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Science

An artistic rendering of a multituberculate mother with her litter of offspring.

Just Like Us, Jurassic Mammals Cared for Their Young

Clues from bones reveal multituberculates looked after their offspring for lengthy periods during the Age of Dinosaurs

A scary figure emerges in a doorway at Dystopia Haunted House.

Can Experiencing Horror Help Your Brain?

The “recreational fear” that arises from visiting haunted houses and watching scary movies may provide psychological benefits

A mountain lion, P-22, known to live in the Los Angeles area

L.A.’s Cougars Were Driven to Extremes by Wildfire

With less suitable habitat, the big cats traveled further and crossed dangerous roads more often

Shark skin is made of tiny, stiff segments of overlapping, textured dentin and enamel. Shark skin’s distinctive texture gives sharks greater efficiency moving through the water.

Shark Skin-Inspired Materials Have a Long Way to Go Before They Work Like the Real Thing

The predator’s distinctive texture is the envy of engineers trying to maximize hydrodynamics

Deinocheirus walks across a landscape dotted with ponds. Fossils found recently in eastern North America provide evidence that similar dinosaurs lived on our continent.

Giant Ostrich-Like Dinosaurs Once Roamed North America

Rare finds in Mississippi paint a picture of these creatures’ lost world

A yoga instructor practices a breathing exercise.

The Future of Mental Health

How Does Breathing Affect Your Brain?

Neuroscientist are piecing together how the rhythm of respiration influences everything from cognition to emotion

The first juvenile collector urchin (Tripneustes gratilla) raised from a cryopreserved embryo.

Planet Positive

A Graduate Student’s Research Could Help Stop the Spread of Invasive Seaweed in Hawai’i

For the first time, using cryopreservation to freeze sea urchin embryos may help restore coral reefs

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Can This New A.I. Tool Help Detect Blood Poisoning?

The algorithm scans electronic records and may reduce sepsis deaths, but widespread adoption could be a challenge

A golden-winged warbler perches on a branch in Minnesota. The bird’s declining population worries ornithologists.

More Than Half of U.S. Bird Populations Are Shrinking

An alarming report indicates that dozens of species are likely to become federally endangered without preventive action

Two Hadza men in Tanzania carry bows and their catch.

Our Ancestors Ate a Paleo Diet, With Carbs

A modern hunter-gatherer group known as the Hadza has taught researchers surprising things about the highly variable menu consumed by humans past

The Maka Niu, a low-cost, customizable deep-sea observing tool is currently undergoing testing around the world, including at the New England Aquarium in Boston, Massachusetts.

This Low-Cost Device Could Make the Deep Sea Accessible to Everyone

The inexpensive Maka Niu collects video and data at depths more than five times greater than trained scuba divers can go

This photo of the south end of the canal, taken in 2018, shows where the waterway met up with Little Lagoon. 

Archaeologists Dig Up 1,400-Year-Old Native American Canal in Alabama

The nearly mile-long structure allowed inhabitants to paddle to rich fishing grounds and access trade routes

An artist’s reconstruction of Scleromochlus taylori, an ancestor of pterosaurs

The Ancestors of Flying Pterosaurs Were Sleek Reptiles That Ran on the Ground

High definition scans of a fossil reveal the form of an early pterosaur relative

Photographed on September 14, 2022, 480 Otis is the reigning 2021 Fat Bear Week champion.

How the Bears at Alaska’s Katmai National Park Became Celebrities

Park officials had no idea that the installation of live nature cameras at Brooks River ten years ago would lead to the wildly successful Fat Bear Week

The project started eight years ago, when artists Heidi Quante and Alicia Escott had no words to describe the anxiety they were experiencing over California’s drought.

Art Meets Science

How Two California Artists Can Help Personalize Your Eco-Grief

Alicia Escott and Heidi Quante founded the Bureau of Linguistical Reality to create words to help describe people’s feelings about climate change

The elkhorn coral is one of the most endangered corals in the Caribbean and the Florida Keys. In Florida alone, the population is reduced by over 95 percent. A coral breeding project using elkhorn coral gametes collected in Florida and Curaçao hopes to give this species a new lease on life. 

This Moonshot for Coral Breeding Was Successful

But the coral are still in tanks, waiting to be released on reefs

A bus being treated with ultraviolet light in Shanghai, China. Although types of UV light are already in use to decontaminate vehicles and indoor spaces, the wavelengths used are dangerous to people. Researchers hope that wavelengths of far-UVC light can be used harmlessly when people are present.

Covid-19

Could UV Light Reduce the Spread of Covid-19 in Indoor Spaces?

Some wavelengths of light in a range called far-UVC kill microbes in experiments and appear to be harmless to people

Five-day-old red-eyed treefrog embryos are tightly curled inside dehydrated eggs packed closely together. It’s dry enough to make them begin to hatch early amid heating.

Panama

When the Heat Is on, Red-Eyed Treefrogs Hatch Early

The embryos make the move from clutches on leaves to rainforest ponds below

An artist’s reconstruction of Qianodus duplicis, the earliest known fish that had a mouth with teeth

Haul of Fossil Fish Pushes Back the Origin of Teeth and Jaws

The unexpected finds illustrate life during a critical and little-understood time period

A European eel swims in the Baltic Sea. 

The Utterly Engrossing Search for the Origin of Eels

To save the endangered animals, researchers have been working for decades to figure out where they reproduce

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