Biology

Feb 10th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google For more than a century, one small group of jumping spiders existed in scientific records mostly as fragments – incomplete specimens, scattered notes, and unanswered questions. New fieldwork in southern India has brought the missing pieces together. Researchers rediscovered the lineage, documented its first known female, and formally described a new species, closing a 123-year gap that once left the genus difficult to identify. The discovery does more than add a new ... [Read More]

Feb 10th, 2026 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . F or 100 million years, plants had Earth's surface mostly to themselves while vertebrates thrashed around in the primordial seas. When vertebrates finally crept up on terra firma, they still opted to dine on their fellow animals, leaving the foliage alone. Tens of millions of years later, that changed. Now, researchers have identified one of the earliest known fossils of a terrestrial vertebrate plant-eater. They published their findings today in ... [Read More]

Feb 10th, 2026 - The showrunner of the Angeles National Forest isn't a 500-pound black bear or a stealthy mountain lion. It's a small ant. The velvety tree ant forms a millions-strong "social insect carpet that spans the mountains," said Joseph Parker, a biology professor and director of the Center for Evolutionary Science at Caltech. Its massive colonies influence how fast plants grow and the size of other species' populations. That much, scientists have known. Now Parker, whose lab has spent 8 years studying ... [Read More]

Feb 10th, 2026 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . T ermites are capable of constructing sprawling colonies containing millions of individuals, a complex social structure that evolved at least 100 million years ago. But how did they come to be so organized? A new study published in Science is shedding light on their fascinating evolutionary history. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. To get a better picture of termite evolution, an international team of evolutionary biologists led by ... [Read More]

Feb 10th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Harbor porpoises don't have the luxury of long breaks. They're small, burn energy fast, and need to eat almost constantly just to keep up with their metabolism. So when something interferes with their feeding time, it's not a minor inconvenience – it can ripple into their health, reproduction, and survival. That's the concern behind a new study that tracked harbor porpoises in Denmark's Little Belt, a narrow strait that acts like a busy marine corridor between the ... [Read More]

Feb 9th, 2026 - On the outskirts of western England, inside the storybook town of Cheshire, lately the zookeeper Katie Kelton from the Bug Team has been busy chopping lettuce, sweet potatoes, and carrots, not to prepare a party buffet, but to feed some tiny button-sized creatures resting and reproducing in plastic trays. Dubbed Bermuda snails ( Poecilozonites bermudensis ), these teeny spiral-shelled creatures were once thought to be lost forever from the North Atlantic Archipelago. In 2014, a flicker of hope ... [Read More]

Feb 9th, 2026 - A giant crocodilian that once shared wetlands with dinosaurs has taken physical form again, this time inside a museum. A new life-sized mounted skeleton of has been installed at the Tellus Science Museum in Georgia, following years of scientific work behind the scenes. The replica is the first of its kind to be built with close attention to fossil evidence rather than artistic impression. It draws on decades of research by palaeontologist Dr David Schwimmer, whose work has reshaped ... [Read More]

Feb 9th, 2026 - GAINESVILLE, Fla. – A from the University of Florida has revealed that two invasive species of termites in Florida have begun to spread farther than experts previously predicted, , UF/IFAS Public Relations Manager Lourdes Mederos discussed the two species, identified as While these pests have been historically relegated to South Florida, Mederos explained that they're no longer restricted to just that region of the state. "Decades of monitoring data show the spread is accelerating, with ... [Read More]

Feb 9th, 2026 - The evolution of vertebrates sheds light on disease prevention The research is important for understanding how these proteins and pathways could be manipulated in disease management New research from the University of St Andrews (Scotland) has discovered an important piece in the puzzle of how all vertebrate animals (with a spine) – including all mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians – evolved.   Here, the ... [Read More]

Feb 9th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google New clues from very old fish are helping scientists understand one of the biggest moments in the history of life on Earth. More than 400 million years ago, some fish began to change in small but meaningful ways. Over time, those changes opened the door for animals to leave the water and move onto land. That moment eventually led to frogs, dinosaurs, and humans. Two recent studies add new details to that story. They focus on lungfish, an ancient group of fish that still ... [Read More]

Feb 8th, 2026 - No Result View All Result No Result View All Result Sex differences in brain volume emerge before birth, groundbreaking research suggests [Adobe Stock] A new study published in Scientific Reports provides a detailed model of how the human brain develops during the transition from the womb to early infancy. The findings indicate that distinct growth patterns for different brain tissues and sex-based differences in brain volume are established between mid-pregnancy and the first weeks of life. ... [Read More]

Feb 7th, 2026 - What were the first animals? The fierce sponge–jelly battle that just won't end Which animals came first? For more than a century, most evidence suggested that sponges, immobile filter-feeders that lack muscles, neurons and other specialized tissues, were the first animal lineages to emerge. Then, in 2008, a genomic study pointed to a head-scratching rival: dazzling, translucent predators called comb jellies, or ctenophores, with nerves, muscles and other sophisticated features. That ... [Read More]

Feb 6th, 2026 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . T here are monsters lurking in the rivers of southern Japan—giant salamanders that can grow up to five feet long. Second only to their Chinese cousins, these wet-skinned leviathans are some of the largest amphibians in the world. New research into their diet published in Oikos reveals they have a monstrous appetite to match, and one that changes dramatically over their lifetimes.   Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. To ... [Read More]

Feb 6th, 2026 - Spotted lanternflies are thriving in the US, and scientists may know the reason. They speculate that the secret to spotted lanternflies' sustenance may lie in the tricks they picked up in their native country, as published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B . These creatures were first documented in the US back in 2014. Since then, they have expanded to 19 states in the eastern US. The spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) is a planthopper with long mouthparts that help it to ... [Read More]

Feb 6th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google A newly described fossil fish species, Romundina gagnieri , has revealed teeth growing on bony plates that line the roof of its mouth. This extends the acquisition of teeth in jawed fishes to a far earlier stage in vertebrate evolution. That architecture reframes how jaws and teeth first emerged together in fishes, shifting the starting point for a defining feature of vertebrate life. Clues inside a jawed fish skull Those tooth -bearing plates appear on fragments of an ... [Read More]

Feb 5th, 2026 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . I f you've ever had the misfortune of staring down the gullet of a screaming goose, you know it contains the stuff of nightmares—a thick, barbed tongue surrounded by an array of fleshy, toothlike protrusions. Now, research published in The Innovation about a recently uncovered Archaeopteryx fossil shows that birds got their fascinating structures early in their evolution.  Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. The Archaeopteryx ... [Read More]