Biology

Feb 23rd, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google For more than a century, Triceratops has been defined by what we can see – its horns, its frill, its massive beak. But the real surprise may lie in what we couldn't see at all. New CT scans reveal that this horned dinosaur rerouted the main nerves and blood vessels of its snout through its nose instead of its jaw. That unusual detour reshapes how scientists understand the oversized nasal cavity. Rather than a hollow chamber for smell alone, Triceratops ' nose may ... [Read More]

Feb 23rd, 2026 - WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — The world's only flightless parrot species was once thought to be doomed by design. The kakapo is too heavy, too slow and, frankly, too delicious to survive around predators, and takes a shamelessly relaxed approach to reproduction. But the nocturnal and reclusive New Zealand native bird 's fate is teetering toward survival after an unlikely conservation effort that has coaxed the population from 50 to more than 200 over three decades. This year, with a ... [Read More]

Feb 23rd, 2026 - By A newly-discovered ancient crocodile looked nothing like the low-slung, swamp-delling crocodiles you see today. Instead, it stood upright on long, slender legs and sprinted across dry land with the build of a greyhound. It ate small reptiles, amphibians and early mammals. More than 200 million years after this creature last roamed what is now the United Kingdom, scientists have formally identified it as a new species — and named it after a secondary school physics teacher in Wales. The ... [Read More]

Feb 23rd, 2026 - When science meets art, nature happens. This year's winning gallery of the 2026  World Nature Photography Awards is bubbling with images that depict this marriage of the two, wrapped in dramatic storytelling. A gorilla-butterfly encounter illustrates the beauty of relationships. The dark-skinned gorilla concentrates its intense, enlightened gaze upon the peppy little butterfly as it flutters carefree. The unflinching gaze of a protective lion mom is just as fierce as the gaze of this ... [Read More]

Feb 23rd, 2026 - Your chin might just be an evolutionary side effect of the human face shrinking over millions of years. The human chin is uniquely human, and the assumption has always been that it must have evolved for a specific purpose, perhaps to strengthen the jaw during chewing or speech. After all, chimpanzees and gorillas don't have chins. Neither did Neanderthals nor Denisovans.  In fact, Homo sapiens is the only species known to possess this small bony projection at the front of the lower jaw. ... [Read More]

Feb 23rd, 2026 - Temnothorax kinomurai, a parasitic ant species found in Japan, reproduces asexually and all of its young develop into queens that try to take over other ants' colonies A parasitic species of ant from Japan is the first ever found to have done away with both males and female workers – instead, every individual is a queen that tries to take over the nests of other species. Typically, ant colonies consist of a queen, female workers and short-lived males that die after mating. For more than ... [Read More]

Feb 22nd, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google In 2025, there were 65 unprovoked shark bites worldwide. That is slightly below the recent 10-year average of 72. Nine of those bites were fatal, compared to a 10-year average of six deaths per year. After a sharp drop the year before, the numbers have settled back into a familiar pattern. A long record of shark bites The data come from the International Shark Attack File (ISAF) at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Created in 1958, it includes records going back to ... [Read More]

Feb 22nd, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google A common shoreline barnacle has been documented piercing deep-sea sharks and extracting nutrients directly from their flesh, marking a complete transition from filter feeding to parasitism. That shift captures an evolutionary turning point in living form, revealing how an ordinary marine animal can cross into a radically different way of life. A fjord transformation Deep in Norway's Sognefjord, small lantern sharks now carry yellow, stalked growths anchored firmly in ... [Read More]

Feb 22nd, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Fossil evidence shows that baby long-necked dinosaurs were a major food Because these young plant-eaters were so common and easy to catch, predators at the time had an easier food supply than the giant hunters that evolved millions of years later. Dry Mesa evidence At Dry Mesa Dinosaur Quarry in western Colorado, a fossil site known for its rich dinosaur bone beds, a dense layer of remains preserved predators and prey from the same place. By sorting those remains into ... [Read More]

Feb 21st, 2026 - Giant tortoises return to Galápagos island after nearly 200 years Giant tortoises are roaming the Galápagos island of Floreana for the first time in more than 180 years, in what conservationists have called a "hugely significant milestone". The release of 158 captive-bred juvenile tortoises onto the island is part of the Floreana Ecological Restoration Project led by the Galápagos National Park Directorate. The reintroduction follows a "back-breeding" programme launched in ... [Read More]

Feb 20th, 2026 - At a remote and barren Sahara desert site in Niger, scientists have unearthed fossils of a new species of Spinosaurus, among the biggest of the meat-eating dinosaurs, notable for its large blade-shaped head crest and jaws bearing interlocking teeth for snaring slippery fish. It prowled a forested inland environment and strode into rivers to catch sizable fish like a modern-day wading bird — a "hell heron," as one of the researchers put it, considering it was about 40 feet long and weighed ... [Read More]

Feb 20th, 2026 - A newly discovered dinosaur carried hollow spikes never seen before in its kind. A fossil discovered in northeastern China has revealed unusual skin structures in an ornithischian dinosaur that lived about 125 million years ago. The skin impressions on the specimen are remarkably well-preserved for such an old fossil, including small hollow spikes that have not been previously documented in dinosaurs. The species, Haolong dongi , meaning "spiny dragon," was an Early Cretaceous iguanodontian. ... [Read More]

Feb 20th, 2026 - FLOREANA ISLAND, Ecuador (AP) — Nearly 150 years after the last giant tortoises were removed from Floreana Island in Ecuador's Galápagos archipelago , the species made a comeback Friday, when dozens of juvenile hybrids were released to begin restoring the island's depleted ecosystem. The 158 newcomers, aged 8 to 13, have begun exploring the habitat they are destined to reshape over the coming years. Their release was perfectly timed with the arrival of the season's first winter ... [Read More]

Feb 19th, 2026 - A fast-moving ancient crocodile ancestor gets a name honoring the physics teacher who inspired its discoverer. In the Late Triassic, some 215 million years ago, the region we now know as the southwestern United Kingdom looked nothing like the rolling green hills of today. It was a rugged, arid archipelago of limestone islands, baking under a hot sun and surrounded by subtropical seas. If you were standing on one of those ancient uplands, you might have seen a creature that defied modern ... [Read More]

Feb 19th, 2026 - One fossil's teeth are forcing scientists to rethink where dinosaurs began. A small fossil jaw rests in Argentina's national natural science museum in Buenos Aires. The fossil, only six inches long, carries backward-curving teeth shaped for gripping prey. Paleontologist Martín Ezcurra says the teeth resemble "those of the fearsome Komodo dragon." The bone belonged to Lewisuchus admixtus , a reptile that lived 236 million years ago, during the Triassic . Roughly 1.5 meters long, it likely ... [Read More]

Feb 18th, 2026 - Lovingly nicknamed "sea gooseberry," it glides through waters like a squishy crystal or a blimpy iridescent water balloon. It has been observed in deep ocean trenches and coastal waters across the world and has also been spotted in the Black, North, and Baltic Seas. The moment this gelatinous creature is removed from the water, it collapses almost instantly, disappearing like it never existed. For years, this made things difficult for the scientists who keenly desired to witness this creature ... [Read More]