Biology

Oct 30th, 2025 - The natural world is full of discoveries that feel straight out of a Tim Burton fever dream. They say reality is stranger than fiction. With Halloween just around the corner, we wanted to explore the creepier side of science. Over the past year, scientists have uncovered zombie fungi, brain-hacking parasites, and spiders that use glowing corpses to bait their prey. Forget witches and ghosts, the real frights are happening in the forests, the jungle, and inside you . A parasitic worm that ... [Read More]

Oct 30th, 2025 - For more than three decades, paleontologists have argued over whether a lithe predatory dinosaur called ever really prowled Cretaceous North America—or whether the bones that some researchers attributed to the creature instead belonged to teenage examples of Tyrannosaurus rex that were still growing into their monstrous frame. A new study in Nature may have finally settled the score in favor of Nanotyrannus based on an analysis of Montana's striking "Dueling Dinosaurs" fossil , discovered ... [Read More]

Oct 30th, 2025 - A critically endangered spider, not seen in the UK for 40 years, has been rediscovered in a remote nature reserve accessible only by boat. Aulonia albimana, which was last recorded in the UK in 1985, was uncovered at the National Trust's Newtown nature reserve on the Isle of Wight - about 2km (1.2 miles) from the spider's former colony. The tiny orange-legged arachnid has informally been named the white-knuckled wolf spider by those who found it. Entomologist Mark Telfer, who led the survey, ... [Read More]

Oct 30th, 2025 - Environment, which refers to the conditions a living organism lives in, is an overriding factor that influences how that organism behaves, acts, and exists. Fluctuations or triggers in this environment can dramatically alter animal performance, their routines, and probably their biological and mental chemistry, too. Planet Earth cradles a mosaic of habitats scattered across its blue-green-white pieces. In a study published in Ecosphere , scientists documented the habitat of the Greater ... [Read More]

Oct 30th, 2025 - New research has found that social interactions among meerkats may be crucial to their health and survival—thanks to the sharing of beneficial gut bacteria. Published in the Journal of Animal Ecology , the study discovered that a meerkat's social group membership strongly influences its gut microbiome —even more than factors such as age, sex, health, genetic relatedness , diet or environmental conditions such as temperature. Microbiomes provide many health-related benefits and a ... [Read More]

Oct 30th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google A 19 foot Burmese python was captured in Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida, setting a new state length record. The capture was led by Jake Waleri near Naples on July 10, 2023. Conservancy biologist Ian Easterling oversaw the official measurements and sampling for the specimen. He and his team carefully recorded its length, mass, and genetic samples to contribute to long-term tracking of python population dynamics in South Florida. "We had a feeling that these ... [Read More]

Oct 30th, 2025 - Analysis of Montana fossils shows the battling predator was a fully grown Nanotyrannus, not a young T rex The fossilised remains of two dinosaurs locked in combat have unleashed a fresh drama, suggesting diminutive specimens thought to be Tyrannosaurus rex teenagers could instead be separate, smaller species. The "duelling dinosaurs" fossil, which reveals a triceratops in battle with a medium-sized tyrannosaur, was unearthed in Montana by commercial fossil hunters in 2006 and dates to shortly ... [Read More]

Oct 30th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Deep within the frozen ground of Devon Island in Canada's High Arctic, researchers found the nearly complete skeleton of a rhinoceros, Epiaceratherium itjilik , that lived there around 23 million years ago. The discovery, made by a team from the Canadian Museum of Nature , reveals that rhinos once roamed much farther north than anyone imagined. Epiaceratherium itjilik fossils The fossils were found inside Haughton Crater, a 23-kilometer-wide impact site now locked in ice ... [Read More]

Oct 30th, 2025 - Female mosquitoes that transmit dengue and other diseases are actually in charge during sex, according to a study that challenges the long-held view that they are passive participants. Leslie Vosshall, a neurobiologist at the Rockefeller University in New York City, and her team were intrigued by the observation that male mosquitoes of the Aedes genus seem to pursue females constantly, yet females typically mate only once in their lifetimes. "The question was: how are the females able to say ... [Read More]

Oct 29th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Scientists in Argentina have described a new long-necked dinosaur, Chucarosaurus diripienda , that stretched about 100 feet. It lived around 90 million years ago in Patagonia , and its heavy fossil blocks even damaged a road during transport. The find adds a big piece to the puzzle of South America's giant plant-eaters. It is not the largest ever found, but it is large enough to sharpen how researchers think about sauropod body design . Meet Chucarosaurus diripienda Lead ... [Read More]

Oct 29th, 2025 - Oats are having a moment. As a highly nutritious cereal crop with well-documented health benefits, it's no surprise oat-based foods are popular alternates to dairy and wheat products. They contain compounds that help lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of metabolic diseases, and they are less likely to trigger allergies. With improved crop breeding, future oat varieties could become even more nutritious, productive, and sustainable. But for years now, oat breeders have been uncertain why ... [Read More]

Oct 29th, 2025 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . H urricanes are potent agents of change. But just as powerful hurricanes can upend the lives, plans, and livelihoods of humans, they can devastate ecosystems and change the course of some species' evolution in their wake. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica yesterday, its 185-mile-per-hour winds making it the most powerful storm to strike the Caribbean island nation on record. According to ... [Read More]

Oct 29th, 2025 - 'Wonderful' for people to see the predators so close and feasting on bait fish at the Gold Coast's Rainbow Bay, near Snapper Rocks, expert says A shiver of sharks has been spotted feeding close to shore near a popular surfing spot on the Gold Coast on Australia's east coast. The large group of predators surprised spectators on the southern end of Rainbow Bay on Tuesday, near the renowned Snapper Rocks surf break. It was not clear what species the sharks were, though the Tweed River, which ... [Read More]

Oct 29th, 2025 - A fossil once assumed to be of a young Tyrannosaurus rex is in fact that of a different species altogether, and the dinosaur it belongs to was a fully grown adult at the time of its death, palaeontologists have found. The small tyrannosaur — named Nanotyrannus — is about half the length and one-tenth of the body mass of a fully grown T. rex — which led scientists to initially suspect the fossil belonged to a teenage T. rex . But the specimen has several distinct physical ... [Read More]

Oct 29th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google A team surveying Ha Long Bay found a large sea sponge in a shadowed rock tunnel and realized it was new to science. It grows to about 8 inches across, looks like a cluster of short tubes, and carries a pale green tint. The species has a formal name, Cladocroce pansinii , and it was collected during shallow dives along Vietnam's northern coast. Researchers gathered eight specimens and compared them with lookalikes from the wider Indo Pacific, then published their results ... [Read More]

Oct 28th, 2025 - Homo species was the first  hunter Almost 2 million years ago, a young ancient human died beside a spring near a lake in what is now Tanzania, in eastern Africa. After archaeologists uncovered his fossilized bones in 1960, they used them to define Homo habilis – the earliest known member of our own genus. Paleoanthropologists define the first examples of the genus Homo based largely on their bigger brains – and, sometimes, smaller teeth – compared with other, earlier ... [Read More]