Biology

Mar 16th, 2026 - Susanne Rust 5 min read Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Sandy Field, left, and Crystal Schalmo, with Green Dragon Conservation Education, collect debris that washed up on Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro on Dec. 25. New research shows the chemicals we use to kill pests, heal our bodies and package our foods are spread throughout the ocean, intermingling with the microorganisms that feed marine life. They've reached even the most distant and remote places on the ... [Read More]

Mar 16th, 2026 - Paleontologists uncover a new Spinosaurus species by following a clue from a decades‑old book into the Sahara Desert My fixation on a small, desolate locale in the heart of the Sahara Desert started with a single line buried in a 630-page tome in French about the rocks of the central Sahara: "Dent de Carcharodontosaurus saharicus Depéret," which translates to "tooth of Carcharodontosaurus saharicus Depéret" – "Depéret" refers to the scientist who originally ... [Read More]

Mar 16th, 2026 - Crabs are cannibalizing one another with surprising rapacity in parts of the Chesapeake Bay The Chesapeake Bay's crabs are tearing themselves apart. A decades-long study of the blue crabs living along the Maryland coast suggests that cannibalism is so rife that the crabs are their own major predatory force. Cannibalism is common among the animal kingdom—it's been witnessed in a diversity of creatures, from and praying mantises to giant salamanders and octopuses —but how, where and ... [Read More]

Mar 16th, 2026 - Recording of humpback whale from 1949 could also provide new understanding of how the huge animals communicate A haunting whale song discovered on decades-old audio equipment could open up a new understanding of how the huge animals communicate, according to researchers who say it is the oldest such recording known. The song is that of a humpback whale, a marine giant beloved by whale watchers for its docile nature and spectacular leaps from the water, and was recorded by scientists in March ... [Read More]

Mar 16th, 2026 - Plants changed the world. But first they had to make their way from the water to the land. Long before dinosaurs roamed the land, Earth looked very different from the planet we know today. Around 500 million years ago, most of Earth's surface was bare rock and dry soil. There were no trees, no grass and no flowers. Life existed almost entirely in the oceans. Then something amazing happened: Plants began to grow on land. This moment was one of the most important events in Earth's history because ... [Read More]

Mar 15th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Scientists have identified a newly described African mushroom as the closest known wild relative of the world's most widely cultivated magic mushroom, Psilocybe cubensis . That discovery pushes their shared ancestry back about 1.5 million years and challenges the long-standing idea that the species spread globally only after cattle were moved across continents. Clues in the African grasslands Across cattle-grazed grasslands in South Africa and Zimbabwe, mushrooms long ... [Read More]

Mar 15th, 2026 - A dearth of species turnover may be a bad sign in an era of habitat loss and climate change. Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. This story was originally published by  Yale E360   and is reproduced here as part of the  Climate Desk  collaboration. Nature is slowing down, and its ability to regenerate is failing in the face of climate change, according to the authors of a new analysis of the speed of species turnover in ecosystems across ... [Read More]

Mar 15th, 2026 - Create hedgehog havens – and seven other ways to help our prickly friends Hedgehogs' habitat is shrinking, they're vulnerable to cars, and pesticides are affecting their food supply. Here's how we can help them pull through W ith stumpy, speedy legs, questing snouts and a fierce quiver of needles, hedgehogs are enchantingly strange, like fantasy creatures from a medieval bestiary . "It's the nation's favourite wild animal – every time there's a vote or a poll, the hedgehog wins," ... [Read More]

Mar 15th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google In a dry riverbed in Brazil, researchers found a set of fossil jawbones that look like they belong to an animal built unlike anything living today. The jaws are oddly twisted, with teeth that point outward instead of upward, plus rows of smaller inner teeth that form a rasping surface. Even without the rest of the skeleton, those strange jaws suggest the creature was an early experiment in grinding plants for food and a rare survivor from an ancient branch of the ... [Read More]

Mar 14th, 2026 - A humble mollusk can live to 507. The oldest Greenland sharks navigate deep, dark Arctic waters for longer than America has existed. And the wrinkly, cancer-resistant naked mole rat can live well into its 30s, a veritable rodent Methuselah. Human centenarians excite a deep fascination. What are their secrets? Do they eat breakfast? Skip lunch? Exercise every day? What genes helped keep them strong and disease-free, years longer than most people? But across the animal kingdom, evolution has ... [Read More]

Mar 14th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google A new digital reconstruction of an ancient fossil's face is reshaping how scientists think about early human relatives in Africa. By virtually "undoing" distortions caused by millions of years underground, researchers have produced one of the most complete Australopithecus faces ever assembled. The rebuilt features suggest that facial evolution between four to three million years ago may have been more complex than a simple, region-by-region story. Researchers focused on ... [Read More]

Mar 14th, 2026 - More than 20,000 sq km of coast has succumbed to Australia's first bloom of toxic Karenia cristata algae – and scientists worry it could explode again The largest and most destructive algal bloom in Australia's history is persisting along parts of the South Australian coastline, a year on from when it was first detected. From a distance, it can be hard to grasp just how unusual and devastating the crisis has been. Most harmful blooms only last a few weeks. This one has been unrelenting. ... [Read More]

Mar 13th, 2026 - Scientists found two marsupials thought extinct for 6,000 years. Scientists have described an exciting discovery: two marsupials that modern science thought to be extinct are still alive in the rainforests of western New Guinea. The discovery is all the more amazing once you learn these were supposed to have gone extinct 6,000 years ago. Both were known from fossil or subfossil remains on the Vogelkop Peninsula, in what is now Indonesian Papua. And both lived in a landscape that is still ... [Read More]

Mar 13th, 2026 - Reading time 2 minutes A woodland species long absent from the forests of Ohio has made a triumphant return. For the first time in centuries, wildlife officials have documented the appearance of a furry creature known as the fisher. Officials at the Cleveland Metroparks detailed the fisher's comeback, caught on a wildlife camera last year, in a recent Instagram post. It's the first verified sighting of the mammal in the region since the 1800s, when it was locally driven to extinction. Its ... [Read More]

Mar 13th, 2026 - Having a piece of dinosaur history meant visiting museums or joining a fossil dig site. But today, fossil collecting is no longer just for scientists or museum visitors, as it has gone into the online marketplace. Dinosaur fossils, teeth, and other fossilised parts are now up for sale through various websites and social media sites, making these prehistoric treasures accessible to individuals worldwide. For journalist Jacopo Prisco, his adventure in fossil collecting started when he stumbled ... [Read More]

Mar 13th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Strolling a familiar beach and stumbling upon a relic from the age of dinosaurs sounds like pure fantasy, yet that is exactly what happened on England's west coast. A stretch of shoreline below Somerset's crumbling cliffs yielded a bone so large that it challenged everything we thought we knew about prehistoric marine reptiles. The fossil – a lower jaw more than 6½ feet long – promised a creature leagues beyond anything alive today. The find ... [Read More]