away. The large sea eagles are native to the Kamchatka Peninsula in far eastern Russia, and also seen in Japan, China,

If creepy crawlies make you uncomfortable, be glad you weren’t living in the Carboniferous period (around 100 million years before the dinosaurs arrived) in what is now Northumberland in the UK. Scientists have made an astonishing discovery along this part of the coast of northeast England: a 326 million-year-old fossil, showing traces of the largest