Biology

Dec 24th, 2025 - How centuries of human pressure quietly reshaped a rare brown bear Bears are one of the big victims of deforestation. As more and more forests get cut down, bears keep retreating to remote corners, keeping their distance from people. In a small stretch of central Italy, however, bears have followed a different path. A new genetic study suggests that Apennine brown bears have gradually become less aggressive over thousands of years of living alongside people. Rather than retreating entirely from ... [Read More]

Dec 24th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Modern sightings of living coelacanths in the 20th century surprised the world, but this fish species' story goes back a long way. Although coelacanth remains are well known from Paleozoic and Cretaceous rocks in Britain, very little is known about their relatives from the Late Triassic. A fresh look inside British museum drawers has just closed one of these gaps. A new peer-reviewed study reports more than 50 late Triassic coelacanth specimens from southwestern England, ... [Read More]

Dec 24th, 2025 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Flipboard Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter From a distance, it might have looked like a small child was wending her way through the waving grass along a vast lake. But a closer look would have ... [Read More]

Dec 24th, 2025 - Long before flowers dazzled insects with colors, ancient plants used a different signal. We tend to think of plants as passive, vulnerable actors. But in their partnership with insects, it's plants that often play the leading role. Sometimes, this can get pretty surprising. As evening approaches, certain tropical plants raise the temperature of their reproductive cones well above the surrounding air. The heat produces infrared radiation that nocturnal beetles can sense, even though humans ... [Read More]

Dec 24th, 2025 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . T raditional animal surveys are cumbersome—days and weeks of tromping around in the field looking for animals and signs of their presence in tracks, scrapes, and scats. But entomologists at the University of Florida have found a way to survey vertebrate animals from just a few drops of mosquito blood.  Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. A paper published in Scientific Reports describes how analysis of mosquito blood can yield ... [Read More]

Dec 24th, 2025 - Scientists working for government breed biological control agents in lab to take on species choking native wildlife Crayfish, weevils and fungi are being released into the environment in order to tackle invasive species across Britain. Scientists working for the government have been breeding species in labs to set them loose into the wild to take on Japanese knotweed, signal crayfish and Himalayan balsam, and other species that choke out native plants and wildlife. They are doing this, in part, ... [Read More]

Dec 23rd, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Researchers in southwest China have identified a new plant-eating dinosaur species with an extraordinary neck. The animal, named Mamenchisaurus sanjiangensis , lived roughly 160 million years ago during the late Jurassic Period, and reshapes how paleontologists view East Asian dinosaur ecosystems. The work was led by Hui Dai, a paleontologist at the Institute of Paleontology in southwest China. His research focuses on Jurassic sauropod evolution and on how long-necked ... [Read More]

Dec 23rd, 2025 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . R oughly 120,000 years ago, in what would someday be Spain, a group of Neanderthals prepared their supper. That night's menu did not feature mammoth, or any other big game. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Instead, as dusk descended, some individuals tended tortoises, crackling belly-up on the fire. Others used flint knives to quarter rabbits for roasting and marrow. A pack of youngsters returned to the cave, perhaps with a haul of ... [Read More]

Dec 23rd, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Off Vancouver Island in British Columbia, scientists have recorded killer whales and dolphins hunting salmon together in coordinated teams. The team followed nine northern resident killer whales and documented 258 encounters in which whales tailed foraging dolphins toward adult Chinook salmon. Normally, these northern residents search for salmon on their own, while Pacific white-sided dolphins target much smaller fish and squid. The new observations suggest both species ... [Read More]

Dec 23rd, 2025 - Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Imagine pulling up to a fishing spot. You hook a fish, a beautiful snook. As you reel it in, the water boils, a shark's tail smacks the surface. The fish stops struggling. All that's left of the snook is a bloody stump. On the next cast the same thing happens. There's no reason to continue fishing in this spot, so you leave. Anglers say this kind of shark encounter seems to be happening more and more in parts of South Florida, especially near Flamingo, ... [Read More]

Dec 23rd, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google A university student cracked open a rock in Alberta's Dinosaur Provincial Park and uncovered Canada's first dinosaur-era dragonfly fossil. That 75-million-year-old wing from the late-Cretaceous, the last period of the dinosaur era, belonged to an undescribed dragonfly species. The work was led by André S. Mueller, a McGill University graduate student who specializes in fossil dragonflies and other ancient insects. His research focuses on how these insects fit into ... [Read More]

Dec 23rd, 2025 - According to a team of researchers from the University of Arizona, new species are being discovered at a faster rate than ever before, one that far exceeds extinction University of Arizona About 300 years ago, Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus set out on a bold quest: to identify and name every living organism on Earth. Now celebrated as the father of modern taxonomy, he developed the binomial naming system and described more than 10,000 species of plants and animals. Since his time, scientists ... [Read More]

Dec 22nd, 2025 - You can now listen to Fox News articles! Paleontologists may have uncovered the traces of a dinosaur that may have been limping, thanks to fossilized footprints preserved in stone for over 150 million years. In a Nov. 25 press release from the University of Queensland (UQ), Australian officials announced that the discovery was made at an ancient trackway near Ouray, Colorado. Measuring over 310 feet long, the trackway consists of around 130 footprints. The dinosaur that made the track was ... [Read More]

Dec 22nd, 2025 - New research confirms animals are physically mutating to cope with our cities. With more than 55% of the world's population now living in cities, the frantic pace of urban life is changing life on a genetic level. Through rapid evolution, we are seeing the formation of genetically distinct populations right in our backyards. We've known for a long time that humans impact other species, usually for the worse. But nowhere is this clearer than in urban centers. These concrete constructions, ... [Read More]

Dec 22nd, 2025 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Flipboard Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter For a half century, the iconic "Lucy" fossil species, Australopithecus afarensis, has held the title of being the most likely direct ancestor of all humans. ... [Read More]

Dec 22nd, 2025 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . A round 40,000 years ago, a band of early humans rolled into the Iberian Peninsula, an area of Europe thought to have been a late Neanderthal holdout.  Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Researchers aren't entirely sure what went down next. Past genetic studies suggest Neanderthals and early humans interbred in some regions, including eastern Europe and southwestern Asia, but it's unclear whether this transpired on the Iberian ... [Read More]