Biology

Jun 13th, 2025 - We are taking a look back at stories from Cosmos Magazine in print. Australia's relationship with fire is complicated, but data can help us manage it. In this gripping and wide-ranging feature from December 2023, Bianca Nogrady talks to the researchers at the coalface of this changing phenomenon, asking: What's known about the science of fire? What data do we have, and how has it changed our approach to fire over the last decade? To a firefighter, whose fragile skin is protected only by a ... [Read More]

Jun 12th, 2025 - A mysterious type of pitting on the dental enamel of Paranthropus , a genus of extinct human relatives, has baffled experts for decades. But new research suggests the clusters of pits are genetic rather than evidence of a disease, making them key to further understanding the human family tree. "Teeth preserve an incredible amount of biological and evolutionary information," study co-author Ian Towle , a researcher in the Palaeodiet Research Lab at Monash University in Australia, told Live ... [Read More]

Jun 12th, 2025 - Vulnerable grassland birds listen in to the social rodents warning of the many threats both species face Prairie dogs bark to alert each other to the presence of predators, with different cries depending on whether the threat is airborne or approaching by land. But their warnings also seem to help a vulnerable grassland bird. Curlews have figured out that if they eavesdrop on alarms from US prairie dog colonies they may get a jump on predators coming for them, too, according to research ... [Read More]

Jun 12th, 2025 - Life almost ended 252 million years ago. The end-Permian mass extinction wiped out 81% of marine life and over half of land-based species . But not everything perished. Among the survivors were the archosauromorphs, small early reptiles that would later give rise to crocodiles, dinosaurs, and birds. These creatures were not supposed to survive the intense heat of the early Triassic tropics. Scientists considered this zone nearly lifeless. Ancient reptiles crossed deadly zones New research ... [Read More]

Jun 12th, 2025 - Marine algal bloom: Grim scenes greeted divers in murky water at Edithburgh on the Yorke Peninsula. (Paul Macdonald of Edithburgh Diving) South Australian beaches have been awash with algal bloom – the foamy, discoloured water and dead marine life for months. The problem hasn't gone away; it has spread. Devastating scenes of death and destruction mobilised locals along the Fleurieu Peninsula, Yorke Peninsula and Kangaroo Island. The state government has hosted emergency meetings , most ... [Read More]

Jun 12th, 2025 - Measuring around 1 inch in length with a wingspan of approximately 2.7 inches, an ancient cicada fossil has captured attention for preserving detailed wing veins. Researchers suggest it was part of a family of "true" singing cicadas that are still common across many warm regions today. Experts were intrigued by the fossil's nearly complete form. Its wings, pressed against stone, showed patterns seldom seen in insects so old. How the cicada fossil was found The study was led by Dr. Hui Jiang at ... [Read More]

Jun 12th, 2025 - Most plants form beneficial relationships with belowground mycorrhizal fungi that help them access soil nutrients in exchange for sugars. These plant-fungal relationships are the most common type of symbiosis in the world, but scientists know very little about the ways that fungal species' characteristics relate to their distribution, function, and resilience. In a new study in Scientific Data , Dartmouth researchers present a comprehensive database that catalogs the spore traits of 344 ... [Read More]

Jun 12th, 2025 - Fossils found in Mongolia of a new dinosaur species may help palaeontologists explain the evolution and dispersal of the group which includes Tyrannosaurus rex . T. rex is often called the "king of the dinosaurs" for good reason. It was the apex predator for 2 million years before it and all the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago. T. rex was massive – measuring 4m tall, 12m long and 9 tonnes. How it evolved to dominate ancient North America is debated. T. rex was the ... [Read More]

Jun 11th, 2025 - I think sharks are one of the most incredible animals on the planet. From a distance, of course! While I love to watch them during Shark Week , I wouldn't want to encounter one in the wild. However, not all sharks are created equal. Some are much larger than others. At the same time, others are much more aggressive. Here are 10 of the largest living sharks, as well as how dangerous they are. 1. Whale Shark Starting off with the largest of the living sharks, we have the whale shark. This ... [Read More]

Jun 11th, 2025 - Marion Island, a speck of volcanic rock about 1,243 miles southeast of Cape Town, hardly looks like the setting for a horror story. Yet on this windy, treeless outpost, an invasion of house mice is turning a haven for seabirds into a crime scene. Night after night, the rodents swarm across the nests of wandering albatrosses and other ocean-roaming birds, gnawing at eggs – and, more recently, at the birds themselves. The attacks are easy to miss if you picture mice as timid scavengers. On ... [Read More]

Jun 11th, 2025 - A new species of early tyrannosaur, dubbed the "prince of dragons," has been discovered lurking in a collection of fossils first excavated in Mongolia in the early 1970s, scientists said Wednesday in the journal Nature . Khankhuuluu mongoliensis — its scientific name — is an evolutionary ancestor of the most famous tyrannosaur, the "tyrant lizard king," T. rex. With their bone-crushing bites and spindly little arms, large tyrannosaurs (scientifically known as "eutyrannosaurians") ... [Read More]

Jun 11th, 2025 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . A iling coral reefs may have an unlikely chum: giant, jelly-like plankton called pyrosomes. Which turn out to be excellent fuel in the face of intensifying climate change. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Several years ago, researchers spotted blooms of a particular pyrosome cropping up along the northern coast of the country Timor-Leste in Southeast Asia. Like other types of plankton, they're carried by currents and tides and don't ... [Read More]

Jun 11th, 2025 - Researchers engineer a fungus that kills mosquitoes during mating, halting malaria in its tracks By the time the sun sets in Burkina Faso, swarms of mosquitoes rise with it—tiny, buzzing engines of one of the world's oldest and deadliest diseases. But now researchers have turned one of the insects' greatest strength—their sheer reproductive drive—into their downfall. In a new study, scientists revealed a new kind of biocontrol agent that sounds more like science fiction than ... [Read More]

Jun 11th, 2025 - The Karoo stretches across more than 150,000 square miles of semi-arid South Africa, a place where sun-bleached soil keeps secrets older than dinosaurs. Wander its stony flats and you'll see ridges of exposed rock that look like the pages of a giant book. The "chapters" span hundreds of millions of years, each one packed with fossilized bone and impressions of vanished forests. For anyone fascinated by life's backstory, the Karoo is irresistible. Long before geology students arrived with ... [Read More]

Jun 10th, 2025 - About 66 million years ago – perhaps on a downright unlucky day in May – an asteroid smashed into our planet. The fallout was immediate and severe. Evidence shows that about 70% of species went extinct in a geological instant, and not just those famous dinosaurs that once stalked the land. Masters of the Mesozoic oceans were also wiped out, from mosasaurs – a group of aquatic reptiles topping the food chain – to exquisitely shelled squid relatives known as ammonites . ... [Read More]

Jun 10th, 2025 - The amount of snakes eradicated, if put in a mound, would be the size of a city bus. A startling milestone has been reached in Florida's war against the invasive Burmese pythons eating their way across the Everglades. The Conservancy of Southwest Florida reports it has captured and humanely killed 20 tons of the snakes since 2013, including a record 6,300 pounds of pythons killed this past breeding season, according to a June 9 news release. To put that in perspective, 20 tons — or 40,000 ... [Read More]