Biology

Mar 12th, 2026 - Researchers have found the reason behind two mass strandings of dolphins in Argentina. These events took place in 2021 and 2023, respectively, at San Antonio Bay in northern Patagonia. Findings regarding these mass strandings have been published in the Royal Society Open Science journal. The team associated with the study determined that the dolphins got stranded because they were being chased away by deadly orcas . These state-of-affairs possibly caused hundreds of dolphins to become trapped. ... [Read More]

Mar 12th, 2026 - The story of a wildflower that adapted to a severe drought in California raises hopes that evolution will come to the rescue of species hit by climate change, but there are limits For the first time, we have seen a species that was in decline due to extreme weather recover through rapid evolution. Does this mean species that are increasingly being hit by soaring temperatures and other challenging conditions can adapt as the planet gets warmer? It is clear that evolution has saved countless ... [Read More]

Mar 12th, 2026 - Meet Lucy's hunter, a massive, horned crocodile that likely terrorized early human ancestors in ancient Ethiopia. Over three million years ago, the wetlands of ancient Ethiopia were dominated by an ambush predator that dwarfed early human ancestors and likely preyed on them. Researchers have officially identified this apex predator as a new species, Crocodylus lucivenator . The name translates to "Lucy's hunter." It references the famous fossil skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis discovered ... [Read More]

Mar 12th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Reptiles lived on land long before modern crocodiles appeared. Some of their early relatives looked very different from anything alive today. During the Triassic period, crocodile relatives came in many forms. Some walked low to the ground on four legs, while others developed features that made them look a lot like the early dinosaurs living at the same time. Researchers have now found one of the strangest examples. The animal was small and built a little differently from ... [Read More]

Mar 11th, 2026 - Everything we thought we knew about where magic mushrooms came from is probably wrong. Magic mushrooms are stepping out of the underground and into the clinic. Increasing evidence suggests that psilocybin mushrooms help with treatment-resistant depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), addiction, and psychiatric illnesses related to a growing global mental health crisis. At the center of this psychedelic renaissance is Psilocybe cubensis , the golden-capped fungus cultivated by ... [Read More]

Mar 11th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google A rare Hawaiian tree snail has returned to native forest habitat on O'ahu after surviving more than three decades only in captivity. That return transforms a species once absent from the wild into a living test of whether long-term conservation can reverse losses long assumed permanent. Snails return to forest Inside O'ahu's Honolulu Watershed Forest Reserve in the Ko'olau Mountains, the first Achatinella fuscobasis now cling to wet leaves again. Building on that return, ... [Read More]

Mar 11th, 2026 - 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 Pinterest Flipboard Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Get the Live Science Newsletter Get the world's most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and ... [Read More]

Mar 11th, 2026 - In a 1981 magazine essay, the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould let readers in one of his field's counter-intuitive truths. Aquatic animals, including lungfish and coelacanths, are more closely related to tetrapods — four-limbed vertebrates — than to salmon, sticklebacks and many other things people call 'fish' — or, as Gould quipped, "there is surely no such thing as a fish". Sharks could be in a similar situation. A genomic study of dozens of shark species and their ... [Read More]

Mar 11th, 2026 - To most people, calories are the North Star of nutrition: a rigid quantity assigned to each and every food that never wavers or changes. Two individuals who eat the exact same thing in the exact same amount will always absorb the exact same number of calories, right? Or will they? "This is probably one of the more robust dietary myths that circulates," Janice Dada, MPH, RDN , a certified intuitive eating counselor based in California, tells SELF. Contrary to what you've probably thought all ... [Read More]

Mar 11th, 2026 - By A landmark ocean expedition off Japan's coast has confirmed 38 new species and identified 28 more candidates, including two worms found living inside the skeleton of a deep-sea glass sponge. The Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census expedition launched in June 2025 in partnership with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC). Scientists aboard the JAMSTEC research vessel Yokosuka deployed the Shinkai 6500 , a crewed submersible, to explore two understudied deep-sea ... [Read More]

Mar 11th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google A juvenile great white shark caught off Spain has become one of the clearest modern records of the species in the Spanish Mediterranean. That single animal forces a reconsideration of waters long treated as empty of white sharks, raising new urgency around where young individuals may be coming from. A juvenile shark appears Pulled aboard by local fishers, the shark measured nearly 7 feet (2.1 meters) long and weighed 176 to 198 pounds (80 to 90 kilograms). Examining that ... [Read More]

Mar 10th, 2026 - A small dinosaur that forces some big changes. "Terrible Lizards"—That's the literal translation of the term Dinosauria, coined by Sir Richard Owen in the 19th century to describe the colossal bones early paleontologists were unearthing. For a long time, the name made sense. The dinosaur lineage has provided us with some of the most truly terrifying animals to ever walk the planet. But we eventually learned that all birds are actually theropod dinosaurs. Looking at chickens, geese, or ... [Read More]

Mar 10th, 2026 - By A team of researchers in one of Thailand's most biodiverse national parks lifted a single rock near their campsite and found a scorpion no one had ever formally described. It was barely an inch long, armed with slender speed-snap claws, covered in sensory hairs that detect the faintest shift in the air, and equipped with a full set of eight eyes. The species, Scorpiops krachana , may exist nowhere else on Earth. Zoologist Wasin Nawanetiwong and colleagues from and partner institutions were ... [Read More]

Mar 10th, 2026 - These tiny teeth prove that our earliest relatives moved across North America much faster than we thought. Sixty-six million years ago, a massive asteroid smashed into Earth. Life has undergone at least five mass extinctions in the last 500 million years, but this one particularly stands out. It wiped out all the non-avian dinosaurs and plunged the planet into a devastating ecological crisis. But out of the ashes of the Cretaceous period, a new cast of characters quickly emerged. Among these ... [Read More]

Mar 10th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google A new study suggests a major group of plant viruses was already circulating in wild Eurasian plants long before agriculture, long before global trade, and even before the last Ice Age.  The research focuses on tymoviruses, a family of viruses that now infect both wild plants and important crops.  The results hint that their evolutionary story stretches back tens of thousands of years – while their modern, worldwide spread looks much more recent and very ... [Read More]

Mar 9th, 2026 - By Carlos Bocos uploaded photographs of a small marsupial to iNaturalist. Those images helped scientists confirm a species that had been classified as extinct for thousands of years — and earned Bocos a co-authorship on the published study. Two marsupial species in New Guinea, previously known only from fossil evidence and believed extinct for more than 7,000 years, have been confirmed alive. According to The Bishop Museum in Honolulu , which announced the discovery on Tuesday, Bocos ... [Read More]