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Stories from Alex Fox

The male of a newly discovered species named Brookesia nana may be the smallest adult reptile ever found.

Chameleon Discovered in Madagascar May Be World’s Smallest Reptile

The male of the newly described species measured just half an inch long from his nose to the base of his tail

A group of perovskite solar cells that have been treated with capsaicin.

Chili Pepper Compound Increases Solar Cell Efficiency

Adding capsaicin, the chemical responsible for making chili peppers spicy, improved the efficiency of solar cells in experiments

An oceanic whitetip shark swimming in the open ocean. This species was common in the 1970s but its population has since declined by 98 percent, according to a new study.

Oceanic Sharks and Rays Have Declined 70% Since 1970

Fishing fleets have indiscriminately slaughtered sharks for decades and a new study catalogues the environmental damage done

A stream of meltwater cuts through the Greenland ice sheet.

Earth Loses 1.2 Trillion Tons of Ice Per Year, a Nearly 60% Increase From 1994

A pair of studies paint a worrying picture of accelerating ice loss around the world, with serious consequences for projections of sea level rise

Three adult gray whales photographed via drone in 2017, 2018 and 2019 in Laguna San Ignacio off the coast of Mexico. The three shots show increasingly skinny whales, a bad sign for an animal that needs to make a 10,000-mile return trip to reach its feeding grounds.

Nearly 400 Gray Whales Have Died Off the West Coast Since 2019

Scientists say the die-off, which is entering its third year, is likely due to a scarcity of food in the animals’ cold water feeding grounds

An Australian lungfish (Neoceratodus forsteri) at the Haus des Meeres in Vienna, Austria.

Australian Lungfish Has Biggest Genome Ever Sequenced

The air-breathing fish dethrones the Mexican axolotl for the title of largest known genome in the animal kingdom

Artist's rendering of blue jet lightning blasting from a storm cloud towards space. The International Space Station solar panels can be seen in the foreground.

Mysterious Blue Jet Lightning Seen From Space

Researchers captured an instance of this poorly understood type of lightning using instruments aboard the International Space Station

A paleontologist excavating a 98 million-year-old fossil which may belong to the largest land animal ever. Researchers first started unearthing the creatures remains in 2012 at the Candeleros Formation in the Neuquen River Valley, Argentina.

Dinosaur Unearthed in Argentina Could Be Largest Land Animal Ever

The skeleton is still far from complete but paleontologists say what they’ve found suggests the dinosaur may be more than 120 feet long

Silver-washed fritillary butterfly

Study Reveals the Secrets of Butterfly Flight

The fluttering insects create tiny jets of air by clapping their flexible wings together, which may help them evade predators

The SpaceX Cargo Dragon capsule separating from the International Space Station after undocking from the Harmony module’s international docking adapter.

Case of Bordeaux Wine Returns to Earth After a Year in Space

Last week a dozen bottles splashed into the Gulf of Mexico inside SpaceX’s Dragon capsule after a year aboard the International Space Station

Astronomers have discovered the oldest and most distant quasar in the universe. The quasar, named J0313-1806, formed just 670 million years after the Big Bang some 13 billion light years away.

This 13-Billion-Year-Old Supermassive Black Hole Is the Oldest Ever Found

Huge black hole is so old it offers a glimpse into the early universe, and so big it challenges ideas of how black holes form

Researchers estimate this seagrass found in the Mediterranean could trap about 867 million plastic pieces per year in coastal areas.

This Seagrass Traps Marine Plastic

Researchers find the Mediterranean species of seagrass collects plastics in fibrous balls that form from its fallen leaves

An artist's illustration of two gray wolves (lower left) vying with a pack of dire wolves for a bison carcass near the tar pits in Rancho La Brea roughly 15,000 years ago.

Dire Wolves Weren’t Actually Wolves, DNA Analysis Reveals

Ancient DNA extracted from fossils shows the beast split off from Canis lupus and coyotes nearly 6 million years ago

Category-4 Hurricane Laura hit Cameron, Louisiana on August 27, 2020 with winds up to 150 mph and storm surge in excess of 15 feet. The storm caused costly destruction along the coast and inland to the city of Lake Charles and was one of seven storms that caused more than $1 billion in damages.

U.S. Breaks Record for Billion-Dollar Climate Disasters in 2020

A total of 22 disasters caused $95 billion in total damage, reflecting climate change’s growing cost

A manatee seen underwater. These slow-moving, sea grass-munching marine mammals are incredibly docile, which leaves them vulnerable to harassment and boat propellers.

Florida Manatee Found With ‘Trump’ Written on Its Back

The threatened species faces other serious threats, including boat collisions, habitat loss and toxic algae blooms

If the platypus looks like a mixture of bird and mammal features, it's because it is.

Platypus Genes Are Just as Odd as the Creature Itself

These egg-laying, lactating animals have genes in common with mammals as well as birds

Researchers say some of this woolly rhino's internal organs may still be preserved.

Melting Russian Permafrost Yields New Woolly Rhino Specimen

Russian researchers say this may be the best-preserved woolly rhino ever found

A COVID testing site at Echo Park Stadium on December 30, 2020 in Parker, Colorado. This site is nearby Ebert County, where the first case of a COVID-19 variant that is thought to be more contagious was detected in the United States.

Colorado and California Report First U.S. Cases of Highly Contagious Covid-19 Variant

First discovered in England, the variant appears to be more transmissible but does not cause a more severe case of the disease

A new chemical process uses an iron-based catalyst to turn carbon dioxide into jet fuel. So far the process has only been proven effective in lab settings, but if researchers can scale it up it could lessen the climate impact of air travel.

Scientists Use Iron to Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Jet Fuel

If the chemical reaction at the heart of the process can be scaled up, it could help reduce the carbon footprint of air travel

A newly described python species named Messelopython freyi. The 47-million-year-old specimen is the world’s oldest known fossil record of a python.

Oldest-Ever Python Fossil Found in Europe

The 47-million-year-old snake pushes the evolutionary origins of the group back some 20 million years

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