Nature

Spiders rely quite significantly on touch to sense the world around them. Their bodies and legs are covered in tiny hairs and slits that can distinguish between different kinds of vibrations. Prey blundering into a web makes a very different vibrational clamor from another spider coming a-wooing, or the stirring of a breeze, for example.

When the dinosaur-destroying asteroid collided with Earth 66 million years ago, massive amounts of sulfur – volumes more than were previously thought – were thrown high above land into the stratosphere, a new study finds. Once airborne, this vast cloud of sulfur-bearing gases blocked the Sun and cooled Earth for decades to centuries, then fell

Most life on Earth can be broadly split into oxygen consumers and oxygen producers. This delicate balance of givers and takers keeps the concentration of oxygen in our planet’s atmosphere around 21 percent. And, yet, that wasn’t always the case. In the first few billion years of Earth’s existence, oxygen was relatively scarce. Then, out

Human activities are pushing plants and animals to extinction at a sickening rate. From habitat loss, overfishing and poaching, to global heating and pollution, species are dying out faster than we can comprehend. A new study by conservation ecologist Haydee Hernandez-Yanez and two colleagues from Alexander Center for Applied Population Biology at Lincoln Park Zoo

Researchers digging in Peru’s Ocucaje desert have uncovered the skull of an enormous marine predator thought to be the ancestor of modern whales and dolphins. Four feet long (1.2 meters) and lined with knife-like teeth, the skull appears to be a new species of Basilosaurus – a genus of ferocious marine mammals that lived some 36 million

Being able to tell the difference between a photo of something and the actual thing itself – picture-to-object equivalence, in science speak – is a useful test for better understanding the visual and cognitive function of other primates, birds, and even rats. But how far does this ability to interpret a flat image extend in

A staggeringly terrible ecological disaster is on the way, researchers are warning: Invasive insects set to kill somewhere in the region of 1.4 million trees across the United States in the next three decades. The main driver of this devastation is the emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis), predicted to be responsible for 90 percent of

When Chilean scientist Osvaldo Ulloa led an expedition 8,000 meters under the sea to an area where no human had ever been, his team discovered microscopic organisms that generated more questions than answers. The January submarine expedition dove into the Atacama Trench, created by the meeting of two tectonic plates in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

We just received more evidence that life on Earth may have started with RNA, with scientists in Japan creating RNA that can replicate, diversify, and develop complexity all on its own. Long before Earth had its first budding cells of primordial ooze, it was awash with a churning organic soup that sat on the brink

As the full Moon rises, so too does the Northern black swift (Cypseloides niger borealis). When this little bird migrates from the Rocky Mountains to the Amazon rainforest, researchers have found it uses moonlight to regain its energy. In periods around the full moon, tiny trackers and sensors attached to Northern swifts show them regularly

Authorities lifted a tsunami advisory and electricity was restored after a powerful 7.4-magnitude quake jolted northeastern Japan on Wednesday night in waters near the site of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. At least one person died in the coastal city of Soma and dozens more were injured in the quake, local news agency Kyodo reported, as

If you’ve ever lived with a cat, you’ve probably received a painful chomp from your beloved furball’s pointy canines at least once. But 42 million years ago, your kitty’s teeth would have looked very different: Evolution was only just honing the teeth of cat-like animals to a deadly sharp tip for piercing and shredding flesh.

Dogs might not be able to recognize themselves in a mirror, but that doesn’t mean our pets don’t have some level of self-awareness. Recent research has shown dogs can recognize the unique smell of their own odor, sort of like looking in an ‘olfactory mirror’, and in 2021, a study found they might also have

A new species of giant tortoise has been discovered in the Galapagos after DNA testing found animals living on one island had not yet been recorded, Ecuador’s environment ministry said. Researchers compared the genetic material of tortoises currently living on San Cristobal with bones and shells collected in 1906 from a cave in the island’s

As scientists continue to discover more about the brain and how it works, it can help to know just how much brain matter is required to perform certain functions – and to be able to make complex decisions, it turns out just 302 neurons may be required. That’s based on a new study looking at

Indoor air quality can be significantly improved by houseplants, new research has shown – specifically in terms of removing nitrogen dioxide (NO2) from the air, a pollutant created from fuel burning that’s been linked to respiratory disease. Potted plants are simple to install, affordable to buy, and potentially a genuinely effective option when it comes

Earth’s interior is not a uniform stack of layers. Deep in its thick middle layer lie two colossal blobs of thermo-chemical material. To this day, scientists still don’t know where both of these colossal structures came from or why they have such different heights, but a new set of geodynamic models has landed on a possible answer

An enormous impact crater, hiding deep beneath Greenland’s Hiawatha glacier, is probably the result of a kilometer-wide asteroid that crashed into Earth 58 million years ago. That’s much older than scientists presumed – roughly eight million years after the infamous impact that killed off most dinosaurs. When the Hiawatha crater was first discovered in 2015,

Having never evolved wings, many species of spider instead evolved an uncanny ability to take to the skies using nothing more than a few short threads of gossamer dangling from their dainty butts. Just how this invertebrate answer to paragliding works has never been entirely clear, though historically biologists have assumed it probably has something

The Cambrian Explosion – around 541 million years ago – was when life and organisms really got going on planet Earth. Now new research has revealed how that explosion of life has left behind traces deep within Earth’s mantle. For scientists, it shows the connected interplay between Earth’s surface and what lies beneath, as sediments

It’s been rumored that sharks don’t sleep at all; the fact some sharks must stay on the move to facilitate their breathing has contributed to this idea. A new study, however, finally confirms what anecdotal evidence and other research have long suggested – these animals do slumber, just as we do. “We have provided the

Your pet’s dinner may contain endangered shark – even if the ingredients on the label don’t explicitly include “shark”, a recent analysis of commercially produced pet foods has found. Pet foods often describe their ocean-sourced ingredients with generic terms such as “fish”, “white fish”, “white bait”, or “ocean fish” and researchers wondered if genetic testing

An exceptional fossil unearthed in Montana has given us the earliest known ancestor of vampire squids and octopuses. The cephalopod, belonging to the vampyropod or octopodiform superorder, pushes back the age of the group by about 82 million years. This challenges our understanding that octopuses evolved from a Triassic ancestor. Fascinatingly, it has not eight, but

Pack hunting spiders exist in places other than your nightmares. While most spiders enjoy solitary lives, 20 of the roughly 50,000 known spider species live in colonies. One species, Anelosimus eximius, lives in extremely large colonies of up to 1,000 individual spiders that work together to build webs spanning several meters. When prey falls into their web,

People have been trying to understand how predators and prey are able to stay balanced within our planet’s ecosystems for at least 2,400 years. The Greek author Herodotus even raised the question in his historical treatise Histories, written around 430 BC. And when Charles Darwin published in 1859 his revolutionary theory of evolution in On

California is a land divided by a 1,287-kilometer-long (800 miles) rupture known as the San Andreas Fault. Running north to south through the state close to several major cities, it has been responsible for some of the US’s most devastating earthquakes. There are regions in the state’s heart that haven’t experienced the fault’s full fury,

We have a salt problem, and we’re not referring to our diets. As effective as salt is at de-icing our highways in the winter, new research reveals that its extensive use is also causing damage to freshwater ecosystems. What’s more, saltwater concentrations deemed safe by regulators in the US, Canada, and Europe aren’t doing enough

Say hello to the Jorō spider (Trichonephila clavata), an arachnid you’re likely to be seeing a lot more of in the future if you live on the East Coast of the US. New research suggests the distinctive black-and-yellow creature – currently flourishing in the state of Georgia – is unlikely to face any barriers in

A thorough review of 300 years of research, and an exceptionally preserved fossil, have given us what paleontologists say is the most up-to-date reconstruction yet of an ancient beast. Living alongside dinosaurs during the Mesozoic Era, ichthyosaurs were marine reptiles that swam and hunted in Earth’s oceans. Resembling reptilian dolphins, these fascinating animals thrived for

Early Earth is often described as ‘Hadean’ for good reason. Arising from the ashes of a collision that gave us our Moon, the primordial eon was characterized by hellish heat trapped beneath a thick blanket of carbon dioxide and water vapor.  Strangely those conditions should have been inhospitable for far longer than they were. By

Unnerving images of a mummified shark that looks like a zombie, as well as other dead and decaying sea creatures, have been captured in eerie new footage of an abandoned aquarium. The spooky viral video was taken by a pair of “urban explorers” who broke into the unnamed aquarium in Spain. The video was posted

A newly discovered fossilized stegosaur found in China is the most ancient ever found in Asia, and could be the oldest in the world. Treading the Earth some 170 million years ago, during the Middle Jurassic Bajocian age, the beastie was also small for a stegosaur, measuring just 2.8 meters (just over 9 feet) from

Grains of sand on a beach can tell us more than you might think about the history of the planet, new research reveals – something to think about the next time you’re heading to the coast for a swim or splash around. Scientists have developed a new metric to determine what they call the “age

A towering colossus and predatory beast, the comically tiny-armed Tyrannosaurus rex is perhaps the most iconic of all prehistoric predators. Its place in the popular imagination is mirrored in academia, with researchers investigating everything from how it walked, to how it mated, to how many there even were. Despite abundant research into the genus Tyrannosaurus, all adult specimens

Patagonian ice fields are among some of the fastest-melting glaciers on the planet. As these glaciers disappear, the earth that once lay beneath them is rebounding upwards at rates much faster than expected. Now, scientists have worked out a gap in tectonic plates that began forming some 18 million years ago underneath now-shrinking ice fields

A crescent-shaped crater in Northeast China holds the record as the largest impact crater on Earth that formed in the last 100,000 years. Prior to 2020, the only other impact crater ever discovered in China was found in Xiuyan county of the coastal province of Liaoning, according to a statement from the NASA Earth Observatory. Then,

The Red Sea has been hiding powerful geological forces that could put communities on the coast of Egypt and Saudi Arabia at risk. The thought hit Sam Purkis like a wave, as he gazed out the window of a submarine 900 meters deep (3,000 feet) in Tiran Strait. There, in the light of the vehicle’s

We humans are versatile and accomplished navigators, but insects might have navigation skills that are even better. For them, it’s literally a matter of life and death – and that’s why we decided to freeze some ants and beetles (don’t worry, they still survived) to learn more about how they remember their way home after

The loss of a beloved canine companion is devastating, and new research shows that you might not be the only one feeling it. Any other dogs in your family could also go through mourning, as indicated by their behavior. A survey of 426 multiple-dog owners in Italy revealed that, when one dog in the family

When it comes to longevity and surviving extended amounts of time without food, the Argas brumpti species of African tick is hard to beat, newly published research shows. Observed close-up in the lab over the course of 45 years by entomologist Julian Shepherd from Binghamton University in New York, some of these ticks have survived as

The Chicxulub asteroid that ended the reign of the dinosaurs is one of the most momentous impact disasters in Earth’s history, and scientists have now identified the time of year when this deadly event took place. New evidence suggests the asteroid hit in the spring for the Northern Hemisphere, which would be fall (or autumn) for

During low tide on Scotland’s Isle of Skye, a graduate student hunting for dinosaur bones looked down at the coastal rocks and made the discovery of a lifetime: the remains of the largest pterosaur on record from the Jurassic period. Since collecting the specimen in 2017 – an eventful excavation that involved cutting out the

A low-lying continent that existed some 40 million years ago and was home to exotic fauna may have “paved the way” for Asian mammals to colonize southern Europe, new research suggests. Wedged between Europe, Africa and Asia, this forgotten continent – which researchers have dubbed “Balkanatolia” – became a gateway between Asia and Europe when

When we attached tiny, backpack-like tracking devices to five Australian magpies for a pilot study, we didn’t expect to discover an entirely new social behavior rarely seen in birds. Our goal was to learn more about the movement and social dynamics of these highly intelligent birds, and to test these new, durable and reusable devices.

Paleontologists in Argentina have identified a new species of dinosaur which likely had such feeble forearms, it would make Tyrannosaurus rex look like Popeye in comparison. The dinosaur, named Guemesia ochoai and identified from a single skull, is thought to belong to a clade of tiny-armed carnivores known as abelisaurids, which once tramped across Europe, Africa, South

Photosynthesis quite literally changed our world. Plants ‘eating’ sunlight and ‘breathing out’ oxygen transformed Earth’s entire atmosphere into the one we now breathe, and fuel our ecosystems with energy. Now researchers have caught a cunning species of bacteria with stolen photosynthesizing technology. And their molecular, light-eating device is unlike any we’ve ever seen. “The architecture

Earth’s last major ice age locked up gargantuan amounts of water in vast glaciers. Once they melted, it was a spectacle to behold as tremendous floods gouged channels into the face of the planet. The remnants of one of the largest of these ancient deluges are still visible in eastern Washington, in an area now

It’s a common pattern during hunting season in the winter: Hunters shoot elk or deer, then eagles scavenge the waste.  That scavenged meal may have deadly consequences for eagles, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science. The researchers detected high rates of lead poisoning among the two most common types of eagles in the