Biology

Mar 8th, 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 8th, 2026 - Small size seems to have come before a change in diet for a tiny dinosaur lineage. Alvarezsaurids were mostly small-bodied theropods that paleontologists originally misinterpreted as early flightless birds, only to later recognize them as an ant-eating lineage of non-avian dinosaurs. For years, we suspected that Alvarezsaurids underwent a rare process of evolutionary miniaturization directly coupled to a diet of social insects like ants and termites. It was a tidy hypothesis: They got smaller ... [Read More]

Mar 8th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Scientists have documented healthy oarfish alive far below the ocean surface, revealing how the world's longest bony fish actually moves and behaves in its natural environment. That direct evidence reframes a creature long known mainly from damaged bodies on beaches and centuries of sea-serpent lore. Robots spot living oarfish Video recorded deep in the northern Gulf of Mexico captured a living oarfish moving steadily through dark midwater far from shore. Reviewing those ... [Read More]

Mar 7th, 2026 - A unique head spike and fish-eating jaws help make sense of these dinosaurs. The Spinosaurus is a sail-backed, crocodile-snouted dinosaur that Hollywood depicted as a giant terrestrial predator capable of taking down a T. rex in Jurassic Park 3 . Then they changed their mind and made it a fully aquatic diver in Jurassic World Rebirth —a rendering that was more in line with the latest paleontological knowledge. But now, deep in the Sahara Desert, a team of researchers led by Paul C. ... [Read More]

Mar 6th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Mosquitoes have been feeding on human blood for a very long time – far longer than scientists once realized. A new genetic analysis from researchers at the University of Manchester shows that several Southeast Asian malaria mosquitoes began preferring human blood between 2.9 and 1.6 million years ago – long before modern humans existed. The timing lines up with the arrival of Homo erectus , one of our early human ancestors, hinting that mosquitoes may have ... [Read More]

Mar 6th, 2026 - Two marsupial species thought long extinct, until now known only from fossils, were found alive in New Guinea through a collaboration of scientists, indigenous communities and citizen scientists. The discovery of the pygmy long-fingered possum and the ring-tailed glider marks the first confirmation of live specimens in over 7,000 years, the Bishop Museum, a natural history museum in Honolulu, announced on Tuesday. "To be able to say that they indeed are alive brings me joy as a scientist and ... [Read More]

Mar 6th, 2026 - A bizarre ancient swamp creature just proved that evolution is much messier than we thought. Paleontologists surveying a dry riverbed in northeastern Brazil repeatedly encountered the same type of fossil: a lower jaw about six inches long, curved and thick, and twisted in an unexpected way. A single specimen could have been written off as a distortion. But after the team recovered nine jaws from the Pedra de Fogo Formation —all preserving the same pronounced rotation in three ... [Read More]

Mar 6th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google A 518-million-year-old fossil has revealed that some of the earliest vertebrates possessed four image-forming eyes instead of two. That configuration recasts a small brain structure humans still carry as the remnant of a once fully visual organ. Embedded in rock from southern China, the head of Myllokunmingia , an early jawless fish that lived more than 500 million years ago, preserves two large lateral eyes and two smaller organs aligned along the midline. Evidence in ... [Read More]

Mar 6th, 2026 - By A major new study finds the pace of species discovery is accelerating, not slowing, and suggests the true number of species on Earth could reach into the billions. It has been roughly 300 years since Carl Linnaeus began the project of naming and classifying life on Earth. A University of Arizona-led study published in Science Advances now reveals that scientists are discovering new species at a faster rate than at any point in human history, with more than 16,000 species added each year. The ... [Read More]

Mar 6th, 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 6th, 2026 - Reading time 3 minutes Field researchers call them "Lazarus taxa," species once presumed extinct that suddenly appear to have risen from the dead. And scientists have found one more—a marsupial thought to have disappeared over 6,000 years ago. Researchers with the Australian Museum and the University of Papua discovered this elusive marsupial—known as the pygmy long-fingered possum ( Dactylonax kambuayai )—still doing its thing within the remote rainforests of Indonesia's ... [Read More]

Mar 5th, 2026 - The chances of finding one mammal species thought to be lost was 'almost zero' and finding two is 'unprecedented', biologist Tim Flannery says R esearchers led by the Australian scientist Tim Flannery have made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery: that two charismatic marsupial species that had been thought extinct for 6,000 years are alive in rainforest in remote West Papua. The pair are rare examples of "Lazarus taxa" – species that disappeared from fossil records in the distant past that ... [Read More]

Mar 5th, 2026 - T-Rex walked on its tippy toes, but we're not sure how elegant it was. For decades, pop culture has painted Tyrannosaurus rex as a heavy-footed titan whose every step would make the ground tremble. But new evidence suggests this nine-ton predator was surprisingly dainty. Instead of stomping, T. rex likely struck the ground with the very tips of its toes first. A study published in Royal Society Open Science reveals that T. rex utilized a "distal-first" foot-strike. Essentially, its toes hit the ... [Read More]

Mar 5th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Some of the oldest living trees on Earth grow in the temperate rainforests of Chile's Coast Range. Towering alerce trees have stood for thousands of years, surviving storms, fires, and shifting climates. Now scientists have discovered that their importance goes far beyond what we see above ground. New research from the University of Melbourne shows that these ancient giants act as underground biodiversity hubs, supporting vast communities of fungi that help forests cycle ... [Read More]

Mar 5th, 2026 - Inside the unforgiving, violent rollers of the North Pacific waters, Resident killer whales and Bigg's killer whales are those two neighbors that prefer to avoid each other and keep a distance. While residents have strong family structures where individuals live in tight-knit groups, leaving only a few hours to mate before returning, Bigg's whales swim in loosely knit units. Let alone casual interaction, socialization, or interbreeding, the two groups would rather not confront each other. But ... [Read More]

Mar 5th, 2026 - The arrival of loggerheads in New South Wales shows these 'sentinels of climate change' are being forced into unknown territory W hen Bulwal Bilima (BB for short) first arrived at Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia, she, or possibly he, was lethargic, badly constipated and dehydrated. Named "strong turtle" in the Aboriginal Dhurga language of the Yuin people on whose land it was found, the tiny 110g loggerhead hatchling, no bigger than a bar of soap, had a fight on its hands. The baby turtle was ... [Read More]