Life
- Animals
Microbe lets mite dads perform virgin birth
A gender-bent mite—in which altered males give birth as virgins—turns out to be the first species discovered to live and reproduce with only one set of chromosomes.
- Animals
Fruit flies hear by spinning their noses
Drosophila have a rotating ear—and odor-sensing—structure that's new to science.
- Paleontology
Two new dinosaurs chiseled from fossil gap
A sleek predator and a pot-bellied giant dinosaur have emerged from North American rocks to fill in a 30-million-year gap in the dinosaur fossil record.
- Paleontology
Sahara yields second-largest dinosaur
Excavations near an Egyptian oasis have unearthed the fossils of an animal that probably ranks as the second-most-massive dinosaur known.
- Paleontology
Fossil footprints could be monumental
Trace fossils found in a vacant lot in a small town in Utah, including the footprints of meat-eating dinosaurs, could soon be protected as part of a new U.S. national monument.
- Paleontology
Beyond Bones
The forensic analysis of trace fossils such as footprints, nests, burrows, and even coprolites—fossilized feces—reveal subtle clues about ancient species, their behavior, and their environment.
- Ecosystems
Parrot survey finds poaching but also hope
The largest review yet of wild parrot nesting finds poaching worrisomely frequent but also sees cause for hope in the efects of a U.S. protection law.
- Paleontology
Early Mammal’s Jaw Lost Its Groove
A tiny fossil skull found in 195-million-year-old Chinese sediments provides evidence that crucial features of mammal anatomy evolved more than 45 million years earlier than previously thought.
- Ecosystems
Hurricanes’ full havoc yet to be felt
When Hurricanes Dennis, Floyd, and Irene pummelled North Carolina in the fall of 1999, they delivered a three-punch sequence that may, for years to come, disrupt fishing in the Atlantic Ocean.
- Paleontology
The Latest Pisces of an Evolutionary Puzzle
The recent discovery of coelacanths off the northeastern coast of South Africa was the first sighting of the rare fish in that country since the first living coelacanth, a type of fish thought to have been extinct for millions of years, was caught there in late 1938.
- Paleontology
Did fibers and filaments become feathers?
A variety of filamentary structures on the fossil of a small theropod dinosaur recently found in China may provide new insight into the evolution of feathers.
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