Biology

Feb 22nd, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google In 2025, there were 65 unprovoked shark bites worldwide. That is slightly below the recent 10-year average of 72. Nine of those bites were fatal, compared to a 10-year average of six deaths per year. After a sharp drop the year before, the numbers have settled back into a familiar pattern. A long record of shark bites The data come from the International Shark Attack File (ISAF) at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Created in 1958, it includes records going back to ... [Read More]

Feb 22nd, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google A common shoreline barnacle has been documented piercing deep-sea sharks and extracting nutrients directly from their flesh, marking a complete transition from filter feeding to parasitism. That shift captures an evolutionary turning point in living form, revealing how an ordinary marine animal can cross into a radically different way of life. A fjord transformation Deep in Norway's Sognefjord, small lantern sharks now carry yellow, stalked growths anchored firmly in ... [Read More]

Feb 22nd, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Fossil evidence shows that baby long-necked dinosaurs were a major food Because these young plant-eaters were so common and easy to catch, predators at the time had an easier food supply than the giant hunters that evolved millions of years later. Dry Mesa evidence At Dry Mesa Dinosaur Quarry in western Colorado, a fossil site known for its rich dinosaur bone beds, a dense layer of remains preserved predators and prey from the same place. By sorting those remains into ... [Read More]

Feb 21st, 2026 - Giant tortoises return to Galápagos island after nearly 200 years Giant tortoises are roaming the Galápagos island of Floreana for the first time in more than 180 years, in what conservationists have called a "hugely significant milestone". The release of 158 captive-bred juvenile tortoises onto the island is part of the Floreana Ecological Restoration Project led by the Galápagos National Park Directorate. The reintroduction follows a "back-breeding" programme launched in ... [Read More]

Feb 20th, 2026 - FLOREANA ISLAND, Ecuador (AP) — Nearly 150 years after the last giant tortoises were removed from Floreana Island in Ecuador's Galápagos archipelago , the species made a comeback Friday, when dozens of juvenile hybrids were released to begin restoring the island's depleted ecosystem. The 158 newcomers, aged 8 to 13, have begun exploring the habitat they are destined to reshape over the coming years. Their release was perfectly timed with the arrival of the season's first winter ... [Read More]

Feb 20th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google After a wildfire tears through a landscape, the destruction looks absolute. Hillsides turn black, trees collapse into ash, wildlife scatters, and the soil itself seems lifeless. Then something unexpected happens. Within days or weeks, life creeps back. Not trees. Not deer. Fungi. Some of these fungi were barely there before the fire. You couldn't see them. You couldn't easily detect them in the soil. Yet after a blaze, they spread quickly across the burned ground. ... [Read More]

Feb 20th, 2026 - A newly discovered dinosaur carried hollow spikes never seen before in its kind. A fossil discovered in northeastern China has revealed unusual skin structures in an ornithischian dinosaur that lived about 125 million years ago. The skin impressions on the specimen are remarkably well-preserved for such an old fossil, including small hollow spikes that have not been previously documented in dinosaurs. The species, Haolong dongi , meaning "spiny dragon," was an Early Cretaceous iguanodontian. ... [Read More]

Feb 20th, 2026 - At a remote and barren Sahara desert site in Niger, scientists have unearthed fossils of a new species of Spinosaurus, among the biggest of the meat-eating dinosaurs, notable for its large blade-shaped head crest and jaws bearing interlocking teeth for snaring slippery fish. It prowled a forested inland environment and strode into rivers to catch sizable fish like a modern-day wading bird — a "hell heron," as one of the researchers put it, considering it was about 40 feet long and weighed ... [Read More]

Feb 19th, 2026 - One fossil's teeth are forcing scientists to rethink where dinosaurs began. A small fossil jaw rests in Argentina's national natural science museum in Buenos Aires. The fossil, only six inches long, carries backward-curving teeth shaped for gripping prey. Paleontologist Martín Ezcurra says the teeth resemble "those of the fearsome Komodo dragon." The bone belonged to Lewisuchus admixtus , a reptile that lived 236 million years ago, during the Triassic . Roughly 1.5 meters long, it likely ... [Read More]

Feb 19th, 2026 - For the first time in 80 years, a rare and endangered marsupial has been rediscovered in Australia's Piccaninny Plains Wildlife Sanctuary at Cape York. The rare marsupial in question is the northern quoll, which has been listed as endangered by IUCN . Due to a long absence, experts assumed it had vanished from the area. However, it shocked everyone when it was detected on a motion-sensor camera at the facility. The news was made public by the establishment on January 5 through an Instagram post ... [Read More]

Feb 19th, 2026 - A fast-moving ancient crocodile ancestor gets a name honoring the physics teacher who inspired its discoverer. In the Late Triassic, some 215 million years ago, the region we now know as the southwestern United Kingdom looked nothing like the rolling green hills of today. It was a rugged, arid archipelago of limestone islands, baking under a hot sun and surrounded by subtropical seas. If you were standing on one of those ancient uplands, you might have seen a creature that defied modern ... [Read More]

Feb 18th, 2026 - Lovingly nicknamed "sea gooseberry," it glides through waters like a squishy crystal or a blimpy iridescent water balloon. It has been observed in deep ocean trenches and coastal waters across the world and has also been spotted in the Black, North, and Baltic Seas. The moment this gelatinous creature is removed from the water, it collapses almost instantly, disappearing like it never existed. For years, this made things difficult for the scientists who keenly desired to witness this creature ... [Read More]

Feb 17th, 2026 - Sometimes, new data raises more questions than it answers. In a recent study, University of Alaska Fairbanks paleontologist Matthew Wooller and his colleagues radiocarbon-dated what they thought were pieces of two mammoth vertebrae, only to get a whale of a surprise and a whole new mystery. At first glance, it looked like Wooller and his colleagues might have found evidence that mammoths lived in central Alaska just 2,000 years ago. But ancient DNA revealed that two "mammoth" bones actually ... [Read More]

Feb 17th, 2026 - New research reveals the hidden cooling system inside the horned dinosaur's massive skull. To build an absolute unit like Triceratops , nature had to get creative with the plumbing. While the dinosaur is famous for its three-horned combat stance, the internal anatomy of its skull has long remained a black box. To paleontologists, the sheer size of its head presented a massive thermal engineering problem. How do you keep a brain cool inside a giant, bony helmet? According to new research from ... [Read More]

Feb 17th, 2026 - ANGWIN, Calif. (AP) — Jessica Allen crunched through fallen leaves among Manzanita trees hunting for something few have spotted before: the Manzanita butter clump — a rare and little-known yellow mushroom found, so far, only along North America's Western coastlines. It was last seen here in California's Napa County two years ago, and Allen, a fungi scientist, was keen to find it. But within minutes, something caught her attention. She knelt, pulled a hand lens to her eye, and peered ... [Read More]

Feb 16th, 2026 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . H ave you ever wondered how an elephant can pick up something as delicate as a peanut with its massive, thick-skinned trunk? It seems a bit like trying to scoop up a single pebble with a snow shovel. Yet, elephants manage to "go from lugging logs to delicately grasping a tortilla chip" with their trunks. For proof, check out these videos from a 2017 Science study that characterized the grip forces of elephant trunk tips.   Nautilus Members ... [Read More]