One of the first questions scientists ask when a new disease appears is, “Where did this come from?” Many viruses jump from animals to humans, a phenomenon known as “zoonotic spillover.” Although it remains unclear which animal was the source…
This is how the ancient humans may have discovered the elephant’s carcass on a lake shore at what is now Schöningen, Germany. Archaeologists have discovered the nearly complete skeleton of an enormous, now-extinct elephant that lived about 300,000 years ago…
Two white dots (circled in red) are actually a new species of parasitic fungus that lives on American millipedes. Researchers named it in honor of Twitter. Researchers have discovered a parasitic fungus that sucks nutrients out of the reproductive organs…
In this artist’s depiction of life 77 million years ago in Alberta, Canada, the tyrannosaur Daspletosaurus hunts a young horned Spinops. An adult Spinops tries to interfere, and a Coronosaurus watches from a distance. Tyrannosaurus rex may have been the…
A Madagascan marbled praying mantis grabs at a dangling fly. New slow-motion video shows how praying mantises snatch their prey with lightning-fast, deadly precision. Though these strikes are completed in microseconds, the long-armed predators calibrate their attacks even more quickly…
The baby hippo is mama Mabel’s first calf. The San Diego Zoo recently announced its newest (and arguably cutest) arrival: a newborn male pygmy hippo, born on April 9 to its 4-year-old pygmy hippo mama Mabel. Within hours of birth,…
The U.S. launched espionage satellites during the Cold War to locate Soviet missile sites, but in doing so, they also captured photos of animals and their historic habitats, Science magazine reported. Now, scientists have put these 1960s snapshots to new…
Bones found in Tanque Loma represent 22 sloths; adults and juveniles. During the Ice Age, a group of giant ground sloths died together after swallowing their own feces in a contaminated pool of shallow water. Scientists discovered the bones of…
A still from a video fly-through of the brain map shows a slice of mouse brain. No, you’re not looking at a psychedelic Millennium Falcon: This flickering, ghostly image is the most detailed view of a mouse brain ever seen.…
A magnified image showing the damaged head and body of the fish, with the arms of the squid-like creature clamped around it. An ancient squid-like creature with 10 arms covered in hooks had just crushed the skull of its prey…
The Great Lakes — Superior, Huron, Michigan, Ontario and Erie — make up the largest body of fresh water on Earth, accounting for one-fifth of the freshwater surface on the planet at 6 quadrillion gallons. The area of all the…
Vespa mandarinia, or Asian giant hornets, as also known as “yak-killer hornets,” “murder hornets,” and “hornets from hell.” Massive, deadly hornets affectionately known as “murder hornets” “hornets from hell” and “yak-killer hornets,” have been spotted in the U.S. for the…