Biology

Apr 16th, 2026 - As the Arctic's climate and ecology rapidly change, two researchers are calling for a paradigm shift in insect monitoring. Reading time 3 minutes Until recently, Iceland was considered the last Arctic nation without mosquitoes. That changed in October 2025, when insect enthusiast Björn Hjaltason discovered one male and two female specimens of Culiseta annulata in his garden in Kiðafell, Kjós. The arrival of this pest in Iceland is a warning, Arctic researchers Amanda Koltz and ... [Read More]

Apr 16th, 2026 - A newly identified Triassic predator shows crocodiles diversified long before they conquered the water. Sometime around 210 million years ago, in what is now the badlands of New Mexico, a mudslide froze an ancient ecosystem in stone. Two swift, land-dwelling predators—about the size of modern jackals—perished side-by-side in a sudden catastrophic surge, leaving their skeletons locked in the earth as the world moved on. Millions of years later, human hands dug up the now fossilized ... [Read More]

Apr 16th, 2026 - 10 best dinosaur books, according to a paleontologist I have one of the best jobs in the world: I am a paleontologist who digs up dinosaur bones for a living. I am also the paleontology consultant for the Jurassic World film series, and I teach courses at the University of Edinburgh about Earth history and evolution. I've written science books such as The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs and The Rise and Reign of the Mammals. My latest book, The Story of Birds: A New History from Their Dinosaur ... [Read More]

Apr 16th, 2026 - Reading time 3 minutes Fantastic numbers of leathery, beaked Lystrosaurus—a distant ancestor to today's mammals, often the size of a small dog—roamed the sulfurous wastelands of Pangea after the Permian–Triassic extinction event over 251 million years ago. While many of its predators were busy suffocating to death under the endless volcanic soot and sweltering temperatures that led to this era's "Great Dying," the little plant-eating Lystrosaurus is believed to have burrowed ... [Read More]

Apr 15th, 2026 - Researchers find increase in whale deaths in the bay, largely because of collisions with vessels on busy shipping route Gray whales have historically been a rare sight in the San Francisco Bay. They trek from the warm lagoons of Mexico's Baja California more than 10,000 miles (16,000km) north to the Arctic region to feast on shrimp-like animals during the summers, seldom stopping in the busy shipping corridor for prolonged periods. But in recent years, that story has changed in a dire way. A ... [Read More]

Apr 15th, 2026 - While plenty of animals have developed a reputation for being intimidating, only one can reign supreme as the most dangerous. To be more specific, this animal kills the most humans. Hollywood films would have you believe that it's the toughest animals like lions and crocodiles that we need to watch out for. However, many animals are much less lethal than you'd expect – sharks, for instance, only kill 70 humans each year . Surprisingly, the most deadly creatures on Earth are often much ... [Read More]

Apr 15th, 2026 - Detailed imaging of a 250-million-year-old fossil has revealed the first proof that the ancestors of mammals laid eggs. The discovery answers a long-standing question about the reproductive biology of our ancient forerunners and hints at how they managed to flourish in the aftermath of the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history. Scientists have long assumed that the ancestors of mammals—a group known as the therapsids—laid eggs like today's platypuses and echidnas do. But they ... [Read More]

Apr 15th, 2026 - A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com The invasion of the golden oyster mushroom is posing a threat to native species. And with temperatures warming, further expansion could lead to dire ecological consequences. The golden oyster mushroom was brought to the U.S. from Asia during the 2000s mostly because it "can grow quickly, which was a boon, as it's considered one of the most delicious mushrooms a forager can find," said Vice ... [Read More]

Apr 14th, 2026 - Giant echidnas weighing 15kg roamed Victoria – and the evidence was hiding in plain sight A skull fragment found in a tray of unsorted fossils collected more than a century ago leads to discovery A prehistoric fossil, hiding in plain sight in museum storage for more than a century, has revealed that giant echidnas once roamed Victoria . The Owen's giant echidna, Megalibgwilia owenii , lived during the Pleistocene , a geological epoch that began 2.5m years ago. It grew to about 1 metre ... [Read More]

Apr 14th, 2026 - A New York Museum Honors Its Real-Life 'Indiana Jones' Dinosaur Hunters In a new and ongoing exhibition, the American Museum of Natural History highlights the findings of Mark Norell and other fossil hunters responsible for its most important discoveries. This article is part of our Museums special section about how institutions are commemorating the past as they move into the future. They went searching for human ancestors but instead came upon an abundance of dinosaur, mammal and reptile ... [Read More]

Apr 14th, 2026 - Amid growing evidence of fungi's key role in ecosystems and storing carbon, African scientists are championing the need to preserve 'funga' as much as flora and fauna M adagascar has long been celebrated for its remarkable wildlife, with the vast majority of its species – from ring-tailed lemurs to certain species of baobab trees – found nowhere else on the planet. But when discussing the island nation's endemic treasures, fungi are often left out of the conversation. Yet "fungi are ... [Read More]

Apr 14th, 2026 - Increasingly warm and sunny weather over the last half century – driven in part by climate change – has helped some British butterfly species to flourish, according to one of the world's biggest insect monitoring schemes. But the overall picture is more troubling. Data collected over half a century shows many of the UK's most distinctive butterflies are in steep decline. The findings come from the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS), which has gathered more than 44 million ... [Read More]

Apr 13th, 2026 - A stunning Chinese fossil site pushes the origins of complex animals back millions of years. If you trace the animal family tree back through the fossil record, the trail usually goes cold about 539 million years ago. Before this boundary—the start of the famous Cambrian explosion—multicelled life was typically confined to the oceans, which left no obvious modern descendants. But a deposit of rocks in southwestern China has now yielded the remains of hundreds of complex animals ... [Read More]

Apr 13th, 2026 - In newly released images, a rare "cloud jaguar" slinks through dense foliage of the jungle-covered Sierra del Merendón mountains in Honduras. The sighting offers a sliver of hope for the imperiled big cat , which is struggling to survive across its range in North and South America, largely because of a combination of habitat loss and poaching . As farmland, deforestation and human development have fractured its habitat, the jaguar lost as much as an estimated 25 percent of its adult ... [Read More]

Apr 13th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Scientists have identified the genetic changes that helped tree-dwelling snakes to evolve longer tails across multiple lineages. The finding shows that similar DNA modifications repeatedly reshaped snake bodies in response to life in trees. Clues from snake bodies Across 323 snakes from 110 species, the clearest pattern of longer tails appeared in species that live primarily in trees. By comparing these species, Jia-Tang Li at the Chengdu Institute of Biology ( CIB ) ... [Read More]

Apr 13th, 2026 - A massive study of zoo animals proves our supposedly peaceful ape cousins are hiding a dark side. A new  study  of our two closest living relatives finds that, at least in zoos, bonobos may not be more peaceful than chimpanzees. Bonobos ( Pan paniscus ) are only found south of the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where food is abundant and evenly distributed. Chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ) range across West, Central and East Africa, where food can be variable and ... [Read More]