Volcanoes and earthquakes are among Earth’s most dynamic and interesting forces, but their origins have remained a bit elusive. Plate tectonics are the result of a cosmic collision about 4.5 billion years ago, when an object about the size of the planet Mars slammed into Earth. The impact left behind some strange blobs within our planet that may have created plate tectonics, according to new computer modeling research. This new hypothesis is described in a study published May 7 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

What are these mystery blobs?

In the 1980s, geophysicists first discovered two continent-sized blobs of an unusual material deep near the center of the Earth. One blob is located beneath the Pacific Ocean and the other is under the African continent. Both are twice the size of our moon. They are so large that if they were placed on Earth’s surface, they would make a layer roughly 60 miles thick around the planet.

Formally known as large low-velocity provinces (LLVPs), they are also likely built of different proportions of elements than the mantle that surrounds them. A 2023 paper published in the journal Nature proposed that they are the remains of an ancient planet called Theia that collided with Earth in the same massive impact that created the moon. The study suggests that most of Theia was absorbed into our young planet, forming the LLVP blobs. The residual debris formed the moon. 

[Related: Earth’s first continent? Probably a giant continental crust.]

“The moon appears to have materials within it representative of both the pre-impact Earth and Theia, but it was thought that any remnants of Theia in the Earth would have been ‘erased’ and homogenized by billions of years of dynamics (e.g., mantle convection) within the Earth,” Arizona State University astrophysicist and co-author of the Nature study Steven Desch said in a statement. “This is the first study to make the case that distinct ‘pieces’ of Theia still reside within the Earth, at its core-mantle boundary.”

The study posits that these blobs themselves then created our planet’s plate tectonics, which allowed life to flourish. 

A new look at some very old minerals

This new paper builds on that study. Using computer modeling, they determined that around 200 million years after the impact with Theia, the submerged LLVP blobs may have helped create the hot plumes inside Earth that disrupted the surface. They breached the flat crust and allowed circular slabs to sink down in a process called subduction.

According to the team, it may explain why the Earth’s oldest minerals are zircon crystals that appear to have undergone subduction over 4 billion years ago and may have contributed to plate tectonics. 

[Related: How old is Earth? It’s a surprisingly tough question to answer.]

“The giant impact is not only the reason for our moon, if that’s the case, it also set the initial conditions of our Earth,” California Institute of Technology geoscientists and study co-author Qian Yuan told The Washington Post. 

The model raised numerous questions for some outside geologists, including whether or not the collision would have resulted in a recycling of Earth’s entire crust instead of plate tectonics. This process potentially occurred on our sister planet Venus billions of years ago. There are also some geochemical inconsistencies that cast doubt on the planet smashing theory as a whole, according to some scientists.

Are plate tectonics really necessary for life?

While they can be destructive to both property and lives, some scientists believe that plate tectonics helps Earth keep up the carbon cycle. This process moves carbon between microbes, plants, minerals, animals, and Earth’s atmosphere. The fourth most abundant element in the universe, carbon can also form the complex molecules on Earth like DNA and proteins. These building blocks of carbon make life on Earth possible. 

However, another study published last year in Nature posits that mobile plate tectonics was not happening on Earth about 3.9 billion years ago when the first traces of life appeared on Earth. 

[Related: Your ancestors might have been Martians.]

“We found there wasn’t plate tectonics when life is first thought to originate and that there wasn’t plate tectonics for hundreds of millions of years after,” University of Rochester paleogeologist John Tarduno said in a statement. “Our data suggests that when we’re looking for exoplanets that harbor life, the planets do not necessarily need to have plate tectonics.”

What is clear is that concrete answers to the question of how, when, and why life first emerged on our planet and what role the shifting plates played or didn’t play will endure. 

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Sperm whales have their own unique cultures, accents, and potentially a phonetic alphabet. A team from MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) may have decoded this phonetic alphabet that reveals sophisticated structures within sperm whale communication that could be similar to human phonetics and other animal linguistic systems. 

“Sperm whale calls are, in principle, capable of expressing a wider space of meanings than we previously thought!” MIT computer science graduate student Pratyusha Sharma tells PopSci. Sharma is a co-author of a new study published May 7 in the journal Nature Communications that describes these findings. 

Sperm whale ABCs

With some of the largest brains of any species on Earth, sperm whales have complex social behaviors. They travel in pods and have various cultural groups that dive and hunt together and even take turns looking after younger whales. They do this all in almost complete darkness, so they need strong communication to coordinate their lives in the ocean’s deepest depths.

[Related: Science Says Sperm Whales Could Really Wreck Ships.]

Sperm whales use a complex system of codas–short bursts of clicks–to communicate. In this study, the team collected 9,000 codas from sperm whale families in the Eastern Caribbean sperm observed by The Dominica Sperm Whale Project. They used acoustic biologging tags, called D-tags that were deployed on whales. The D-tags captured details of the whales’ vocal patterns. 

The team found that these short groups of clicks vary in structure depending on the conversational context. With this data in hand, they used a mix of algorithms for pattern recognition and classification, and on-body recording equipment. It revealed that the communications were not random or simple, but more structured and complex. 

The sperm whale’s essentially have their own phonetic alphabet. Various auditory elements that the team call rhythm, tempo, rubato, and ornamentation work together to form a large array of distinguishable codas. Depending on the context of the conversation, the whales can systematically modulate certain aspects of their codas. They may smoothly vary the duration of the calls–rubato–or add in some extra ornamental clicks. The team also found that the building blocks of these codas could be combined in various ways. The whales can then build many distinct vocalizations from these combinations. 

“The sperm whale communication system is a combinatorial coding system,” says Sharma. “Looking at a wider communicative context allowed us to discover that there is fine-grained variation in the structure of the calls of sperm whales that are both perceived and imitated in the course of their exchange.”

Using AI

The team developed new visualization and data analysis techniques that found individual sperm whales could emit various coda patterns in long exchanges. Using machine learning is important for pinpointing the specifics of their communications and predicting what they may say next. 

[Related: How bomb detectors discovered a hidden pod of singing blue whales.]

Scientists are interested in determining if these signals vary depending on the ecological context they are given in and how much the signals follow any potential rules similar to grammar that the listeners recognize. 

“The problem is particularly challenging in the case of marine mammals, because scientists usually cannot see their subjects or identify in complete detail the context of communication,” University of Pennsylvania Psychology Professor Emeritus Robert Seyfarth said in a statement. “Nonetheless, this paper offers new, tantalizing details of call combinations and the rules that underlie them in sperm whales.” Seyfarth was not involved in this study.

Alien communication on Earth

In future studies, CETI hopes to figure out whether elements like rhythm, tempo, ornamentation, and rubato carry specific intentions when communicated. This could provide insight into a specific linguistic phenomenon where simple elements are combined to present complex meanings. This “duality of patterning” was previously thought to be unique to human language. 

Research like this also parallels hypothetical scenarios in which humans contact alien species and need to communicate. 

“It’s about understanding a species with a completely different environment and communication protocols, where their interactions are distinctly different from human norms,” says Sharma. “Essentially, our work could lay the groundwork for deciphering how an ‘alien civilization’ might communicate, providing insights into creating algorithms or systems to understand entirely unfamiliar forms of communication.”

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It’s baby Peregrine falcon season on a California island best known for its swift currents, cold water, and notorious prisoners. A new live webcam allows viewers to watch four recently hatched peregrine falcon chicks on Alcatraz Island. The camera was set up by the National Park Service (NPS) and Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. The fixed-angle webcam provides high-definition images even at night. The livestream is also equipped with a 12-hour cache so that visitors can catch-up on allowing viewers to catch up.

The nest is the handiwork of a female falcon named Larry, short for Lawrencium. Larry hatched on the University of California, Berkeley’s bell tower in 2018. To track Larry’s progress in the wild, biologists placed a band on her leg when she was a chick. By 2020, Larry and her unnamed male partner were spotted breeding on Alcatraz Island. They were tucked away with their young in a natural cave called an eyrie on the western side of the island. According to the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, this was the first time that Peregrines had ever been recorded nesting on Alcatraz. The duo welcomed four chicks in April 2023, matching their four for this year. 

Biologists say that the goal of the livestream is to “share this incredible view of a wild peregrine falcon nest with the world.”

“I hope this livestream generates appreciation for Peregrine falcons and sparks viewers’ interest in the other bird life found on Alcatraz as well,” Alcatraz Island biologist Lidia D’Amico said in a statement.

[Related: Thriving baby California condor is a ray of hope for the unique species.]

While best known for its now-closed prison, Alcatraz Island has been a sanctuary for birds for years.  It’s home to loud Western Gulls, large Black-crowned Night-Herons, speedy Anna’s Hummingbirds, and more. According to the NPS, Peregrine falcons like Larry are the apex predators of the island who can be seen preying on other avians, including songbirds, shorebirds, ducks. This behavior is an important reminder that the falcons are wild animals. Parts of the popular island are closed from the months of February to September to allow for nesting and protecting the birds.

Peregrine falcons are the largest falcons in North America, with an impressive 39 to 43-inch wingspan. They are known for their spectacular dives called stoops. Urban-dwelling Peregrines fly high above their intended prey–usually pigeons–before they stoop and strike the bird in mid-air. This sharp blow is fatal and scientists estimate diving Peregrine falcons can reach speeds of over 200 miles per hour.  

[Related: Sadly, these live-streamed bald eagle eggs likely won’t hatch.]

Despite being such fearsome predators, their populations nationwide were once driven to the brink of extinction. They were federally listed as endangered in 1973. Organic pollutants, particularly the synthetic insecticide DDT, severely thinned their egg shells. DDT was banned in 1972 and Peregrine falcons were officially removed from the endangered species list in 1999.

“This impressive bird has long been noted for its speed, grace, and aerial skills,” the National Park Service says. “Now, it is also a symbol of America’s recovering threatened and endangered species.”

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Despite being Earth’s sister planet in terms of size, Venus is pretty parched compared to our watery world. New computer simulations may hold clues about exactly how our neighbor became so dry. 

Hydrogen atoms in the planet’s atmosphere may fling off into space due to a dissociative recombination–where electrons are removed. Venus may be losing roughly twice as much water every day than previous estimates. The findings are detailed in a study published May 6 in the journal Nature and may help explain what happens to water on other planets in our home galaxy.

“Water is really important for life,” study co-author and University of Colorado Boulder astrophysicist Eryn Cangi said in a statement. “We need to understand the conditions that support liquid water in the universe, and that may have produced the very dry state of Venus today.”

The mystery of the missing water

The Earth is roughly 71 percent water. If you took all of that water and spread it across the planet, you’d get a liquid layer about 1.9 miles deep. If you did the same thing on Venus, you would get a layer that is only 1.2 inches deep. 

“Venus has 100,000 times less water than the Earth, even though it’s basically the same size and mass,” study co-author and astrophysicist Michael Chaffin said in a statement. 

[Related: A private company wants to look for life just above Venus.]

However, the planet was not always such a desert. Scientists believe that billions of years ago when Venus was forming, it got about as much water as Earth. At some point, clouds of carbon dioxide in Venus’ atmosphere essentially turned the planet into a greenhouse. The trapping of carbon dioxide raised surface temperatures to 900 degrees Fahrenheit. All of Venus’ water evaporated into steam and most drifted into space. 

That ancient evaporation even still isn’t enough to explain Venus is as dry as it is warm or how it continues to lose water into space. 

“As an analogy, say I dumped out the water in my water bottle. There would still be a few droplets left,” Chaffin said. 

What’s kicking out the hydrogen?

To try to determine why Venus is so dry, the team on this study used computer models to look at the different chemical reactions occuring in the planet’s swirling atmosphere. 

“We’re trying to figure out what little changes occurred on each planet to drive them into these vastly different states,” said Cangi.

They found that a molecule made up of one atom each of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen called HCO+ may be causing the planet to leak water.

[Related: Something is making Venus’s clouds less acidic.]

In a planet’s upper atmosphere, water mixes with carbon dioxide to form these HCO+ molecules. Earlier studies found that HCO+ may also be the reason why Mars lost a large amount of its original water.

On Venus, HCO+ is constantly produced in its atmosphere, but the individual hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen atoms don’t survive very long. The electrons in the atmosphere find the atoms, recombine, and then split them in two. When this happens, the hydrogen atoms zip away and may completely escape into space. It eventually is stealing one of the two components needed for water away from Venus. The team calculated that the only way to explain Venus’ dry state was if the planet had higher than expected volumes of HCO+ in its atmosphere. 

Probing Venus

Scientists have never observed HCO+ around Venus. The team believes that is because they’ve never had instruments that can properly look for the ion. None of the spacecraft that have visited Venus–including NASA’s Mariner 2, the European Space Agency’s Venus Express, or Japan’s Akatsuki and others—have carried instruments that could detect HCO+.

“One of the surprising conclusions of this work is that HCO+ should actually be among the most abundant ions in the Venus atmosphere,” Chaffin said.

[Related: We finally know why Venus is absolutely radiant.]

By the end of this decade, NASA plans to drop a probe through Venus’ atmosphere down to the surface during its DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gasses, Chemistry, and Imaging) mission. While it won’t be able to detect HCO+, the team is hopeful that a future Venus mission might reveal another clue to the mystery of Venus’ missing water.  

“There haven’t been many missions to Venus,” Cangi said. “But newly planned missions will leverage decades of collective experience and a flourishing interest in Venus to explore the extremes of planetary atmospheres, evolution and habitability.”

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Despite the reputation for being the trash pandas of the bird world, seagulls are kind of the masters of evolution. They can survive and thrive alongside humans, have a remarkable memory, and some have been observed using pieces of food to bait fish the way primates use tools. The seagull species that have bigger brains that are also more likely to nest on coastal cliffs may also be better adapted to breed in urban environments. 

A study published April 25 in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution found that more than half of cliff-nesting gull species that also nest in cities and towns have bigger brains. Species such as the Herring Gull, the Lesser Black-backed Gull, and the Black-legged Kittiwake potentially have a behavioral flexibility that allows them to nest in more challenging locations like rooftops.

“Many people will be familiar with gulls nesting and foraging in urban areas,” Madeleine Goumas, study co-author and a postdoctoral researcher specializing in herring gulls at the University of Exeter in England, said in a statement. “It’s not something you might expect from a seabird, so we wanted to try to understand why they do it.”

[Related: Seagulls hunger for food touched by human hands.]

In the study, the team combed through various research databases to find records of urban breeding and foraging among gulls and data on brain size by species. They then mapped a range of the different species present. 

Out of 50 gull species, 13 were recorded as using urban areas to breed, while 13 were recorded using urban areas to forage for food. Nine species bred and fed in more building-heavy environments. 

When they compared the figures for breeding with the birds’ known habits and brain size, they found that 10 out of the 19 cliff-nesting gull species (53 percent) also nested in urban areas. Only three out of 28 (11 percent) of generally non-cliff-nesting species nested in both spaces. 

[Related: The birds of summer patrolling Ocean City’s boardwalk.]

“We found that gull species with larger brains are more likely to be cliff-nesters, and cliff-nesting species are more likely to breed in urban areas,” study co-author and University of Exeter evolutionary biologist Neeltje Boogert said in a statement. “We also found that cliff-nesting is probably not something that was shared by the ancestor of gulls, so it is a relatively recent adaptation.”

They also point out that this is not a fixed or instinctive behavior in most gulls. The non-cliff-nesting gull species nest exclusively on the ground, most most traditionally cliff-nesting species can nest in both spaces. 

“This suggests that bigger brains enable these gull species to be flexible with regard to where they choose to nest, and this allows them to use unconventional sites, like buildings, for raising their young,” said Goumas.

[Related: Piping plovers are in trouble, but there’s some good news.]

In terms of foraging, the researchers found that neither brain size nor the shape of their wing were good indicators of seagull behavior in urban environments. The team also looked at the status of the gulls on the International Union on Conservation of Nature’s Red List. The gulls with stable or increasing populations were more than twice as likely to be observed using urban habitats than the species that are decreasing. Of the 10 Threatened or Near Threatened species, only the Black-legged Kittiwake was known to use urban spaces.

Observing how gull species function in populated areas with humans and buildings is important for conservation. Seeing what factors allow some to survive and thrive while others do not can inform why some aren’t faring as well. 

“Urbanization is a major problem for a lot of animals,” said Goumas. “It looks like some gull species have managed to overcome some of the challenges that prevent other animals from using urban areas, but we need more long-term studies as well as comparative studies on other taxa to fully understand the impacts of urban living.”

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A newly discovered asteroid is a toddler–in space years. The moonlet circling the small asteroid Dinkinesh named Selam is about 2 to 3 million years old. Scientists arrived at this age estimate using new calculation methods that are described in a study published April 19 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Selam is nicknamed “Lucy’s baby,” after NASA’s Lucy spacecraft discovered it orbiting another asteroid in November 2023. The Lucy mission is the first set to explore the Trojan asteroids. These are a group of about 7,000 primitive space rocks orbiting Jupiter. Lucy is expected to provide the first high-resolution images of these space rocks. Dinkinesh and Selam are located in the Main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Discovering a tiny moonlet was a surprise. According to study co-author and Cornell University aerospace engineering doctoral student Colby Merrill, Selem turned out to be “an extraordinarily unique and complex body.” Selem is a contact binary that consists of two lobes that are piles of rubble stuck together and is the first of this kind of asteroid ever observed. Scientists believe that Selam was formed from surface material ejected by Dinkinesh’s rapid spinning.

[Related: NASA spacecraft Lucy says hello to ‘Dinky’ asteroid on far-flying mission.]

“Finding the ages of asteroids is important to understanding them, and this one is remarkably young when compared to the age of the solar system, meaning it formed somewhat recently,” Merrill said in a statement. “Obtaining the age of this one body can help us to understand the population as a whole.”

To estimate its age, the team studied how Dinkinesh and Selam moved in space–or its dynamics. Binary asteroids like this pair are engaged in a galactic tug-of-war. Gravity that is acting on the objects is making them physically bulge and results in tides similar to what oceans on Earth have. The tides slowly reduce the system’s energy. At the same time, the sun’s radiation also changes the binary system’s energy. This solar change is known as the Binary Yarkovsky-O’Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack (BYORP) effect. The system will eventually reach an equilibrium, where tides and BYORP are equally strong.

Assuming that the forces between the two were at equilibrium and plugging in asteroid data from the Lucy mission, the team calculated how long it would have taken for Selam to get to its current state after it formed. The team said that they improved preexisting equations that assumed both bodies in a binary system are equally dense and did not factor in the secondary body’s mass. Their computers simulations ran about 1 million calculations with varying parameters and found a median age of 3 million years old, with 2 million being the most likely result. This calculation also agreed with one made by the Lucy mission based on a more traditional method for dating asteroids based on an analysis of their surface craters. 

According to the team, studying asteroids this way does not require a spacecraft like Lucy to take close-up images, thus saving money. It could be more accurate in cases where an asteroid’s surfaces have undergone recent changes from space travel. Since roughly 15 percent of all near-Earth asteroids are binary systems this method can also be used to study other secondary bodies like the moonlet Dimorphos. NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into Dimorphos to test out planetary defense technology in September 2022.

[Related: NASA’s asteroid blaster turned a space rock into an ‘oblong watermelon.’]

“Used in tandem with crater counting, this method could help better constrain a system’s age,” study co-author and Cornell University astronomy doctoral student Alexia Kubas said in a statement. “If we use two methods and they agree with each other, we can be more confident that we’re getting a meaningful age that describes the current state of the system.”

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With a hollow center, 12 sides, and no known uses, Roman dodecahedrons remain one of the great enigmas in archeology. They don’t appear to be used for grooming or personal pleasure  and only 33 of these objects have been uncovered in Great Britain’s Roman ruins. A recent discovery in eastern England is now making a splash in the Roman dodecahedron stud world. The Norton Disney Dodecahedron is of the largest and newest Gallo Roman Dodecahedrons ever found and is currently on display at the National Civil War Centre, Newark Museum in Newark, England. It will also be featured in an exhibit beginning on Saturday May 4 at the Lincoln Museum in Lincoln, England. 

The strange object was discovered by a group of amateur archeologists in June 2023 in the village of Norton Disney in the Midlands of eastern England. The mysterious object was sitting among the ruins of a Roman pit and was likely placed there about 1,700 years ago. It was found “in situ,” or deliberately placed among 4th Century CE Roman pottery in some sort of hole or quarry. More archeological excavation is needed to clarify exactly what this pit was used for. 

[Related: This ancient Roman villa was equipped with wine fountains.]

The cast bronze object is hollow at its middle and is about the size of a clenched fist. It has 12 flat faces that are shaped like pentagons. Each face has a hole in various sizes and all 20 corners have a knob. At about three inches tall and half a pound, it is one of the largest of these mysterious Roman objects ever discovered. 

According to the Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group, it is considered a copper alloy object that is made up of 75 percent copper, seven percent tin, and 18 percent lead. It is also the only example of one of these objects found in England’s Midlands and is an example of very fine craftsmanship.

Lorena Hitchens, an archaeologist specializing in Roman dodecahedrons, told The Washington Post, that “it’s a really good dodecahedron,” after examining the object. Preliminary dating estimates believe that it was crafted sometime between 43 and 410 CE, during the later Roman period. 

Even with such a solid find, historians and archeologists are still not sure exactly what these unique objects were used for.

“The imagination races when thinking about what the Romans may have used it for. Magic, rituals or religion–we perhaps may never know,” Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group  secretary Richard Parker told the BBC.

Known Roman literature does not have any descriptions or drawings of dodecahedra. The objects were not of a standard size, so the Norton Disney group does not believe they were used to take measurements. They also do not have signs of wear and tear the way blades do, so they were not tools.

“A huge amount of time, energy and skill was taken to create our dodecahedron, so it was not used for mundane purposes, especially when alternative materials are available that would achieve the same purpose,” the Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group wrote in a statement. 

[Related: The Roman Britons cared a lot about hair removal, and it shows in artifacts.]

There are 130 known examples of these objects that have been uncovered from the rest of the vast Roman world. Most have been found in north and western Roman provinces near the Alps of modern day France and Germany. There are 33 known examples of Roman dodecahedrons that have been excavated in Britain. This particular example was found near the where a statue of a mounted horseman deity was found in 1989

“Roman society was full of superstition, something experienced on a daily basis,” wrote Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group. “A potential link with local religious practice is our current working theory. More investigation is required though.”

The group will return to the trench the dodecahedron was found in sometime this year to resume excavations.

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NASA has big plans for space farms and there are plenty of ideas from astrobiologists for what the best crops to grow on Mars could be. To best optimize these future extraterrestrial farms, scientists are also exploring what planting methods could boost potential crop yields on the Red Planet. Some new experiments with tomato, carrot, and pea plants found that growing different crops mixed together could boost yields of some plants in certain Martian conditions. The findings could also have implications for life on Earth and are described in a study published May 1 in the journal PLOS One. 

A Martian greenhouse

In order for future humans to survive on Mars for long stretches at a time, nutritious food is going to be essential. While learning how fake astronaut Mark Watney grew potatoes in the sci-fi novel and film The Martian was entertaining and informative, real astronauts should have some helpful resources from planet Earth for growing food in future Mars settlements.

To learn how to best do this, scientists on Earth must simulate the unique conditions on the Red Planet here. Mars’ atmosphere is about 100 times thinner than Earth’s and is mostly made up of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and argon gasses. Entire Martian colonies in the future will need to be set up in controlled enclosures similar to greenhouses with an Earth-like atmosphere of the right mixture of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide.

[Related: Why space lettuce could be the pharmacy astronauts need.]

“The best ‘Martian environment’ is actually simply a greenhouse with controlled conditions including temperature, humidity, and gasses,” Rebeca Gonçalves, a study co-author and astrobiologist at Wageningen University & Research in The Netherlands, tells PopSci. 

For this study, Gonçalves and the team used greenhouses at the university to simulate a growing environment on Mars. They tested how crops fare in a simulated version of Martian regolith–the loose and rocky material covering the planet. Pots of standard potting soil and sand were used as a control group. Bits of organic Earth soil and other nutrients was also added to the sand and Martian regolith samples to improve water retention and root holding. 

Picking plants

For the plants on this fake Martian farm, the team selected peas, carrots, and tomatoes. A 2014 study found that all three are able to grow in Martian regolith. According to Gonçalves, knowing that these plants could grow was key, since they were looking for an answer to a different question. They wanted to know how to use companion plants and intercropping–an ancient planting technique of growing two or more plants in close proximity–to boost crop yields. These three also could have an important nutritional role in the future. 

“They were chosen for their nutritional content, being high in antioxidants, vitamin C, and beta carotene,” says Gonçalves. “This is important because these nutrients are all completely lost in the process of food dehydration, which is the main process we use to send food to space missions. Therefore, the production of fresh food containing these nutrients is a must in a Martian colony.”

These crops are also companion species that share complementary traits. Peas are considered a main contributor to the intercropping system because they are legumes that can “fix” nitrogen. In nitrogen fixing, some plants and bacteria can turn nitrogen from the air into a form of ammonia that plants can use for nutrition. This, in turn, benefits other plants and diminishes the need for fertilizers to be added to the plant system. According to Gonçalves, it optimizes the resources needed for plants to grow on the Red Planet.

“Carrots were used to help aerate the soil, which can improve water and nutrient uptake by the companion plants, and tomatoes were used to provide shade for the temperature sensitive carrot and to give climbing support for the peas,” says Gonçalves.

Red fruit, red planet

All three species grew fairly well in the Martian regolith, producing just over half a pound of produce with only a minimum addition of nutrients. The tomatoes grew better when they were alongside the peas and carrots in an intercropping set up, than the control tomatoes that were grown alone. The tomatoes had a higher biomass and also had more potassium when grown this way. 

However, intercropping in this regolith appeared to decrease yields for the carrots and peas. These plants did better alone. In future experiments, the team hopes that some modifications to how the simulated Martian regolith is treated could help increase yields when intercropping is used, so that the carrots and peas can have similarly bigger harvests.

“The fact that it worked really well for one of the species was a big find, one that we can now build further research on,” says Gonçalves. 

[Related: Watering space plants is hard, but NASA has a plan.]

The team was also surprised by how intercropping showed an advantage in the sandy soil control group. It benefited two of the three plant species and this find could be applied to agricultural systems on Earth. Climate change is making some soils more sandy and this study is part of ongoing efforts to see how intercropping can help tackle this issue.

In future studies, the team hopes to figure out how to reach, “a completely self-sustainable system using 100% of the local resources on Mars.” This would help make these future colonies more financially viable and not as dependent on resupply missions. 

“If we can unlock the secret to regenerating poor soils while developing a high-yielding, self-sustainable food production system—exactly the goal of Martian agriculture research—we will have found a solution for a lot of the issues we are having here on Earth as well,” says Gonçalves.

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The saber-toothed cats that once prowled modern day California had more distinct dental features than even their sabers would suggest. Some of the complete skulls had a tooth socket occupied by two teeth–a permanent saber tooth and a baby tooth that would eventually fall out. These double-toothed sockets may have helped stabilize their signature front fangs and keep them from breaking off. The findings are described in a study published April 8 in the journal The Anatomical Record. 

Sharp, but easily lost teeth

The study looked at saber-toothed cat fossils found in the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. There are at least five separate lineages of saber-toothed animals that have evolved around the world. The species Smilodon fatalis roamed widely across North America and into Central America, before going extinct about 10,000 years ago.

Paleontologists studying these fossils have been stumped by why the adult animals with two canines that are more like thin-bladed knives avoided breaking them. During periods of food scarcity, saber-toothed cats broke their teeth more often than they did during times of plenty, potentially due to altered feeding strategies and eating rocks. Paleontologists also still do not know how saber-toothed animals hunted prey without completely breaking these unwieldy teeth. 

In an earlier study, a team from the University of California, Berkeley speculated that a baby tooth helped stabilize the permanent tooth against sideways breakage as it emerged from the gums. The baby tooth–also called a milk canine–are the types of teeth that all mammals grow and lose sometime before adulthood. The growth data seemed to imply that the two teeth sat there together for up to 30 months into the animal’s adolescence. 

[Related: Mighty sabertooth tigers may have purred like kittens.]

To investigate this tooth stabilization theory for the new study, the team used computer models that simulate a saber-tooth’s strength and stiffness against the sideways bending that happens when the saber tooth grows outwards. They also tested and bent plastic models of saber teeth. They found evidence that while fearsome, the saber tooth would have been increasingly vulnerable to breaking off as they emerged from the gums. Having the baby or milk tooth behind it would have worked like a buttress to make it significantly more stable. 

The temporary baby milk canine remaining behind long after the permanent saber tooth erupted indicates that it would have stayed in until the maturing cats learned how to hunt without damaging them. 

“The double-fang stage is probably worth a rethinking now that I’ve shown there’s this potential insurance policy, this larger range of protection,” study co-author and Cal Berkley paleontologist Jack Tseng said in a statement. “It allows the equivalent of our teenagers to experiment, to take risks, essentially to learn how to be a full-grown, fully fledged predator. I think that this refines, though it doesn’t solve, thinking about the growth of saber tooth use and hunting through a mechanical lens.”

Applying some beam theory

Some of the double-fanged specimens found from the La Brea tar pits are considered rare cases of animals with a delayed loss of a baby tooth. This gave Tseng the idea that maybe they had an evolutionary purpose. He used  the beam theory engineering analysis to model real saber teeth.

“According to beam theory, when you bend a blade-like structure laterally sideways in the direction of their narrower dimension, they are quite a lot weaker compared to the main direction of strength,” said Tseng. “Prior interpretations of how saber tooths may have hunted use this as a constraint. No matter how they use their teeth, they could not have bent them a lot in a lateral direction.”

The beam theory combined with computer models that simulated the sideways forces of a saber tooth could withstand before breaking. As the tooth got longer, it became easier to bend, increasing the chance of breakage.

[Related: This tiger-sized, saber-toothed, rhino-skinned predator thrived before the ‘Great Dying.’]

When a supportive baby tooth was added to the beam theory model, the stiffness of the permanent saber kept pace with the bending strength. This baby tooth essentially reduced its chance of breakage. 

The study has implications for how saber-toothed cats and other saber-toothed animals like Africa’s Inostrancevia africana may have hunted as adults. They likely used their predatory skills and strong muscles to compensate for the more vulnerable canines. 

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While we may not have the excitement of a total solar eclipse this month, May offers us a good chance to see some incredibly fast meteors zipping by. Nighttime stargazing should also start to get more comfortable as temperatures warm up in the Northern Hemisphere. Here’s what to look for in the night sky in May. 

May 5 and 6–Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower Predicted Peak

The Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower is expected to peak on May 5, where roughly 10 to 30 meteors per hour can be seen. Eta Aquarid meteors are known to be super speedy, with some traveling at about 148,000 mph into our planet’s atmosphere. These fast meteors can also leave behind incandescent bits of debris in their wake called trains. 

According to the 2024 Observer’s Handbook from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, this year’s Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower may put on a particularly good show. The waning crescent moon means less light in the night sky and may help viewing conditions.

[Related: The history of Halley’s Comet—and the fireball show it brings us every spring.]

The Farmer’s Almanac suggests looking towards the southeast between 2 to 4 a.m. local time on May 5 and 6. If it’s cloudy or you miss those days, the shower will likely stay fairly strong until around May 10. This meteor shower is usually active between April 19 and May 28 every year, peaking in early May. 

The point in the sky where the meteors appear to come from–or radiant–is in the direction of the constellation Aquarius and the shower is named for the constellation’s brightest star, Eta Aquarii. It is also one of two meteor showers created by the debris from Comet Halley.

May 11–Globular Cluster Messier 5 At Highest Point

A bright globular cluster called Messier 5 (or NGC 5904) will reach its highest point in the sky at about midnight local time. Using a telescope or pair of binoculars, look to the southeastern sky, where it should appear like a patch of light. In the evenings after May 5, M5 will be at its highest point for that day about four minutes earlier each day, according to In the Sky.

[Related: How the Hubble telescope is keeping a 265-year-old stargazing project alive.]

M5 is one of the oldest globular clusters in our galaxy. According to NASA, stars in globular clusters like this are believed to form in the same stellar nursery and grow old together. M5 has an apparent magnitude of 6.7 and is about 25,000 light-years away in the constellation Serpens, It is also very bright in July.

May 14 through 30–Lāhaina Noon

This twice a year event in the Earth’s tropical regions occurs when the sun is directly overhead around solar noon. At this point, upright objects do not cast shadows. It happens in May and then again in July. If you are in Hawaii, you can consult this timetable to see what day and times this month’s Lāhaina Noon will occur near you. 

According to the Bishop Museum, in English, the word “lāhainā” can be translated as “cruel sun,” and is a reference to severe droughts experienced in that part of the island of Maui in Hawaii. An older term in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi is “kau ka lā i ka lolo,” which means “the sun rests upon the brain” and references both the physical and cultural significance of the event. 

May 22 and 23–Full Flower Moon

May’s full moon will reach its peak illumination at 9:53 a.m. EDT on Thursday, May 23. Since it will already be below the horizon when it reaches peak illumination, it will be best to view it on the nights May 22 and 23rd. You can use a moonrise and moonset calculator to determine exactly what time to head out and take a gander at this month’s full moon. 

The name Flower Moon is in reference to May’s blooms when flowers are typically most abundant in the Northern Hemisphere. May’s full moon is also called the Flowering Moon or Waabigoni-giizis in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), the They Plant Moon or Latiy^thos in Oneida, and the Dancing Moon or Ganö́’gat in Seneca. 

The same skygazing rules that apply to pretty much all space-watching activities are key during the nighttime events this month: Go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let the eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour. 

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Archeologists have found evidence that ancient Mayans may have made ceremonial offerings during the construction of the ballcourts they used for sporting events. An international team of researchers used advances in environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis to detect evidence of several plants known for both medicinal and religious purposes. The microscopic fragments of ancient plants were found beneath the floor of a Mayan ballcourt in present day Mexico and are described in a study published April 26 in the journal PLOS One. 

The research was a collaboration of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History in collaboration with researchers from the University of Cincinnati in the United States, the University of Calgary, in Canada, Mexico’s Autonomous University of Campeche and the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Play ball

From 2016 to 2022, the team excavated ruins of the ancient city of Yaxnohcah–formerly major city is in the present day Mexican state of Campeche, near the border of Guatemala. The structure in the study was originally constructed sometime between 1000 and 400 BCE. It was subsequently remodeled around 400 BCE-200 CE, when a ballcourt was added.  

According to the team, the ancient Maya participated in several ball games. One included pok-a-tok, a mix of soccer and basketball that is undergoing a revival. Players likely tried to get a ball through a ring in a hoop affixed to a wall. Ballcourts were considered significant places within cities and even built near some of the biggest temples, including in ancient Maya cities like Tikal in Guatemala. 

[Related: The Maya dealt with a form of climate change, too. Here’s how they survived.]

“Ballcourts occupied prime real estate in the ceremonial center. They were a fundamental part of the city,” study co-author and University of Cincinnati paleobotanist and paleoecologist David Lentz said in a statement. “But not all of the ballcourts had hoops. We think of ballcourts today as a place of entertainment. It wasn’t that way for the ancient Maya.”

The construction of new projects were subject to ceremony, similar to how a new ship is christened by breaking a bottle of champagne on the bow or a ribbon is cut at the opening of a new building today.

“When they erected a new building, they asked the goodwill of the gods to protect the people inhabiting it,” said Lentz. “Some people call it an ‘ensouling ritual,’ to get a blessing from and appease the gods.”

e-DNA tells a more complete story 

Offerings and blessings were also made when buildings like the ballcourt were expanded or repurposed. While ceramics or jewelry can be found alongside with plants that are culturally significant, plant remains are much more difficult to find in tropical locations. The humid air can cause them to decompose quickly, so archeologists have relied on trapped pollen samples to get a sense of what plant species were around. 

Studying the environmental DNA (eDNA) offers a way to tell what plants were present. eDNA is material from an organism that can be found from a surrounding environment. It originates from cellular material shed by organisms, such as skin or excrement. It can be used to track what plant, animal and fungi species are around. Unlike fossilized bones or physical anthropological evidence like tools, eDNA can only be sampled by using new molecular methods.

[Related: Scientists are tracking down deep sea creatures with free-floating DNA.]

To pinpoint several types of plants known for use in significant rituals from the eDNA left behind, the team used a product called RNAlater. It preserves the samples during transit back to the lab at the University of Cincinnati. Special genetic probes that are sensitive to plant species found in that region helped them single out the fragmented DNA of several species. They then assembled DNA sequences from these fragments and compared them with sequences stored with the US National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database called GenBank.

The team detected evidence of four different plants associated with ancient Maya medicine and divination rituals.

The first is a type of morning glory called xtabentun. It is known for its hallucinogenic properties and mead is brewed from the honey of bees that feed on the pollen from xtabentun flowers.

Traces of chili peppers were also detected. This spice that is still popular today was used to treat a variety of illnesses for the ancient Maya. An offering of chili peppers might have been intended to ward off disease since it was a healing plant used in many ceremonies. 

The eDNA analysis also identified the tree Hampea trilobata or jool. Leaves from this tree were used to wrap bodies for Maya ceremonies, and the bark was used to make baskets and twine and treat snake bites. 

The plant Oxandra lanceolatal or lancewood was also present at this site. Its oily leaves are a known anesthetic and antibiotic. 

“I think the fact that these four plants, which have a known cultural importance to the Maya, were found in a concentrated sample tells us it was an intentional and purposeful collection under this platform,” study co-author and University of Cincinnati botanist Eric Tepe said in a statement.

Studying eDNA this way holds the promise of helping researchers learn even more about ancient civilizations, as it can help cross reference with written and oral sources. 

“We have known for years from ethnohistorical sources that the Maya also used perishable materials in these offerings, “study co-author and University of Cincinnati environmental biologist Nicholas Dunning said in a statement. “But it is almost impossible to find them archaeologically, which is what makes this discovery using eDNA so extraordinary.”

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New research is throwing some cold water on the idea that the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex was as smart as a primate. These possibly scaly-lipped theropods were about as smart as living reptiles like crocodiles, but not quite as intelligent as monkeys. The findings are detailed in a study published April 26 in the journal The Anatomical Record 

How smart was the T. rex?

In 2023, a study from Vanderbilt University neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel set off a dinosaur-sized debate. Herculano-Houzel proposed that dinosaurs like T. rex had an exceptionally high number of neurons–over 3 billion of them, or more than a baboon. This higher number of neurons could mean that they were more intelligent than assumed. 

The paper theorized that these high neuron counts could inform their intelligence, metabolism, and even give them some more monkey-like habits. They could have used tools and transmitted knowledge culturally like modern day primates, according to Herculano-Houzel’s study.

These bold claims that such a large and powerful reptilian carnivore could have been intelligent enough to sharpen tools and transmit knowledge shook the paleontology world.

[Related: Is T. rex really three royal species? Paleontologists cast doubt over new claims.]

Taking another look

In this new study, an international team of paleontologists, neuroscientists, and behavioral scientists argues that researchers should look at multiple lines of evidence when reconstructing long-extinct species. These include skeletal anatomy, bone composition, trace fossils that show movement, and the behaviors of their living relatives.

“Determining the intelligence of dinosaurs and other extinct animals is best done using many lines of evidence ranging from gross anatomy to fossil footprints instead of relying on neuron number estimates alone,” study co-author and University of Bristol paleontologist Hady George said in a statement.

The study reexamined the techniques that were used to predict both number of neurons and brain size in dinosaurs as well as decades of previous research. They found that the assumptions made about brain cavity size and corresponding neuron counts were unreliable. 

“Neuron counts are not good predictors of cognitive performance, and using them to predict intelligence in long-extinct species can lead to highly misleading interpretations,” Ornella Bertrand, a study co-author and mammalian paleontologist at the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont said in a statement.

Despite being very similar to big birds, dinosaurs were reptiles. As reptiles, they have very different brains than birds or mammals, but brain tissue does not fossilize. To study what their brains must have been like, scientists look to their skulls for clues. Reptile brains typically don’t fill up their skull cavity and they also tend to have a lot of cerebrospinal fluid taking up space. 

“The first time I dissected an alligator brain, I took the top of the skull off and I went, ‘Where is the brain?’ Because there is this big space in there,” study co-author and University of Alberta neurophysiologist Doug Wylie said in a statement.

Reptile brains are also packed more loosely with neurons than bird or mammalian brains. They also don’t have the same kinds of connections and circuits in their brains, which would have limited the complexity of their social behaviors.

Neurons scale up

The size of the animal is also a major factor. An adult male baboon can range from 30 to 88 pounds, while a T. rex could be over 15,000 pounds. Number of neurons typically scales to body size, according to the team.

“We don’t know why it’s true, but it is true,” said study co-author and University of Alberta comparative neurobiologist Cristian Gutierrez-Ibanez said in a statement. “A larger animal needs more neurons.”

[Related: Giganotosaurus vs. T. rex: Who would win in a battle of the big dinosaurs?]

The team believes that the T. rex needed a huge number of neurons for just maintaining basic biological functions with such a large body and wouldn’t have had any leftover for things like cultural knowledge transmission or tool usage. 

The study also found that their brain size had been overestimated, particularly the forebrain. The neuron counts could have also been overestimated and the neuron count estimates are not a reliable guide to intelligence.

“The possibility that T. rex might have been as intelligent as a baboon is fascinating and terrifying, with the potential to reinvent our view of the past,” study co-author and University of Southampton palaeozoologist Darren Naish said in a statement. “But our study shows how all the data we have is against this idea. They were more like smart giant crocodiles, and that’s just as fascinating.”

In response to this new study re-examining her work, Herculano-Houzel told the Los Angeles Times, “I am delighted to see that my simple study using solid data published by paleontologists opened the way for new studies. Readers should analyze the evidence and draw their own conclusions. That’s what science is about!”

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Genetic material from a particularly virulent strain of bird flu virus has been found in 1 in 5 samples of pasteurized milk, according to an April 25 update from the Food and Drug Administration. The tested milk came from a nationally representative sample and the positive results came from milk in areas with herds of dairy cows where Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) or H5N1 infections have been detected. The FDA’s new test results indicate that the virus has spread further among dairy cows than previously indicated.

As of April 25, bird flu had been detected in 33 herds in Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Dakota, Ohio, and Texas. This particular virus strain has caused a devastating outbreak in wild and commercial birds since 2021. It first spread to mammals in 2022 and can occasionally infect humans. Only two human cases of HPAI have been reported in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). 

The FDA used quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) testing to inspect the milk samples. While the findings are concerning, it does not necessarily mean that the milk was contaminated with live virus–which can cause infection. 

[Related: Bird flu detected in dairy cow milk samples.]

“With qPCR tests, the genetic material, not necessarily the whole active or infectious virus, is what is detected,” clinical pathologist Nam Tran said in a statement. “In the case of food, the genetic material, the RNA found in the grocery store milk samples, may not be the infectious H5N1 virus, but fragments from it.” Tram is a professor at the University of California Davis and senior director of clinical pathology at UC Davis Health.

The FDA believes that the commercial milk supply remains safe, since the testing only revealed small genetic traces of bird flu and not live virus that causes infections. The virus itself was first detected in dairy cows in the US in March and the FDA announced on April 23 that it had found viral fragments in commercially sold milk. 

Milk sold in grocery stores is pasteurized. This process kills harmful bacteria and viruses by heating milk to a specific temperature for a set period of time. The viral particles detected by highly sensitive qPCR tests were likely the remnants of viruses that had already been killed during the pasteurization process. 

To determine if any active, infectious virus remains in the milk samples, the FDA is going to perform egg inoculation tests. These rests are often considered the “gold standard” for determining a virus’ viability. In these tests, scientists will inject the virus sample into a raw chicken egg to see if it replicates or not. This test provides the most sensitive results, but it will take longer than other methods.

“Virus isolation propagates viruses, and needs a live virus particle to start with,” UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine professor of clinical diagnostic virology Beate Crossley said in a statement. “A virus isolation positive result of a sample would indicate a live, infectious virus is present in the sample.”

[Related: Seal pup die-off from avian flu in Argentina looks ‘apocalyptic.’]

The World Health Organization has also urged public health officials to prepare for a potential spillover to humans in the future. While cases of humans getting infected and seriously ill from bird flu are rare, the more it spreads among mammals, the easier it will be for the virus to evolve to spread. 

Health officials continue to believe that commercial milk is unlikely to help spread the virus to humans and that pasteurization is the best line of defense. Consuming raw or unpasteurized milk is dangerous, no matter what the internet says. Raw milk has no added nutritional benefits and it can be contaminated with harmful germs. The CDC even considers raw milk one of the riskiest foods a person can consume.

As an evolving situation, the USDA and FDA will continue to share updates. 

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Red squirrels living in Canada’s Yukon territory can have a pretty hard knock life. Bitterly cold winters, resource scarcity, intense competition for habitat, threats from large predators like the Canada lynx, and even take big reproductive risks for their genetic fitness. All of these stressors take their toll on these resilient rodents. Their early life struggles can also leave a lasting mark. The more challenges young red squirrels face in the year they’re born, the shorter their adult lifespan. The findings are detailed in a study published April 24 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences and could have some implications for humans. 

Food booms

Red squirrels are about 11 inches long and weigh just over half a pound on average. They are known for their rust colored fur and “scolding chatter” above the trees. The new study uses data collected by the Kluane Red Squirrel Project, a multi-university long-term field study. The project has tracked and studied thousands of wild North American red squirrels in the southwestern region of the Yukon for more than 30 years that individually tags and tracks individual red squirrels to learn how they deal with all that’s thrown at them  . 

The new study analyzing the observations found that red squirrels that survive past their first year go on to live about 3.5 years on average. However, early life adversity like food scarcity can cut their life expectancy by at least 14 percent.

[Related: A Medieval strain of leprosy is infecting squirrels in the UK.]

“The ecosystem red squirrels inhabit in this region is unique,” study co-author and University of Arizona ecologist and evolutionary biologist Lauren Petrullo said in a statement. “Every three to seven years, their favorite food–seed from cones of white spruce trees–is produced in superabundance during what we call a food boom.”

The team found that even though these food booms are rare, they can interrupt some biological processes for the squirrels and help shape their lifespans.

“If a squirrel had a harsh first year of life, if they were lucky enough to experience a food boom in their second year of life, they lived just as long–if not longer–in spite of early-life adversity,” said Petrullo.

Rodents as proxies

Rodents like squirrels, rice, and mats, are often used as models for humans in a lab setting. However, the laboratory environment often has limited relevance to the bigger pictures of what is going on at an ecological and evolutionary level. 

“It can be hard to really replicate the ecological challenges that animals have evolved to cope with in a lab setting,” said Petrullo. 

Wild red squirrels can offer scientists a chance to better study the role that early-life environment plays. Petrullo and her colleagues hope that continued observations in the wild can help them learn more about the biological mechanisms that link squirrels’ early developmental conditions with their later-life survival. This could have some insights into our understanding of human resilience. 

[Related: Nature wasn’t healing: What really happened with wildlife during pandemic lockdowns.]

“Our findings in red squirrels echo what we know about how early-life adversity can shorten adult lifespan in humans and other primates,” Petrullo said. “Humans vary widely in how vulnerable or resilient they are to challenges faced during early development. Our study demonstrates that future environmental quality might be an important factor that can explain why some individuals appear to be more, or less, susceptible to the consequences of early-life adversity.” 

‘Born with a silver spoon’

While growing up as a young red squirrel in the Yukon can be quite difficult, there are some things that can go right. 

“Some red squirrels have the luck of being born into gentler early environments, akin to being born with a silver spoon,” Petrullo said. “Because of this, we’ve got this really nice individual variation in early-life environmental quality across a natural ecological environment.”
However, as global temperatures continue to climb, this environment is expected to see a good deal of change. It’s possible that food booms and other ecological patterns could change right alongside the climate and the connections between early-life experiences and lifespan could also shift. According to Petrullo, these changes could offer more insight into how animals may continue to adapt to environments that are only getting more challenging to survive in. Future study could also help scientists learn more about what environmental factors can buffer these squirrels from ongoing environmental threats.

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It’s ‘spider’ season on the Red Planet. There are no actual spiders on Mars–that we know of–but arachnid-shaped black spots dot some parts of our celestial neighbor every spring.

[Related: Mars’s mascara-like streaks may be caused by slush and landslides.]

The European Space Agency (ESA) released new images of these seasonal eruptions in a formation called Inca City in Mars’ southern polar region.

How do Martian ‘spiders’ form?

Mars has four distinct seasons, similarly to Earth. Each Martian season lasts roughly twice as long as a season here. According to the ESA, these spider-like marks appear in Martian spring when sunlight falls on layers of carbon dioxide that have been deposited over the dark Martian winter. The sunlight causes carbon dioxide ice at the bottom layer to turn into gas. The gas builds up and eventually breaks through slabs overlying ice around Mars’ poles. When they burst free, the dark material is dragged up to the surface as it travels and shatters layers of ice that are up to three feet thick. 

The emerging gas is full of dark dust and shoots up through cracks in the ice similar to a fountain or geyser. The gas then travels back down and settles on the surface. The settling gas creates dark spots which range from 0.3 to 0.6 miles across. This same process creates the spider-shaped patterns that are etched beneath the ice.

The image was captured by the CaSSIS instrument aboard the ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). CaSSIS stands for Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System and it was built at the University of Bern in Germany. It creates high resolution images designed to complement data collected on Mars. It is made up of a telescope and focal plane system that are mounted on a rotation mechanism and has three electronics units that relay images back to the ESA. 

Mars’ mysterious Inca City

Most of the spots in this new image are seen on the outskirts of Angustus Labyrinthus–more commonly called Inca City. NASA’s Mariner 9 probe first spotted Inca City in 1972 and its geometric-looking network of ridges reminded astronomers of Inca ruins. 

Scientists are still not sure exactly how Inca City formed. It may be sand dunes that have turned to stone over millennia. Materials like magma or sand could also be seeping through cracked sheets of Martian rock. The ridges could also be winding structures related to glaciers called eskers. 

Inca City also appears to be part of a large circle–about 53 miles in diameter. Scientists believe that the ‘ formation sits within a large crater that may have taken shape as a rock from space crashed into Mars’ surface. The impact likely caused faults to ripple through the surrounding plain. The faults were then filled with rising lava and have worn away over time. 

Towards the middle section of the image the landscape changes somewhat, with large roundish and oval swirls creating an effect reminiscent of marble. This effect is thought to occur when layered deposits are worn away over time.

[Related: Scientists brought ‘Mars spiders’ to Earth—here’s how.]

A few prominent steep, flat-topped mounds and hills stand almost 5,000 feet above the surrounding terrain. These mounds form as softer material is eroded wind, water, or ice. The harder material left behind forms these hills. Some signs of the ‘spiders’ are scattered across the dust-covered plateaus, lurking amongst various canyons and troughs.

The data for these images was captured on October 4, 2020 during Mars’ most recent spring. The Red Planet is currently in its autumn and its next spring equinox will be on November 12, 2024.

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About five million years ago, the North American Pacific Northwest was teeming with some pretty big fish that would have made the continent’s biggest salmon runs look small. An eight to 10-feet-long prehistoric salmon species called Oncorhynchus rastrosus stalked the seas and streams of the Miocene. It weighed upwards of 400 pounds and was almost twice as long and three times heavier than today’s largest salmon species–the Chinook/king salmon. 

Oncorhynchus rastrosus also sported a formidable pair of front teeth that projected out from the sides of their mouths like tusks, but not like fangs as scientists previously believed. This major dental update is detailed in a study published April 24 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

Oncorhynchus rastrosus was first described in 1972. At the time, scientists believed that its large oversize teeth pointed backwards into the month like fangs. This largest known member of the Salmonidae family was commonly called the “saber-toothed salmon” due to the position of its teeth. However, CT scans of some newer Oncorhynchus rastrosus fossils and analysis in the study confirmed that these two-inch long curved chompers were more similar to a warthog’s tusks. This makes the species more of a “spike-toothed salmon.”

“This is all part of the scientific process. You have an idea and you get new information,” study co-author and University of Oregon paleobiologist Edward Davis tells PopSci. “It’s a good reminder of the humility you need to have as a scientist.”

[Related: A gator-faced fish shaped like a torpedo stalked rivers 360 million years ago.]

Scientists are not exactly sure what these signature tusks were used for, but believe they were primarily used to fight off other salmon or predators. They also may have been a way for female fish to dig nests for their eggs or even to help both sexes swim upstream to spawn.

“When they’re swimming upstream, they could maybe hook the spikes on something and take a rest without having to use any energy,” says Davis. “It’s sort of like if you’re holding on to the side of the swimming pool.”

With these tusks, they would have been as “equally fearsome” as their male counterparts, according to study co-author and professor and curator of fishes at Oregon State University Brian Sidlauskas.

Their teeth likely weren’t used for catching prey. The spike-toothed salmon may have been a filter-feeder that dined on tiny organisms called plankton. This filter feeding may have been one of the reasons they reached such titanic sizes. Their relatives the sockeye salmon as well as baleen whales and basking sharks have bony features called gill rakers that they use to filter out oxygen and microorganisms from the water. According to Davis, Oncorhynchus rastrosus have an unusually large number of gill rakers. Filter feeding with these gill takers possibly helped them grow since it could consume larger organisms like jellyfish and get more nutrients. 

They also lived in an environment with the food and water resources that could support their large bodies. In this way, studying the spike-toothed salmon can also give clues about what might be in store for the planet as temperatures continue to rise. They lived at the end of the Miocene, when the world’s oceans were much warmer than today. Global carbon dioxide levels were also near what Earth could see in the year 2100. Like today’s salmon, they hatched in freshwater, went into the ocean, and then returned back into the freshwater to spawn and die. 

“But these fish were huge,” says Davis. “That means there had to be a lot more water in those ancient rivers than we see today, to give them the space to be able to swim all the way up into eastern Oregon.”

[Related: The salmon of 2100 will have new habitat: the remains of melted glaciers.]

Oncorhynchus rastrosus went extinct as the Earth began to cool towards the end of the Miocene. This change in climate likely depleted them of the resources that they needed to sustain such large bodies. 

In future studies, Davis and his colleagues plan to do a closer analysis of some

spike-toothed salmon specimens. While a complete skeleton has yet to be found, a number of fossils belonging to this enormous fish have been uncovered in recent years. They also hope to come up with new models to study how these tusk-like teeth were used and better understand what extinct ecosystems can teach us. 

“Cool extinct animals get people excited about science and the ancient world. But it’s important to understand that ancient world because it gives us a window into what the world could be like in future scenarios,” says Davis. “By looking at how the giant salmon lived on this much warmer Earth, we can think about what resources are going to change over the next 80 years if our Earth is returning to that warmer state.”

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Many marine organisms–including sea worms, some jellyfish, sea pickles, and more–can emit ethereal glow through a process called bioluminescence. The evolutionary origins of this light production remain a mystery, but an international team of scientists have found that bioluminescence may have first evolved in a group of marine invertebrates called octocorals at least 540 million years ago–nearly 300 million years earlier than they previously believed. This new timeline could help scientists unravel bioluminescence’s origin story. The findings are detailed in a study published April 23 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

What is bioluminescence? 

Bioluminescent organisms produce light via chemical reactions. This ability has independently evolved at least 94 times in nature. Bioluminescence is involved in multiple animal behaviors including communication, courtship, camouflage, and hunting. Fireflies, glowworms, and even some species of fungi on land are also considered bioluminescent organisms. 

“Nobody quite knows why it first evolved in animals,” Andrea Quattrini, a study co-author and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History’s curator of corals, said in a statement. 

The earliest dated example of bioluminescence in animals was believed to be roughly 267 million years ago in small marine crustaceans known for a mucus-filled synchronized mating dance called ostracods, until this new research turned back the clock. 

An octocoral evolutionary tree

In the study, the team looked back into the evolutionary history of octocorals to search for clues to when it first appeared in animals. Octocorals are an ancient and frequently bioluminescent group of living animals that includes sea fans, sea pens, and soft corals. Just like hard corals, octocorals are tiny colonial polyps that build up a reef structure, but they are primarily soft bodied and not stony. The octocorals that glow generally light up when they are bumped or otherwise disturbed. According to the team, this makes the precise function of their ability to produce light a bit of a puzzle  

[Related: These newly discovered bioluminescent sea worms are named after Japanese folklore.]

“We wanted to figure out the timing of the origin of bioluminescence, and octocorals are one of the oldest groups of animals on the planet known to bioluminesce,” study co-author and  Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History postdoctoral scholar Danielle DeLeo said in a statement. “So, the question was when did they develop this ability?”

They turned to a detailed evolutionary tree of octocorals that was built in 2022. This map of evolutionary relationships–or phylogeny–used the genetic data from 185 different species of octocorals. The team then placed two octocoral fossils of known ages within the tree based on  their physical features. They were able to use the fossils’ ages and their respective positions in the evolutionary tree to determine roughly when octocoral lineages split apart to become two or more branches. The team ultimately mapped out the evolutionary relationships that featured all of the known bioluminescent species alive today.

With this evolutionary tree and branches that contained bioluminescent species labeled, the team used a statistical technique called ancestral state reconstruction to analyze the relationships between the species.

“If we know these species of octocorals living today are bioluminescent, we can use statistics to infer whether their ancestors were highly probable to be bioluminescent or not,” said Quattrini. “The more living species with the shared trait, the higher the probability that as you move back in time that those ancestors likely had that trait as well.”

Multiple different statistical methods all reached the same result. About 540 million years ago, the common ancestor of all octocorals was very likely bioluminescent. This is about 273 million years earlier than in the ostracod crustaceans that were previously considered the earliest evolutionary example of bioluminescence in animals.

According to the team, the octocorals’ thousands of living species and relatively high incidence of bioluminescence suggests that glowing played a role in the group’s evolutionary success. While this does not exactly answer what octocorals are using bioluminescence for, the fact that it has been retailed for so long shows how important this form of communication has become for their survival. 

Conservation implications

Now that the team knows that the common ancestor of all octocorals likely could already produce its own inner glow, they are interested in conducting a more thorough count of which of the group’s more than 3,000 known living species are still bioluminescent and which have lost the trait over time. This may have them pinpoint a set of ecological circumstances that correlate with bioluminesce and potentially shed some light on its function. 

The team is also working on creating a genetic test to determine if an octocoral species has functional copies of the genes for luciferase–an enzyme involved in bioluminescence. Future studies could even show that bioluminescence is even more ancient and embedded in coral’s evolutionary history. 

[Related: Surprise! These sea cucumbers glow.]

The study also points to evolutionary insight that could help monitor and manage octocorals in today’s oceans. They are currently threatened by mineral mining, fishing, oil and gas extraction and spills, and human-made climate change. 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently confirmed that the planet is currently experiencing the fourth global coral bleaching event on record and the second in the last 10 years due to heat stress from increasingly warming oceans. Octocorals can bleach the way that hard corals can under extreme temperatures. Understanding more about how they use bioluminescence could help scientists better identify their habitats and monitor their behaviors. Better knowledge of their genetics and what they need to survive can also inform better conservation policies for these marine organisms. 

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For the first time since November 2023, NASA is receiving meaningful communication from its Voyager 1 probe. The agency has spent months troubleshooting a glitch in why the famed probe was sending home messages that looked like garbled up gibberish and not scientific data. The probe is now coherent, but according to NASA, the next step is to enable Voyager 1 to begin to return usable science information again. 

[Related: Voyager 1 is sending back bad data, but NASA is on it.]

Alongside its twin Voyager 2, these probes are the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space–or the region between stars beyond the influence of the sun. Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes launched in 1977. Their mission initially included detailed observations of Jupiter and Saturn, but it continued on exploring the outer reaches of the solar system. Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to enter interstellar space in 2012. Voyager 2 followed Voyager 1 into interstellar space in 2018. 

On November 14, 2023, Voyager 1 stopped sending readable science and engineering data back to Earth for the first time. Mission controllers could tell that the spacecraft was still receiving their commands and otherwise operating normally, so they were not sure why it was sending back such incoherent information. In March, the Voyager engineering team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) confirmed that the issue was related to one of the spacecraft’s three onboard computers, called the flight data subsystem (FDS). The FDS packages science and engineering data before it’s sent to Earth so that NASA can use it.

The team pinpointed the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft’s engineering data. The glitch was only on one single chip representing around 3 percent of the FDS memory, according to Space. They were unable to repair the chip. On April 18, JPL engineers migrated the code to other portions of the FDS memory. This required splitting the code up into several sections to store them at multiple locations in the FDS. The code was adjusted to work from multiple locations as one cohesive process and references to its new directories were updated. 

“When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on April 20, they saw that the modification worked: For the first time in five months, they have been able to check the health and status of the spacecraft,” NASA wrote in an update on April 22.

[Related: When Voyager 1 goes dark, what comes next?]

As of now, the usable data returned so far relates to how the spacecraft’s engineering systems are working. The team plans more software repair work in the next several weeks so that Voyager 1 can send valuable science data about the outer reaches of the solar system that is readable once again. As of now, Voyager 2 is still operating normally.

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Many of Madagascar’s charismatic lemurs are in big trouble. Slash and burn agriculture has destroyed their habitat and made most of its subspecies vulnerable to extinction. Now, critically endangered diademed sifaka lemurs (Propithecus diadema) are being attacked by another vulnerable species, a cat-like carnivore called the fosa (Crytoprocta ferox, also spelled fossa). 

A study published April 9 in the journal Ecology and Evolution details very rare observations of how diademed sifaka lemurs at Madagascar’s Betampona Strict Nature Reserve have been attacked by fosas. Fosas are reddish brown animals with slender bodies and long tails. They are excellent climbers and are often compared to cougars. However, they are actually part of the weasel family. 

The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources also categorizes the fosa as vulnerable and at risk of extinction. Nearly all of the lemurs that fosas have now been observed eating are also at risk of extinction. The fosas also prey on birds and rodents. 

The impact of this new predation by the fosa combined with low reproductive rates and a potentially high inbreeding in the lemur population of Betampona could affect the survival of this species at this site. Betampona is Madagascar’s first protected reserve. It includes roughly 5,400 acres of rainforest on the island’s east coast, surrounded by agricultural land. This makes it difficult for the lemurs and other animals in the reserve to find other eligible animals to mate with. 

[Related: Giant beasts once roamed Madagascar. What happened to them?]

In this new study, a team from Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar came across one fosa preying on diademed sifaka lemur during the team’s daily behavioral observations.

“What we saw was very rare. There are other small carnivores in Madagascar, but they are not big enough to be able to prey upon an adult diademed sifaka [lemur] because they are among the biggest lemurs,” study co-author and Washington University in St. Louis biological anthropologist Giovanna Bonadonna said in a statement. “There are not so many predators that could actually get them.”

The team found that this dynamic can be particularly complex when the predation occurs in an isolated or poor-quality habitat without enough resources to go around. Also, fosas are rarely caught in the act since they are stealthy hunters. Previous studies could only gleam what they eat by examining the bones and other evidence left behind in their droppings. 

“We noticed that a female diademed sifaka [lemur] that we were following after the first attack didn’t run away very far,” study co-author and University of Antananarivo PhD student Onja Ramilijaona said in a statement. “Instead she stayed still and remained vigilant, looking at the fosa.”

Ramilijaona also documented the remains of another lemur that they presumed was killed by a fosa. Hair was scattered around the site and its abdominal contents were found near several bones. The tree branches nearby also indicated signs of a struggle between animals. The study describes other instances over 19 months of observations when the fosa appeared to stalk lemurs, but did not manage to take one of them down. 

[Related: Dams are hurting this enigmatic Australian species.]

While the Betampona reserve itself is protected, the forest’s relatively small size and isolation from other eligible mates can make it difficult for animals like the diademed sifaka lemurs to continue to breed and survive there.

“This population of diademed sifakas is already in bad shape,” Bonadonna said. “There is a huge predation pressure that was underestimated until we did this behavioral study. We were able to highlight inbreeding and other factors that may be behind the fact that this population cannot thrive at Betampona.”

Bonadonna stresses that fosas are not “the bad guy.” They are also in need of conservation and face threats from habitat loss, competition for food resources, and a bad reputation among humans who can often consider them pests. The study highlights just how difficult conservation can be. Human activities and behaviors can lead to changes within ecosystems and cascading effects on at-risk species, such as more inbreeding and lack of genetic diversity. 

“Despite the effort to conserve one species, it’s really the ecosystem and the balance of that ecosystem that is at stake once the habitat is compromised,” said Bonadonna.

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Letters written by famous British mountaineer and Mount Everest explorer George Mallory are now digitized and freely available to the public for the first time. The University of Cambridge’s Magdalene College has digitized its collection of the mountaineer’s correspondence. The letters can be downloaded here in honor of the upcoming 100th anniversary of Mallory’s final attempt to climb Mount Everest. 

Mallory is best known for replying with “because it’s there” when asked why he wanted to risk death and climb Mount Everest. He took part in a reconnaissance expedition to produce the first European maps of the mountain in 1921. His first serious attempt at climbing the mountain was in 1922, with two subsequent attempts at climbing the mountain following. Most of the correspondence is between Mallory and his wife Ruth and was housed at his alma mater Magdalene College following his death on Mount Everest in 1924. 

In his final letter to his wife Ruth before his doomed last attempt to climb the mountain, George wrote: “Darling I wish you the best I can–that your anxiety will be at an end before you get this–with the best news. Which will also be the quickest. It is 50 to 1 against us but we’ll have a whack yet & do ourselves proud. Great love to you. Ever your loving, George.”

Who was George Mallory?

George Mallory (1886-1924) was one of the leading members of the early European teams to explore Mount Everest. At 29,032 feet, Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world. It rises from the Great Himalayas of southern Asia on the border of Nepal and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. It was previously referred to as Peak XV and was renamed for British explorer Sir George Everest in 1865.

[Related: The increase in Everest deaths may have nothing to do with crowds or waiting.]

In May 1924, Raymond J. Brown from Popular Science magazine chronicled Mallory’s upcoming expedition which would be his last. Brown wondered, “Nature controls the situation through the physical capacities with which she has invested in man. Can a man at a height of 27,000 feet develop the energy to walk or drag himself higher?”

On June 6, 1924, Mallory and a newer climber named Andrew Irvine began an attempt to reach the summit. The last time the pair was spotted alive was June 8, and the debate as to whether or not Mallory reached the summit continues to this day, as he could have reached the summit and died on the way down. 

During the 1930’s, Irvine’s ax was discovered at roughly 27,700 feet. In 1975, a Chinese climber named Wang Hongbao found a body. He said that the body was an old “English dead” due to the vintage clothes. At the time, no other English climber was known to have died at that elevation on the mountain, so it was presumed that the body could be George Mallory or Andrew Irvine. In addition, an oxygen canister from the 1920s was later unearthed in 1991. 

With these clues in tow, an expedition set out in 1999 to search for both Mallory and Irvine. The team found Mallory’s body at 26,760 feet and it’s believed that he died after a bad fall. Irvine’s remains have never been found. 

What is in this collection of letters?

Most of the letters in this collection are corespondence between Mallory and his wife Ruth. They date from the time of their engagement in 1914 until his death. The last letter that he wrote and sent in May 1924 before his final Everest attempt is in the collection. 

In addition, three letters that were retrieved from his body in 1999 are included in this new collection. The letters survived 75 years in his jacket pocket before his body was discovered and are included in the collection with his other letters.

The collection covers several topics including his first mission to Everest in 1921 to see if it was even possible to get to the base of the mountain. It also includes an account of his second mission that ended in disaster when eight Sherpas were swept off the mountain and killed in an avalanche. In the letters, Mallory often blamed himself for the tragedy. 

Mallory also details his service in World War I in the letters, including a detailed account of the deadly Battle of the Somme in 1916. Mallory’s letters even detail a visit to the United States during Prohibition in 1922. He describes visiting speakeasies, asking to be served milk, and getting whiskey through a secret hatch.

[Related: The rocky history of a missing 26,000-foot Himalayan peak.]

According to the team from Magdalene College, the letters from his wife Ruth are a major source of women’s social history, as they detail a wide variety of topics about her life as a woman living through World War I.

In the only surviving letter from the Everest period in the archive, Ruth wrote: “I am keeping quite cheerful and happy but I do miss you a lot. I think I want your companionship even more than I used to. I know I have rather often been cross and not nice and I am very sorry but the bottom reason has nearly always been because I was unhappy at getting so little of you. I know it is pretty stupid to spoil the times I do have you for those when I don’t.”

“It has been a real pleasure to work with these letters,” archivist Katy Green said in a statement. “Whether it’s George’s wife Ruth writing about how she was posting him plum cakes and a grapefruit to the trenches (he said the grapefruit wasn’t ripe enough), or whether it’s his poignant last letter where he says the chances of scaling Everest are ‘50 to1 against us,’ they offer a fascinating insight into the life of this famous Magdalene alumnus.”

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Lampreys look like something out of a horror movie, with their sucky mouths chock full of teeth, eel-like bodies, and parasitic behaviors. These “water vampires” represent a bit of an evolutionary fork in the road between vertebrates and invertebrates, and the scientific debate about just how closely related we are to these carnivorous fish has taken yet another turn. 

Scientists found some evidence that lampreys have a rudimentary sympathetic nervous system–which is believed to control the fight-or-flight reaction in vertebrates. The findings are detailed in a study published April 17 in the journal Nature and could prompt a rethink of the origins of the sympathetic nervous system.

Lampreys are the closest living organisms scientists have to studying the fish ancestors that vertebrates evolved from some 550 million years ago. They belong to an ancient vertebrate lineage called Agnatha–or jawless fish. Some scientists believe that they represent the earliest group of vertebrates that is still living and can give us an evolutionary window into all vertebrate ancestors. Other scientists question the theories due to a lack of lamprey evidence in the fossil record. 

[Related: Giant prehistoric lamprey likely sucked blood—and ate flesh.]

Scientists previously believed that lampreys did not have sympathetic neurons. These neurons are part of the sympathetic nervous system, a system of nerves that target the internal organs throughout the body including the gut, pancreas, and heart. The system works together to respond to dangerous or stressful situations. It also helps an organism’s body maintain homeostasis, making sure that the heart keeps pumping, the digestive system keeps moving, and more. 

In this new study, a team used lampreys to look at how developmental changes may have promoted the evolution of vertebrate traits like fight-or-flight. They found evidence of the types of stem cells that eventually form sympathetic neurons. The presence of these cells in lampreys could revise the timeline of when the sympathetic nervous system began to evolve. 

“Over a hundred years of literature has suggested that lamprey lack a sympathetic nervous system,” study co-author and California Institute of Technology biologist Marianne Bronner said in a statement. “Surprisingly, we found that sympathetic neurons do, in fact, exist in lamprey but arise at a much later time in lamprey development than expected.”

Bronner and her team studied neural crest cells. These are a kind of stem cells that are specific to vertebrates and give rise to the multiple cell types found throughout the body. Scientists previously believed that lampreys lacked the neural crest-derived precursors, or progenitors, that ultimately build the sympathetic nervous system.

According to Bronner, researchers previously looked for evidence of a sympathetic nervous system too early in lamprey development compared to other animals. For example, the sympathetic nervous system forms in the first two to three days of development in birds. 

[Related: You might have more in common with the sea lamprey than you realize.]

Study co-author and Cal Tech evolutionary biologist Brittany Edens looked at the neural crest–derived progenitor cells in lampreys that ultimately give rise to sympathetic neurons. She found that in lampreys, the neural crest–derived progenitors appear much later than other animals. They can appear as long as one month after fertilization. The cells also do not fully mature into neurons until about four months of development, during the fish’s larval stage.

It is still not known whether the sympathetic nervous system of lampreys controls fight-or-flight-like behaviors similar to other vertebrates. According to the team, these findings suggest that the developmental program that controls the formation of sympathetic neurons remains across all vertebrates, from lamprey to mammals. 

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NASA’s Juno mission scientists have used complex data collected during two flybys of Jupiter’s third largest moon Io to create animations that highlight this moon’s most dramatic features. Io is a little bit larger than the planet Earth and is also home to a mountain with a smooth lake of lava. Lava lakes like Io’s Loki Patera have a cooling surface crust that slowly thickens until it becomes denser than the underlying magma. It then sinks and pulls in the nearby crust. 

First launched in 2011, Juno arrived at our solar system’s largest planet in 2016 with a mission to explore the Jovian system. It has 95 known moons and its four largest–Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto–are called the Galilean moons. Io is most volcanically active.

This animation is an artist’s concept of Loki Patera, a lava lake on Jupiter’s moon Io, made using data from the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft. With multiple islands in its interior, Loki is a depression filled with magma and rimmed with molten lava. CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS.

“Io is simply littered with volcanoes, and we caught a few of them in action,” Juno’s principal investigator Scott Bolton said in a statement. “We also got some great close-ups and other data on a 200-kilometer-long [127-mile-long] lava lake called Loki Patera. There is amazing detail showing these crazy islands embedded in the middle of a potentially magma lake rimmed with hot lava. The specular reflection our instruments recorded of the lake suggests parts of Io’s surface are as smooth as glass, reminiscent of volcanically created obsidian glass on Earth.”

The observations were announced April 16 during the European Geophysical Union General Assembly in Vienna, Austria.

[Related: See the most volcanic world in our solar system in new NASA images.]

Juno conducted very close flybys of Io in December 2023 and February 2024, getting within 930 miles of the surface. The spacecraft obtained first close-up images of Io’s northern latitudes. Maps created with data collected by Juno’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR) instrument show that Io has a surface that is more smooth compared to Jupiter’s other Galilean moons, but also has poles that are colder than their middle latitudes.

Created using data collected by the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno during flybys in December 2023 and February 2024, this animation is an artist’s concept of a feature on the Jovian moon Io that the mission science team nicknamed “Steeple Mountain.” CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

Mountains and polar cyclones

With every pass, Juno flies closer to the north pole of Jupiter. Changing the spacecraft’s orientation allows the MWR instrument to improve its resolution of Jupiter’s northern polar cyclones. These storms at the top of the gas giant can reach wind speeds of 220 miles per hour and the data collected by Juno reveals that not all polar cyclones are created equal.

“Perhaps [the] most striking example of this disparity can be found with the central cyclone at Jupiter’s north pole,” Steve Levin, Juno’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. “It is clearly visible in both infrared and visible light images, but its microwave signature is nowhere near as strong as other nearby storms. This tells us that its subsurface structure must be very different from these other cyclones. The MWR team continues to collect more and better microwave data with every orbit, so we anticipate developing a more detailed 3D map of these intriguing polar storms.”

Just how much water is on Jupiter? An enduring mystery

One of Juno’s primary science goals is to collect data that will help astronomers better understand Jupiter’s water abundance. However, the team isn’t looking for liquid water. Instead, they are studying Jupiterl’s atmosphere to quantify the presence of the molecules that make up water–oxygen and hydrogen. According to NASA, an accurate estimate of oxygen and hydrogen molecules present in Jupiter’s atmosphere is crucial to unlocking some of the underlying mysteries of how our solar system formed.  

Jupiter was likely the first planet to form roughly 4.5 billion years ago. It also contains most of the gas and dust that wasn’t incorporated into the sun when the solar system formed. Water abundance also has important implications for Jupiter’s meteorology and internal structure.

[Related: Juno finally got close enough to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot to measure its depth.]

In 1995, NASA’s Galileo probe provided early data on the amount of water on Jupiter, but the data created more questions than answers. It showed that the gas giant’s atmosphere was unexpectedly hot and actually deprived of water—contrary to what computer models had initially indicated.

“The probe did amazing science, but its data was so far afield from our models of Jupiter’s water abundance that we considered whether the location it sampled could be an outlier. But before Juno, we couldn’t confirm,” said Bolton. “Now, with recent results made with MWR data, we have nailed down that the water abundance near Jupiter’s equator is roughly three to four times the solar abundance when compared to hydrogen. This definitively demonstrates that the Galileo probe’s entry site was an anomalously dry, desert-like region.”

[Related: Jupiter’s icy ocean worlds could be cool travel destinations in the future.]

The new results support the idea that sometime during the formation of our solar-system, water-ice material may have been the source of heavy element enrichment. These are chemical elements that are heavier than hydrogen and helium that Jupiter accumulated. The planet’s formation remains puzzling, because Juno’s results on the core of the gas giant suggest that there is very low water abundance. How abundant H₂0 is on the gas giant remains a mystery that the Juno mission could potentially solve.  

What’s next for Juno

Data during the reminder of Juno’s mission could help determine how much water is on Jupiter in two ways. It could enable scientists to compare Jupiter’s water abundance near the polar regions to the equatorial region. It also may shed additional light on the structure of the planet’s dilute liquid core. 

Juno’s most recent flyby of Io was on April 9 and the spacecraft came within about 10,250 miles of the moon’s surface. Its 61st flyby of Jupiter is scheduled for May 12 and it will continue to explore the planet and its moons through September 2025. 

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The Central California coast is proving to be a playground for baby sharks. Earlier this year, we caught a glimpse of what could be the first images of a newborn great white shark. Now, we’re learning more about where they like to live during their formative years. Juvenile great white sharks select warm and shallow waters and congregate about half a mile from shore. These findings are described in a study published April 19 in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science and could have crucial conservation implications.

This water column is too cold

After they’re born, baby great white sharks–called pups–do not get any care from their parents. This new study looked at one of these populations of young sharks off Padaro Beach near Santa Barbara in Central California. Here, pups and juveniles gather together in ‘nurseries’ and are unaccompanied by adults in a sort of shark never, neverland, except these fish will eventually grow up.

“This is one of the largest and most detailed studies of its kind, because around Padaro Beach, large numbers of juveniles share near-shore habitats, we could learn how environmental conditions influence their movements,”study co-author and California State University, Long Beach marine biologist Christopher Lowe said in a statement. “You rarely see great white sharks exhibiting this kind of nursery behavior in other locations.”

[Related: This could be the first newborn great white shark ever captured on camera.]

In 2020 and 2021, the team tagged 22 juveniles with sensor-transmitters. Great white sharks can live for up to 40 to 70 years and the younger sharks in this study were all females and males between one and six years old. The sensor-transmitters measured local water pressure and temperature in real time. They also tracked each shark’s position by sending out “pings” to several receivers spread out over roughly two miles along the shoreline. 

When the juveniles temporarily left for offshore waters in the winter, the tracking was stopped. The team gathered more information on the temperature distribution with an autonomous underwater vehicle. With this data in hand, they used artificial intelligence to generate a 3D model of the juveniles’ temperature and depth preferences.

The juveniles dived to the greatest depths around dawn and dusk. This is likely when they were foraging for rays, skates, and schooling fish. They moved closer to the surface–between zero and 13 feet deep–during the afternoon when the sun was warmest. This shift towards the warmer water was potentially to increase their body temperature. They directly altered their vertical position within the water column to stay between 60 degrees and 71 degrees Fahrenheit. Their sweet spot also appeared to be between 68 and 71 degrees. 

“This may be their optimum to maximize growth efficiency within the nursery,” study co-author and California State University, Long Beach research technician Emily Spurgeon said in a statement. 

Keeping to the shallows

The temperature distribution in the water changes quite frequently, which means that the juveniles must constantly be on the move to remain within optimal range. They believe that this is why juvenile great white sharks spend more time in shallow water than adults tend to. Additionally, adult sharks were rarely observed in the nursery.

[Related: With new tags, researchers can track sharks into the inky depths of the ocean’s Twilight Zone.]

According to the team, the results show that the temperature distribution across three dimensions strongly impacted how the juvenile sharks were distributed. They spread out at greater depths when seafloor temperatures were warmer, and moved closer together towards the surface of the water when deeper water was cooler.

However, the team is still not sure what benefits the pups and juveniles have from gathering in nurseries in the first place. It could potentially help them avoid predators like some whales.

“Our results show that water temperature is a key factor that draws juveniles to the studied area,” said Spurgeon. “However, there are many locations across the California coast that share similar environmental conditions, so temperature isn’t the whole story. Future experiments will look at individual relationships, for example to see if some individuals move among nurseries in tandem.”

Great white sharks are considered vulnerable, with their populations decreasing in some parts of the world. Knowing where baby and juvenile sharks like to hang out can help inform better conservation laws to protect them as a species. It can also help protect the public from negative shark encounters. 

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Evolution is quite a wondrous and lengthy process, with some random bursts of activity that are responsible for the diversity of life on our planet today. These can happen on large scales like with the evolution of more efficient limbs. They also occur at microscopic cellular level, such as when different parts of the cell were first formed. 

Now, a team of scientists have detected a sign of a major life event that has likely not occurred for at least one billion years. They’ve observed primary endosymbiosis–two lifeforms merging into one organism. This incredibly rare event occurred between a type of abundant marine algae and a bacterium was observed in a lab setting. For perspective, plants first began to dot our planet the last time this happened. The results are described in two papers recently published in the journals Cell and Science. 

Where the ‘powerhouse of the cell’ and chloroplasts come from

Primary endosymbiosis happens when one microbial organism engulfs another. It then begins to use the swallowed organisms as an internal organ. The host provides the organism–now called an endosymbiont–several benefits including nutrients, energy, and protection. When it can no longer survive on its own, the engulfed endosymbiont becomes an organ for the host called an organelle.

“It’s very rare that organelles arise from these types of things,” Tyler Coale, a co-author of the Cell study and a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Santa Cruz said in a statement. “The first time we think it happened, it gave rise to all complex life.”

Endosymbiosis where the host life form becomes fundamental to another organism’s function has only happened three known times. All of these instances were a major breakthroughs for evolution, since merging with their hosts became fundamental for the endosymbionts very existence.

The first event was roughly 2.2 billion years ago. This is when a single-celled organism called archaea swallowed up a bacterium that eventually became the mitochondria. This specialized organelle is what every biology student learns is the “powerhouse of the cell” and its formation allowed for complex organisms to evolve. 

“Everything more complicated than a bacterial cell owes its existence to that event,” said Coale. “A billion years ago or so, it happened again with the chloroplast, and that gave us plants,” Coale said.

This second event occurred when more advanced cells absorbed cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria can harvest energy from sunlight and they eventually become organelles called chloroplasts that can harvest energy from sunlight. The chloroplasts gave us another core principle of biology–green plants that can make food from the sun. 

With this latest endosymbiosis event, it’s possible that the algae is converting nitrogen from the atmosphere into ammonia that it can use for other cellular processes. However, it needs the help of a bacterium.

A new organelle?

In the paper published in Cell, a team of scientists show that this process is occurring yet again. They looked at a species of algae called Braarudosphaera bigelowii. The algae engulfed a cyanobacterium gives it a bit of a plant superpower. It can “fix” nitrogen straight from the air and combine it with other elements to form more useful compounds. This is something that plants normally can’t do.  

Nitrogen is a very important nutrient for life to exist and plants normally get it through mutual relationships with the bacteria that remain separate from the plant or algae. The team first thought that the B. bigelowii algae had this kind of symbiotic relationship with a bacterium called UCYN-A. The relationship had actually gotten much more close and serious.  

[Related: You have no idea how much you need these bacteria.]

They found that the size ratio between the algae and UCYN-A bacterium remains similar across different species related to the B. bigelowii algae. The growth appears to be controlled by an exchange of key nutrients, linking up their metabolisms. This synchronization of growth rates led the researchers to call UCYN-A organelle-like.

“That’s exactly what happens with organelles,” study co-author and UC Santa Cruz microbial oceanographer Jonathan Zehr said in a statement. “If you look at the mitochondria and the chloroplast, it’s the same thing: they scale with the cell.”

Introducing the nitroplast

To look for more lines of evidence that this bactrium is an organelle, they needed to take a deeper look inside. The study published in the journal Science used advanced X-ray imaging to get a look at the interior of the living B. bigelowii algae cells. It revealed that the replication and cell division was synchronized between both the host algae and the UCYN-A bacterium. It provided even more evidence of this organism merging process of primary endosymbiosis at work.

“Until this paper, there was still a question of is this still an ‘endosymbiont’, or has it become a true organelle?” Carolyn Larabell, a study co-author and faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab’s Biosciences Area and Director of the National Center for X-Ray Tomography, said in a statement. “We showed with X-ray imaging that the process of replication and division of the algal host and endosymbiont is synchronized, which provided the first strong evidence.”

They also compared the proteins of isolated UCYN-A bacteria to the proteins inside of the algae  cells. The team found that the isolated bacterium can only make roughly half of the proteins it needs. It needs its algal host to provide it with the rest of the proteins necessary for living. 

“That’s one of the hallmarks of something moving from an endosymbiont to an organelle,” said Zehr. “They start throwing away pieces of DNA, and their genomes get smaller and smaller, and they start depending on the mother cell for those gene products–or the protein itself–to be transported into the cell.”

The team believes that this indicates that UCYN-A can be considered a full organelle. They gave it the name “nitroplast,” and it potentially began to evolve around 100 million years ago. While that sounds long to our human sense of time, it’s a mere millisecond in evolutionary time when compared with mitochondria and chloroplasts.

Plenty of other questions about UCYN-A and its algal host remain unanswered and the team also plans to figure out UCYN-A and the alga operate and study different strains. Further study of nitroplasts could also determine if they are present in other cells and what their benefits may be. For example, it could have wide applications in agriculture.

“This system is a new perspective on nitrogen fixation, and it might provide clues into how such an organelle could be engineered into crop plants,” said Coale.

According to Zehr, scientists will likely find other organisms that have similar evolutionary stories as UCYN-A, but this discovery is “one for the textbooks.”

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In the new IMAX film Deep Sky, a protostar shines from the center of a dark cloud, the phantom galaxy swirls, and the dusty space clouds of the Cosmic Cliffs of Carina tower like mountain peaks. Also, scientists cry. The film centers on the James Webb Space Telescope’s visual legacy and the people behind it. At one point, NASA astrophysicist Amber Straughn gets to the heart of why seeing the Cosmic Cliffs of Carina is such an emotional journey. “This has always been there. It’s always been out there, but we’re just now able to see it. We now have this new telescope that’s opened up our eyes to let us see something we haven’t seen before.”

While not quite as challenging as building a space telescope, making Deep Sky posed a novel challenge to the filmmakers, Nathaniel Kahn noted: “…Every time we’d start to get close to finishing, NASA would release a new amazing image, and we’d have to find a way to work that in!” As the film’s writer, director, and producer, Kahn and team were finishing the project in September of 2023, combining digital cinematography by NASA, ESA, and commercial satellite launch company Arianespace with animations and graphics created specifically for IMAX. If you want to see the stereotypes of the stoic scientists challenged and bask in the glory of space, you can catch the IMAX experience starting Friday, April 19. 

The drive to uncover the secrets of the cosmos propels this new telling of JWST’s unfolding story. Here’s what it took to get there.

‘It was waving goodbye’

In the almost two years since those first images were beamed back to planet Earth, it’s easy for casual observers to forget how improbable it was. JWST was initially supposed to launch in 2011 and congress even tried to cancel it that same year over budget concerns. It ultimately took 10,000 people from 14 countries, $10 billion, and 20 years to complete.

[Related: JWST images show off the swirling arms of 19 spiral galaxies.]

“I’ve worked on JWST for 15 years and I’m sort of one of the younger ones working on this telescope,” Straughn tells PopSci. “We faced a lot of challenges along the way and it was an audacious mission. We had to build this enormous telescope that had to be cold and that had to unfold in space. When you describe it, it sounds impossible.”

Multiple technologies needed to be invented to get this game-changer off the ground, including a critical sunshield. Since JWST primarily observes infrared light from faint and very far away objects. It must be kept extremely cold, at about -370 degrees Fahrenheit, to detect these faint signals of heat. The team constructed a five-layer sunshield about the size of a tennis court that protects it from other heat sources like the Earth, sun, and various moons. In the documentary, Amy Lo, the Deputy Director for Vehicle Engineering on JWST for Northrop Grumman, described it as being “SPF one million,” in order to keep it so cold and protected. She noted that there was no “second shot of doing this.”

During its launch on Christmas Day 2021, JWST completed over 40 crucial deployments of its various instruments and overcame 344 “single point failures.” If any one of those single points had failed, the entire mission would have ended.

The mission overcame all 344 single point failures and even got an added surprise. About 45 seconds into the launch, they caught the telescope’s power source called the solar array open up. This proved JWST officially had power and the deployment was not something the team planned to be able to see with their own eyes during the launch. Through tears, NASA JWST Program Scientist Eric Smith said, “It was waving goodbye,” in the documentary. 

Back to the big bang

By several accounts, JWST is performing better than expected. It’s standing up against the micrometeoroids–tiny pieces of space dust that can build up on the telescope’s mirrors. The team had a good idea of how frequently the dust would hit the mirrors, but the size of the impacts was more surprising.

[Related: Why a 3,000-mile-long jet stream on Jupiter surprised NASA scientists.]

“What we’ve been able to do to help mitigate this is essentially change the way we’re operating so that as the telescope is facing away from the direction that the micrometeoroids are coming from when we think we could have higher impacts,” Straughn tells PopSci. 

It has also proven to be more stable and more efficient overall. According to Straughn, JWST has delivered more data in even less time than the team anticipated, revealing some of the most distant galaxies in the universe. These are galaxies that were born just after the big bang about 13.8 billion years ago. JWST has revealed that many are brighter, bigger, and more numerous than astrophysicists previously thought and their black holes are also growing incredibly fast. 

“There’s an overarching new mystery that’s arisen of why galaxies are growing so big,” says Straughn. “When we find something that we don’t expect, that’s a new problem to solve that will help increase our knowledge about how the universe works.”

Towards the future

JWST built on the success of the Hubble Space Telescope and other observational projects are on our horizon. Scheduled to launch in 2027, the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope will explore exoplanets and dark matter. The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) is also in the early stages of development and will be specifically designed to discover life on other planets. 

[Related: In NASA’s new video game, you are a telescope hunting for dark matter.]

“I think that this telescope launch and these images came along at a perfect time to present a contrast to the bad things that are going on in the world,” says Straughn. “It really is an example of something that’s good, of what we humans can do when we put our hearts and our minds into something that’s for a bigger purpose.”

Deep Sky releases in IMAX theaters nationwide on Friday, April 19.

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Paleontologists already know that the extinct marine reptile ichthyosaurs were enormous. Some newly described jawbone fossils uncovered in England represent a new ichthyosaur species. The bones indicate that the ocean titan may have been over 82 feet long, and even pushed the possible limits of vertebrate size. The new find is detailed in a study published April 17 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

“This research has been ongoing for almost eight years. It is quite remarkable to think that gigantic, blue whale-sized ichthyosaurs were swimming in the oceans around what was the UK during the Triassic Period,” study co-author and University of Manchester paleontologist Dean Lomax said in a statement. “These jawbones provide tantalizing evidence that perhaps one day a complete skull or skeleton of one of these giants might be found. You never know.”

Meet the ichthyosaurs

Ichthyosaurs are an extinct group of reptiles that are distant relatives of today’s lizards and snakes. They had long fins and were potentially ambush predators like today’s great white sharks and wolves, feeding on fish and other marine dwellers. Ichthyosaurs also may have followed migration patterns that are similar to today’s whales. 

[Related: These ancient, swimming reptiles may have been the biggest animals of all time.]

They lived 228 to 112 million years ago and they were most abundant during the Triassic and Jurassic eras. There are over 100 known ichthyosaur species. Their remains have been found in parts of Asia, North America, and Europe. A fossil deposit in present day Nevada may have even been an ichthyosaur birthing ground. 

Solving a prehistoric jigsaw puzzle 

Over several years, a team from The University of Manchester has discovered and pieced together individual fragments of an ichthyosaur jawbone. A jawbone uncovered in 2016 at the Westbury Mudstone Formation in Somerset was similar to one collected from the same rock formation just a few miles away. The team believe that both of these jawbones belong to a previously undescribed species of ichthyosaur.

In 2020, a father and daughter from Devon named Justin and Ruby Reynolds found the first pieces of the second jawbone to be found in May 2020. Ruby was 11 years-old at the time and found the first chunk of giant bone before searching for more pieces. The family contacted Lomax and fossil collector and study co-author Paul de la Salle, who found the first jawbone in 2016. 

“I was amazed by the find. In 2018, my team studied and described Paul’s giant jawbone and we had hoped that one day another would come to light,” said Lomax. “This new specimen is more complete, better preserved, and shows that we now have two of these giant bones–called a surangular–that have a unique shape and structure. I became very excited, to say the least.”

Over time, several members of the Reynolds family, Paul, and Lomax’s research team visited the site to hunt for more pieces of this rare discovery. They found more pieces of the same jaw which happened to fit together perfectly.

[Related: Why kids make the best amateur fossil hunters.]

“It was so cool to discover part of this gigantic ichthyosaur. I am very proud to have played a part in a scientific discovery like this,” Ruby Reynolds said in a statement. Ruby and her father are both listed as co-authors of the new study. 

A new ichthyosaur species

The final piece of bone was recovered in October 2022. The research team found that the jaw bones belong to a new species of giant ichthyosaur they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, or “giant fish lizard of the Severn.” It was likely the size of the blue whale–today’s largest living organism. Comparing the two examples of the same bone with the same unique features from the same geologic time zone helps support the idea that it is a new species. 

The bones are about 202 million years old and date back to the end of the Triassic Period called the Rhaetian. During the Rhaetian, gigantic ichthyosaurs swam while dinosaurs walked on land. However, this was when ichthyosaurs’ time on Earth came to a close. They went extinct during the Late Triassic global mass extinction event some 200 million years ago and these bones represent the very last of their kind. Dinosaurs would not go on to live another 134 million years. 

While this new discovery is not the first giant ichthyosaur, these findings are unique among those known to science. These two bones appear about 13 million years after their latest geologic relatives. These include Shonisaurus sikanniensis from British Columbia, Canada, and Himalayasaurus tibetensis from Tibet, China. A closer examination of the bones’ internal structures also confirmed that the animal was likely still growing at its time of death.

“The anomalous periosteal growth of these bones hints at yet to be understood bone developmental strategies, now lost in the deep time, that likely allowed late Triassic ichthyosaurs to reach the known biological limits of vertebrates in terms of size,” Marcello Perillo, a study co-author and a paleobiology master’s student at the University of Bonn in Germany, said in a statement. “So much about these giants is still shrouded by mystery, but one fossil at a time we will be able to unravel their secret.”

The ichthyosaur bones will soon be on display at the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery.

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Life may “find a way,” but how living things evolve is not a neat and orderly process. Instead of a tidy family tree with straight lines added for each new generation, the birth of a new species is much more tangled in reality. New research into one butterfly genus found in the Amazon shows just how entangled those evolutionary lines may be. Hybrids between some species can produce new butterfly species that are genetically distinct from both parent species and their earlier ancestors. The findings are described in a study published April 17 in the journal Nature. 

A third hybrid

In the study, the team focused on the brightly colored Heliconius genus of butterflies found in Central and South America. They are a common model for studying how butterfly wing patterns evolved due to the wide variety of wings within the group. In an 1861 letter to Charles Darwin, naturalist Henry Walter Bates referred to the Heliconius butterflies found in the Amazon as “a glimpse into the laboratory where Nature manufactures her new species.”

For a deeper look into Heliconius’ evolution, the team on this new study harnessed the power of whole-genome sequencing. All living organisms have DNA that is made of four nucleotide bases–adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. If you know the sequence of bases, you can identify the organism’s unique DNA fingerprint called a pattern. Sequencing determines these patterns and whole genome sequencing in a lab can determine the orders of these bases in one process.  

[Related: You might have more in common with the sea lamprey than you realize.]

The whole-genome sequencing indicated that a hybridization event occurred about 180,000 years ago between Heliconius melpomene and the ancestor of today’s Heliconius pardalinus butterflies. This event produced a third hybrid species called Heliconius elevatus. While it is descended from hybrids, H. elevatus is also a distinct butterfly species and has its own individual traits. These include color pattern, wing shape, flight characteristics, how they choose mates, and more. All three of these distinct species now fly together across a wide area of Amazon and indicate more evidence that hybrids are not always sterile as sometimes previously thought. 

“Historically, hybridization was thought of as a bad thing that was not particularly important when it came to evolution,” study co-author and Harvard University biologist Neil Rosser said in a statement. “But what genomic data have shown is that, actually, hybridization among species is widespread. Over the last 10 or 15 years, there’s been a paradigm shift in terms of the importance of hybridization and evolution.”

An evolutionary surprise

According to the team, this may alter how we view species and speciation. Scientists had generally believed that hybridization inhibited the generation of new species. Hybrid organisms are often born unhealthy or sterile and can’t reproduce, particularly when they are born with two different sex chromosomes. Most species are not perfectly intact tight units, but instead exchange a lot of DNA and can be considered “quite leaky.” The species that are evolving are actually exchanging genes constantly and it can trigger the evolution of new lineages. 

“Normally, species are thought to be reproductively isolated. They can’t produce hybrids that are reproductively fertile,” study co-author and Harvard University biologist James Mallet said in a statement. 

This is a different case for Heliconius  butterflies. They show that hybridization is not only occurring, but has driven the evolution of a new species in itself. While there is now evidence of hybridization between species, confirming if hybridization is involved in speciation has been difficult. 

[Related: Butterflies can remember specific flower foraging routes.]

“The question is: How can you collapse two species together and get a third species out of that collapse?” said Mallet.

This new research provides scientists with a next step in understanding how hybridization and speciation work in evolution. It could also help play a role in the planet’s biodiversity crisis, since fully understanding the question of what we really mean by “species” on a genetic level is important for conservation. It may also help in understanding the carriers of certain diseases. Multiple species of mosquitoes carry malaria, and while they are closely related, we still do not know how they interact or create new hybrids the way Heliconius butterflies do. 

As with evolution itself, this area of study will only continue to untangle as biologists learn more about what really makes a species a species. 

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Microscopic tardigrades have fascinated scientists for their incredible toughness since they were first discovered back in 1773. They can sense when it’s time to go dormant and enter a tun state under harsh conditions. Tardigrades can even withstand dangerous levels of radiation and a surprising mechanism in the DNA may be why. The process to repair DNA goes into overtime when exposed to the deadly radiation to fix the damaged DNA. The findings are described in a study published April 12 in the journal Current Biology.

“What we saw surprised us,” study co-author and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill biologist Bob Goldstein said in a statement. “The tardigrades are doing something we hadn’t expected.”  

Among the many dangers of excessive radiation exposure is its ability to damage DNA. In humans, the DNA damage from excessive radiation is linked to diseases including various cancers and cardiovascular disease. Tardigrade aka “water bears” can withstand an incredible amount of radiation. In 1963, researchers first discovered that they can survive 1,400 times more intense radiation than humans are known to live through. Now, scientists are getting a glimpse into how their bodies correct the radiation damage in DNA. 

[Related: What you need to know about the tardigrade cannon.]

In this new study, a team at UNC Chapel Hill used lab methods developed over the past 25 years to identify the internal genetic mechanisms tardigrades use to survive radiation exposure. They looked at a species of tardigrade called Hypsibius exemplaris that are not immune to DNA damage from radiation. Instead, they can repair this type of extensive damage. When they are exposed to radiation, tardigrade cells harness the power of hundreds of genes to create new proteins used to repair DNA. These proteins then ramp up the level of DNA repair to levels study co-author and biologist Courtney Clark-Hachtel called “ridiculous.”

“These animals are mounting an incredible response to radiation, and that seems to be a secret to their extreme survival abilities,” Clark-Hachtel said in a statement. “What we are learning about how tardigrades overcome radiation stress can lead to new ideas about how we might try to protect other animals and microorganisms from damaging radiation.”

[Related: We’ve seen how tardigrades walk, and it’s mesmerizing.]

As the UNC-Chapel Hill scientists completed the work, a team from France found similar results in their experiments. Museum of Natural History Paris researchers Jean-Paul Concordet and Anne de Cian and their colleagues found that while gamma rays shattered the DNA of the tardigrades, it didn’t kill them. They also discovered a new tardigrade protein called TRD1 that protects DNA. When it is put into human cells, the protein seems to help them withstand the damage. Concordet told The New York Times that TRD1 may grab onto the chromosomes and keep them in their correct shape, even as the chromosome strands start to fray. Understanding proteins like these can potentially lead to new treatments for cancer and other medical disorders where DNA is damaged. 

“Any tricks they use we might benefit from,” said Concordet. Concordet’s  findings were published as a reviewed preprint in the journal eLife in January. 

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As we wait for this spring and summer’s “cicadapocalypse,” when trillions will emerge across the Southern and Midwestern United States, some of the bugs may face a predicament that sounds straight out of science fiction. A sexually transmitted fungal pathogen exclusive to these periodical insects called Massospora cicadina can control them like “a puppet master.” It causes the infected cicadas to act hypersexual and infect other bugs before they eventually die.

Abdomens pierced open by a fungus

Massospora cicadina can affect both broods of periodical cicadas set to emerge in the coming weeks and months. Brood XIII–the Northern Illinois Brood–will emerge for the first time since 2007 and stretches across parts of Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, and northern Illinois. Some of Brood XIX–the Great Southern Brood–will overlap with Brood XIII. The Great Southern Brood last emerged in 2011 and is primarily located in Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, George, North Carolina, South Carolina, and southern Illinois.

When they emerge, the cicadas molt into adults. Within a week to 10 days, this fungus opens up the backs of their abdomens. Scientists are still not sure when in their life cycle cicadas can initially become infected with Massospora cicadina, but the prevailing hypothesis is that they are infected on their way up from the ground. 

[Related: This parasite deploys mucus slime balls to make ‘zombie ants.’]

According to West Virginia University mycologist Matt Kasson, the infected cicadas look like they have “a gumdrop that’s gotten wet and dropped in chalk dust,” on them.

“If you look at a fungus infected cicada, you’ll see that basically, the backside of the body has been replaced by this chalky white fungal plug,” Kasson tells PopSci. “Now, if you or I had our abdomens pierced open by a fungus or a third of our body was replaced by some parasite, we probably wouldn’t feel well. We probably wouldn’t attempt to mate. We would just feel awful, lay down, and die.”

However, infected cicadas continue to fly around as if nothing is wrong with them even as their genitalia have been consumed by a fungus. They can do this because the fungus has sent them into a period of prolonged wakefulness–a time of increased stamina.

“A hypothesis for that prolonged wakefulness is that the fungus is producing an amphetamine called cathinone,” says Kasson. Kasson says it is similar to one of the synthetic stimulants commonly found in “illegal bath salts that were banned because of the aggressiveness that [they] would cause.” 

A quiet fungal ‘puppet master’

It makes the cicadas act hypersexualized, where males will continue to try to unsuccessfully mate with females and also mimic female behaviors to attract other males to mate with them. This then doubles the number of cicadas that will eventually become infected and is why it can be considered sexually transmitted. 

Massospora cicadina’s ability to keep the host alive long to maximize the number of cicadas infected makes it a biotroph. It does not work like the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus that takes over ants and makes them act like zombies or the fictional fungi from the television show and video game The Last of Us that pops out in a dramatic fashion. 

[Related: The Cicadapocalypse is nigh. 7 cicada facts to know before it hits.]

“It’s a trick of the fungus and it’s like a puppet master,” says Kasson. “It’s pulling the strings to maximize its own survival.”

Infection rates can reach 20 percent of a cicada if the environmental conditions are perfect, but some older studies suggest that it affects about five percent of cicadas in a given brood. 

Optimizing its genome

Massospora cicadina was first discovered in the mid to late 1800’s. Since periodical cicadas only emerge every 13 or 17 years, studying this fungus is difficult. It also can’t be cultured on a petri dish, so mycologists have a limited window to study them and are still not really sure where it comes from. 

In 2016, Brood V emerged near Kasson’s office in West Virginia and some of his graduate students suggested they look for signs of this fungus. They were able to sequence parts of its genome to see what makes it special. What they found was the largest genome ever sequenced for a fungus at about 1.5 billion bases.

“It’s about 20 times bigger than the average human genome and it’s mostly filled with these repetitive sequences called transposable elements,” says Kasson.

They indicate that Massospora cicadina has essentially spent millions of years optimizing its genome right alongside the cicada. The fungus and insect appear to have coevolved so that it can manipulate its host in a specific way to not kill it, but ensure its own survival. According to Kasson, their data on this coevolution hasn’t been published yet, but shows some interesting evolutionary dynamics. 

“What we see is a pattern where basically cicadas evolved in parallel to the fungus all together,” says Kasson. 

Massospora cicadina is not transmissible to humans, but  it would be smart to avoid eating any cicadas that have the white, chalky plugs on their abdomens. The infected bugs will not come with any sort of high or buzz, but do have several toxins that could be dangerous if eaten. 

“We found 1,000 other chemical compounds, some of which are known mycotoxins,” says Kasson. “So proceed with caution if you’re thinking about consuming one of these cicada fungi.”

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Scientists have discovered an enormous stellar-mass black hole in our Milky Way galaxy that’s roughly 33 times more massive than our sun. This black hole designated as Gaia-BH3 was observed with the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia space telescope and is pretty close to Earth in space-terms at only 2,000 light years away. It is described in a paper presented April 16 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

What is a stellar-mass black hole?

Stellar-mass black holes like Gaia-BH3 are formed when a large star runs out of gas and then collapses. They are generally about 10 times as massive as our sun. Data from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and other ground-based observatories verified its large mass of 33 times bigger than the sun. The stellar-mass black hole Cygnus X-1 is only 21 solar masses, making Gaia-BH3 “exceptional.”

However, both are considered small compared with the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy–Sagittarius A*. Its mass is 4.2 million times that of the sun. Enormous black holes like Sagittarius A* are created by progressively larger and larger black holes merging together, and not by the death of large stars. 

A landmark discovery

This new discovery is considered a landmark by scientists because it’s the first time that a large black hole with this kind of origin story has been found so close to Earth. One of the clues that tipped off the Gaia mission team was an odd ‘wobbling’ motion occurring on the companion star orbiting the black hole. 

Gaia-BH3 is 2,000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila and is Earth’s second-closest known black hole. It was also an unexpected find while an international team of scientists were reviewing Gaia observations ahead of a full data drop planned for next year.

[Related: Fastest-growing black hole eats the equivalent of one sun a day.]

“No one was expecting to find a high-mass black hole lurking nearby, undetected so far,” Pasquale Panuzzo, an astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris, part of France’s National Centre for Scientific Research and Gaia collaboration member, said in a statement. “This is the kind of discovery you make once in your research life.”

Mass rich, metal-poor

Astronomers have found similarly large black holes outside of the Milky Way galaxy. The prevailing theory is that they may form from the collapse of stars that do not have many elements heavier than helium and hydrogen in their chemical makeup. These stars are considered “metal-poor” and are believed to lose less mass over their lifetimes, so they have more material left over to produce these high-mass black holes after they die. Evidence directly linking metal-poor stars to high-mass black holes has been lacking until these new observations. 

Stars that come in pairs tend to have similar chemical compositions, so Gaia BH3’s companion star holds some important clues to how the star collapsed to create this giant black hole. Data from the Very Large Telescope’s Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph instrument showed that the companion star was very metal-poor. This means that the star that collapsed to form Gaia BH3 was also metal-poor, as the theories predicted. 

[Related: Black hole collisions could possibly send waves cresting through space-time.]

“We took the exceptional step of publishing this paper based on preliminary data ahead of the forthcoming Gaia release because of the unique nature of the discovery,” astronomer Elisabetta Caffau, a study co-author from the CNRS Observatoire de Paris also a Gaia collaboration member, said in a statement. 

According to the team, making this data available early will allow other astronomers to study Gaia BH3 immediately without waiting for the complete Gaia data release. The full release from the space telescope is planned for late 2025 at the earliest and additional observations could reveal more about the black hole’s history.

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Tropical fruit-eating birds are so much more than just eye candy. These wildly colored avians are also a vital part of regenerating tropical forests. Data gathered on the ground in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil indicates that if birds like the red-legged honeycreeper, palm tanager, and toco toucan can move around more freely, carbon storage can increase by up to 38 percent. The findings are detailed in a study published April 15 in the journal Nature Climate Change. 

A crucial, but fragmented landscape

The Atlantic Forest in Brazil is one of the most biologically diverse regions in the world. It’s home to nearly seven percent of the world’s plant species and five percent of all vertebrates. This region is also one of Earth’s most fragmented tropical forests, due to deforestation, agriculture, and other human activities. Roughly 88 percent of its vegetation has been lost in the last 500 years, with only 12 percent of the original forest remaining in a patchwork of micro-forests. Many of these widely scattered forests are too far apart from one another to support bird movement.

Wild birds that eat a variety of fruits–or frugivores–can play a vital role in forest ecosystems by eating, excreting, and spreading seeds as they move around. Between 70 to 90 percent of the tree species living in tropical forests depend on seed dispersal from animals, as it allows the forests to grow and function.  

To combat this, 12 million hectares of land are targeted for restoration and natural recovery under the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact. New data from this study is helpful for determining how to proceed. 

[Related: Three nations pledge to reverse decades of destruction in the rainforest.]

“This crucial information enables us to pinpoint active restoration efforts–like tree planting–in landscapes falling below this forest cover threshold, where assisted restoration is most urgent and effective,” Daisy Dent, a study co-author and naturalist at ETH Zurich, a public research university in Switzerland, said in a statement. 

Bigger birds, bigger seeds

In the study, the team compared the carbon storage potential that could be recovered in landscapes with limited forest fragmentation to the more splintered landscapes. They found that the  more fragmented landscapes restricted the bird’s movement and more tree cover was needed.

According to the team, a minimum of 40 percent forest cover is critical across the Atlantic Forest region for species diversity and also maintain and restore ecosystem services needed to maximize forest restoration efforts. These ecosystem services include carbon storage and seed dispersal.

Different bird species also have differing impacts in terms of seed dispersal. 

The smaller birds can spread more seeds around, but they can only carry the smaller seeds that have lower carbon storage potential. 

Larger larger birds like the toco toucan or the curl-crested jay can disperse the seeds of bigger trees with a higher carbon storage potential. However, the larger birds are less likely to move across more highly fragmented landscapes.

“Allowing larger frugivores to move freely across forest landscapes is critical for healthy tropical forest recovery,” study co-author and ETH Zurich ecologist and biologist Carolina Bello said in a statement. “This study demonstrates that especially in tropical ecosystems seed dispersal mediated by birds plays a fundamental role in determining the species that can regenerate.”

What can be done

Preventing the poaching of tropical birds is one strategy, as more birds flying around can translate into more trees.

“We have always known that birds are essential, but it is remarkable to discover the scale of those effects,” study co-author and ETH Zurich ecologist Thomas Crowther said in a statement. “If we can recover the complexity of life within these forests, their carbon storage potential would increase significantly.”

[Related: Songbirds near the equator really are hotter, color-wise.]

Earlier studies suggest that recovering these forests could capture more than 2.3 billion tonnes of carbon. Natural regeneration could also be more cost-effective than planting more trees, but both should be done. This enhances animal movement in the areas where a more passive restoration is more likely. In highly fragmented landscapes, active restoration like planting more trees is necessary. In order for these tree planting methods to be ecologically effective, ensuring that the trees actually belong in the area and not are not being planted in grasslands is important. 

[Related: When planting trees is bad for the planet]

“By identifying the thresholds of forest cover in the surrounding landscape that allow seed dispersal, we can identify areas where natural regeneration is possible, as well as areas where we need to actively plant trees, allowing us to maximize the cost-effectiveness of forest restoration,” study co-author and nature based solutions project manager Danielle Ramos, said in a statement. Ramos is affiliated with the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom and the Universidade Estadual Paulista, in Rio Claro, São Paulo, Brazil.

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Get ready. Trillions of chirpy, red-eyed periodical cicadas are getting ready to emerge from underground in a rare double emergence event. These specific types of cicadas crawl out from below the ground every 13 or 17 years and can make as much noise as a jet engine.

While there are 3,400 known species of cicadas, only nine of them have the tendency to disappear underground then reemerge all at the same time. Seven of these nine periodical cicada spears are found in the United States. Even though it is not happening all across North America, it is still a huge natural event that’s worth keeping an eye on. 

[Related: This gnarly fungus makes cicadas hypersexual.]

“I would put the periodical cicadas as a natural phenomenon in the same category as April’s total solar eclipse,” Penn State University entomologist Michael Skvarla tells PopSci.

What is a brood of cicadas?

A brood is another term for a group of periodical cicadas that emerge every 13 or 17 years. Scientists use roman numerals to differentiate between various broods in North America. This year, Brood XIII (aka the Northern Illinois Brood) and Brood XIX (the Great Southern Brood) will emerge at the same time. 

The Northern Illinois Brood is a 17 year group and stretches across parts of Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, and northern Illinois. The Great Southern Brood emerges every 13 years and is primarily located in Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, George, North Carolina, South Carolina, and importantly, southern Illinois.

[Related: Cicadas pee in jet streams like bigger animals.]

“This year is kind of special because we have the emergence of two broods,” says Skvarla. “ We have one 13 year brood and one 17 year brood emerging. Because they’re coming out every 13 or 17 years, they don’t sync up very frequently.”

When will they emerge?

They will start to emerge as soon as the surrounding soil has reached 64 degrees Fahrenheit. That usually occurs anytime between late April and June and the cicadas will stay around through July.

These cicadas hatched from eggs that were laid in 2011 and 2007. They fell from the trees as newborns and burrowed into the ground where they hunkered down and fed on xylem sap and tree roots as they grew. 

Where will the broods overlap?

The real “cicadapocalypse” will primarily affect the unlucky few in parts of Illinois where both broods will emerge simultaneously. 

Even though it is not happening all across North America, it is still a huge natural event. “I would put the periodical cicadas as a natural phenomenon in the same category as April’s total solar eclipse,” says Skvarla.

This type of overlap is also incredibly rare and has not occurred since 1803, when Thomas Jefferson was president and had just purchased the Louisiana Territory from France.

[Related: Fiber optic cables can pick up cicadas’ droning din.]

What do they do when they emerge?

Cicadas come up to mate for several weeks and then die. The males send out their mating song by vibrating the small flaps on their abdomen called tymbals. Females will respond by flicking their wings. Eggs will be laid in trees and the hatchlings will burrow under the ground, beginning the whole process over again. 

Why do cicadas emerge on these strict schedules?

“The 13 and 17 year lifecycle is interesting, because both are prime numbers. We aren’t really sure why they’ve hit upon these prime number years,” says Skvarla. “There’s speculation that it might be because it’s harder for the broods to sync up the way that they’re doing this year.”

More synching up between broods could lead to less genetic diversity if interrelated bugs are mating with one another. Since they don’t emerge very often, it is difficult for scientists to study their peculiar calendars.

“You can spend your entire career and only see the same brood emerge two or three times,” said Sklarva. 

[Related: Baby Brood X cicadas are headed underground. What lies ahead is still a mystery.]

What do cicadas eat?

They spend their time underground munching on tree roots. They will not be destroying plants or crops when they emerge. 

Can you eat cicadas?

Yes, and there are several recipes that you can try.

“Cicadas kind of taste like shellfish like shrimp or lobster. It’s got kind of a crunchy, shrimpy flavor,” says Skvarla. “It doesn’t have the same consistency because cicadas have more shell and most recipes typically fry up the shell. With lobster or shrimp, you typically take the shell off.”

It is also not dangerous if your dog eats a few of them while out on a walk. 

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Earth used to be absolutely crawling with more megafauna. The fossil record is full of enormous birds like New Zealand’s Heracles inexpectatus, giant lemurs from Madagascar, large marine reptiles that would put today’s sea snakes to shame. Paleontologists have now found evidence of three unusual new species of giant fossil kangaroo in present day Australia and New Guinea. The creatures are described in a study published April 14 in the journal Megataxa and indicate that these species were likely much more diverse in terms of shape, range of habitat, and hopping method. 

“Living kangaroos are already such remarkable animals, so it’s amazing to think what these peculiar giant kangaroos could have been getting up to,” study co-author and Flinders University PhD student Isaac Kerr said in a statement.

Meet the giant kangaroos

The three new species belong to an extinct genus of giant kangaroos called Protemnodon that lived from five million to about 40,000 years ago. They would have looked somewhat similar to modern gray kangaroos, but were generally more squat and muscular. Some species were roughly 110 pounds, but others were up to twice as large as today’s biggest living kangaroos.

Protemnodon fossils are fairly common across Australia, but they have historically been found as individual bones instead of in complete skeletons. This has made it difficult for scientists to determine just how many species there were and how they differed in geographic range, movement, and size. 

[Related: What prehistoric poop reveals about extinct giant animals.]

“The fossils of this genus are widespread and they’re found regularly, but more often than not you have no way of being certain which species you’re looking at,” study co-author and Flinders University paleontologist Gavin Prideaux said in a statement. 

For this study, the team was able to use multiple complete fossilized kangaroo skeletons from Lake Callabonna in South Australia, which may help give scientists a more clear picture of these giant kangaroos. Researchers also reviewed all known species of Protemnodon and found that they were all quite different from one another. The animals also adapted to live in different environments and even had different methods of hopping. 

One very heavy, wayfaring kangaroo

One of the new species is named Protemnodon viator. The word viator means ‘traveler’ or ‘wayfarer’ in Latin. This wandering marsupial was also much bigger than other known giant kangaroos at weighing up to 374 pounds. According to the team, this is roughly twice as much as the largest living male red kangaroos. 

Protemnodon viator was also likely well-adapted to its arid central Australian habitat. It lived in a smaller geographic area than the red kangaroos of today. It was also long-limbed and could hop quickly and efficiently. 

A ‘robust’ creature and a swamp wallaby-like kangaroo

Another of the new species is named Protemnodon mamkurra and it connects the paleontologists of today with a famous scientist of the past. British paleontologist and naturalist Sir Richard Owen famously coined the term ‘dinosaur’ in 1842, but also described the first species of Protemnodon in 1874.

When he first found these giant kangaroo fossils, he followed a common scientific approach at the time. He mainly focused on fossilized teeth, seeing slight differences between the teeth of his specimens. He ultimately described six species of Protemnodon and further study chipped away at some of Owen’s early descriptions. He also suggested that some or all Protemnodon have four legs, While not all of them do, this study agrees that one of his species–Protemnodon anak–likely did have four legs. 

[Related: Giant beasts once roamed Madagascar. What happened to them?]

“However, our study suggests that this is true of only three or four species of Protemnodon, which may have moved something like a quokka or potoroo–that is bounding on four legs at times, and hopping on two legs at others,” Kerr said. “The newly described Protemnodon mamkurra is likely one of these. A large but thick-boned and robust kangaroo, it was probably fairly slow-moving and inefficient. It may have hopped only rarely, perhaps just when startled.”

The best of these fossil species comes from the Green Waterhole Cave in southeastern Australia, on the land of the Boandik people. The species name mamkurra, means ‘great kangaroo’ and was chosen by Boandik elders and language experts in the Burrandies Corporation.

According to Kerr, it is unusual for a single genus of kangaroo to live in such varied environments. “For example, the different species of Protemnodon are now known to have inhabited a broad range of habitats, from arid central Australia into the high-rainfall, forested mountains of Tasmania and New Guinea.”

The third new species is named Protemnodon dawsonae. It is known from fewer fossils than the other two, so it is more of a mystery. The team believes it was likely a moderate speed hopper and potentially similar to the living swamp wallaby. It was named in honor of Australian paleontologist Lyndall Dawson.

While most species became extinct about 40,000 years ago on mainland Australia, they potentially lived longer in New Guinea and Tasmania. Future studies could shed more light on their extinction, as it is still an enduring paleontological mystery. 

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From a human perspective, chimpanzees and bonobos often represent two sides of our very nature. Chimpanzees are seen as more conflict ready. Bonobos are considered more peaceful, even demonstrating cooperation between groups. Some new research into both great ape species paints a more nuanced picture of both species and their behavior. Bonobos appear to be actually more aggressive than researchers previously thought within their own communities. The findings are described in a study published April 12 in the journal Current Biology.

“Chimpanzees and bonobos use aggression in different ways for specific reasons,” study co-author and Boston University anthropologist Maud Mouginot said in a statement. “The idea is not to invalidate the image of bonobos being peaceful—the idea is that there is a lot more complexity in both species.”

Pushing, biting, and chasing

In the study, the team focused in male aggression, which is often tied to reproduction. They analyzed three bonobo communities at the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo and two chimpanzee communities at Gombe National Park in Tanzania. Researchers observed the behavior of 12 bonobos and 14 chimpanzees with a method called focal follows. This involves tracking one individual animal’s behavior for an entire day and noting how often the animal engaged in aggressive interactions, who they acted aggressively with, and whether or not they were physical. In great apes, these physical engagements included pushing, biting, or chasing an adversary. 

[Related: Popular chimpanzees set hand-holding trends for the whole group.]

“You go to their nests and wait for them to wake up and then you just follow them the entire day—from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep at night—and record everything they do,” said Mouginot.

They found that the male bonobos aggressive more frequently than chimpanzees. Overall, bonobos engaged in 2.8 times more aggressive interactions and three times as many physical aggressions than chimpanzees.

Bonobo males were also almost exclusively aggressive towards other males, while chimpanzees were more likely to be aggressive towards females. Chimpanzees were also more likely to use “coalitions” of males, with 13.2 percent of chimpanzee aggression and only one percent of bonobo aggressions featuring these groupings. 

The altercations involving groups of males can also cause more injuries and community infighting can potentially weaken the group’s ability to fight off different groups of chimpanzees. Bonobos do not appear to have this issue since most of their disputes are one on one. They have never been observed to kill one another and are not believed to be territorial, which leaves their communities more free to fight amongst themselves instead of outsiders. 

Male ‘coalitions’

The more aggressive males in both species also had greater mating success. The team was surprised to see this in bonobos because they have a co-dominant social dynamic where females often outrank males and can be more decisive with mates. Chimpanzees have male-dominated hierarchies, where these male coalitions coerce the females into mating.

“Male bonobos that are more aggressive obtain more copulations with females, which is something that we would not expect,” said Mouginot. “It means that females do not necessarily go for nicer males.”

The team notes that female bonobos and chimpanzees are not exactly passive, but that female aggression warrants its own future research.

The self-domestication hypothesis

These new findings of higher rates of male-male aggression in bonobos contradict a prevailing hypothesis in primate behavior called the self-domestication hypothesis. This idea that goes back as far as Charles Darwin posits that evolution has selected against aggression in bonobos and humans, but not chimpanzees. 

[Related: Primates have been teasing each other for 13 million years.]

Some of the findings do support some parts of the self-domestication hypothesis, specifically related to aggression towards females. Compared to chimpanzees, male bonobos direct less aggression towards females. According to the team, this aligns with earlier findings that male bonobos rarely use coercive mating strategies, even if they are physically larger.

The team could not assess the severity of aggressive interactions in terms of whether they caused wounds or injuries. They hope to collect this type of data in the future, along with comparing aggressive behavior that varies between communities and subspecies.

“I’d love to have the study complemented with comparable data from other field sites so we can get a broader understanding of variation within and between species,” said Mouginot.

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The Earth’s octopuses have been around for at least 330 million years. While they evolved before dinosaurs roamed the planet, their present day descendents don’t live for very long. They generally die soon after mating or laying eggs, with some octopus species living only six months and the average living about two to three years. Some species like the giant Pacific octopus can live up to five years at most. 

To keep fish populations sustainable, fisheries must ensure that enough breeding individuals are either left alone or released back into the wild. Government agencies can enforce catch laws, while scientists can inform laws by understanding the breeding lives of various fish. For octopuses, their short lifespans have been okay on an evolutionary level. However, as human taste for these cephalopods grows, it’s become a problem to meet demand. 

In an effort to protect the longevity of this incredibly old and smart sea creature while ensuring that octopus fisheries remain sustainable, a team of scientists in Australia have created the first known step-by-step guide for determining the age of an octopus. The guide is detailed in a paper published April 11 in the Marine and Freshwater Research Journal and offers a first step in creating guidelines for fishers to follow and ensure that they are catching octopuses that are not of breeding age.

There are a few ways to tell how old an organism is–a process called aging. Trees famously have rings that indicate how many years they have been living. Examining teeth and bone structure in mammals also can reveal similar information about age. That process has been a little bit tricky for octopuses. In the new paper, the team looked at their beaks and stylets–internal shells located near their gills. They pinpointed the growth rings similar to tree’s are located here and are a useful tool to validate the age of an octopus.

[Related: Octopuses rewrite their own RNA to survive freezing temperatures.]

“Over the past 30 years, various studies have explored different methods to age octopus, but only a small number of researchers worldwide have the hands-on knowledge to execute these methods in the laboratory,” study co-author and University of South Australia marine ecologist Zoe Doubleday said in a statement. “It’s critical that we don’t lose this practical scientific knowledge because by determining their age, we can understand the impact of different rates of fishing on the population.”

The team explains how scientists can examine an octopus’ beak, stylets, and growth rings in the lab to determine how old the animal is. In the future, these methods could then be applied in the wild to get a sense of how old octopuses living in the ocean are.

“Understanding an octopus’s age helps to keep fisheries sustainable,” study co-author and University of South Australia PhD student Erica Durante said in a statement. “If you know a species’ age, you can estimate how fast they grow and reproduce and how much you can catch to keep a fishery sustainable.”

[Related: Eating seafood can be more sustainable and healthy than red meat.]

Age data can also tell scientists how long it takes for an animal to mature. This way, octopuses that have not matured enough to breed can be avoided when fishing. According to Durante, age is important for the general conservation and management of a species, whether or not it is commercially fished. 

One tricky part is that while growth rings on trees represent years, the growth rings on octopus represent days. According to the team, these methods will need to be customized for each of the roughly 300 known species of octopus. The team also acknowledges that these guidelines will continue to evolve as we learn more about the lives of these multi-legged creatures.

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Our bodies can sometimes forcefully expel dust in our noses in the form of a sneeze. A similar phenomenon may be happening in baby stars. Some new observations of the protostellar disk that surrounds a baby star offer a closer look at how the disk releases plumes of gas, electromagnetic energy, and dust. The team from Kyushu University in Japan describes these “sneezes” as a release of magnetic flux or energy that could be a vital part of star formation. The findings are described in a study published April 11 in The Astrophysical Journal.

All stars develop in stellar nurseries, but star formation is a complex process that we still do not fully understand. These large areas of space that are full of the raw materials needed to create stars–gas, dust, and energy. Stellar nurseries with large concentrations of dust and gas eventually condense, forming a stellar core or baby star. Over time, the stellar cores will accumulate more material and grow in mass. As this growth unfolds, dust and gas form a ring around the new star astronomers call the protostellar disk.

“These structures are perpetually penetrated by magnetic fields, which brings with it magnetic flux,” study co-author and Kyushu University radio astronomer Kazuki Tokuda said in a statement. “However, if all this magnetic flux were retained as the star developed, it would generate magnetic fields many orders of magnitude stronger than those observed in any known protostar.”

[Related: The biggest gaseous structure in our galaxy is filled with baby star factories.]

Scientists have hypothesized that some mechanism during star development removes the magnetic flux. One theory is that the magnetic field gradually weakens over time as the cloud is gradually pulled into the stellar core.

In this new study, the team set their sights on a stellar nursery called MC 27. This stellar nursery is about 450 light-years away from Earth. They observed MC 27 using the ALMA Array, a collection of 66 high-precision radio telescopes in northern Chile.

“As we analyzed our data, we found something quite unexpected,” said Tokuda. “There were these ‘spike-like’ structures extending a few astronomical units from the protostellar disk. As we dug in deeper, we found that these were spikes of expelled magnetic flux, dust, and gas.”

According to the team, this phenomenon is called interchange instability. This occurs when instabilities in the magnetic field react with different amounts of gas in the protostellar disk surrounding the baby star. The result is the expulsion of magnetic flux.

“We dubbed this a baby star’s ‘sneeze’ as it reminded us of when we expel dust and air at high speeds,” said Tokuda.

[Related: Bursting stars could explain why it was so bright after the big bang.]

They also observed other spikes of energy thousands of astronomical units away from the protostellar disk. The team believes that these extra spikes could be the remnants of past stellar sneezes.

The team hopes that their findings will improve astronomer’s understanding of the detailed processes that shape the universe.

“Similar spike-like structures have been observed in other young stars, and it’s becoming a more common astronomical discovery,” said Tokuda. “By investigating the conditions that lead to these ‘sneezes’ we hope to expand our understanding of how stars and planets are formed.”

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A green sea turtle believed to be up to 95 years young was given a clean bill of health this week. Myrtle the ancient green sea turtle has been at Boston’s New England Aquarium for more than 50 years and shows no signs of slowing down, despite being in the upper levels of her life expectancy.

[Related: Endangered sea turtles build hundreds of nests on the Outer Banks.]

Turtles and tortoises are well known for their longevity. Depending on the species, they can live anywhere from 25 to 200 years. In December 2023, a tortoise named Jonathan celebrated his 191st birthday and is currently the oldest known tortoise. According to Guinness World Records, the previous oldest known tortoise was a radiated tortoise named Tu’i Malila. British explorer Captain James Cook presented Tu’i Malila to the royal family of Tonga sometime around around 1777. Tu’i Malila died in 1965 at the estimated age of 188.

Myrtle still has a ways to go to live up to the standards set by Jonathan and Tu’i Malila, so physical exams like this one can help veterinarians keep her healthy. To perform this semi-annual reptilian check-up, veterinarians first had to get Myrtle into an underwater crate and hoist all 500-plus pounds of her from her home in the aquarium’s Giant Ocean Tank. Once she was safely removed from the tank, a team of trained veterinarians, vet technicians, and aquarists drew blood, checked her flippers, and made sure her mouth, nose, and eyes were all working properly. She then received an ultrasound, hopped on the scale, and was returned to her tank. 

All of this was done while the aquarium was open to visitors, who assured onlookers that the veterinarians were trained professionals safe from Myrtle’s powerful jaws. Her serrated teeth are  likely strong enough to crush grass and some small hard shelled organisms.

According to ocean tank manager Mike O’Neill, she is “in robust condition,” despite her age. Myrtle is thought to be up to 95 years old, which would place her just beyond the upper boundaries of the species’ longevity. 

“There’s every reason to believe Myrtle will stick around for years to come,” O’Neill told the Associated Press. “She is iconic. One of the really special things we see is parents with their kids who say, ‘This is Myrtle, she has been here since when I was a kid.’ She has this multigenerational impact, which is really special.”

Since first arriving from an aquarium in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1970, Myrtle has been visited by roughly 50 million patrons. According to the New England Aquarium, she has gotten quite used to humans in that time and enjoyed having her schell scratched and eats up to six and a half pounds of food per day. She currently shares her space with tankmates Carolina and Retreat. These loggerhead sea turtles are about half her age and size. The loggerheads also received physicals and are also doing well, according to O’Neill.   

[Related: Safely share the beach with endangered sea turtles this summer.]

The second-largest species of sea turtle, green sea turtles live in tropical and subtropical oceans all over the world. The United States is home to six species of native sea turtles–green, hawksbill, Kemp’s ridley, leatherback, loggerhead, and olive ridley. They primarily feast upon algae and seagrass. 

All six sea turtle species in the US are protected by the Endangered Species Act, with green sea turtles listed as endangered and decreasing in population by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recommends reducing marine debris, not releasing balloons that often end up polluting the ocean, leaving turtle nests alone, and keeping these areas dark at night as some small steps to better protect sea turtles. 

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Dolphins and other toothed whales–or Odontocetes–use their heads to create sounds that help them communicate, navigate, and hunt in their murky marine world. These sometimes vocal-fry-like sounds reveal information about their murky marine world that is critical for survival. Some new genetic analysis suggests that the collections of fatty tissues that enable echolocation in toothed whales may have evolved from their skull muscles and bone marrow,changing how these animals eat and sense the world around them. The findings are described in a study published in the April 2024 issue of the journal Gene. 

Toothed whales include numerous dolphin species as well as orcas, sperm whales, belugas, and narwhals. Echolocation produced by a bulbous mass of fat tissue inside of their heads called the melon. 

Alongside of the jawbone of dolphins and toothed whales is a group of sound producing extramandibular fat bodies (EMFB). Another set of acoustic fat deposits called the intramandibular fat bodies (IMFB) are located inside the jawbone. The evolution of the melon, the extramandibular, and intramandibular fat bodies was critical for echolocation to develop in these marine mammals. However, little is known about how these fatty tissues themselves originated genetically. 

“Toothed whales have undergone significant degenerations and adaptations to their aquatic lifestyle,” Hayate Takeuchi, a study co-author and PhD student at Hokkaido University in Japan,  said in a statement. 

One of these adaptations was the partial loss of their sense of smell and taste, alongside the gain of echolocation. To look closer at this and other adaptations at a genetic level, the team from Hokkaido University studied DNA sequences of genes that are expressed in these acoustic fat bodies. They measured the gene expressions in harbor porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) and Pacific white-sided dolphins (Lagenorhynchus obliquidens). 

[Related: This dolphin ancestor looked like a cross between Flipper and Moby Dick.]

They found that the genes which are normally associated with muscle function and development were active in the melon and EMFB’s on the outside of the jawbone. There was also evidence of an evolutionary connection between this fat and a muscle called the masseter muscle. In humans, the masseter muscle connects the lower jawbone to the cheekbones and is one of the the key muscles used in chewing.

“This study has revealed that the evolutionary tradeoff of masticatory muscles for the EMFB—between auditory and feeding ecology—was crucial in the aquatic adaptation of toothed whales,” study co-author and genome scientist and evolutionary biologist Takashi Hayakawa said in a statement. “It was part of the evolutionary shift away from chewing to simply swallowing food, which meant the chewing muscles were no longer needed.”

[Related: We finally know how baleen whales make noise.]

When the team analyzed the gene expression in the intramandibular fat on the inside of the jawbone, they found active genes related to some elements of immune response and regulation of a group of white blood cells that fight infection called T cells. The team believes that this is due to its proximity to bone marrow–which helps produce T cells–and requires more study.

The team also credited the Stranding Network Hokkaido as another important aspect of the research, as the samples used in this study were collected by them. The organization has  collected specimens of stranded whales along the seashore and river mouth in Hokkaido. Performing necropsies on stranded marine mammals have been critical for sampling and research to learn more about the potential causes of strandings and death, but also anatomy, physiology, and evolution. 

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Worm bodies might not seem all that interesting. However, a closer look can also reveal how some worms use extra appendages to move through the water like “magic carpets,” while others detach their butts to procreate. Scientists have now discovered that a type of bristle worm is equipped with a complex vision system dominated by two really big eyes.

The Vanadis bristle worm’s eyes can potentially use ultraviolet (UV) light to communicate and find mates and/or food, which has not been well documented or studied in nature. The worms could also be among the only known bioluminescent animals that use UV light to glow. The findings are described in a study published April 8 in the journal Current Biology. 

Meet Vanadis bristle worms

The Vanadis bristle worms in this study are found around the island of Ponza, in the Mediterranean Sea west of Naples, Italy. It is a member of a family of large-eyed bristle worms called polychaeta. They are about six inches long and primarily eat plankton, algae, and bits of organic matter from dead organisms. As a pair, the worm’s eyes weigh about 20 times as much as the rest of the worm’s head, and appear like two giant red orbs are strapped to its body. If human eyes are as proportionally large, we would need to carry around roughly 220 extra pounds.  Since the worms are nocturnal and disappear when the sun is out, scientists wondered what they do with their eyes after and what they are used for.

[Related: How do animals see the world?]

In the study, a team from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, Lund University in Sweden, and Tuscia University in Italy examined three species of bristle worms that they collected by hand in shallow water. They brought them back to a lab, where they analyzed their eyes in close detail. The team found that Vanadis’ eyesight is better and more advanced than previously believed. Its eyes can see very small objects and track their movements, despite having a more simple nervous system.

A ‘secret language’–for mating

The team is still trying to figure out how they evolved such sharp eyesight. The worms’ bodies  are transparent, except for their eyes that need to register light to work properly. This means that they can’t be inherently transparent, so their eyes becoming visible must come with some evolutionary trade-offs. Some aspects about having a transparent body with visible eyes must have had evolutionary benefits that outweigh the consequences.

What the worms gain remains unclear partially because they do not come out during the day, when eyes typically work best. 

“No one has ever seen the worm during the day, so we don’t know where it hides. So, we cannot rule out that its eyes are used during the day as well,” University of Copenhagen marine and neurologist Anders Garm said in a statement. “What we do know is that its most important activities, like finding food and mating, occur at night. So, it is likely that this is when its eyes are important.”

[Related: Microscopic worms use electricity to ride bumblebees like EVs.]

The team believes that part of the explanation is that these worms can see different wavelengths of light than humans can. Like many birds, reindeer, and other more complex organisms, the worm’s vision can see UV light that is invisible to the human eye. This could indicate that the purpose of the eyes is to see bioluminescent signals in the pitch-black night time sea. Bioluminescence occurs when organisms can produce light on their own. Glow-worms are a famous example that use certain chemicals to produce light within their bodies. 

“We have a theory that the worms themselves are bioluminescent and communicate with each other via light. If you use normal blue or green light as bioluminescence, you also risk attracting predators,” said Garm. “But if instead, the worm uses UV light, it will remain invisible to animals other than those of its own species. Therefore, our hypothesis is that they’ve developed sharp UV vision so as to have a secret language related to mating.”

The worms also may need to be on the lookout for UV bioluminescent prey. Regardless of what it is used for, the Vanadis worm could become the first animal proven to naturally create UV bioluminescence to communicate, according to Garm.

Robotics research and evolutionary debates

The team has begun working with robotics researchers from the University of Southern Denmark to investigate how to better understand the mechanism behind these eyes well enough to translate it into technology.

“Together with the robotics researchers, we are working to understand how animals with brains as simple as these can process all of the information that such large eyes are likely able to collect,” said Garm. “This suggests that there are super smart ways to process information in their nervous system. And if we can detect these mechanisms mathematically, they could be integrated into computer chips and used to control robots.”

Beyond robotics, their eyes could also help settle a heavy debate around evolutionary theory. Did eyes only evolve once into every form we know today or have they arisen several times in evolutionary history?

Vanadis has eyes that are built relatively simply, but have very advanced functions. They have simultaneously evolved in only a few million years–a relatively short span of time in terms of evolution. These worm eyes likely developed independently of more complex eyes like humans, and could help prove that the development of vision is possible over a relatively short time.

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Human-made currency such as coins and paper bills have certainly evolved over time. Small pieces of precious metals or paper with no metal backing have changed into invisible cryptocurrencies stored on servers. For decades, numismatists–or currency experts–have puzzled over where the silver present inside some coins uncovered in England came from. The coins date back to between 660 and 750 CE, when the Anglo-Saxon world began to see a large revival of trade using silver coins. This shift broke the reliance on gold and archaeologists have uncovered about 7,000 of these silver pieces.

Now, a new noninvasive way of peering into the past may have revealed where the silver from the coins came from. It offers clues into how political changes and the rule of Charlemagne–the Holy Roman Emperor and King of the Franks–fueled currency changes in early medieval Europe. The findings are described in a new study published April 8in the journal Antiquity and could deepen modern understanding of the continent’s economic and political development at the time.

[Related: Benjamin Franklin used science to protect his money from counterfeiters.]

“There has been speculation that the silver came from Melle in France, or from an unknown mine, or that it could have been melted down church silver,” study co-author and University of Cambridge early medieval English historian Rory Naismith said in a statement. “But there wasn’t any hard evidence to tell us one way or the other, so we set out to find it.”

A little help from lasers

Earlier research tested other coins from a silver mine at Melle, but this new study looked at less-studied Fitzwilliam’s coins. These 49 silver pieces were minted in England, the Netherlands, Belgium, and northern France and date from 660 to 820 CE. They are housed by The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

Jason Day from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences traced what elements were present in the coins in a lab. Day then used a technique called portable laser ablation. During this process, microscopic samples were collected onto Teflon filters to analyze the lead isotopes presented. This new technique pioneered by the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, combines a minimally invasive sampling with a laser and the high precision results of the more traditional methods that take samples of metals.

While the coins primarily continued silver, the amount of gold, another metal called bismuth, and other elements guided the researchers towards the silver’s previously unknown origins. The various ratios of lead isotopes in the silver coins also provided further clues to where the metals originated from. 

Byzantine silver for the masses

Twenty-nine of the coins in the study date back to 660 to 750 CE. They were minted in present-day England, France, and a cross-border cultural region in Northwestern Europe called Frisia. However, the lasers revealed very clear chemical and isotopic signatures that matched 3rd to early 7th century silver that came from the Byzantine Empire in the eastern Mediterranean.

This Byzantine silver was homogenous across the coins. No known source of European ore matches the elemental and isotopic characteristics of these early silver coins. According to the team, there is also no meaningful overlap with late Western Roman silver coins or other objects made from the metal, meaning that it was not simply recycled late Roman silver.

“These coins are among the first signs of a resurgence in the northern European economy since the end of the Roman Empire,” study co-author and University of Oxford archaeologist Jane Kershaw said in a statement. “They show deep international trade connections between what is now France, the Netherlands and England.”

The study proposes that the Byzantine silver must have made its way into Western Europe decades before it was melted down, as the late 7th century is considered part of the Dark Ages, or more accurately termed Migration Period. This was a low point in trade and diplomatic contacts as the Roman Empire ended. 

[Related: Divers recovered a treasure trove of more than 30,000 ancient, bronze coins off the Italian coast.]

“These beautiful prestige objects would only have been melted down when a king or lord urgently needed lots of cash. Something big would have been happening, a big social change,” said Kershaw. “Elites were liquidating resources and pouring more and more money into circulation. It would have had a big impact on people’s lives. There would have been more thinking about money and more activity with money involving a far larger portion of society than before.”

The team hopes to look further into how and why so much silver moved from the Byzantine Empire into Western Europe. It was potentially a mixture of trade and payments to Anglo-Saxon mercenaries serving in the Byzantine army. 

The rise of Frankish silver

The study also pinpointed a shift away from Byzantine silver to a new source of metal. They analyzed 20 coins from 750  to 820 CE and found that the silver was quite different by this time. It had lower levels of gold, which is characteristic of the silver that is mined at Melle in western France. Mining here was particularly intense during the 8th and 9th centuries.

The team believes that Melle silver permeated regional silver stocks after 750 CE and was mixed with older, higher-gold stocks, including Byzantine silver. While it was already known that Melle was an important mine at this time, what was not clear was just how quickly the site became a major silver producer. 

The study argues that this widespread suge in Melle silver was driven by Charlemagne. He is best known for uniting Western Europe by force and he took more control over how and where the coins of his kingdoms were made. The management of silver supply likely went alongside the other changes introduced by Charlemagne, his son, and grandson. These monetary changes include altering the size and thickness of coins and marking their name or image on the coins.

“I strongly suspect that Charlemagne did something similar with Melle silver,” Naismith said. “We can now say more about the circumstances under which those coins were made and how the silver was being distributed within Charlemagne’s Empire and beyond.”

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Amphibians are known for their bright colors and their low and bellowing croaks that often announce when it is going to rain. Other frogs may make sounds that humans can’t even hear. These sounds are also potentially pretty violent. A study published April 4 in the journal Acta Ethologica describes how some amphibians in South America potentially emit sounds on the ultrasound spectrum to defend themselves against predators. 

Ultrasound in nature are sounds that are created at an ear-piercingly high frequency that is inaudible to the human ear. Humans can’t hear frequencies over 20 kilohertz (kHz). Ultrasound is used by some marine mammals, bats, and rodents for communication and to locate food. Some amphibian predators can also emit and hear sounds at this frequency. 

“One of our hypotheses is that the distress call is addressed to some of these, but it could also be the case that the broad frequency band is generalist in the sense that it’s supposed to scare as many predators as possible,” Ubiratã Ferreira Souza, a study co-author and ecologist at the State University of Campinas’s Institute of Biology (IB-UNICAMP) in São Paulo, Brazil, said in a statement. 

[Related: New proto-amphibian species named after Kermit the Frog.]

Another hypothesis is that this amphibian scream is meant to draw another animal to attack the predator threatening the amphibian. The leaf litter frog (Haddadus binotatus) that lives in the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest deploys this sonic tactic against potential predators, including bats, rodents, some snakes, and small primates.

In the study, a team of researchers recorded the amphibian’s distress call on two separate occasions. They used software to analyze the sound and found that it had a 7 kHz to 44 kHz. 

When emitting the distress call, the leaf litter frog makes a series of movements that are similar to defense positions. The frog raises the front of its body, opens up its mouth, and jerks its head backwards. It then will partially close its mouth and send out a sound that ranges from audible to humans (7 kHZ to 20 kHz) to an ultrasound band (20 kHz to 44 kHz) that humans can’t hear. 

“In light of the fact that amphibian diversity in Brazil is the highest in the world, with more than 2,000 species described, it wouldn’t be surprising to find that other frogs also emit sounds at these frequencies,” said study co-author and IB-UNICAMP PhD student Mariana Retuci Pontes said in a statement. 

Pontes may have discovered the use of this sonic strategy by another species accidentally. In January 2023, pontes saw a rock and an animal that was likely a Hensel’s big-headed frog (Ischnocnema henselii) in the Upper Ribeira State Tourism Park in Iporanga, São Paulo. When she tried to take a photo of the frog, she held it by the hind legs and found that the defensive moment and distress call was similar to the leaf litter frog. Pontes also noticed that a landhead pit viper (Bothrops jararaca) was only a few feet away, which she believes confirms that this behavior is a response to predators. While Pontes was able to record a video, she couldn’t analyze the sound to confirm if ultrasound bands were created. 

[Related: These clams use poop to dominate their habitat.]

“Both species live in leaf litter, are similar in size [between 1.8  and 2.3 inches], and have similar predators, so it’s possible that I. henselii also uses this distress call with ultrasound to defend itself against natural enemies,” study co-author and IB-UNICAMP zoologist Luís Felipe Toledo said in a statement. 

Researchers have also obtained recording of ultrasound calls by three Asian amphibian species, but the frequencies are used for communication between species and its not known if they are deployed when a predator is around

The team plans to address the numerous questions that arose from this discovery. These include which predators are sensitive to the frog’s distress call, how these other animals react to it, and if the call is intended to scare them or attract their natural enemies. 

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Food allergies are a growing health and safety risk, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimating that about 1 in 3 children in the United States are affected. To help combat this, physicians use a technique called oral immunotherapy to try to build a child’s tolerance to some common food allergens. Now, a study published April 8 in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology aims to create the first set of international guidelines for clinicians to use to help families and clinicians succeed in this sometimes life saving process. These guidelines are not currently mandatory and aim to help standardize care to improve patient outcomes. 

“These families must provide the therapy every single day. That’s why these guidelines are so important,” Douglas Mack, study co-author and a clinical professor at McMaster University in Canada, said in a statement. “Safety can be optimized to make sure that they understand what they’re taking on, while ensuring that they are aware of the kinds of side-effects that can be dangerous.”

What is oral immunotherapy?

Oral immunotherapy involves giving very small amounts of a food allergen like peanuts, walnuts, milk, or egg to a child with a documented allergy. The amount is then gradually increased in an attempt to build up the body’s tolerance and the process has been used for over a century. In 1908, oral immunotherapy helped desensitize a 13-year-old patient with an egg allergy. In that study, the starting dose was 1/10,000th of an egg every day. After six months, the patient could safely eat eggs. More recent analysis found that it can induce desensitization in most patients who are allergic to peanuts, milk, and egg by 76.9 percent. 

This process is not without risks, as it is administered every day at home to children by their caregivers, which requires caregivers to act like “amateur medical professionals” by observing a child’s reactions and deciding if medical treatment is necessary. These new guidelines are intended to help prepare families and standardize the approach to the process. 

[Related: Babies who grow up around pets may be less likely to develop food allergies.]

“Families need to learn about food allergies, anaphylaxis, immunotherapy, how to safely dose the food, which things to look out for, when to treat, and when to contact the medical team,” Julia Upton, a clinical immunologist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, told DW. Upton is not a co-author of the new study. 

What’s in the new guidelines?

A panel of 36 international oral immunotherapy experts worked together to craft a detailed standardized consent form and topics to discuss with families. This includes mentioning that oral immunotherapy is not a cure, that asthma should be controlled before starting the therapy, and stress all caregivers must understand how the process works. This should ensure that all parents and caregivers know the risks and benefits, and alternative treatments if they are unwilling to take on oral immunotherapy. 

“If they decide they want to do it after following these guidelines, they’re prepared for what they’re getting into,” said Mack. “They understand the risks and most importantly, it makes it safer because they can anticipate the challenges. This protocol sets the standard moving forward.”

The guidelines also stresses adequate adult supervision of dosing before treatment begins and that potential risk factors to the patient should be identified before the therapy begins. Some of these risk factors include uncontrolled asthma in the patient and an unwillingness for the caregiver to use epinephrine in case of a reaction. Failure to administer epinephrine in the event of a severe allergic reaction can result in death. 

[Related: A peanut allergy patch is making headway in trials with toddlers.]

The team estimates that as many as one-third of patients were not getting any degree of counseling or preparation before starting the treatment. It took about 30 to 60 minutes for a clinicing to provide adequate counseling about all of the risks and benefits of oral immunotherapy, according to the study. 

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Nature comes in wild colors, like the electric blue tarantulas and brightly spotted poison dart frogs. Named after bull fighters, matador bugs (Anisoscelis alipes) are known for vibrant flag-like red decorations on their hind legs. These insects are native to Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela, and Mexico, and scientists have been stumped as to what their signature red flags on their legs are used for. A study recently published in the journal Behaviors Ecology found that this fancy leg waving is actually part of the matador bug’s elaborate defense strategy.

In animals, some of the most obvious and showy traits are usually expressed by males, like an elk’s large antlers or a peacock’s loud plumage. A 2022 study suggested that matador bugs’ leg movements were not a sexual display. Both male and female matador bugs like to flaunt their removable hind legs and the waving behavior did not change if there were potential mates around or not. It led researchers to question if their leg waving warns predators about a potential chemical defense and bad flavor or divert attacks towards their removable hindlegs to increase their chances of getting out alive.

[Related: Cicadas pee in jet streams like bigger animals.]

To try to answer what is going on with their legs, the team on the new study worked in Gamboa, Panama, a small town near the Panama Canal. They attached red flags that mimicked the matador bug’s accessories to the legs of crickets, and observed how predatory birds called motmots responded to the red flags. Motmots are large birds with iridescent feathers, long tails, keen eyesight, and a strong taste for crickets. The team spent about a month just catching the birds for the experiment.

“We placed the nets in areas of the forest where we saw that the birds moved the most and, when an individual was captured, it was immediately taken to the cages and tested,” study co-author and a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) Jorge Medina said in a statement. “When the birds were finished with the tests, we released them back in the same area where they were captured.”

They found that the strikes from the birds were not primarily aimed at the hind leg flags. This indicated that the flags were not used as a way to deflect predator attacks. However, it supported the idea that some sort of chemical defense was potentially being used by the bugs as self-defense. 

The regular crickets were always attacked, but the ones with flags got fewer hits. Matador bugs themselves were actively avoided by the bird, whether they had flags or not. According to the team, this indicates that the flags are just one component of their defense strategy.

[Related: Bug-munching plant turns insect nurseries into death traps.]

To further test the idea that the birds didn’t like the taste of matador bugs, they offered both crickets and matador bugs to baby birds that had never seen them before. With or without their flags, the matador bugs seemed to warn the predators to stay away. When the chicks attacked, they demonstrated that the bugs were distasteful by shaking their heads and often refusing to eat more matador bugs. However, the crickets were readily attacked and eaten. 

“I was fascinated to see that when we outfitted tasty crickets with the matador bug flags they immediately became less appealing to their bird predators,” study co-author and STRI post-doctoral fellow Juliette Rubin said in a statement. “It seems like this warning signal is enough to make the birds cautious, but bugs themselves are so well equipped with ‘don’t eat me!’ signals that even without the flags, experienced birds wouldn’t touch them.”

The team believes that the flags appear to signal to birds that matador bugs are not a tasty or safe choice of a snack. These flags also collaborate with other parts of the bug’s characteristics to emphasize that message. This indicates that they are part of a complex defense strategy that likely evolved to protect them from birds. 

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The living mammal family tree is full of diverse species–big blue whales, great apes, bats, rodents, and humans, to name just a few. The early evolution of mammals is a little bit murky, with some placental mammals even likely living alongside dinosaurs and others arising much later. 

Now, some teeth and ear bones uncovered in present day Inner Mongolia are offering some fresh insight into early mammalian evolution. The findings are described in two studies published April 3 in Nature that feature the work of scientists from the United States, Inner Mongolia, China, and Australia.

Keeping up with the shuotheriids–and their teeth

In the first study, scientists focused on the shuotheriids. This family of mouse-sized mammals from the Jurassic period had molars that are different from those in any living mammal. Their molars had a pseudotalonid– or a basin-like structure in their lower molars more similar to reptiles. By comparison, living mammals have a tribosphenic pattern that interlocks with upper molars when chewing food.  

“This unique tooth pattern has hindered our comprehension of shuotheriid relationships and the first steps in the evolution of mammaliaform species,” study co-author and Monash University paleontologist Patricia Vickers-Rich said in a statement.

With these unique back teeth, where these animals fit in the timeline of mammal evolution has been puzzling. Shuotheriids have previously been linked to a group called australosphenidans. This group includes living mammals that lay eggs like the platypus called monotremes. However, this relationship has been a bit controversial among scientists and leaves more questions that aren’t explained by some features seen in later mammals like different molars.

The team analyzed two newly uncovered and well-preserved skeletal fossils of shuotheriids. They lived in the Middle Jurassic between 168–164 million years ago in what is now Inner Mongolia. The team found that the molars of these animals were more similar to another extinct mammal group called the docodontans and not the australosphenidans. The two specimens also belong to a new genus and species named Feredocodon chowi.

[Related: A boiling hot supercontinent could kill all mammals in 250 million years.]

“When you look at the fossil record, both for mammals and many other sorts of animals, teeth are the part of the body that you are most likely to recover,” study co-author and curator in the American Museum of Natural History’s Division of Paleontology Jin Meng said in a statement. “Yet since the 1980s, the perplexing tooth shape seen in shuotheriids has been a barrier to our efforts to understand early mammal evolution. These new specimens have allowed us to solve this longstanding problem.”

The team believes that some common mammal ancestor independently gave rise to major groups of mammaliaforms: Docodontiformes, Allotheria, and Holotheria.

Listen up!

The second study focuses on the fossilized skulls of Feredocodon chowi and second new species named Dianoconodon youngi. It lived in the Early Jurassic between 201–184 million years ago. It was similar to an extinct rat-like animal called Morganucodon that is widely regarded as one of the first mammals. 

The team looked at the structure of Dianoconodon youngi’s middle ear, which helps give modern mammals their sharp hearing. In the middle ear, the spot inside the eardrum that turns vibrations in the air into ripples in the inner ear’s fluids has three bones. These bones called auditory ossicles are a feature that is unique to mammals and birds and reptiles only have one middle ear bone. At some point during the early evolution of mammals, the bones that formed the joints of the jaw separated and became associated with hearing. 

[Related: A new evolutionary theory could explain the mystery of shrinking animals.]

Both Feredocodon chowi and Dianoconodon youngi specimens show some fossil evidence of this evolutionary transition in action, as mammals evolved from a group that includes lizards, crocodilians, and dinosaurs. The team believes that this transition began from an ancestral animal that had a double jaw joint. It likely had the joint of a mammal on the outside and a more reptilian joint on the inside.

Analyses on the older fossil (Dianoconodon youngi) show that one of its two joints, the reptilian one, was already beginning to lose its ability to handle the forces created by chewing. The younger fossil (Feredocodon chowi) had a more mammalian middle ear that was formed and adapted exclusively for hearing.

“Scientists have been trying to understand how the mammalian middle ear evolved since Darwin’s time,” said Meng. “While paleontological discoveries have helped reveal the process during the last a few decades, these new fossils bring to light a critical missing link and enrich our understanding of the gradual evolution of the mammalian middle ear.”

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Rare earth elements touch almost every aspect of modern life. Elements and minerals including copper, lithium, nickel, and cobalt support the technology that can power clean energy, electric vehicles,  telescope lenses, and computer screens, and more. Since they are stored deep within the Earth, extracting these elements can be ecologically damaging.

The demand for rare earth elements in countries in Africa is driving the destruction of tropical rainforests, as it is home to over half of the world’s cobalt and copper. Now, the continent’s great ape population is more threatened from mining than scientists originally believed. A study published April 3 in the journal Science Advances estimates that nearly 180,000 gorillas, bonobos, and chimpanzees are at risk.

[Related: A deep sea mining zone in the remote Pacific is also a goldmine of unique species.]

“There has been an increase in mining in Africa to satisfy the demand from more industrialized countries and linked to the ‘green revolution’. This requires [a] significant amount of critical minerals to build electric cars, wind turbines, etc.,” Genevieve Campbell, a study co-author and primatologist with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and conservation nonprofit re:wild, tells PopSci. “Unfortunately the location of these minerals often overlap with ape habitat, but people are not aware of the impact of their consumption patterns on apes. This study aimed to quantify this impact and bring awareness to this issue.”

Looking at west Africa

In the study, an international team of scientists used data on operational and preoperational mining sites in 17 African countries and defined 6.2 mile wide buffer zones to account for direct impacts from mining, including habitat destruction and light and noise pollution. They also defined 31 mile buffer zones for the more indirect impacts linked to increased human activity near mining sites, including new roads and infrastructure to access formerly remote areas and more human presence. More human activity generally puts more pressure on the animals and their environments due to increased hunting, habitat loss, and a higher risk of disease transmission. 

“Mining often exacerbates existing threats by, for example, building roads to remote areas that in turn facilitate access for hunters,” says Campbell.

Integrating the data on the population density of great apes allowed the team to pinpoint how many African great apes could be negatively impacted by mining activities and mapped out areas where high ape densities and heavy mining overlapped. 

They found that more than one-third of the great ape population–180,000 animals–is in danger. The west African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mali, and Guinea had the largest overlaps of high ape density and mining areas. The most significant overlap of mining and chimpanzee density was found in Guinea, where more than than 23,000 chimpanzees (80 percent of the country’s ape population) could be directly or indirectly impacted by mining activities. The most sensitive areas are also not generally protected.

“I expected the spatial overlap between mining projects and ape habitat to be large and I suspected that previous estimates had underestimated the potential impact of mining-related activities on great apes,” study co-author and IUCN and re:wild conservation biologist Jessi Junker tells PopSci. “The results of this study thus didn’t really come as a surprise since no assessments at this spatial scale had been done previously.”

‘Critical Habitat’ zones

The study also explored how mining areas intersect with areas that could be considered ‘Critical Habitat.’  These regions have unique biodiversity and plant life that is crucial to a species’ survival. They found 20 percent overlap between proposed mining areas and Critical Habitat zones. When a region is designated this way strict environmental regulations can be implemented. These regulations particularly apply to any mining projects looking for funding from groups such as the International Finance Corporation (IFC) or other money lenders adhering to similar standards. 

According to the team, previous efforts to map Critical Habitats in African countries have overlooked large portions of ape habitats that would qualify under international benchmarks.

“Companies operating in these areas should have adequate mitigation and compensation schemes in place to minimize their impact, which seems unlikely, given that most companies lack robust species baseline data that are required to inform these actions,” Tenekwetche Sop, a study co-author and manager of the great ape population database at the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History in Germany, said in a statement. “Encouraging these companies to share their invaluable ape survey data with our database serves as a pivotal step towards transparency in their operations. Only through such collaborative efforts can we comprehensively gauge the true extent of mining activities’ effects on great apes and their habitats.”

What can be done

In future research, the team hopes to quantify the direct and indirect impacts of mining activities in a different range of African countries and different ape species. Currently, these risks are not considered often and mitigated by mining companies. The study’s authors also urge mining companies to avoid their impacts on great apes and for more data collection to create a more accurate picture of where apes live in relation to where mining activities may take place. 

[Related: How can we decarbonize copper and nickel mining?]

The general population also has a responsibility to ensure a shift away from fossil fuels does not come at the expense of biodiversity. 

“We can all do something to help protect great apes and their habitat. It is crucial for everyone to adopt a mindset of reduced consumption,” says Junker. “Moreover, policymakers must enact more effective recycling policies to facilitate sustainable reuse of metals.”

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Galaxies come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some have buff, spiral arms. Others are necklace-shaped or oblong. They begin their lives rotating in an orderly fashion, but the movement of the stars eventually gets more random and less organized. Astronomers have not been able to pinpoint the reasons behind the changes, but new research poses a somewhat simple explanation–aging. As galaxies age, they tend to be more chaotic. The findings are described in a study published April 3 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS).

[Related: Listen to three breathtaking NASA images.]

“When we did the analysis, we found that age, consistently, whichever way we slice or dice it, is always the most important parameter,” study co-author and University of Sydney observational astrophysicist Scott Croom said in a statement. “Once you account for age, there is essentially no environmental trend, and it’s similar for mass. If you find a young galaxy it will be rotating, whatever environment it is in, and if you find an old galaxy, it will have more random orbits, whether it’s in a dense environment or a void.”

When galaxies are young, they are star-forming machines. Older ones typically stop forming new stars. Earlier studies suggested that the galaxy’s environment or mass were the more important factors influencing how galaxies behave and move. According to the team, these ideas are not necessarily incorrect.

“We do know that age is affected by [the] environment. If a galaxy falls into a dense environment, it will tend to shut down the star formation. So galaxies in denser environments are, on average, older,” study co-author and University of Sydney astronomer Jesse van de Sande said in a statement. “The point of our analysis is that it’s not living in dense environments that reduces their spin, it’s the fact that they’re older.” For example, our own 13.6 billion year-old Milky Way galaxy still has a thin star forming disk and it is considered a high spin rotational galaxy. Older galaxies also move around more randomly than younger ones, no matter how densely packed with energy their environments are.    

In the new study, an international team of scientists used data from observations from the SAMI Galaxy Survey. SAMI has surveyed 3,000 galaxies across a wide range of cosmic environments, which helped the team compare and contrast different types of galaxies. Having more accurate observations of galactic behavior helped them fine-tune their models of how the universe developed. 

[Related: JWST images show off the swirling arms of 19 spiral galaxies.]

In future studies, the team hopes to create galaxy evolution simulations in better detail using the University of Sydney’s Hector Galaxy Survey.

“Hector is observing 15,000 galaxies, but with higher spectral resolution, allowing the age and spin of galaxies to be measured even in much lower mass galaxies and with more detailed environmental information,” study co-author and Hector Galaxy Survey lead Julia Bryant said in a statement.

This work ultimately aims to give scientists a better understanding about how the universe has evolved over billions of years and how our solar system came to be.  

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A team of scientists is attempting to grow a new liver inside of a human using lymph nodes. While this sounds like science fiction, Pittsburgh-based biotech company LyGenesis announced that a volunteer has received an injection of liver cells from a living donor that could turn one of their lymph nodes into a second and functioning liver.

The experimental procedure took place in Houston on March 25. It is part of a Phase 2a clinical trial that will test this treatment in 12 adults who have end-stage liver disease (ESLD). This illness occurs when the liver is damaged beyond repair, primarily due to chronic liver disease or acute liver failure. Over 50,000 Americans die of chronic liver disease every year. 

Patients with ESLD typically require a liver transplant, but roughly 10,000 people are currently on the waiting list in the United States alone. In 2021, a record of 9,234 liver transplants were performed in the US, according to the federal government’s Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients. LyGensis hopes that this procedure will create the growth of enough liver tissue that patients won’t need a transplant. 

[Related: Swiss researchers kept a donor liver healthy for a remarkable 68 hours.]

“This therapy will potentially be a remarkable regenerative medicine milestone by helping patients with ESLD grow new functional ectopic livers in their own body,” LyGenesis co-founder and CEO Dr. Michael Hufford said in a statement. “If our study is successful and we obtain FDA approval, our allogeneic cell therapy could enable one donated liver to treat many dozens of ESLD patients, which could help to tilt the current organ supply-demand imbalance in favor of patients.”

The technique has been in the works for over a decade. It takes liver cells–or hepatocytes–from a donated organ and injects them into the lymph nodes that are found all over the body. In the lymph nodes, the liver cells will hopefully divide, grow, and develop blood vessels. It targets a group of lymph nodes in the abdomen that are connected to the liver via a system of veins.

According to MIT Technology Review, LyGenesis has tested their approach in mice and pigs, finding that the cells can flourish and form an additional liver that will take over the function of an animal’s failing organ. Chief scientific officer of LyGenesis and University of Pittsburgh pathologist Dr. Eric Lagasse published a study in 2020 that found the pigs regained their liver function following the injections. They also noted that the more severe the damage to the pig’s original liver, the bigger the second livers grew. The pig’s body may be able to recognize the more healthy tissue and give the new liver more responsibilities. 

In the trial procedure, the doctors threaded a thin flexible tube down the end of the patient’s throat through the digestive tract, according to Wired. They then used an ultrasound to identify one of the target lymph nodes and put 50 million hepatocytes into it.

[Related: Surgeons complete first-ever gene-edited pig kidney transplant.]

“LyGenesis’ cell therapy platform represents a truly remarkable potential commercial opportunity and may be transformative for chronic liver failure patients who do not have access to a donor liver,” LyGenesis investor Justin Briggs from Prime Movers Lab said in a statement. “Their use of an endoscopic ultrasound as a low risk and low cost route of cell therapy administration is another way this pioneering technology could provide patients with access to life-saving therapies and address complex medical challenges by upending transplant medicine.”

The results won’t be available for a few months and the team will be monitoring how many cells are required to grow a liver that is large enough to filter blood and produce bile. If it works, it could mean a major change for the treatment of liver disease, which affects roughly 4.5 million people in the United States. 

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The mystery of what came first, the chicken or the egg has generally been solved–it was the egg. However, some questions remain about how well chickens were dispersed in the ancient world, as some wild bird bones have been misidentified as domesticated chicken bones. 

With the help of new technology, a recent analysis of eggshell fragments from Central Asia suggests that raising chickens for egg production was likely common in the region from about 400 BCE to 1000 CE. The domestic chicken’s ability to lay eggs outside of a traditional breeding season was potentially the primary driver for the dispersal of these birds across Eurasia and northeast Africa. The findings are described in a study published April 2 in the journal Nature Communications and helps explain how they became such a critical economic and agricultural resource.

An international team of archaeologists, historians, and biomolecular scientists studied eggshell fragments from 12 different archaeological sites in Central Asia spanning about 1,500 years. They were likely dispersed along the central corridor of the ancient Silk Road, a vast Eurasian trade network spanning from present day China to the Mediterranean Sea. The network was used from the second century BCE through the mid-15th century and facilitated religious, cultural, economic, and political interactions between Asian and European countries. 

[Related: Humans have been eating hazelnuts for at least 6,000 years.]

To identify the source of the egg fragments, they used a biomolecular analysis method called ZooMS. It can identify a particular species from animal remains, including bone, skin, and shells. ZooMS also relies on protein signals instead of DNA, which makes it a quicker and more cost-effective option than genetic analysis, according to the team.  

“This study showcases the potential of ZooMS to shed light on human-animal interactions in the past,” Carli Peters, a study co-author and archaeologist at Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany, said in a statement.

The technique identified the shell fragments as pieces of domestic chicken egg, which is a key finding. The team believes that the amount of chicken egg shells present throughout the layers of sediment at each archeological site means that the birds must have been laying eggs more frequently than their wild ancestor–the red jungle fowl. These colorful tropical birds are still found throughout Southeast Asia and parts of South Asia, and only nest once per year, laying about six eggs per clutch. Domestic chickens lay eggs much more frequently, with some hens able to lay one egg per day, so ancient peoples must have taken advantage of this egg laying ability that was not beholden to a specific season. 

The abundance of the eggshells suggests that the birds were laying eggs out of season. Having this access to eggs that were not dependent on a particular season likely made the domestic chicken a particularly useful animal.

[Related: Finally, a smart home for chickens.]

“This is the earliest evidence for the loss of seasonal egg laying yet identified in the archaeological record,” study co-author and Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology paleoecologist and paleoeconomist Robert Spengler said in a statement. “This is an important clue for better understanding the mutualistic relationships between humans and animals that resulted in domestication.”

The study suggests that at least in Central Asia, the domestic chicken’s ability to lay several eggs made it the important agricultural species that it is today. The team hopes that work like this demonstrates how using new cost-effective analysis methods like ZooMS and interdisciplinary collaboration can be used to address long-standing questions about our past. 

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An enormous asteroid crashed into the Earth about 65 million years ago. While terrestrial dinosaurs like the famed Tyrannosaurus rex were wiped out, many avian animals really began to flourish. Considering that there are more than 10,000 species of birds on Earth, flourish may even be an understatement. Keeping birds organized in a neat family tree is a bit of a Herculean task, since there are so many species and their evolution has been a little unclear. However, some advances in genomic sequencing and analysis are beginning to create a more lucid picture of how the planet’s living dinosaurs evolved.

In two studies published April 1 in the journals Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and Nature, scientists reveal that a genetic event about 65 million years ago has misled them about the true history of avian evolution. A section of one chromosome hasn’t mixed together with nearby DNA as it should have. This section is only tiny fraction of the bird genome, but was enough to make it difficult for scientists to build a more detailed bird family tree.  

A sticky chunk of DNA

In 2014, advances in computer technology used to study genomes helped scientists piece together a family tree for the Neoaves. This group includes the majority of bird species. Using the genomes of 48 species, they split the Neoaves into two major categories. Doves and flamingos were in one group and all the other bird species belonged to the other group. 

When a similar genetic analysis was repeated using 363 bird species for this new study, the team saw a different family tree emerge. This one points to four main groups and reveals that flamingos and doves are more distantly related and it all came back to a specific spot in the chromosomes.

[Related: Birds are so specialized to their homes, it shows in their bones.]

Within these two family trees, the team looked for explanations that could tell them which one was correct. They found one spot on the genome, where the genes were not as mixed together as they should have been over millions of years of sexual reproduction. 

“When we looked at the individual genes and what tree they supported, all of a sudden it popped out that all the genes that support the older tree, they’re all in one spot,” a co-author of the study published in PNAS and University of Florida biologist Edward Braun said in a statement. “That’s what started the whole thing.”

Birds combine genes from a father and a mother into the next generation, but they first mix the genes they inherited from their parents when creating sperm and eggs. This process is called recombination and it is also something that occurs in humans. Recombination maximizes a species’ genetic diversity by ensuring that no two siblings are exactly the same.

One section of one chromosome did not mix with DNA nearby like it should have and has basically spent millions of years frozen in time. This chromosomal section makes up only two percent of the bird genome, but was enough to convince scientists that most birds could be grouped into two major categories–Passerera and Columbea. This new and more accurate family tree takes into account that  misleading section of the avian genome and identifies four main groups of birds.

The team also found evidence that this spot on the bird chromosome has suppressed the recombination process since around the time the dinosaurs disappeared. It is not clear if the Cretaceous-tertiary Extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs and these genomic anomalies are related.

The result of this genetic suppression is that the flamingos and doves looked similar to one another in this one sticky chunk of DNA, but two groups are actually more distantly related when looking at their entire genomes. Flamingos and doves can now be considered more distantly related genetically. According to the team, this kind of stuck genetic mystery could be lurking in the genomes of other organisms. 

Building a better bird family tree

The study published in Nature details an intricate chart detailing 93 million years of evolutionary relationships between 363 bird species, or about 92 percent of all bird families. This updated family tree revealed patterns in the evolutionary history of birds following the Cretaceous-tertiary Extinction.

[Related: Dinosaurs may have evolved into birds, but early flights didn’t go so well.]

The researchers noticed sharp increases in effective population size, substitution rates, and relative brain size in early birds. These evolutionary changes shed new light on the adaptive mechanisms that drove the diversification of bird species in the aftermath of this planet-altering extinction event. 

To do this, they harnessed the power of a suite of computer algorithms known as ASTRAL. This program helps infer evolutionary relationships quickly and accurately and enables the team to integrate the genomic data from more than 60,000 regions in bird genomes. They then examine the evolutionary history of individual segments across the genome and pieced together several gene trees to build out a larger species tree. 

“We found that our method of adding tens of thousands of genes to our analysis was actually necessary to resolve evolutionary relationships between bird species,” study co-author and University of California, San Diego computer engineer Siavash Mirarab said in a statement. “You really need all that genomic data to recover what happened in this certain period of time 65-67 million years ago with high confidence.”

These computational methods also helped the team shed light on that same particular section of one chromosome in the bird genome that has remained unchanged over millions of years and made it difficult for scientists to study these changes. 

“What’s surprising is that this period of suppressed recombination could mislead the analysis,” said Braun. “And because it could mislead the analysis, it was actually detectable more than 60 million years in the future. That’s the cool part.” 

In future studies, similar computer models could help reconstruct evolutionary trees for a variety of other animals. The team is hoping to continue their efforts to build a more complete picture of bird evolution. Biologists are also continuing to sequence the genomes of other bird species in an effort to expand their family tree even more. 

The work is part of the international Bird 10,000 Genomes (B10K) Project, a multi-institutional effort with the goal of generating draft genome sequences for about 10,500 living bird species.

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After a particularly mild winter in most of the United States, which followed a record warm summer for the planet, seasonal allergy season is kicking into high gear. According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, more than 80 million Americans suffer from sneezing, itchy eyes, runny nose, and other symptoms of seasonal allergies.  

Climate change is making allergy season worse

A 2021 study found that spring allergy season is beginning about 20 days earlier in North America due to human-caused climate change. Pollen concentrations have risen roughly 20 percent across the country since 1990, with the Midwest and Texas seeing the largest increases. A combination of warmer temperatures, higher concentrations of carbon dioxide, and more precipitation can all contribute to plants producing more pollen longer. 

This year, the pollen count started particularly early, according to allergist and director of the Loyola Medicine Allergy Count Dr. Rachna Shah. She typically looks at pollen counts in Chicago in April, but saw that tree pollen was already at a moderate level in the middle of February. 

[Related: Climate change is pumping more pollen into allergy season.]

“This season has been so nuts,” Shah told the Associated Press. “Granted, it was a pretty mild winter, but I didn’t expect it to be so early.” 

Shah also believes that this season will be longer than other years, if the weather remains unseasonably warm. 

What are some triggers for seasonal allergies?

Pollen from growing trees and other plants is one of the most common triggers of seasonal allergies. In the early spring, tree pollen tends to be the biggest allergy trigger, with grass and weed pollen following. 

Ragweed, goldenrod, dust, and mold can also trigger allergies for some. 

Is it a cold or allergies?

Since allergies typically come with sneezing, coughing, itchy eyes, and sore throat, it can be hard to tell them apart from the common cold. According to Dr. Rita Kachru, chief of clinical allergy and immunology at UCLA Health, muscle pain, joint aches, fatigue, and fever is a sure sign that these symptoms are from a cold and not allergies.

Symptoms flaring up around the same time every year and having a family history of seasonal allergies are also helpful in determining what’s causing the symptoms.

How to manage symptoms

According to the Mayo Clinic, one of the first things to do is reduce exposure. This can mean avoiding going outside on windy days when pollen is blowing around, changing clothes and showering after coming inside, and even rinsing out your nasal passages. The best time to go outside is after a good rainfall, when some pollen has been washed away. You can also monitor pollen counts in your area online or during weather forecasts. 

[Related: It’s time you really understood what allergies mean.]

There are also several over-the-counter remedies available in both oral and nasal spray form that can help with symptoms when taken correctly. These include fexofenadine (Allegra), loratadine (Claritin), levocetirizine (Xyzal), and cetirizine (Zyrtec). Some common steroid nasal sprays include budesonide (Benacort), fluticasone (Flonase), triamcinolone (Nasacort) and mometasone (Nasonex).

Medical professionals do caution against using products that have pseudoephedrine, such as Sudafed, for more than a day or two. These medications can increase heart rate and blood pressure. A task force of physicians also issued guidelines in 2020 that did not recommend using Benadryl to treat allergies. The medication can have sedative effects and cause confusion in some patients.

If symptoms are severe and last for several months, it is important to speak with a medical professional and potentially get tested to see exactly what the body is reacting to. There are also long term allergy shots avaialbe that can help with more severe reactions.

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Millions across Canada, the United States, and Mexico are getting ready for this month’s big total solar eclipse. However, this exciting celestial event is not the only thing to get pumped about this Global Astronomy Month. April will bring in another possible chance to see the “Devil Comet” and a meteor shower. 

[ Related: This is the most cosmically perfect time in history ]

April 8-Total Solar Eclipse

In North America, the moon will pass between the sun and Earth, completely blocking the face of the sun. According to NASA, the sky will darken as if it were dawn or dusk in the areas where the moon blocks out the sun’s light. Torreón, Mexico will see the longest totality at 4 minutes and 28 seconds, while most places along the path of totality will see it last between 3.5 and four minutes. 

The first location in continental North America that will experience totality is the Pacific Coast of Mexico, at about 11:07 am PDT. The path of the eclipse will then enter the United States in Texas, and travel through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. It will enter Canada via Southern Ontario, and continue through Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. The eclipse will leave continental North America on the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland, Canada, at 5:16 p.m. NDT. 

It is incredibly important to not look directly in the sun without proper eye protection during the eclipse. You can also build your own eclipse glasses and pinhole camera to watch this incredible event without frying your eyeballs. Aspiring astrophotographers are also encouraged to try to photograph the event and you can learn how to do so safely with this NASA-approved guide.

[Related: How to make sure your eclipse glasses actually work.]

April 21- Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks Reaches Perihelion

The “Devil Comet” put on a show in the Northern Hemisphere in March, and could even photobomb this month’s eclipse. On April 21, it will reach its closest point to the sun. During this time, it may be visible to the naked eye if the sky is dark enough. As it moves from the constellation Aries to Taurus, it will also become visible from the Southern Hemisphere. For the best spots to try to catch a glimpse of Pons-Brooks, consult StarWalk. 

After June, Pons-Brooks will take another 71 years for it to complete a full circuit around the sun. It won’t be visible again until summer 2095, so this will likely be the last time most of us get to see it. 

April 21 through 23- Lyrids Meteor Shower Predicted Peak

The annual Lyrids meteor shower officially begins on April 15 and is predicted to peak beginning in the early evening hours of April 21. Unfortunately, this year’s shower will be impacted by a bright waxing gibbous moon, making the night sky a bit brighter. In a dark sky with no moon 10 to 15 meteors per hour can be expected, so this year’s may be a little bit low. However, the Lyrids are known for some rare surges in activity that can sometimes bring them up to 100 per hour. The meteor shower will be visible from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres, but is much more active in the north.

[Related: The moon is shrinking (very slowly).]

April 23- Full Pink Moon

The first full moon of spring in the Northern Hemisphere will reach peak illumination at 7:49 pm EDT on April 23. You can use the Farmer’s Almanac to calculate the local moonrise and moonset times near you. For best viewing, watch as the moon rises just above the horizon. 

April’s full moon is often called the pink moon in reference to the early springtime blooms of the wildflower Phlox subulata found in eastern North America, so it will not take on a pink hue. The April full moon is also called the Loon Moon or Maango-giizis in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), the It’s Thundering Moon or Wasakayutese in Oneida, and the Planting Moon or O’nót’ah in Seneca.

The same skygazing rules that apply to pretty much all space-watching activities are key during the nighttime events this month: Go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let the eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour. 

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Scientists have discovered a new species of gecko named for post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh. A team of scientists from the Thackeray Wildlife Foundation were exploring the Southern Western Ghats in southern India when they came across this unusual lizard. The back of Cnemaspis vangoghi reminded them of one of the world’s most famous paintings. The new species is described in a study published March 27 in the journal ZooKeys. 

“Cnemaspis vangoghi is named for Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) as the striking colouration of the new species is reminiscent of one of his most iconic paintings, The Starry Night,” study co-author and biologist Ishan Agarwal said in a statement. 

The males of this species boast a yellow head and forebody, with light blue spots on their back. They live among the rocks in this mountainous and rainforest covered region and occasionally are found on buildings and trees. Scientists don’t currently know what Cnemaspis vangoghi eats, but other geckos eat crickets, earthworms, waxworms, mealworms, moths, fruit flies, or grasshoppers. Some geckos will also eat fruit, including papaya, pineapple, and grapes. 

[Related: This tiny robot grips like a gecko and scoots like an inchworm.]

Genetic sequencing helped the team determine that this is a new species of gecko. There are roughly 1,500 known gecko species around the world. These lizards are found on every continent except for Antarctica, but are especially prevalent in warmer climates. Ishan Agarwal and colleagues Akshay Khandekar and Tejas Thackeray found the new species during an April 2022 expedition in Tamil Nadu, India. 

“Tamil Nadu is an exceptionally biodiverse state and we expect to name well over 50 new species of lizards by the time we are done [with our expeditions]!,” said Agarwal. “I also had more than 500 tick bites during that summer trip, with the highest densities in the low-elevation, dry forests of Srivilliputhur, where the new species are found.”

Cnemaspis vangoghi is a small gecko that can get up to only one to two inches in length. The largest known gecko in the world is the New Caledonian gecko. They are exclusively found on the islands of New Caledonia in the South Pacific and can grow up to 14 inches long. 

[Related: This 6-inch-long Jurassic creature does a great lizard impersonation.]

Cnemaspis vangoghi was described as new to science with another species in the same genus named Cnemaspis sathuragiriensis. This other gecko is named for its locality the Sathuragiri Hills.

“The two new species are distributed in low elevation [820 to 1,312 feet], deciduous forests of Srivilliputhur, and add to the five previously known endemic vertebrates from Srivilliputhur-Megamalai Tiger Reserve, Tamil Nadu, India,” said Agarwal.

Both species are also diurnal, meaning they are primarily active during the cool hours in the early morning. They have only been found in very restricted locations, which makes them an  “an interesting case of micro-endemism in low-elevation species,” according to Agarwal. 

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The brain’s ability to create and store memories is pretty mysterious. Memory can’t always be trusted, and yet it is crucial to survival. Remembering where food is stored during lean winter months is a necessity for many animals, including black-capped chickadees. New research suggests that these birds with impeccable memories use a system similar to something you’ve probably seen at the grocery store. They appear to memorize each food location using brain cell activity that functions similar to how a barcode works. The findings are described in a study published March 29 in the journal Cell.

“We see the world through our memories of objects, places and people,” study co-author and Columbia University neuroscientist Dmitriy Aronov said in a statement. “Memories entirely define the way we see and interact with the world. With this bird, we have a way to understand memory in an incredibly simplified way, and in understanding their memory, we will understand something about ourselves.”

‘Memory geniuses’

Scientists have long known that the brain’s hippocampus is necessary for storing episodic memories like where a car is parked or food is kept. It’s been more difficult to understand how these memories are encoded in the brain, since it’s hard to know what an animal might be remembering at a particular time. 

To work around this problem, the new study looks at black-capped chickadees. Arnov calls these birds “memory geniuses” and masters of episodic memory. Most chickadees live in colder places and don’t migrate in the winter like other birds. Their survival hinges on remembering where they hid food in the summer and fall, with some birds making up to 5,000 of these stashes every day.

[Related: Dogs and wolves remember where you hide their food.]

“Each cache is a well-defined, overt, and easily observable moment in time during which a new memory is formed,” said Aronov. “By focusing on these special moments in time, we were able to identify patterns of memory-related activity that had not been noticed before.”

A hippocampal ‘barcode’

In the study, the team built indoor arenas in a lab that were inspired by the birds’ natural habitats. During the experiments, a black-capped chickadee instinctively hid sunflower seeds in the holes in the arenas, while the team monitored the activity in the bird’s hippocampus, using an implanted recording system. This device allowed the team to monitor the brain while the birds moved about freely and was removed between recording sessions. At the same time, six cameras recorded the chickadees as they flew and an artificial intelligence system that automatically tracked them as they stashed and retrieved seeds. 

“These are very striking patterns of activity, but they’re very brief—only about a second long on average,” study co-author and postdoctoral research fellow Selmaan Chettih said in a statement. “If you didn’t know exactly when and why they happened, it would be very easy to miss them.” 

They saw that the hippocampal neurons fired in a unique pattern each time the chickadees stored food in a certain location. Each memory was tagged with a unique pattern in the hippocampus that lit up when the bird retrieved the cached food. The team referred to these patterns as barcodes since they are very specific labels of individual memories. 

“For example, barcodes of two different caches are uncorrelated even if those two caches are right next to each other,” said Aronov.

These barcode-like patterns also occur independently from the other activity of hippocampal neurons called place cells. These cells encode memories of locations in the brain. Each of these pseudo barcode stayed distinct, even for the stashes that were hidden at the same place, but at different times, or at nearby stashes that were made in quick succession. 

“Many hippocampal studies have focused on place cells, with the Nobel Prize awarded for their discovery in 2014,” said Aronov. “So the assumption in the field was that episodic memory must have something to do with changes in place cells. We find that place cells don’t actually change when birds form new memories. Instead, during food caching, there are additional patterns of activity beyond those seen with place cells.”

What this could mean for humans

According to the team, the question of whether and how these patterns are being used by the brain to drive behavior remains. It is not fully clear whether the chickadees activate the ‘barcodes’ and use those memories to make decisions about where to go next. 

[Related: Do cats and dogs remember their past?]

In future studies, the team hope to see if the birds activate these barcode-esque patterns when looking for caches in more remote spots or in more complicated environments. They also plan to record brain activity while the birds make choices about which cache to visit. 

The team is also eager to know if this barcoding tactic is in widespread use among other animals–ourselves included, since memory is a critical part of the human experience. 

“If you think about how people define themselves, who they think they are, their sense of self, then episodic memories of particular events are central to that,” said Chettih. “That’s what we’re trying to understand.”

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As dairy alternatives such as almond, oat, and soy milk continue to grow in popularity, an centuries old question regarding cow’s milk still remains. How does today’s dairy differ from what previous generations consumed? 

Some clues are now emerging in the form of some 117-year-old whole milk powder that was transported on Sir Ernest Shackleton’s British Antarctic Expedition in the early 20th Century. A study published in the March 2024 issue of the Journal of Dairy Science found that despite advancement in selective cow breeding and changes to farm practices, milk from the present and past have more similarities than differences. 

The Nimrod expedition

The powdered milk in the study was made by New Zealand’s Defiance brand in 1907. On New Year’s Day in 1908, Shackleton and his crew aboard the ship Nimrod set sail on a quest to be the first to set foot on the South Pole. The Nimrod was well stocked with dairy, including 1,000 pounds of dried whole milk powder, 192 pounds of butter, and two cases of cheese. The crew would make it farther south than any known human had been before and made it within 100 nautical miles of the South Pole and left their base camp and its supplies behind. 

About a century later, one remaining container of Defiance whole milk powder was uncovered during a restoration project by the Antarctic Heritage Trust restoration project. The milk powder had been frozen in time and ice at Shackelton’s base camp for 100 years.

“The Shackleton dried milk is possibly the best-preserved sample manufactured during the pioneering years of commercial milk powder production, and its discovery gives us a once-in-a-lifetime chance to understand the similarities and differences between a roller-dried milk powder manufactured over 100 years ago with modern spray-dried counterparts,” Skelte G. Anema, a study co-author and chemist at Fonterra Research and Development Centre in New Zealand, said in a statement. 

[Related: Ancient milk-drinkers were just fine with their lactose intolerance–until famine struck.]

According to Anema, before vacuum-assisted evaporation, milk powders were made by a roller-drying process. Boiling-hot milk was poured between two steam-heated revolving cylinders so that the water evaporated. A thin sheet of dried milk was left behind that was then milled and sieved. While scientists knew that these early milk powders were not as sophisticated as those available today, they were not sure what other differences existed. 

Analyzing milk powders

In the study, the team analyzed a few hundred grams of the 100 plus year-old Defiance milk. They set out to compare it with two modern-day commercial, non-instantized and spray-dried whole milk powder samples. They compared the composition of the milk’s major and trace components, proteins, fatty acids, and phospholipids. They also looked at the microstructural properties, color, and volatile components in the different whole milk powder samples.

“Despite more than a century between the samples, the composition of bulk components and detailed protein, fat, and minor components have not changed drastically in the intervening years,” said Anema.

The fatty acid composition, phospholipid composition, and protein composition of the samples were generally similar. The major mineral components between the samples were also relatively alike, except for higher levels of lead, tin, iron, and other trace minerals found in the Shackleton whole milk powder. These minerals likely came from the tin-plated can the powder was stored in and the equipment and water supply used during that time period. Using stainless steel and better water has eliminated that issue from modern milk powders, according to the team.

Another notable difference in the Shackleton milk samples was the presence of oxidation-related volatile aroma compounds.

[Related: Tending Sir Ernest’s Legacy: An Interview with Alexandra Shackleton.]

“Perhaps from less-than-ideal collection and storage of the raw milk before drying, but it’s much more likely that—even in frozen conditions—being stored in an open tin for a century is going to result in continued oxidation,” said Anema.

Despite the remarkable similarities between the milk samples, the team points out that modern spray-dried whole milk powders are substantially superior in terms of the powder quality. They look better and dissolve in water more easily. 

This unique Antarctic time capsule still provides a glimpse into dairy food production methods of the past and its evolution over time. 

“The Shackleton samples are a testament to the importance of dairy products—which are rich in protein and energy as well as flexible enough to be powdered for easy transport, preparation, and consumption,” said Anema. 

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A team in China used ancient DNA to reconstruct the face of an emperor who reigned 1,500 years ago. Emperor Wu was the ruler of the Northern Zhou dynasty from 560 to 578 CE. The facial reconstruction is detailed in a study published March 28 in the journal Current Biology. The study sheds light on Emperor Wu’s potential cause of death and the migration pattern of a nomadic empire that once ruled parts of northeastern Asia.

As a ruler, Emperor Wu is known for building a strong military and unifying a northern part of China after defeating the Northern Qi dynasty. Emperor Wu’s tomb was discovered in northwestern China in 1996. Archaeologists found several bones, including a nearly complete skull. 

Since then, ancient DNA research techniques have advanced and the team from this new study was able to recover over 1 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) on his DNA. Each SNP–or snip–represents a difference in a single building block of DNA. SNPs occur normally throughout DNA and each human genome has about four to five million of them. To be classified as an SNP, the variant must be found in at least one percent of the population. There are more than 600 million SNPs in populations from all over the world.

[Related: This 7th-century teen was buried with serious bling—and we now know what she may have looked like.]

The team found SNPs that contained information about Emperor Wu’s hair and skin color. Historians believe he was ethnically Xianbei–an ancient nomadic group primarily found in present day Mongolia and northern and northeastern China.

“Some scholars said the Xianbei had ‘exotic’ looks, such as thick beard, high nose bridge, and yellow hair,” study co-author and Fudan University bioarchaeologist Shaoqing Wen said in a statement. “Our analysis shows Emperor Wu had typical East or Northeast Asian facial characteristics,” he adds.

With the SNP data and Emperor Wu’s skull, the team reconstructed his face as a 3D rendering using open-source Blender software. The program is based on the soft tissue depth average of modern Chinese persons. They also used the HIrisPlex-S system, which “predicts externally visible human traits using 41 SNPs.” 

The genetic data revealed that he has brown eyes, black hair, and “dark to intermediate skin.” His facial features were also similar to those from parts of Northern and Eastern Asia today.

“Our work brought historical figures to life,” study co-author and Fudan University paleoanthropologist Pianpian Wei said in a statement. “Previously, people had to rely on historical records or murals to picture what ancient people looked like. We are able to reveal the appearance of the Xianbei people directly.”

Emperor Wu died in 578 at the age of 36. Some archaeologists believe that he died of an illness, while others say the emperor was poisoned by his rivals. Analysis of his DNA using a genetic database called Promethease, reveals that he was at an increased risk for stroke, which could have contributed to his death. According to the team, finding aligns with historical records that describe Emperor Wu as having potential symptoms of a stroke–aphasia, drooping eyelids, and an abnormal gait. 

[Related: Ceramic pipes kept this town from flooding during monsoons 4,000 years ago.]

The genetic analysis also shows that the Xianbei people procreated with ethnically Han Chinese individuals when they migrated into northern China. 

“This is an important piece of information for understanding how ancient people spread in Eurasia and how they integrated with local people,” said Wen.

In future studies, the team plans to study the DNA from people who lived in ancient Chang’an city in northwestern China. Chang’an was the capital city of many Chinese empires for thousands of years and was the eastern over thousands of years. It was also located on the eastern end of the famed Silk Road–a critical Eurasian trade network from the second century BCE until the 15th Century. The team hopes that the DNA analysis will reveal more data on how migration and cultural exchange unfolded in ancient China.

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Avian influenza or bird flu has been detected in milk from dairy cows in Kansas and Texas for the first time. Officials from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Texas Animal Health Commission confirmed that the Type A H5N1 strain of bird flu virus was present in some samples of unpasteurized milk. This particular strain is known to cause devastating outbreaks in wild and commercial birds and can occasionally infect people. H5N1 is also affecting older dairy cows in New Mexico and causes decreased lactation and low appetite in the animals.

“At this stage, there is no concern about the safety of the commercial milk supply or that this circumstance poses a risk to consumer health,” the USDA wrote in a statement.

The commercial milk supply is still safe and the risk to people is low, according to the USDA. Dairies must only send the milk from healthy animals into the food chain, with milk from infected or sick animals diverted. The pasteurization process also kills viruses and other bacteria and this process is required for milk that is sold through interstate commerce.

[Related: Seal pup die-off from avian flu in Argentina looks ‘apocalyptic.’]

The tests on the cattle did not find any changes to the virus that indicate it would make it spread more easily to people. Texas dairy farmers first became concerned about three weeks ago when their cattle began falling ill. It is likely related to the current outbreak of a highly pathogenic avian influenza strain called H5N1 that has killed millions of birds and been detected in mammals including elephant seals and a polar bear in Alaska. 

“It’s important for people to know that at this point, there are still a lot of unanswered questions,” influenza pathologist Richard Webby tells PopSci. “It’s still a very unusual and interesting finding. These cows are not hosts we typically associate with avian influenza viruses.” 

Webby is the Deputy Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds and faculty member in the Department of Infectious Diseases at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. According to Webby, the risk to the general population still remains low and studying the cattle is providing scientists with an opportunity to learn more about how the virus spreads, as domestic cows are easy to sample and track in studies.

“In the whole gamut of influenza viruses that make their home in birds, most don’t cause a whole lot of disease,” says Webby. “There are two groups within that (H5N1 and H7N1) that have this ability to make mutations in one of their proteins that makes them much more able to cause a systemic infection.”

These highly pathogenic forms make it easier for the virus to move away from just the lungs and infect other organs and tissues in the body. Webby also points out that as far as viruses go, influenza can be fairly weak, so pasteurization should remain a strong line of defense. Consuming raw or unpasteurized milk is dangerous, no matter what the internet says. Scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say that raw milk has no added nutritional benefits and it can be contaminated with harmful germs. The CDC even considers raw milk one of the riskiest foods you can consume. 

“It doesn’t survive long under heat. So from that perspective, it’s a good thing that it’s pretty easy to kill flu viruses,” says Webby. 

University of Texas Medical Branch epidemiologist Gregory Gray, told Science that the new detections in cows across multiple states was a “worrisome” development. Gray said it may be a sign that the virus is spreading between cattle instead of from birds alone and has mutated in ways that could make the virus easier to spread among humans. However, the National Veterinary Services Laboratories said that the preliminary studies on the affected cows show no evidence that the virus has changed.  

Bird flu spreads through air droplets and bird feces. According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, it is exacerbated by alterations to bird migration schedules due to human-caused climate change and repeated re-circulation in domestic poultry. There have also been outbreaks of the virus at mink farms in France and Spain and the USDA banned poultry imports from France in October 2023. Scientists confirmed that this virus jumped to wild mammals in May 2022.

[Related: Thriving baby California condor is a ray of hope for the unique species.]

According to USDA and Texas officials, the cows likely contracted the virus from infected wild birds. The infected livestock appear to recover on their own within seven to 10 days, which is very different from how this illness affects commercial poultry. Entire bird flocks must be culled to get rid of the virus. About 82 million wild and commercial birds in the United States have been affected since 2022. 

While the risk to humans is still low, the World Health Organization has urged public health officials to prepare for a potential spillover to humans in the future. Scientists initially thought that mammals could only catch the virus through contact with infected birds. While cases of humans getting infected and seriously ill from bird flu are rare, the more it spreads among mammals, the easier it will be for the virus to evolve to spread.

Since this situation is evolving quickly, the USDA and other health agencies will continue to share updates. More information on biosecurity measures can be found here.

UPDATE April 2, 2024 9:57 a.m. EDT

According to Texas health officials, at least one person has been diagnosed with bird flu after interacting with infected cows. The CDC said there are currently no signs that the virus has evolved methods that help it spread more easily among humans, but the situation is continuing to evolve.

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Keeping our teeth clean has been a pain for thousands of years, with some particularly painful methods historically used to take care of our chompers. Two 4,000-year-old human teeth unearthed in a limestone cave in Ireland were recently found to contain an “unprecedented quantity” of the bacteria that cause tooth decay and gum disease. The genetic analysis of these well-preserved microbiomes reveal how changes in diet shaped our oral health from the Bronze Age to today. The findings are described in a study published March 27 in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

Fossilized dental plaques have been one of the best studied parts of the ancient human body. However, very few full genomes from oral bacteria in teeth prior to the medieval era have been uncovered. This means that scientists have limited data on how the human mouth’s microbiome was affected by changes in diet and from events like the spread of farming about 10,000 years ago.

Sugar-munching, acid producing bacteria

Both of the teeth belonged to the same male individual who lived in present day Ireland during the Bronze Age. The teeth contained the bacteria that cause gum diseases and the first 

high quality ancient genome from Streptococcus mutans (S. mutans). This oral bacterium is one of the major causes of tooth decay.

S. mutans is very common in modern human mouths, but is very rare in the ancient genomic record. One potential reason why it’s so sparse may be how the bacterium produces acid. The acid decays the tooth, but also destroys DNA and stops the dental plaque from fossilizing and hardening over time. Most ancient oral microbiomes are found inside these fossilized plaques, but this new study looked directly at the tooth. 

[Related: Vikings filed their teeth to cope with pain.]

Another reason why S. mutans may not have been present in ancient mouths may be due to a lack of sugary mouths for it to thrive in. S. mutans loves sugar and an increase of dental cavities can be seen in the archaeological record after humans began to grow and farm grains. However, the more dramatic increase occurred over the past few centuries when sugary foods became significantly more prevalent.  

The disappearing microbiota hypothesis

The sampled teeth were part of a larger skeleton found in Killuragh Cave, County Limerick, by the late Peter Woodman of University College Cork. Other teeth in the cave show advanced dental decay, but there wasn’t any evidence of any caries–or early cavities. A single tooth turned out to have a ton of mutans sequences. 

“We were very surprised to see such a large abundance of S. mutans in this 4,000 year old tooth,” study co-author and Trinity College Dublin geneticist Lara Cassidy said in a statement. “It is a remarkably rare find and suggests this man was at high risk of developing cavities right before his death.”

The cool, dry, and alkaline conditions of the cave may have contributed to the preservation of S. mutans DNA. While the S. mutans DNA was plentiful, other streptococcal species were mostly absent from the tooth sample. This indicates that the natural balance or the oral biofilm had been altered–mutans outcompeted the other bacteria species.

According to the team, the study adds more support behind the disappearing microbiota hypothesis. This idea proposes that our ancestors’ microbiomes were actually more diverse than our own today. More evidence that supports this hypothesis came from the two genomes for Tannerella forsythia (T. forsythia) that the team built from the tooth. T. forsythia still exists and causes gum disease. 

“The two sampled teeth contained quite divergent strains of T. forsythia,” study co-author and Trinity College Dublin PhD candidate Iseult Jackson said in a statement. “These strains from a single ancient mouth were more genetically different from one another than any pair of modern strains in our dataset, despite these modern samples deriving from Europe, Japan, and the USA. This is interesting because a loss of biodiversity can have negative impacts on the oral environment and human health.”

Shifting genes and mouths

Both reconstructed genomes revealed  dramatic changes in the oral microenvironment over the last 750 years. One lineage of T. forsythia has become dominant in global populations in recent years, which is a sign of an event geneticists call a selective episode. This is when one bacteria strain quickly rises in frequency due to a particular genetic advantage. The T. forsythia genomes that arose particularly after the Industrial Revolution acquired genes that helped it colonize the mouth and cause disease.

[Related: Bronze Age cauldrons show we’ve always loved meat, dairy, and fancy cookware.]

S. mutans also had evidence of recent lineage expansions and changes in gene content that both coincide with the popularization of sugar. However, modern S. mutans populations have remained even more diverse than T. forsythia, including some deep splits in the S. mutans evolutionary tree that pre-date the genomes uncovered in Ireland. The team believes that this is driven by differences in the evolutionary behind genome diversity in these bacteria species.

“S. mutans is very adept at swapping genetic material across strains,” said Cassidy “This allows an advantageous innovation to be spread across S. mutans lineages, rather than one lineage becoming dominant and replacing all others.”

Both of these disease-causing bacteria have essentially changed dramatically from the Bronze Age to today. However, it’s the very recent cultural transitions like more sugar consumption that appear to have had an outsized impact.

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Skygazers have the chance to view more than just a bright planet Mercury or April’s total solar eclipse over the next few days. An unusual “devil comet” or Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks will be visible across the night sky over the next several days and may make an appearance during the big eclipse on April 8th. Since it only makes one orbit around the sun every 71 years, seeing Pons-Brooks is generally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

What is the ‘devil comet’?

Pons-Brooks is a 10.5 mile-wide ball of ice and rock. It has a stretched out or highly elliptical orbit and is currently heading in the direction of our sun. It has a core made up of solid ice, gas, and dust that is surrounded by a frozen shell or nucleus. This nucleus is also covered by a cloud of icy dust called a coma that slowly leaks out of the center of the comet. 

Unlike most other comets, Pons-Brooks is cryovolcanic. It frequently erupts when solar radiation opens up fissures in the nucleus. This causes highly pressurized icy cryomagma to spew into space. When this occurs, the cloud of icy dust that surrounds it expands and appears brighter than usual. 

Pons-Brooks had a major eruption for the first time in 69 years in July 2023, which left it with two distinct trails of gas and ice that resemble a pair of devil horns. It has continued to erupt fairly frequently.

[Related: ‘Oumuamua isn’t an alien probe, but it might be the freakiest comet we’ve ever seen.]

When will it be visible?

Throughout the next few weeks, Pons-Brooks may be visible to the naked eye as it travels through the inner solar system. It will remain so until April 2, as it travels closer to the sun and won’t be visible in the dark night sky. It will be closest to Earth on June 2, when it is headed away from the sun. It does not pose any known threats to Earth and will be about 139.4 million miles away. 

SETI institute postdoctoral fellow Ariel Graykowski told Gizmodo that it is set to become even more active in the coming weeks and will be visible to the naked eye with a maximum brightness magnitude around 4.0. The lower the magnitude, the brighter the appearance.

“The limit for naked eye objects in dark, moonless skies is around 6 magnitudes,” Graykowski said, so “it won’t be super obvious in the sky.”

Where should I look?

In the Northern Hemisphere, it is most visible in the early evening towards the west-northwest horizon. Pons-Brooks is near the Pisces constellation and sits low in the northwestern sky. It should appear like a glowing ball of ice, with its forked horns following behind it.

[Related: Halley’s comet is on its way back towards Earth.]

“The comet will brighten a bit as it gets closer to the sun, and it should be visible to the naked eye low in the west about an hour after sunset,” Paul Chodas and Davide Farnocchia from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory told CNN. “You should go to a location away from city lights and with an unobstructed view of the western horizon. It would be advisable to use a pair of binoculars, since the comet may be hard to locate without them.”

Will it appear during the April 8 solar eclipse?

Maybe. The forecast remains uncertain, but Pons-brooks could be visible if it flares significantly. It would only be seen by viewers in the path of totality–the area stretching from Texas northeast towards Maine where the moon will fully block the sun’s light.

According to EarthSky, “when the sky darkens, you’ll see the brightest planet Venus pop into view on one side of the sun. On the other side of the sun, you’ll find the second-brightest planet, Jupiter. And if Comet Pons-Brooks is bright enough, you’ll see it between Jupiter and the sun, but closer to Jupiter.”

It will not make an appearance again until 2097, so now is your chance to get a look. 

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Non-verbal gestures are an integral part of how humans and some other organisms communicate, as with various sign languages  and expressing emotions. A small-bird species called the Japanese tit (Parus minor) also may also use this more complex form of communication. In a study published March 25 Current Biology, a team from the University of Tokyo describes how this small bird appears to use this wing to say “after you” to indicate that the other bird.

According to the study, when a mating pair arrives at their nest box carrying food, the two will wait outside. One bird will then often flutter its wings towards the other, apparently indicating that the other bird can enter the home first. 

The team believes that this discovery challenges earlier beliefs that only a few species use gestures to communicate. Chimpanzees, bonobos, ravens, and some fish appear to use a form of communication called deictic gesturing. This is when simple gestures are deployed to point out objects or show something of interest. Symbolic gestures, such as how humans use an open hand to signal “after you,” requires more complex cognitive skills and have been difficult to observe.

CREDIT: Suzuki and Sugita, 2024/ Current Biology

“In our latest discovery, we revealed that the Japanese tit uses gestures to communicate with their mate,” study co-author and University of Tokyo animal linguist and biologist Toshitaka Suzuki said in a statement. “For over 17 years, I have been engaged in the study of these fascinating birds. They not only use specific calls to convey particular meanings, but also combine different calls into phrases using syntactic rules. These diverse vocalizations led me to initiate this research into their potential use of physical gestures.”

[Related: Why do humans talk? Tree-dwelling orangutans might hold the answer.]

During the spring, these birds form mating pairs and build their nests inside a tree cavity with a small entrance. In the study, Suzuki and his co-researcher Norimasa Sugita observed the behavior of 16 parent birds (eight pairs) breeding in nest boxes built in the wild. The birds enter one at a time when feeding their nestlings. The team noticed that when they’re carrying food back to the nest, the birds would often find a perch nearby first. Then, one would flutter its wings towards the other.

The team analyzed over 320 nest visitations in detail and observed that the wing-fluttering display promoted the mate who was being fluttered at the go into the nest box first. The other bird who fluttered entered second, seeming to mirror the “after you” gesture that humans sometimes use. 

“We were surprised to find that the results were much clearer than we had expected,” said Suzuki. “We observed that Japanese tits flutter their wings exclusively in the presence of their mate, and upon witnessing this behavior, the mate almost always entered the nest box first.”

Female birds performed the gesture more often than males and male birds usually entered the nest box first, regardless of which bird arrived first. Females usually entered the nest box first if she didn’t flutter her wings. 

[Related: Artificial intelligence is helping scientists decode animal languages.]

The team believes this behavior should be classified as a symbolic gesture. It only occurred in the presence of a mat, stopped after the mate entered the nest box, and encouraged the mate to enter without any physical contact. The wing-fluttering “after-you” gesture was also aimed at the mate and not the nest box, meaning that it wasn’t being used to point out where something of interest was located.

“There is a hypothesis that walking on two legs allowed humans to maintain an upright posture, freeing up their hands for greater mobility, which in turn contributed to the evolution of gestures,” said Suzuki. “Similarly, when birds perch on branches, their wings become free, which we think may facilitate the development of gestural communication.”

The team says that they will continue to look into what birds are talking about to learn more about animal languages and the evolution of human speech. 

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The adjective “fluffy” is not usually one that applies to the billions of bugs that call Earth home. Still, some caterpillars, spiders, and beetles do have longer fuzzy hairs from their many appendages. Now, there is a new genus of fluffy longhorn beetle in Australia that was found by chance and a bit of mistaken identity. The newly discovered Excastra albopilosa (E. albopilosa) is described in a study published March 19 in the  Australian Journal of Taxonomy.

Excastra was initially discovered by entomologist James Tweed while he and his partner were camping in the rainforests of Queensland, Australia. He initially thought the less than an inch long critter with its long white and black hairs was a bit of bird poop. 

“I was walking through the campsite at Binna Burra Lodge one morning and something on a Lomandra leaf caught my eye,” Tweed said in a statement. “To my amazement, I saw the most extraordinary and fluffiest longhorn beetle I had ever seen.” Tweed is an entomologist at the University of Queensland. 

After his trip, Tweed combed through available books, scientific papers, and on the internet to find the name of this species, but his search came up empty. Some photos posted to an Australasian beetles Facebook group sparked some interest, but even the most seasoned insect identifiers were stumped. 

The Australian National Insect Collection in Canberra officially confirmed that the beetle was not only a completely new species, but a new genus. They selected the name Excastra for the genus name, which means “from the camp.” Its species name albopilosa means “white and hairy.”

[Related: Army ants could teach robots a thing or two.]

“We don’t yet know what these hairs are for, but our primary theory is that they make the insect look like it’s been killed by an insect-killing fungus,” said Tweed. “This would possibly deter predators such as birds from eating it, but until someone can find more specimens and study this species further, we won’t be able to say for sure why this beetle is so hairy.”

The area where Excastra was located has been popular with entomologists for over a century and Tweed has not seen it on any additional trips back to the park. These types of chance discovered highlight just how many unknown species are out there and how many may risk going extinct. 

“Insects are the most diverse group of animals on the planet but are also the most underappreciated and understudied,” said Tweed. “Best estimates suggest there may be 5.5 million insect species worldwide and only one-fifth of these have been named and described.”

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Not all dolphins live in the salty ocean. While rare, some river dolphins live and eat in freshwater and are best known for their candy colored hues. Now, paleontologists have uncovered a fossilized skull belonging to a 16-million-year-old extinct river dolphin species in Peru named Pebanista yacuruna. It could grow to about 10 to 11 feet long and is the largest known species of river dolphin known to science. Pebanista is described in a study published March 20 in the journal Science Advances. 

The name Pebanista yacuruna is inspired by the Yacuruna, a mythical aquatic people that legends say inhabit underwater cities in the Amazon basin and are similar to the god Neptune in Greek mythology. The fossilized skull was found in the Peruvian Amazon and belongs to the group Platanistoidea. This group was a common animal in the Earth’s ocean between 24 and 16 million years ago. The team believes that their primarily salt water dwelling ancestors invaded the prey-rich freshwater ecosystems of the early Amazon and learned to adapt to this new environment.

“Sixteen million years ago, the Peruvian Amazonia looked very different from what it is today,” Aldo Benites-Palomino, a study co-author and paleontologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, said in a statement. “Much of the Amazonian plain was covered by a large system of lakes and swamps called Pebas.” 

[Related: Eavesdropping on pink river dolphins could help save them.]

This landscape stretched across present day Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil and included a variety of ecosystems in its lakes and swamps. About 10 million years ago, the Pebas system began to give way to the floodplain that Amazonia looks like today. Pebanista’s prey began to disappear as the landscape began to change, driving these giant dolphins to extinction. With Pebanista out of the picture, the relatives of today’s Amazon river dolphins called Inia had an opportunity to sneak in. 

While these pink dolphins may look similar to the extinct Pebanista, they are not directly related. Pebanista’s closest living relatives of this newly discovered species are actually found in South Asia.

“We discovered that its size is not the only remarkable aspect,” says Benites-Palomino. “With this fossil record unearthed in the Amazon, we expected to find close relatives of the living Amazon River dolphin–but instead the closest cousins of Pebanista are the South Asian river dolphins (genus Platanista).”

Both Pebanista and Platanista have highly developed facial crests that help them with echolocation. That is when they emit high-frequency sounds and listen to their echoes in order to “see” their prey through sounds. 

“For river dolphins, echolocation, or biosonar, is even more critical as the waters they inhabit are extremely muddy, which impedes their vision,” study co-author and University of Zurich paleontologist Gabriel Aguirre-Fernández said in a statement.

[Related: This dolphin ancestor looked like a cross between Flipper and Moby Dick.]

Pebanista’s elongated snout with many teeth suggests that it fed on fish the way other river dolphins do. Modern Amazon river dolphins called boto are considered critically endangered and their primary threats include habitat loss and degradation and getting entangled in fishing gear. 

The Amazon rainforest remains a very difficult place for paleontological fieldwork. Fossils like these are only accessible during the dry season, when water levels drop low enough to expose ancient layers of bedrock. If the fossils are not collected in time, they can be swept away during the rainy season. 

The specimen was found in 2018 in an expedition led by Peruvian paleontologist Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi, who completed his postdoctoral work at the University of Zurich. The team traveled more than 180 miles of the Napo River in northeastern Peru and collected dozens of other fossils. The dolphin skull is now housed at the Museo de Historia Natural in Lima.

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It’s not easy being green, but a newly described amphibian ancestor is seeing limelight after decades safely tucked away in the Smithsonian’s National Fossil Collection in Washington DC. This new species is named Kermitops gratus, in honor of world-famous amphibian Kermit the Frog. It lived more than 270 million years ago and its discovery is altering the story of amphibian evolution. The findings are described in a study published March 21 in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 

A stout salamander-like creature 

Based on an inch-long skull fossil, scientists believed that Kermitops likely would have resembled a stout salamander. The fossil has large, oval-shaped eye sockets, much like the distinct eyes on the Muppet it is named after. Kermitops was likely a temnospondyl–a member of a diverse group of early amphibian relatives that lived for more than 200 million years from the Carboniferous Period up to to the Triassic. 

“It probably was a little more terrestrial than some other frogs and salamanders,” study co-author and Smithsonian vertebrate paleontologist Arjan Mann tells PopSci. “The ecosystems that would have inhabited probably marginal pond environments, similar areas to where you find amphibians living today. 

At times, Kermitops’ environment was potentially similar to the swamp where viewers first meet Kermit singing and strumming the banjo in 1979’s The Muppet Movie. This prehistoric ecosystem also saw large shifts in seasonal rainfall and dry spells, similar to the monsoons seen today in the Southwestern United States and Southeast Asia.

[Related: These pleasantly plump salamanders dominated the Cretaceous period.]

“That rainfall would really feed this ecosystem in pulses,” study co-author and George Washington University evolutionary biologist and PhD student Calvin So tells PopSci. “That’s what sustained animals like Kermitops and modern amphibians have some of the same or similar constraints.”

Paleontological patience

The fossil was originally found by the late Smithsonian paleontologist Nicholas Hotton III. Hotton made several research trips to dig for fossils from a group of rock outcrops in north central Texas called the Red Beds. These rust-colored rocks date back to more than 270 million years ago to the Permian Period and are full of the fossilized remains of ancient reptiles, amphibians, and even some precursors to modern mammals called sail-backed synapsids.

Hotton’s team collected so many fossils that they couldn’t study them all in close detail. This included a small proto-amphibian skull that they found in a rock layer called Clear Fork Formation in 1984–the same year The Muppets Take Manhattan was released. The skull was labeled as an early amphibian and spent decades before researchers could take a closer look. It caught Mann’s eye in 2021 when he was a postdoctoral paleontologist at the Smithsonian. 

“It was easily identifiable as a taxa that that’s something new and different from anything we knew,” Mann tells PopSci. 

A head that snaps

Mann and So worked together to determine what kind of prehistoric creature the fossil belonged to. It has a mix of traits that appeared different from the skulls of older tetrapods–the ancient ancestors of amphibians and living four-legged vertebrates. The region of the skull behind the animal’s eyes was also much shorter than its longer and curved snout. These skull proportions likely helped it quickly grab food like a modern day snapping turtle.

“It may have been predisposed for these quick snapping motions,” says So. “Because of its small size, it was probably feeding on things smaller than itself, like insects, worms and vertebrates, but also potentially smaller amphibians.”

Since the skull had such unique features, the team concluded that it belonged to an entirely new genus they named Kermitops. It is a play on the amphibian’s wide-eyed face and is a mix of the words “Kermit” and the Greek suffix “-ops,” for face. The word Gratus represents the team’s gratitude to Hotton and the rest of the team that originally unearthed the fossil so many years ago. 

The team also hopes that naming it after the beloved frog who was created by puppeteer Jim Henson in 1955, can help get more people excited about the discoveries that scientists make using museum collections.

[Related: These legless, egg-laying amphibians secrete ‘milk’ from their butts.]

“There’s so many implications for reaching a broader audience,” says So. “We don’t only want to inspire future generations of paleontologists, but we hope to broaden what science is, from this very dedicated field to something that may potentially integrate with more creative and artistic things. “

In a statement sent to PopSci, Kermit the Frog wrote: “When the Smithsonian team approached me asking to name a newly-discovered amphibian species after me, I was truly honored… and a little puzzled. I don’t quite see the resemblance, but Miss Piggy and the other Muppets assured me it’s uncanny! Wait ‘til I tell my family in the swamp about our new great-great-great-great-great aunt or uncle–although we never got any gifts from them, so maybe they’re not that great.”

[Related: These spiky frog skulls look more like dinosaur fossils.]

Small fossil, big deal

Despite being such a tiny specimen, Kermitops is filling in some large evolutionary gaps for amphibians. The early fossil record of amphibians and their ancestors is very fragmented, which makes it difficult for scientists to put together how frogs, salamanders, axolotls, and their kin evolved. Finding more early forms of amphibious life is essential for building out the early branches of the amphibian family tree.

“Amphibian evolution was believed to be sort of a linear pattern before, but fossils like Kermitops, kind of put a wrench in that by showing maybe this wasn’t as simple as we thought,” says Mann. “It might have been a process that occurred over many lineages at the same time. Paleontology is always more than just dinosaurs, and there are lots of cool evolutionary stories and mysteries still waiting to be answered.”

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A distinct subpopulation of orca whales appears to be using specialized hunting techniques to hunt the marine mammals that they eat. Orca–or killer whales–are the ultimate apex predators, who have been observed attacking great white sharks, porpoises, and even blue whales. They are found in every ocean on the planet, and the specific environments that they live in have largely shaped their particular food preferences. The killer whales that forage near the deep submarine canyons off the California coast may use the sloping seascape to inform the ways that they catch food. These findings are described in a study published March 20 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

Residents vs. transients

Groups of orca whales can form different populations or ecotypes. They have their own social structures, food preferences, and hunting techniques. Resident killer whales, like the three endangered pods that spend the summer and fall months in and around Puget Sound near Seattle, Washington exclusively eat salmon and have a more round dorsal fin.

[Related: Orca observed hunting and killing a great white shark by itself for the first time.]

The other type of killer whales called transient killer whales specialize in hunting marine mammals. Transients are typically slightly larger than resident orcas have a more pointed dorsal fin. 

The transients that forage in the Northern Pacific Ocean can also be further divided into two groups. The inner coast whales feed in shallow coastal waters, while outer coast whales hunt in deeper water. Most studies have focused on the orcas that hunt closer to shore and not much is known about the foraging techniques for the more offshore whales, such as those near the Monterey Submarine Canyon in California.

“Monterey Bay provides a conducive environment to investigate transient foraging ecology and behavior, due to it having a large deep submarine canyon system occurring close to shore that is accessible to researchers,” study co-author and University of British Columbia marine ecologist Josh McInnes tells PopSci. 

Two distinct foraging behaviors

McInnes and his team looked at the outer coast transient killer whales that foreage around the undersea Monterey Canyon, which is one of the deepest in the United States. They compiled and analyzed data from marine mammal surveys conducted between 2006 and 2018 and whale-watching ecotours between 2014 and 2021. The whales mainly ate California sea lions, gray whale calves, and northern elephant seals. 

The orcas were observed using two different foraging behaviors that appear to be unique to these more offshore transients. When foraging open water, the groups spread out and searched independently for marine mammals to eat. Each whale would also surface at a different time. 

However, if they were looking around the deep submarine canyons and shelf-breaks, groups of whales would search for prey following the contours of the canyon. The group would also surface at the same time. 

According to McInnes, both foraging behaviors appear to be unique to these whales from the other transient groups that hunt in shallow water. 

[Related: Raising male offspring comes at a high price for orca mothers.]

“Their ability to locate and follow the contours of the canyon was surprising based on our focal follow surveys,” says McInnes. “We hypothesize that transient killer whales hunting in submarine canyons may listen to water being upwelled along the continental slope or shelf-break.”

Ramming or punting sea lions

The orcas also deploy special techniques if their prey couldn’t be easily cornered in open water. They subdued their prey by ramming into them with their head or body–as some orca do to boats. The whales also used their powerful tails to hit or launch sea lions out of the water and into the air. 

McInnes and the team believes that these outer coast whales are a distinct subpopulation that has developed these hunting techniques in such a deep water habitat. It’s also possible that these foraging behaviors may be culturally transmitted from one generation to the next. The team was surprised by their affinity for along the slopes of the canyon and shelf-break and just how much time they spent foraging and feeding. 

“Transient killer whales in Monterey Bay, California spend 84 percent of daylight hours foraging (searching, pursuing, and feeding), which is a significant amount of time,” says McInnes. “Feeding appears to be related to the size of prey these whales tackle, with long hunts involving gray whale calves and California sea lions.”

McInness also said the team “really appreciate” any photographs or sightings of killer whales. Images of killer whales can be sent to oceaniceologyrg@gmail.com.

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In a “picture perfect” test, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) successfully smashed a car-sized spacecraft into an asteroid in September 2022. The mission showed that a spacecraft could successfully defect a hazardous space rock if it were ever heading for Earth, even though the odds of a cataclysmic event happening are pretty low. DART changed the asteroid’s orbit, and now scientists found that the blistering impact also likely changed the asteroid’s shape. The findings are described in a study published March 19 in the Planetary Science Journal.

DART targeted the 560-foot-wide asteroid Dimorphos, which orbits a larger near-Earth asteroid called Didymos. Before the impact, Dimorphos had a generally symmetrical oblate spheroid shape.

“When DART made impact, things got very interesting,” Shantanu Naidu, a study co-author and navigation engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said in a statement. “Dimorphos’ orbit is no longer circular. The entire shape of the asteroid has changed, from a relatively symmetrical object to a ‘triaxial ellipsoid’-–something more like an oblong watermelon.”

Previously, it took Dimorphos 11 hours and 55 minutes to complete one loop around Didymos and it had a well-defined, circular orbit about 3,900 feet from it. The space rock’s orbital period–the time it takes to complete one orbit–is now shorter by about 33 minutes and 15 seconds. 

To look into the changes after the impact with DART, Naidu and the team on this study used multiple sources of data in their computer models. The first source was the images that DART captured as it approached the asteroid. These images taken aboard the spacecraft gave close-up measurements of the gap between Didymos and Dimorphos and helped the team gauge the dimensions of both asteroids just before impact.  

The second data source was NASA’s Deep Space Network’s Goldstone Solar System Radar. This rader system is located near Barstow, California. It bounced radio waves off both Didymos and Dimorphos. These radio waves precisely measured the position of Dimorphos relative to Didymos after impact. These radar observations helped NASA conclude that DART exceeded the mission’s expectations. 

[Related: DART left an asteroid crime scene. This mission is on deck to investigate it.]

The most significant source of data came from ground telescopes all over the world that measured both asteroids’ light curve. This is how the sunlight reflecting off the asteroids’ rocky surfaces changed over time. Comparing the light curves before and after impact helped the team learn how DART changed Dimorphos’ motion. As Dimorphos orbits, it periodically passes in front of Didymos and then behind it. During these mutual events, one of the asteroids in the system can cast a shadow on the other, or block our view from Earth. A temporary dimming in the light curve can be recorded by telescopes in both scenarios. 

The team used the timing of this series of light-curve dips to figure out the shape of the orbit. Their models revealed that Dimorphos’ orbit is now slightly elongated, or eccentric. 

“Before impact the times of the events occurred regularly, showing a circular orbit. After impact, there were very slight timing differences, showing something was askew,” study co-author and JPL senior research scientist Steve Chesley said in a statement. “We never expected to get this kind of accuracy.”

[Related: Smashed asteroid surrounded by a ‘cloud’ of boulders.]

According to the team, the models are so precise that they can even show that Dimorphos rocks back and forth as it orbits Didymos. 

The models also calculated how the orbital period evolved. Right after impact, DART reduced the average distance between the two asteroids. It shortened Dimorphos’ orbital period by 32 minutes and 42 seconds, down to 11 hours, 22 minutes, and 37 seconds. 

In the week’s following its collision with DART, the asteroid’s orbital period continued to shorten as it shed more rocky material. It settled in at 11 hours, 22 minutes, and 3 seconds per orbit–or 33 minutes and 15 seconds less time than it took before impact. Dimorphos also now has an average orbital distance of about 3,780 feet–or roughly 120 feet closer to Didymos than it was before colliding with DART.

Another study published in February found that the asteroid is likely a loose rubble pile asteroid–like the recently sampled asteroid Bennu–composition due to its collision with DART. 

“The results of this study agree with others that are being published,” lead scientist for solar system small bodies at NASA Headquarters Tom Statler, said in a statement. “Seeing separate groups analyze the data and independently come to the same conclusions is a hallmark of a solid scientific result. DART is not only showing us the pathway to asteroid-deflection technology, it’s revealing [a] new fundamental understanding of what asteroids are and how they behave.” Statler was not an author on this study. 

To get a closer look at Didymos and Dimorphos, the European Space Agency’s Hera mission is scheduled to launch in October 2024. It will be taking a detailed survey of the asteroid pair and could officially confirm just how much DART reshaped Dimorphos.

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It was once a small and seemingly cozy late Bronze Age village. A settlement of five circular dwellings was built on stilts about 6.5 feet above a rambling river in eastern England. The homes were full of domestic knick knacks that paint a picture of daily life about 3,000 years ago. By all available evidence, Must Farm was a peaceful settlement constructed by skilled builders. That is, until a catastrophic fire engulfed  “Britain’s Pompeii” and its buildings and materials plunged into a muddy river below. 

Now, the first of two reports published March 19 by the University of Cambridge Archaeological Unit (CAU) delves into the details of the Must Farm settlement. This prehistoric stilted village dates back to about 850 BCE and was built in a swampy wetland locals call The Fens or Fenlands. The settlement was excavated in 2015 and 2016 after it was discovered on the edge of the town of Whittlesey, northwest of Cambridge.

According to the team, the site provides them with a unique blueprint for the circular architecture, home interiors, and overall domesticity of the prehistoric “fenlanders” who lived in England’s east.

“These people were confident and accomplished home-builders. They had a design that worked beautifully for an increasingly drowned landscape,” report co-author CAU archaeologist Mark Knight said in a statement. “While excavating the site there was a sense that its Bronze Age residents had only just left. You could almost see and smell their world, from the glint of metal tools hanging on wattled walls to the sharp milkiness of brewed porridge.”

An archeological mirror

The Must Farm dig site currently contains five total structures with walkways that connect them, surrounded by a fence about 6.5 feet high made from sharpened posts. However, the original settlement was likely twice as big. During the 20th Century, half the remains were removed when the area was quarried. The team believes that the site may have been home to at least 60 people living in family units. 

[Related: Details of life in Bronze Age Mycenae could lie at the bottom of a well.]

The river that previously ran underneath this community on stilts likely would have been shallow and ran slowly with thick vegetation. The boggy ground below cushioned the burned remains of the buildings when they fell from the fire. This created an archaeological “mirror” of what had stood above, so the team could map the layout of the structures.  

One of the main roundhouses had almost 538 square feet of space–about the size of many New York City apartments–that may have had distinct areas for specific activities the way modern homes do. 

“Conducting research on Must Farm is a bit like getting an estate agent’s tour of a Bronze Age stilt house,” report co-author and CAU archeologist David Gibson said in a statement.

In this main house, the team found ceramic and wooden containers including cups, bowls, and large storage jars. Some of the cooking pots were even designed so that they stack inside of one another to save space. They also found metal tools along the building’s eastern side and an empty spot in the northwestern side that they believe was likely used for sleeping. 

Lambs were also likely kept indoors here. While the team has yet to recover any evidence of humans dying in the fire, several young sheep were trapped and burnt alive based on skeletal remains. The lambs were about three to six months old, which suggests that Must Farm was probably destroyed in the late summer or early fall, based on when the animals typically breed and give birth. 

[Related: Horned helmets came from Bronze Age artists, not Vikings.]

Each of the roundhouse roofs also had three layers. Insulating stray was topped by turf from the ground and sealed in with clay. 

“In a freezing winter, with winds cutting across the Fens, these roundhouses would have been pretty cozy,” co-author and CAU archaeologist Chris Wakefield said in a statement.

An intact halfted ax was also found directly beneath the first structure. It may have been some sort of good luck token or an offering to a spirit after the site was constructed.

Bronze Age porridge

Despite being encased in mud for thousands of years, many of the artifacts still have signs of their daily use. A pottery bowl bearing the finger-marks by the individual who made it was found containing its final meal. It was a wheat-grain porridge mixed with animal fats–potentially goat or red deer–and a wooden spatula used for stirring was resting against the inside of the bowl.

“It appears the occupants saved their meat juices to use as toppings for porridge,” said Wakefield. “The site is providing us with hints of recipes for Bronze Age breakfasts and roast dinners. Chemical analyses of the bowls and jars showed traces of honey along with ruminant meats such as deer, suggesting these ingredients were combined to create a form of prehistoric honey-glazed venison.”

Multiple small dog skulls suggest that the canines were kept domestically as pets or also to help flush out prey while hunting. The residents likely used the local woodlands to hunt boar and deer, graze sheep, and harvest wheat and flax.

Waterways were also likely vital for transporting all of their material. The team found the remains of nine log-boats and canoes hollowed out from tree trunks. They date back from across the Bronze Age up into the Iron Age and some were contemporary to Must Farm. 

[Related: Cremated remains still hold clues to life and death in the Bronze Age.]

They also found items that would have held great value. Decorative beads were found right across the site. The majority of these beads came from as far away as Northern and Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

“Such items would gradually make their way across thousands of miles in a long series of small trades,” said Wakefield.   

Britain’s Pompeii

When the first that destroyed Must Farm broke out, a combination of the charring from the flames and the chemistry of the wet soil in the fenlands preserved the objects and structures from the site exceptionally well. It is reminiscent of the well-preserved bodies found in Pompeii, Italy after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE and how scientists in the mid 19th Century preserved the remains in plaster. 

Unlike with Mount Vesuvius’ records of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and suffocating toxic gasses, details of what caused the fire that destroyed Must Farm are likely lost to time.

“The cause of the fire that tore through the settlement will probably never be known,” said Gibson. “Some argue it may have come under attack, as the occupants never returned for their goods, which would have been fairly easy to retrieve from the shallow waters.”

Others think that the first may have simply been an accident. If a fire broke out inside one of the roundhouses, it would have quickly spread between the structures. 

“A settlement like this would have had a shelf-life of maybe a generation, and the people who built it had clearly constructed similar sites before. It may be that after the fire, they simply started again,” added Gibson. “There is every possibility that the remains of many more of these stilted settlements are buried across Fenland, waiting for us to find them.”

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On March 18, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a ban on the last form of ban on asbestos used in the United States. This carcinogen kills upwards of 40,000 Americans annually, has been phased out in many products, but is still used in some capacities in the US. Inhaling the tiny fibrous strands that make up asbestos can lead to numerous illnesses including mesothelioma, asbestosis, and lung and ovarian cancer. 

While not a complete ban, under this new guidance, the EPA would prohibit the import of any items that contain the only asbestos used in the US called chrysotile asbestos, or “white asbestos.” Most consumer products including building materials and household appliances are no longer made with asbestos. However, some products including sheet gaskets, brake blocks, and other vehicle friction products, still have chrysotile asbestos. The ban on asbestos used in these products will take effect in six months.

Chrysotile asbestos is also used to make chlorine bleach and sodium hydroxide that can be used for water purification. Chlorine is a commonly used disinfectant in water treatment and eight chlor-alkali plants in the US still use asbestos diaphragms to make chlorine and sodium hydroxide. These plants are primarily in Louisiana and Texas and this new requirement requires them to be phased out. The EPA notes that asbestos is not needed to produce chlorine and roughly two-thirds of the chlorine made domestically is done so without using asbestos. The rule will be phased in over five or more years to provide “a reasonable transition period.’’ 

[Related: The EPA is trying to ban asbestos—again ]

“The science is clear–asbestos is a known carcinogen that has severe impacts on public health,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in a statement.

According to the EPA, it advances one of the goals of the Biden Administration’s Cancer Moonshot, to harness the power of the federal government to end cancer. This new rule also marks a major expansion of EPA regulation under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which made it difficult for the government to ban chemicals. This law remained unchanged until several amendments in 2016 overhauled the regulations of tens of thousands of toxic chemicals found in items found in everything from furniture to clothing and household cleaners. 

The EPA tried to ban asbestos outright during the late 1980s. Manufacturing companies fought back and the EPA’s initial 1989 prohibition of the use of asbestos contained a carve-out for the chlorine industry. 

By 1991, a panel of federal judges stuck down the ban and weakened the EPA’s ability to address human health risks from asbestos or other existing chemicals. This decision went on to hamper additional federal attempts to ban asbestos. More than 50 countries have already outlawed chrysotile asbestos.

[Related: Lung cancer in naval personnel linked to asbestos exposure.]

This rule could be rolled back by future presidential administrations and some legislators are calling on Congress to step in. 

“An immediate ban on the import of chrysotile asbestos for the chlor-alkali industry is a long overdue step forward for public health,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) said in a statement. However, it cannot be the end of the road when it comes to phasing out other dangerous asbestos fibers, and Congress has a role to play here when it comes to providing stronger protections for our health.”

Drexel University professor of environmental and occupational health Arthur Frank told NPR that asbestos still hides in many existing buildings and products across the US, so continues to pose risks to human health.

“This is not a total ban by any means,” Frank said. “It is a modest step that reduces future exposures.”

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Life in the Stone Age was pretty tough for our ancestors. There were animals to fend off and track for food, new tools to make, and massive swings in climate to adapt to. Stone Age humans also faced off against potentially lethal microbes floating around just like we do today. Some dangerous microorganisms spread through kissing and eating contaminated food were found in remains of Stone Age individuals uncovered in present day Scandinavia. They offer some new clues into a major lifestyle transition in human history. The findings described in a study published March 7 in the journal Scientific Reports. 

There are six major types of microbes–bacteria, archaea, fungi (yeasts and molds), algae, protozoa, and viruses. Some microbes like probiotics help keep human bodies healthy, while others can make us sick. Bacteria and viruses are the most common microbes and their genetic material is organized in DNA. This is why microbial DNA can be found in the remains of infected humans and helps scientists detect evidence of illnesses caused by bacteria and viruses.

In the study, an international team of researchers examined the different types of microbial DNA present inside the teeth of 38 individual human remains uncovered at several Neolithic settlements in Norway and Sweden. The material collected from Hummerviksholmen in southern Norway is estimated to be about 9,500 years old. The specimens from Bergsgraven in Linköping, Sweden are about 4,500 years old. 

[Related: The deadliest viruses in human history, from COVID to smallpox.]

They identified 660 microbial species from these remains. Yersinia enterocolitica and Salmonella enterica were two of the most prolific bacteria found. They are both commonly associated with contracting food poisoning from undercooked meat or eating food contaminated with human feces. Even with modern medical care and food safety standards, food poisoning is still responsible for about 48 million illnesses and 3,000 deaths per year in the United States. Living during a time before life saving treatments may have made an already unpleasant human experience more deadly. 

“Especially the case of Salmonella enterica shows us how difficult it [food poisoning] could be. In a Battle Axe culture burial, Bergsgraven in Linköping, we find two infected individuals, and it is actually possible that we are witnessing their cause of death,” study co-author and Stockholm University PhD student Nora Bergfeldt said in a statement. “This, and other bacterial diseases we have found among the individuals, are easily treated with antibiotics today, but back then they could be lethal.”

They also uncovered Neisseria meningitidis, which is related to meningococcal disease. It spreads through close contact between infected individuals. It is spread through the droplets of saliva release through sneezing, coughing, and kissing. Evidence of Neisseria gonorrhoeae–the bacteria that causes the sexually transmitted infection gonorrhea–was also found in the microbial DNA uncovered. These communal diseases found in microbial DNA date back to a long transition from a hunter-gatherer and nomadic lifestyle and settling down to a farming life. It’s believed that this transition began as early as 12,000 years ago. 

“We know when people turned to farming in Scandinavia, but we still do not know how this change in lifestyle affected the general health,” Helena Malmström, a study co-author and biologist at Uppsala University in Sweden, said in a statement. 

[Related: Plague DNA was just found in 4,000-year-old teeth.]

This transition is possibly reflected in the presence of bacterial diseases, as they saw more infections from contaminated food and water and interactions with livestock and one another. Today, illnesses like norovirus and meningitis can quickly spread in schools, dormitories, and nursing homes, and other places where large groups of people are in smaller spaces. The study also found evidence of Yersinia pestis—the bacteria that causes the plague. 

“The more people interacted, [the] more possibilities to infect one another occurred,” study co-author and Stockholm University geneticist Anders Götherström, said in a statement. “But even if we do encounter bacteria with potential to impact societies such as Yersinia pestis, it is the infections that spread through food that is most prominent across the lifestyles in this study.”

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Though they’ve captivated the internet since late February, three eagle eggs in a nest in Southern California are unlikely to hatch. Parents Jakie and Shadow continue to take turns keeping the eggs warm, as snow dots their nest overlooking Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains. 

“At this point, from the date that the eggs were laid, it’s past the time that Jackie’s eggs have hatched in the past,” biologist and nonprofit Friends of Big Bear Valley executive director Sandy Steers tells PopSci. “It’s not past the time that any eagle eggs have hatched. So there’s still a small window, but it’s diminishing quickly.”

According to the US Fish & Wildlife Service, it typically takes eagle eggs about 35 days to hatch. The first egg was laid on January 25, so the earliest the hatching would have been on February 29 and all three eggs should have hatched by now. A three-egg clutch like this is rare for bald eagles and is a first for Jackie. Only about 50 percent of eagle eggs hatch.

[Related: Watch: Three bald eagles could hatch any day now.]

Weather, altitude, and biology

“It could be that the temperatures we had during the incubation period, and when they were laid, were not that good. It could be the amount of oxygen. We’re at a very high altitude, higher than most eagle’s nests, so we have low oxygen levels to begin with,” says Steers. “We also had those big storms. It could also be something biological that just was off when the eggs were created, or during the development process. We just don’t know.”

In previous years, Jackie has left the eggs alone sooner, but this year, Shadow fills in as needed. Jackie and Shadow have had one chick in 2019 and one in 2022, but lost two eggs last year. In the coming days and weeks, they will likely start to spend less time sitting on the eggs. Eventually, the eggs will either be buried into the nest under sticks and twigs or could be taken by a predator like a raven.

Connecting with thousands viewers

The viral livestream of the nest has consistently been clocking in over 20,000 viewers per day, as intense blizzards and fierce winds have spread across the valley. Many viewers have expressed sadness that the eggs will likely not hatch and worry what this means for the pair. According to Steers, this does not tell us much about their future and has given the public some important life lessons from nature.

[Related: Thriving baby California condor is a ray of hope for the unique species.]

“Jackie and Shadow take every day as it comes and they deal with what’s in front of them. I think watching nature and learning from nature as to, it’s okay to have reactions,” says Steers. 

As for the eagle pair, Steers says, “We don’t know that they’re feeling exactly what we’re feeling, but they change their behavior in very distinct ways, based on what’s going on. They’re resilient; they move on.”

The nest cameras will remain on 24/7, so viewers will be able to tune in to see what changes as spring settles into the valley. The nonprofit also keeps a blog with daily updates about the nest. 

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Ireland may not be home to any snakes, but the island’s actual natural past and present is still bustling with other wildlife. It’s currently home to 40 species of land and marine mammals, 12,000 species of insects, and more than 400 bird species. Fearsome wolves used to roam the forests of Ireland, before being hunted into extinction by 1786 These wolves were likely a primary predator of one of the larger players of Irish natural history–the extinct giant deer (Megaloceros giganteus), more commonly known as the Irish elk.

Clocking in at about 6.5 feet tall and weighing upwards of 1,500 pounds, the males boasted antlers over 12 feet wide. By comparison, modern elk have antlers that are about four feet across. These enormous Ice Age mammals were the largest deer in Europe.

While they are primarily associated with Ireland, they have been found from the current western edge of the continent east towards Russia’s Lake Baikal. A 17,000 year-old cave painting in southern France depicts a deer with enormous antlers that archaeologists believed could be Megaloceros. Additional specimens have also been uncovered in Asia and Northern Africa. Megaloceros was first uncovered in a bog in Ireland and scientifically described in the 1690s, but its fossils continue to be uncovered all over the island.

[Related: Why doesn’t Ireland have snakes?]

“Despite Ireland being a tiny place, we have a lot of modern deer and a lot of giant deer deposits,” Paolo Viscardi, Keeper of Natural History at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin tells PopSci. “The depositional environment is just perfect and the preservation of these animals is incredible. There’s just this massive constant stream of giant deer turning up here.”

Heavy heads

Despite most museums listing the animal as an elk, Megaloceros was a deer. Their antlers were made of strong bone. This sturdy bone is one reason why they are more well-preserved than animal horns that are made of keratin. This same material that makes human hair and fingernails, that withers away over time. Horns are also more permanent like the ones found on a bighorn sheep. 

The earliest fossils of Megaloceros date back about 400,000 years and the most recent fossil is roughly 8,000 years old. Some Megaloceros antler fossils have been found completely detached, while others have been uncovered still connected to the skull. 

“The anatomy is just really interesting because they’re so big,” said Viscardi. “I’ve handled quite a lot of them and when you pick them up, you realize just how much they weighed. It’s really incredible that an animal not only grew this, but then walked around with it every day, on its head, and managed to use it to fight with.”

Antlers in the rut

Like deer, they shed these antlers every year. Paleontologists believe that the males had extra thick skulls and sturdy neck vertebrae to carry these antlers. Reproduction was also the primary reason for these enormous appendages, since males used them to fight one another for mates the way modern deer and elk do. 

“It was signaling to other males that you’re not to be messed with, which really helps when it comes to that in the actual nitty gritty of the fighting,” says Viscardi.

[Related: How do deer grow antlers so quickly?]

Megaloceros was likely a very opportunistic eater, grazing on whatever plants were available. While it was primarily an herbivore, they may have dined on some animal parts, since this annual competition for mates took up enormous amounts of energy. 

“I would be more surprised than not if they didn’t eat bits of animal remains,” says Viscardi. “I suspect the males would have actually actively sought out bones and the leftovers from scavengers and carnivores to feed on. It’s something you see today with a lot of deer. They’ll nibble on bits of bone they find to get the nutrients and minerals out.”

While having such large antlers benefited the species as a whole for reproductive survival, it came at a high individual cost. According to Viscardi, some of the specimens that have been found with antlers intact likely died shortly after the rut because they just did not have enough food to keep going. The fossils of large groups of males have been found together in bogs and farmland throughout Europe, many of whom likely did not have a chance to get enough food before the winter set in. 

A drawn out extinction

Extreme cold also likely played a role in their extinction in parts of western Europe. Their first wave of extinction began about 12,000 years ago. The giant deer began to disappear from present day Ireland and most of Europe when the climate began to cool.

“Food becoming less available and reproduction rates going down is probably what drove the extinction in Ireland,” said Viscardi. “As it gets colder, the quality of the food availability goes down. 

[Related: Researchers retraced a woolly mammoth’s steps 17,000 years after it died.]

However, their extinction was not a one and done event. Some fossils uncovered in central Russia reveal that there was an enclave of giant deer alive as late as 8,000 years ago. This last population of giant deer may have gone extinct due to a water climate, unlike their counterparts in Western Europe who disappeared due to extreme cold and ice. In a warmer world, they would have had to navigate increasing forests with their huge antlers and there would have been less grassland available for them to feed on. 

In some parts of Europe, they may have faced pressure from humans, as Neolithic settlements were beginning to expand when they went extinct. Humans removing a lot of vegetation could have put them under continued stress, but it was still glaciers and extreme cold that most likely led to their extinction in Ireland. 

“I don’t think there’s any really good evidence that humans turned up on the scene in Ireland, and we’re hunting or anything like that,” said Viscardi. “It’s very much more about the climate getting less hospitable.”

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Despite their reputation for being easy for aspiring plant parents to destroy, orchids can be found all over the planet. There are more than 25,000 known species of these plants, with more discovered every year. An international team of scientists have now found a new species of orchid in Madagascar with an impressive nectar spur and has a tie to Charles Darwin. Solenangis impraedicta is described in a study published March 11 in the journal Current Biology. 

[Related: This new species of pink orchid looks like delicate glasswork.]

Madagascar is known for flowers with long floral tubes that are pollinated by long-tongued hawkmoths. The most famous orchid species on the island is Angraecum sesquipedale, which is also called Darwin’s orchid. The famed naturalist and orchid enthusiast had a theory that the flower was pollinated by a moth that was unknown at time. About 41 years after this prediction, scientists officially described the large hawkmoth proving Darwin correct. 

The newly discovered species is appropriately named Solenangis impraedicta. In Latin, impraedicta translates to “unpredicted” and is a nod to Darwin’s eventually correct prediction that a specific moth is the orchid’s primary pollinator. The newly discovered orchid has a nectar spur that is almost 13 inches long, despite having petals that are less than one inch. These tube-like projections from a plant’s petals produce and retain nectar for pollinators like bees, butterflies, and moths. Solenangis impraedicta has the third longest spur scientists have ever recorded. 

“The contrast between the little 2 centimeter (0.7 inches) flowers and the hyper-long nectar tube is mind-blowing,” study co-author and Coimbra University Botanic Garden botanist João Farminhão said in a statement. 

The species with dainty white petals and a yellow-ish stem was first collected by Missouri Botanical Garden field botanist Patrice Antilahimena, during a baseline environmental impact study of a mine site in central eastern Madagascar. A new location of these orchids was discovered about 10 years later by Brigitte Ramandimbisoa and a Ph.D. student at the New York Botanical Garden Simon Verlynde. 

It belongs to the angraecoid orchids group also called “Darwin’s pollination guild.” It is currently threatened by mining activities and possibly by poaching for the orchid trade. The authors hope that the discovery will boost conservation efforts.

“Discovering a new orchid species is always an exciting event, but finding such amazing and charismatic species happens only once in a scientist’s career,” study co-author and Missouri Botanical Garden botanist Tariq Stévart said in a statement. “I really hope that this highly threatened species draws attention to the urgent crisis that is affecting Madagascar’s biodiversity and helps support [Missouri Botanical] Garden’s program there.”

[Related: This incredibly rare orchid survives by making male beetles horny.]

The between Solenangis impraedicta’s discovery and its formal scientific description allowed the team to bank some of its seeds and grow them in undisclosed locations to help conserve the plants.

“A precautionary approach is required when publishing such a spectacular new species,” said Stévart. “Wild populations must be protected and monitored and detailed information on their precise coordinates must be kept out of the public domain. So, don’t ask us to reveal where we found it, somewhere in Madagascar.”

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The world needs a better source of sustainable meat. Many conventional livestock raising systems are considered unsustainable and generally make the environment worse, so scientists are searching for new ways to feed and satisfy a growing human population. One source could come from one of the most feared animals on Earth. Farmed pythons could offer a low-emission source of protein, according to a study published March 14 in the journal Scientific Reports. 

Pythons are not venomous, but they do reach lengths of 20 feet. That girth comes with a lot of white meat that is high in protein and they are considered a delicacy in some Southeast Asian countries. Venomous snakes have historically been farmed for their venom, but the practice of keeping large quantities of snakes for meat has begun to grow. The farmed snakes are typically set up in large barns surrounded by “sun traps” that help snakes bask in the sun.

These snake farms could offer a solution, particularly in regions where python farming has already begun to expand in recent decades. While the farming still faces some issues scaling up, it is something to consider according to the team from this new study. 

“Climate change, disease and diminishing natural resources are all ramping up pressure on conventional livestock and plant crops, with dire effects on many people in low-income countries already suffering acute protein deficiency,” Daniel Natusch, a study co-author and herpetologist at Macquarie University in Australia, said in a statement.

[Related: Scientists swear their lab-grown ‘beef rice’ tastes ‘pleasant.’ ]

In this study, a team of scientists from Vietnam, Australia, England, and South Africa, looked at more than 4,600 pythons on two commercial python farms in Thailand and Vietnam. They compared two species–the reticulated python (Malayopython reticulatus) and Burmese python (Python bivittatus) and tested the effects of different food regimes. 

They were fed a mixture of locally sourced food, including pork byproducts, fish pellets, and rodents. Baby pythons were also ‘sausages’ made of waste protein from meat and fish offcuts. These sausages led to faster growth, without any apparent impacts on health.

“It’s a bit like hiding broccoli in the meatballs to get your kids to eat their veggies,” Natusch said.

“We showed that snake farms can effectively convert a lot of agricultural waste into protein, while producing relatively little waste of their own.”

They gained upwards of 1.6 ounces per day and the female snakes grew quicker than the males. According to the team, they were never force-fed and they also found that the snakes could fast without losing body mass. This means that it required less human labor for feeding than traditional livestock farming. 

Since they grew so quickly on smaller amounts of food, they had a good feed conversion ratio. In farming, feed conversion is the amount of animal feed that is needed to produce one pound of meat. 

“In terms of food and protein conversion ratios, pythons outperform all mainstream agricultural species studied to date,” said Natusch. “We found pythons grew rapidly to reach ‘slaughter weight’ within their first year after hatching. While large-scale python farming is well established in Asia, it has received little attention from mainstream agricultural scientists.”

Pound for pound, reptiles like snakes also generate fewer greenhouse gasses than mammals do. They have sturdy digestive systems capable of breaking down bones and produce almost no water waste and poop less than mammals.

“Snakes require minimal water and can even live off the dew that settles on their scales in the morning,” said Natusch. “They need very little food and will eat rodents and other pests attacking food crops.”

[Related: Snakes can actually hear really well.]

While there is also some concern from conservationists about commercial snake farming learning to the illegal harvesting of endangered and wild snake populations, Natusch has argued that the opposite is true. It may give local communities a financial incentive. 

“We also found some farms outsource baby pythons to local villagers, often retired people who make extra income by feeding them on local rodents and scraps, then selling them back to the farm in a year,” said Natusch.

Burmese pythons are considered an invasive species in Florida’s Everglades, where they are hunted to cull the population. A 2023 study from the US Geological Survey said Florida’s python problem is one of the world’s most challenging invasive species management issues. Their meat reportedly tastes like chicken, the team acknowledges that encouraging more people to eat snakes in other parts of the world will take some time. 

“I think it will be a long time before you see Python burgers served up at your favorite local restaurant here [in Australia],” said Natusch.

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Healthy reefs are known as  vibrant homes for colorful corals and fish.. As with any bustling ecosystem, they have their own sounds and can be quite noisy. The purrs, croaks, and grunts of fish and crustaceans that live there and the sounds of healthy coral growing can echo through the water. Larval animals may use some of this sound to help them determine where to put down roots or when it’s time to grow. Broadcasting these healthy coral reef sounds may encourage coral larvae to recolonize degraded or damaged coral reefs. The findings are detailed in a study published March 13 in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

One shot to settle down

As adults, corals are immobile. Their larval stage is their only chance to move around and find that perfect habitat. They swim or drift with the currents to  find the right conditions to settle down and then anchor themselves to the seabed. Earlier studies have shown that chemical and light cues can help influence that decision, but this new work looked at the role that sound may have. They likely can sense these vibrations, since corals don’t have traditional ears. 

[Related: Google is inviting citizen scientists to its underwater listening room.]

“What we’re showing is that you can actively induce coral settlement by playing sounds,” Nadège Aoki, a study co-author and a doctoral candidate at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), said in a statement. “You can go to a reef that is degraded in some way and add in the sounds of biological activity from a healthy reef, potentially helping this really important step in the coral life cycle.”

Reef soundscapes

To look closer, a team of researchers conducted experiments in the US Virgin Islands in June and July 2022. They collected larvae from a hardy coral species named Porites astreoides. It is more commonly known as mustard hill coral, due to its yellow color and lumpy shape. They distributed the larvae along three reefs along the southern coast of St. John. Of these reefs, Tektite is relatively healthy. Cocoloba and Salt Pond are more degraded, having fewer fish and less coral cover.  

The team installed an underwater speaker system at the Salt Pond reef and placed cups of larvae at distances of 3.2, 16.2, 32.8, and 98.4 feet from the speakers. For three nights, they then played healthy reef sounds at Salt Pond that were recorded at Tektite in 2013. They also set up similar installations at Tektite and Cocoloba, but did not play any of the recorded reef sounds.

After collecting the cups, they found that significantly more coral larvae had settled in the cups at Salt Pond than the other two reefs. The larvae settled there an average of 1.7 times higher in the enriched sound environments than in the ones that were not. The cups that were about 16 feet from the speakers saw the highest rate of larvae settlement, but even the cups that were almost 100 feet away had more larvae settling at the bottom than those where the sounds were not played.   

“The fact that settlement is consistently decreasing with distance from the speaker, when all else is kept constant, is particularly important because it shows that these changes are due to the added sound and not other factors,” study co-author and WHOI marine biologist Aran Mooney said in a statement. “This gives us a new tool in the toolbox for potentially rebuilding a reef.”

One thing that surprised the team was that there was not a large difference between the settlement rates at the more-degraded Cocoloba and the healthier Tektite reefs. A 2018 study found higher settlement rates at Tektite than Cocoloba, which may be due to natural variations. However, the Tektite reef has recently seen destructive hurricanes, a significant bleaching event, and even an outbreak of coral disease.

“We seem to have lost some of the complexity of Tektite’s soundscape over the last decade,” Aoki said. “It could be that conditions there are not as good as we thought they were, but we don’t know for sure.”

A potentially new reef restoration tool

According to the authors, a potential drop in settlement rates at Tektite shows just how severe the threats coral reefs are facing are and they need rapid, scalable solutions. Coral reefs protect the coast from storm waves and erosion, provide tourism and food opportunities for millions of people, and support at least 25 percent of all marine life. By some estimates, the planet has lost half of its coral reefs in the past 30 years. 

[Related: Sandy ‘Reef Stars’ help bring life back to coral reefs hurt by dynamite fishing.]

The team hopes that this work can help inform future coral restoration efforts. Using enhanced soundscapes may be used to increase settlement rates in coral nurseries or be passively broadcast at reefs in the wild. They would still need to be monitored by humans, but would be a relatively easy restoration prowess to implement. 

“Replicating an acoustic environment is actually quite easy compared to replicating the reef chemical and microbial cues which also play a role in where corals choose to settle,” study co-author and WHOI microbial ecologist Amy Apprill said in a statement. “It appears to be one of the most scalable tools that can be applied to rebuild reefs, so we’re really excited about that potential.”

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The Hudson River used to be among some of the most contaminated rivers in the United States. Following decades of environmental legislation and activism, wildlife including bald eagles, bears, and whales are being spotted in New York in larger numbers. The Hudson is also an important habitat for migratory American eels, who are now getting some help from citizen scientists. 

For the first time, this citizen science data will be treated as official data entered in the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) peer-reviewed eel stock assessment report. Since 2008, the Hudson River Eel Project has relied on close to 1,000 citizen scientists donating their time every spring to net, count, and release about two million juvenile American eels. 

“What I love about the eel project is it takes another step deeper toward volunteers actually becoming scientists and thinking about research methods and the research questions we’re trying to answer,” Chris Bowser, project leader and Cornell University environmental scientist and educator, said in a statement.

[Related: How eels might hitch a ride to Europe.]

The project has several monitoring sites between Troy south towards New York City. Volunteers count and track the juveniles who are often called glass eels, since they are transparent at this stage of life. Their data helps inform conservation management decisions, since the species is an essential part of the food web. 

An eel’s life

American eels hatch about 3,700-miles miles southeast of the Hudson in the salty Sargasso Sea. When they are larvae, the eels are shaped like willow leaves and they migrate north towards the freshwaters of the Caribbean islands, South America, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic coast from Florida to Canada. 

To get to New York, the eel larvae catch a ride on the Gulf Stream current. They transform into their translucent 2-inch long glass eel state when they hit the brackish waters of coastal estuaries. They migrate into the 150-mile Hudson River tidal estuary every year from February through May. Glass eels then serve an important form of prey for larger organisms. 

When they move into freshwater streams and creeks, they develop pigment and turn into miniature adults called elvers. The elvers become sexually immature yellow eels in their next adult phase, turning a brown, dark green, gray, or mustard yellow color. These older eels become apex predators that help balance the ecosystem by eating fish, aquatic insects, and crustaceans.

They may remain yellow eels for five to 30 years before they reach sexual maturity and turn into silver eels. The sexually mature silver eels then head back down to the Sargasso Sea to spawn and likely die.

Citizen scientists stepping in

Tributaries and estuaries can create a bottleneck for the swimming juveniles, which provides those studying them an opportunity to catch, count, and release the eels to get an idea of population trends that can inform larger scientific studies. 

“When done right, citizen science can be very helpful because it can greatly expand an agency’s or a biologist’s geographic spread, and also a time series [spread over time] with tens of thousands of volunteer hours over the years,” said Bowser. “We have tried to collect data that is as robust as what’s been done at the agency level.”

[Related: How to become a citizen scientist—and when to leave it to the professionals.]

ASMFC accepted the most recent data in August 2023, partially due to the eel project’s strong data quality-control procedures. Partners from Cornell University and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation developed these standards to make sure that their protocols were easy to follow, standardize, and could be repeated every year. According to Bowser, the citizen scientists are all well trained and their eel count numbers and procedures are checked. 

Eels have been found in every waterway that connects with the Hudson River, including urban rivers such as the Saw Mill River in Yonkers, the Fall Kill Creek in Poughkeepsie, and the Poesten Kill creek further north in Troy. They also swim in rural areas, including the Hannacroix Creek in New Baltimore and Black Creek in Esopus.

“The widespread geographic diversity of eels means that you also have widespread diversity of volunteers,” said Bowser. “Different ages, different socioeconomic backgrounds, different experiences.”

Monitoring at the Fall Kill Creek site in Poughkeepsie for this migration season began in late February. There, local high school students and their teachers wade into about two feet of water around nets and traps that are set up along the shoreline where the glass eels swim. Another group may be counting and weighing the eels, while others gather air and water temperature data. 

‘Every single dam is a potential barrier’

Chemical pollutants, overfishing, climate change, habitat loss and human-man obstructions like dams have all taken their toll on the eels over the years. 

“Every single dam is a potential barrier for eels on their migration route,” Bowser said. 

To help combat this, the eels that the project counts are released past at least the first known barrier to their migration, whether it be a road, culvert, or dam.

If you are interested in participating in a citizen science project like the Hudson River Eel Project, visit citizenscience.gov to find something nearby.

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Space travel is certainly not for the faint of heart, for many reasons including its effects on physical health. It can potentially disturb human immune systems and increase red blood cell death. Astronauts can even suffer from bone loss during missions. It could also increase headaches. Astronauts with no prior history of headaches may experience migraine and tension-type headaches during long-haul space flights–over 10 days in space. The findings are detailed in a study published March 13 in the journal Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

“Changes in gravity caused by space flight affect the function of many parts of the body, including the brain,” W. P. J. van Oosterhout, study co-author and a neurologist at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, said in a statement. “The vestibular system, which affects balance and posture, has to adapt to the conflict between the signals it is expecting to receive and the actual signals it receives in the absence of normal gravity.”

[Related: 5 space robots that could heal human bodies—or even grow new ones.]

The study looked at 24 astronauts from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). All of the astronauts were assigned to International Space Station expeditions for up to 26 weeks from November 2011 to June 2018. Combined, the astronauts studied spent a total of 3,596 days in space. 

The astronauts all completed health screenings and a questionnaire about individual headache history before their space flight flight. Nine of them reported never having any headaches prior to the study, with three reporting a headache that interfered with their daily activities within the last year. None of the astronauts had a history of recurrent headaches or had a migraine diagnosis. 

During space flight, they filled out a daily questionnaire for the first seven days and a weekly questionnaire each following week throughout their stay in the International Space Station. The astronauts reported 378 headaches during their combined days in space. 

The study found that 92 percent of the astronauts surveyed experienced headaches during space flight, compared to just 38 percent who reported experiencing headaches in the two to six months before going into space. Twenty-two of the 24 astronauts studied also experienced one or more headache episodes during their first week in space. About 89 percent of these headaches were tension headaches and 10 percent were likely a migraine. Headaches were also of a higher intensity and more likely to be like a migraine during the first week of space flight. 

According to van Oosterhout, the changes to the brain’s balance and posture system, combined with adjusting to zero gravity during the first week of space flight, “can lead to space motion sickness in the first week, of which headache is the most frequently reported symptom. Our study shows that headaches also occur later in space flight and could be related to an increase in pressure within the skull.” 

[Related: Why space lettuce could be the pharmacy astronauts need.]

The astronauts were monitored after returning back to Earth and none of them reported any headaches in the three months after returning home. 

One of the study’s limitations is that it relied on self-reporting of symptoms, so the memory recall may not have been fully accurate. It also didn’t say that going into space causes headaches, only shows an association. 

“Further research is needed to unravel the underlying causes of space headache and explore how such discoveries may provide insights into headaches occurring on Earth,” said van Oosterhout. “Also, more effective therapies need to be developed to combat space headaches as for many astronauts this [is] a major problem during space flights.”

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To the human eye, a video of a faux fox may look like a character from an animated movie. However, to an orphaned juvenile red fox–called a kit–the furry friend is the best imitation of its mother that the employees from the Richmond Wildlife Center in Virginia can provide.

The video posted to Facebook shows Richmond Wildlife Center Executive Director Melissa Stanley wearing a red fox mask to cover her face, along with rubber gloves. She is feeding the kit with a syringe. The kit is also sitting on a large stuffed animal fox that is meant to resemble her mother, while cuddling up with another, smaller stuffed animal. 

CREDIT: Melissa Stanley/Richmond Wildlife Center.

“It’s important to make sure that the orphans that are raised in captivity do not become imprinted upon or habituated to humans,” the wildlife center wrote in the post. “To prevent that, we minimize human sounds, create visual barriers, reduce handling, reduce multiple transfers amongst different facilities, and wear masks for the species. The mask helps ensure that she does not see human faces when feeding, which is important if and when she can be released into the wild.”

Imprinting occurs when a very young animal fixes its attention on the first object that it sees, hears, or feels shortly after birth. It then follows that object or animal around, usually a parent. Human handlers must prevent the injured, orphaned, or endangered baby animals in their care from getting too attached, if their mother or father is not present. 

[Related: How to help an injured bird.]

“The goal is to release animals back into the wild, not only to give them a greater chance of survival, but to recognize their own species and to reproduce to carry on their wildlife population,” Stanley told the Associated Press.

The kit was admitted to the center on February 29. A man walking his dog found the kit in an alley in Richmond. She was brought to the Richmond SPCA, since her rescuer initially believed that she was a kitten. The kit was less than one day old, weighed about 2.2 ounces, and her umbilical stump was still attached. Staff from the wildlife center initially tried to find the baby’s mother and den so that they could reunite the pair. However, they found the den site but were told by a grounds superintendent that the foxes had been trapped and removed. The wildlife center believes that the fox kit either fell out of an enclosure or from the back of a truck when the foxes were caught. Since then, staff have been taking turns feeding her every two to four hours while wearing the fox mask. 

Director of the International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council, Kai Williams, told The Washington Post that she hadn’t seen this technique for foxes, but that it is a common one for humans caring for birds. Avians rely more on their eyesight than mammals, who are dependent on smell. 

“Something you’d see much more is somebody dressing up in a whole crane suit or a brolga— something like that,” Williams said. “Sometimes they’ll just dress up in a covering that hides their shape a little bit, so they don’t quite look like a human, they look like a weird mass. Or they’ll use a hand puppet.”

The end goal is not to inhibit a healthy amount of natural fear of humans by ensuring that they do not associate humans with nurturing activities or feeding. 

[Related: Grizzlies are getting killed by roads, but the risks are bigger than roadkill.]

The Richmond Wildlife Center located three other red fox kits in rehabilitation settings throughout northern Virginia. They hope to eventually place the baby with these other red foxes and release the kits back into the wild together when they are healthy. 

According to the Humane Society of the United States, some signs that an animal may need help include shivering, an obvious injury like a broken limb, or if it has been seen crying or wandering. For birds, signs include missing feathers or if it looks like it has fallen to the ground. If you see an animal acting unusual or with any of these signs, contact local wildlife officials for additional help. 

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The idea that most biologically male members of a species are physically larger than the females goes back to Charles Darwin’s 1871 book The Descent of Man. While this is typically true for some species including gorillas, buffalo, and elephants, it is not necessarily a one size fits all fact. 

A study published March 12 in the journal Nature Communications found that the males in most mammalian species are not bigger than the females. Monomorphism–or both sexes being roughly the same size–is very common and females can be larger in some cases. The authors suggest that biases in scientific literature from over more than a century and a focus on more charismatic species like primates and carnivores has likely led to this misconception.

A persistent narrative

For some mammals, physical differences in size do vary depending on competition for mates and the differences in how mothers and fathers invest time and energy in their offspring. Male lions and baboons typically engage in physical competition for mates and the males are larger than the females. It has been assumed that sexual dimorphism–where the sexes differ in size–is most common in animals. Additionally, the idea that males of a species are always larger, which is the case in lions, applies to most species has also stuck around for decades.

“That’s how Darwin laid out the scene,” study co-author and evolutionary biologist Kaia Tomback tells PopSci. “And it’s very Victorian Era thinking about gender roles.”

[Related: A new evolutionary theory could explain the mystery of shrinking animals.]

During the 1970’s, a mammalogist and conservation biologist named Katherine Ralls was among the first to take a real scientific look at this narrative and push back against this idea that most male mammals are larger. Ralls found evidence that most mammals do not have an extreme dimorphism. More typically, the female members of the species are the same size as the males. Larger females are surprisingly common in nature. According to Tombak, Ralls has also been commonly misquoted as supporting the larger male narrative.

“Science is always changing, so it’s possible that the story will change,” says Tombak, who is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Purdue University. “But [the idea] has been a misconception in the sense that it’s this scientific narrative with very weak evidence.”

From bats to lemurs to elephant seals

In this new study, Tombak and her colleagues went through available scientific literature and compared the male and female body masses of 429 animal species in the wild. In the majority of cases, they found that the males are not larger than the females. In many species, including lemurs, golden moles, horses, zebra, and tenrec, both sexes are the same size.

A male and female plains zebra interacting in Kenya. Males and females are the same size in this species. CREDIT: Severine B.S.W. Hex

Some species did show significantly larger males, including the northern elephant seal. This is what Tombak calls a “famously dimorphic” species, with male northern elephant seals weighing in at about three times larger than females.

On the other end of the spectrum is the peninsular tube-nosed bat. Females are about 40 percent larger than the males. 

“If you want to talk about most mammals, most mammals are rodents and bats, by far,” says Tombak. “Just almost half of bats have larger females. Some hypotheses suggest that for female [bats], it’s better to be bigger so that they can fly carrying fetuses and offspring more easily. Others have said that for males competing for mates, maybe agility matters more in fighting than size.”

A more complicated reproductive story

While the study did not sample all mammalian species, the team did identify trends that made sense given when a lot of these earlier studies were conducted. They believe that the reason for this persistent larger male narrative is related to more studies focusing on charismatic keystone species like primates and seals who have larger bodied males that compete with each other for mates. 

[Related: These female hummingbirds don flashy male feathers to avoid unwanted harassment.]

“As we read through the literature, there was just so much cool biology that we got into,” says Tombak. “I think what the study brings about is that there’s probably way more to reproductive strategies. A diversity of strategies is probably more common than just the males fighting physically for females.”

One example includes the topi, a type of antelope where females have been documented fighting each other for access to mates. Challenging this belief has met resistance and has been understudied, as it goes against the ideas of a seminal figure like Darwin.

“The story is really one of like the other side of the story of having been ignored for a long time,” says Tombak. “In terms of the science, I think it’s important because there’s just so much focus on the male perspective, male mating competition, and sexual selection theory.”

Tombak and her co-authors recommend more research on female biology across species to create a more realistic view of animal size and sex selection and are working on follow-up papers. The authors also caution that findings in this study could change, as more robust data on mammal body sizes is gathered in the future.

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Cicadas are known for emerging in the billions. These groups chatter so loudly that fiber optic cables can pick up the noise. However, the way that they pee is also making waves this year. Instead of urinating in tiny droplets that they flick from their butts like other insects and small organisms, cicadas pee in high speed jets more similar to large mammals. This unique urinary habit is detailed in a study published March 11 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). 

While the insects are a loud bunch, cicadas are not always so easily spotted among the trees. During a research trp in Peru, a team of scientists got lucky and found multiple cicadas peeing in the trees. From this encounter, the team was able to disprove two main beliefs about insect urination.

Droplets vs. jets

The insects that generally eat xylem sap from trees and pee in droplets since it uses less energy to excrete the sap. However, cicadas eat so much sap that individually flicking away each drop would be too taxing. Using this much energy to toss away pee droplets would mean that they needed to eat even more tree sap. 

“Peeing in jets allows cicadas to generate a large volume of liquid excretion,” study co-author and bioengineer/biophysicist Elio Challita tells PopSci. “This is critical because these insects must ingest a substantial amount of xylem-sap daily. So they need to excrete large volumes as well.” Challita completed his work on this study while working with Georgia Tech’s Bhamla Lab and is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University. 

[Related: Watch these tiny bugs catapult urine with their butts.]

Saving energy

Smaller animals are also expected to urinate this way since their orifice is considered too small to release anything thicker than a droplet. Cicadas are on the larger size for insects and can have a wingspan close to that of some hummingbirds. For the cicadas, it appears aht urinating in jets uses less energy than tossing away the pee droplets. Scientists previously believed that if a small animal like an insect wants to eject jets of liquid, it is challenging for them since it would require energy to force the fluid out at a high speed and their bodies are not big enough. Larger animals can use gravity and inertia to help them urinate while saving energy. The team believes that the energy savings and the cicada’s larger size enable them to pee more like a big animal. 

“The biggest surprise was discovering that cicadas can pee in jets, despite being small insects with energetic constraints due to their nutrient-deficient diet,” says Challita. “This goes against the conventional wisdom that small animals, especially those under one kilogram [2.2. pounds], cannot pee in jets.”

‘Expect a lot of peeing’

Studying how the cicadas urinate offers new understanding of fluid dynamics in everything from insects up to large mammals including elephants. According to Challita and the team, studying all of the different ways that animals excrete liquid has potential applications in other areas including soft robotics, additive manufacturing, and drug delivery systems. Since cicadas are now the smallest known animals to create high-speed jets, they could inform how to make jets in small robots or nozzles. 

Beginning in April two broods of cicadas–one in the Midwestern United States and one in the South–will emerge simultaneously. There is a small overlap area in Illinois and these broods only emerge at the same time once every 221 years. Ahead of the “dual emergence” it’s not currently known what kind of impact their urination will have on the ecosystem. But it could be big. 

“Cicadas will be emerging in the billions this year, so expect a lot of peeing! More importantly, we don’t understand the ecological implications for the surrounding flora and fauna,” says Challita.”

[Related: Scientists finally discover the enzyme that makes pee yellow.]

The research also highlights why it’s important to study some of the more mundane and everyday aspects of animal biology. 

“By investigating these processes, we can uncover fascinating adaptations and gain insights into how animals interact with their environment,” says Challita. “It’s also a reminder that there’s still so much to discover about the natural world, even in the most unexpected places, like cicada pee!”

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The Pacific is the largest and deepest ocean basin on the planet. Scientists barely know just how many different organisms call these deep waters home. Many of these areas are remote and difficult to explore, but that hasn’t stopped efforts to find out what’s really lurking under the sea. In February, a team of researchers exploring the Bounty Trough off the coast of New Zealand discovered roughly 100 new and potentially new marine species. 

Team members from the nonprofit organization Ocean Census, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand (NIWA), and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa collected close to 1,800 samples during the three week long expedition. Some of the specimens were uncovered more than 15,000 feet deep. 

“It looks like we have a great haul of new, undiscovered species,” Ocean Census science director and expedition co-leader Alex Rogers said in a statement. “By the time all our specimens are examined, we will be north of 100 new species. But what’s really surprised me here is the fact this extends to animals like fish–we think we’ve got three new species of fish.”

The team also found dozens of new mollusks, a shrimp, and a cephalopod that is a type of predatory mollusk. According to Ocean Census, we currently know of 240,000 marine species and an average of 2,200 species are discovered annually. 

[Related: See the strange new species discovered near Chile—with the help of a deep-diving sea robot.]

One find has been particularly baffling to the experts working to identify the new species. Initially, the team believed it was a new sea anemone or a seastar, but taxonomists do not believe that it is either of those species. 

“We now think it could be a new species of octocoral, but also a new genus [wider grouping of species],” Queensland Museum Network taxonomist Michela Mitchell said in a statement. “Even more excitingly, it could be a whole new group outside of the octocoral. If it is, that is a significant find for the deep sea and gives us a much clearer picture of the planet’s unique biodiversity.”

[Related: Four new octopus species discovered in the deep-sea vents off Costa Rica.]

Expeditions to underexplored ocean regions like the Bounty Trough are critical to discovering new species. The Bounty Trough is a roughly 500-mile long basin east of the South Island of New Zealand. Previously, geologists have surveyed this very deep ocean basin, but this is a first for biologists. 

“We’ve gone to lots of different habitats and discovered a whole range of new species, from fish to snails, to corals, and sea cucumbers–really interesting species that are going to be new to science,” NIWA marine biologist Sadie Mills said in a statement. 

At the beginning of the February 2024 expedition, the team used an imagine system and video cameras to map the area. This was in an effort to make sure that their equipment and cameras could safely operate and not harm any vulnerable animal communities. To collect specimens, they used a sampling device called the Brenke sled. It uses two nets, with one close to the seafloor and the other about three feet above that other net. It drags along the floor, churning up the animals that live close to the sea floor. Baited nets were used to find some of the larger animals of the trough. 

The specimens will be stored at the NIWA Invertebrate Collection (NIC) and National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in their Mollusca and Fish Collections. The findings will also be included in future editions of the New Zealand Marine Biota NIWA Biodiversity Memoir. 

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It was a mosquito full of dinosaur blood and encased in amber that helped bring the fictional Jurassic Park to life. While real world bugs stuck in sticky substances don’t lead to dangerous dinosaur parks (yet), they do offer scientists a peek into their past shapes and behaviors. A pair of 38 million year-old termites trapped in tree resin in the middle of a mating behavior are helping scientists understand the mating behaviors of extinct insects. The finding is detailed in a study published March 5 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The two termites are an extinct species called Electrotermes affinis (E. affinis) and the discovery of this fossil was a bit lucky. Study co-author and entomologist from the Czech Academy of Sciences Aleš Buček saw the piece of amber in an online shop for fossil collectors.

“Termite fossils are very common, but this piece was unique because it contains a pair,” Buček said in a statement. “I have seen hundreds of fossils with termites enclosed, but never a pair,” 

[Related: A 50-million-year-old insect testicle is one lucky find.]

Buček purchased the fossil and a team from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology’s (OIST) Evolutionary Genomics Unit in Japan used an X-ray micro-CT to take a closer look at the bugs. 

“Identifying the species was actually not easy, because there were bubbles in front of important parts of the termite’s bodies,” study co-author and OIST postdoctoral researcher Simon Hellemans, said in a statement. 

The scan revealed what species they belonged to and also that the trapped termites were a female and male laying side by side. The female’s mouthparts were touching the tip of the male’s abdomen. This positioning was familiar to the researchers, as present day termites engage in a mating behavior called tandem running. The insects display coordinated movements to keep themselves together while exploring a new nest site. 

However, the fossilized pair’s irregular side-by-side positioning in the amber also stood out. A pair typically  would have been observed lying behind each other. The team believed that since the preservation in the amber is not an instantaneous process, the termite’s normal mating behaviors gets interrupted. Their positions then shift while they are being encased in the super sticky tree resin. To test out this hypothesis, they simulated the process in the lab. 

“Our approach focused on how fossils are created and how behavior changes during the insect’s death,” study co-author and Auburn University entomologist Nobuaki Mizumoto said in a statement. 

[Related: When insects got wings, evolution really took off.]

They looked at mating termite pairs and found that even if the leading individual got trapped on a sticky surface, the follower did not escape or abandon their partner. Instead, they walked around them and also got stuck in a position like the termites stuck in amber. 

“If a pair encounters a predator, they usually escape but I think on a sticky surface they do not realize the danger and get trapped,” said Mizumoto.  

According to the team, this new way of recreating the process of getting stuck in tree resin allowed them to analyze the behaviors of an extinct species with a new amount of precision.“For some things, fossils are simply the best evidence, a direct window to the past,” said Buček and Mizumoto.

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As ocean temperatures continue to soar, the world’s coral reefs all over the world are in danger from climate change, disease, and destructive human activities. In response, scientists are testing various ways to help, from intentionally bleaching them to preserve fragments to coloring their larvae to study reproduction, and transplanting coral fragments to regrow damaged reefs. 

According to a study published March 8 in the journal Current Biology, planting new coral in some degraded reefs can help it grow just as quickly as healthy reefs after only four years. The study was conducted at the Mars Coral Reef Restoration Programme in South Sulawesi, Indonesia, one of the biggest reef restoration projects in the world.

[Related: World’s largest known deep-sea coral reef is bigger than Vermont.]

“Large areas of reefs in South Sulawesi have been destroyed by destructive dynamite fishing 30 to 40 years ago,” Ines D. Lange, a study co-author and marine biologist at the University of Exeter, tells PopSci. “The degraded areas have not recovered since, as loose coral fragments rolling around on the ground crush any new coral larvae that try to settle.”

Dynamite or blast fishing is an illegal practice where explosives are thrown into the water to stun or kill fish. Coral reef species can pay a hefty price, as the blasts can loosen coral fragments and the indiscriminate killing of anything nearby disrupts the food web. 

The Mars program is working to restore degraded reefs by transplanting these coral fragments onto a network of interconnected structures called Reef Stars. These sand-coated steel frames that help keep them in place.

A team from the University of Exeter collaborated with the Research Center for Oceanography, National Research and Innovation Agency in Indonesia, Mars Sustainable Solutions, and Lancaster University to monitor reef carbonate budgets as the Reef Stars were planted. A reef carbonate budget is the net production or erosion of reef framework over time. They’re a key predictor of a reef’s ability to grow, keep up with rising sea levels, protect the coast from storms, and provide a key habitat for reef animals. 

After planting the Reef Stars, the team measured the carbonate budgets on the restored reef sites after a few months, one year, two years, and four years. These measurements gave them a sense of the rate that the reef’s functions were returning to normal. To compare, they also measured the carbonate budgets of degraded reefs and healthy control sites. 

[Related: Some Pacific coral reefs can keep pace with a warming ocean.]

In the years after coral transplantation, coral cover, colony size, and carbonate production tripled, according to the study. After four years, the restored sites were nearly indistinguishable from nearby healthy reefs. They were growing at the same speed as healthy reefs, while providing a similar habitat for marine life and protecting adjacent islands from coastal erosion and storm waves.

“We did not expect to see a full recovery of overall reef growth in such a short time, which was a very positive surprise,” says Lange.

However, the composition of the reef community on the restoration site in this study was different from what usually makes up a healthy coral community. This is because the transplanted coral fragments were a mix of different branching coral types. The community composition may affect how well the reef’s structure holds up for some larger marine species and the resilience to future heat waves, since branching corals are more sensitive to bleaching.

Longer-term study is necessary to see what happens to the restored reefs over time, but Lange says that this work is an example of how active management can help boost the reef’s resilience. The team is hopeful that the restored reefs will naturally recruit a more diverse mix of coral species over time. 

“We are currently investigating other ecosystem functions on the same restored reefs to get a bigger picture of the ability of reef restoration to bring back fully functioning reef ecosystems,” Lange says. “It would also be interesting to use the same methods as in this study on other reef restoration projects worldwide to assess the recovery in different environmental settings or across different restoration methods.”

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Dinosaur fossils get most of the hype, but uncovering plant fossils is crucial for understanding the long-gone ecosystems of the past. In a plant find that’s definitely worth the buzz, a team of researchers have found the oldest known fossilized forest. The remains of this ancient forest are embedded in sandstone along the coast of southwest England and date back about 390 million years ago. These fossilized trees are roughly four million years older than the previous record holder–the Gilboa fossil forest in New York. The findings are detailed in a study published February 23 in the Journal of the Geological Society.

The fossilized trees were uncovered in a rock embedded in the Hangman Sandstone Formation of Somerset and Devon, which dates back 393 million to 383 million years ago. At a quick glance, they look a bit like palm trees. These Calamophyton trees were actually a “prototype” or an earlier evolutionary version of the relaxing tropical trees we know today. Instead of solid wood, their trunks were thin and hollow. They also had branches that were covered in hundreds of twig-like structures instead of broad shady leaves.

The tallest of these trees were only about 6.5 and 13 feet tall, compared to their descendants which can reach towering average heights of 30 to 50 feet. As Calamophyton grew, the trees  shed their branches, and this vegetation likely supported the invertebrates living on the forest floor hundreds of millions of years ago. 

The forest dates back between 419 and 358 million years ago, during the Devonian Period. This was when life on Earth began its first really big expansion from the sea up onto the land. By the end of the Denovian, the first seed-bearing plants and earliest land animals were well-established. 

[Related: Feast your eyes on exquisite fossils from an ancient rainforest (and more).]

“The Devonian period fundamentally changed life on Earth,” study co-author and University of Cambridge geologist Neil Davies said in a statement. “It also changed how water and land interacted with each other, since trees and other plants helped stabilize sediment through their root systems, but little is known about the very earliest forests.”

During the Devonian period, this part of the Devon and Somerset coasts weren’t attached to the rest of England. It was connected to parts of present-day Germany and Belgium and part of an ancient continent called Laurentia. This continent was near the equator and had a dry and warm climate. Similar Devonian fossils have been found in Belgium and Germany.

“When I first saw pictures of the tree trunks I immediately knew what they were, based on 30 years of studying this type of tree worldwide,” study co-author and University of Cardiff palaeobotanist Christopher Berry said in a statement. “It was amazing to see them so near to home. But the most revealing insight comes from seeing, for the first time, these trees in the positions where they grew. It is our first opportunity to look directly at the ecology of this earliest type of forest, to interpret the environment in which Calamophyton trees were growing, and to evaluate their impact on the sedimentary system.”

Older trees existed elsewhere on the plant, since plants first started to grow on land about 500 million years ago. However, this is the earliest known example of a forest where trees were growing close together en masse. While digging into these high sandstone cliffs, the team identified fossilized plants and plant debris, fossilized tree logs, traces of roots, and sedimentary structures. This area was likely a semi-arid plain with small river channels spilling out from mountains to the northwest during the Denovian.

[Related: Fossilized plants give us hints about what ice age forests may have looked like.]

“This was a pretty weird forest–not like any forest you would see today,” said Davies. “There wasn’t any undergrowth to speak of and grass hadn’t yet appeared, but there were lots of twigs dropped by these densely-packed trees, which had a big effect on the landscape.”

This was also the first time that tightly-packed plants could grow on land. The amount of debris that the Calamophyton trees shed built up in the rock layers, and affected the way that the rivers flowed within the landscape. According to the study, this is the first time that the course of rivers could be affected in this way.

“The evidence contained in these fossils preserves a key stage in Earth’s development, when rivers started to operate in a fundamentally different way than they had before, becoming the great erosive force they are today,” said Davies. “People sometimes think that British rocks have been looked at enough, but this shows that revisiting them can yield important new discoveries.”

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The planet’s deep-sea worms survive and thrive in some pretty inhospitable places. Some are bioluminescent, glowing in regions too deep for the sun’s powerful rays to shine. Other sea worms can live surrounded by methane, one of the Earth’s most potent greenhouse gasses. Now, scientists have discovered a new species of deep-sea worm. It was found about 30 miles off of Costa Rica’s Pacific coast in an underwater methane seep. Pectinereis strickrotti is described in a study published March 6 in the journal PLOS ONE.

[Related: These newly discovered bioluminescent sea worms are named after Japanese folklore ]

Life 3,280 feet under the sea

Pectinereis strickrotti is about four inches long and its elongated body is flanked by a row of feathery, gill-tipped appendages called parapodia. Parapodia help them swim in a wavy pattern. The worms are blind, owing to the total darkness that they experience 3,280 feet under the ocean. The team believes that Pectinereis strickrotti likely has a keen sense of smell and touch to navigate this inky black world.

These deep-sea dwellers have a hidden set of robust, pincer-shaped jaws that they can thrust outwards   for feeding. While marine biologists are still not sure what they eat, they speculate that Pectinereis strickrotti may leisurely feast  on bacteria and other worms. The worms also looked red in color when lights were shone on it, likely due to its blood. 

Pectinereis strickrotti live in methane seeps. These are parts of the seafloor where this powerful greenhouse gas escapes from rocks and sediments in the form of bubbles. Unlike hydrothermal vents, methane seeps aren’t hotter than the water that surrounds them. Both are ecosystems fueled by chemical energy and not sunlight, where the tiny microbes living in them can turn methane into food. The microbes then form the base of the food web in hydrothermal vents and methane seeps, sustaining bigger creatures, including crabs, mussels, and soft-bodied polychaete worms like Pectinereis strickrotti.

This species is a member of the ragworm family, a group of about 500 species of segmented mostly-marine worms that look like a mix of an earthworm and centipede. Many species of ragworm have two distinct life stages–atoke and epitoke. As a sexually immature atoke, these worms spend most of its life on the seafloor hanging out in a burrow. In their final act, they transform into sexually mature epitokes that swim up from their homes to find mates and spawn.

Pectinereis strickrotti is also a bit unusual compared to most ragworms. It lives in the deep sea, while its kin live in shallow waters. Its parapodia are also covered with gills, where most ragworms can absorb oxygen through their parapodia without the help of fish-like gills. The males also have large spines on the end of their tails that the team believes may have to do with reproduction. 

Help from Alvin

A team from University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada in Mexico, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Germany, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) collaborated on this discovery.

[Related: Why these sea worms detach their butts to reproduce.]

Pectinereis strickrotti was first spotted in 2009 at about 3,280 feet deep, during a dive in the HOV Alvin submersible. This human-occupied underwater exploration vehicle is operated by the WHOI and owned by the US Navy and famously played a role in helping discover the wreckage of the RMS Titanic at the bottom of the North Atlantic. 

“When we first saw it, we immediately starting asking what is was. A vertebrate? Some strange fish? We had this blurry image and that was it, but we were very intrigued,” Alvin’s lead pilot Bruce Strickrott tells PopSci. “That’s how it is down there. You see things for one minute, they’re gone, and then you talk about it.”

The team returned to the Costa Rican methane seeps in 2018. During a dive around Mound 12 of the seep, they encountered six or more individuals of the unidentified species that they first spotted back in 2009.  For an unknown reason, the sea worms were less skittish than they had been nine years earlier. Using a five-chambered vacuum canister device on Alvin that Strickrott called the “slurp gun,” the team carefully collected several specimens and enough images and video to formally describe the new species.  

“They swim slowly, but when he really wanted to move, he started to undulate almost like a living magic carpet,” says Strickrott. “The first thing that really caught my eye was just how quick it was.”

Pectinereis strickrotti is named after Strickrott, for his his piloting work that was crucial to the worm’s discovery. He says he was completely “honored and humbled” to have this new species named after him. However, this is not the only animal that bears the submersible pilot’s name. A deep-sea dwelling hagfish called Eptitretus strickrotti is also named for him.

During the 2018 expedition, the team collected three male Pectinereis strickrotti epitokes and part of one female. Tulio Villalobos-Guerrero of the Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada in Mexico conducted the primary anatomical analysis that was necessary to determine that this was a new species. The specimens are currently in Scripps’ Benthic Invertebrate Collection and the Museo de Zoología at the Universidad de Costa Rica. The National Science Foundation also supported this research.

“We’ve spent years trying to name and describe the biodiversity of the deep sea,” Greg Rouse, a study co-author marine biologist at the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said in a statement. “At this point we have found more new species than we have time to name and describe. It just shows how much undiscovered biodiversity is out there. We need to keep exploring the deep sea and to protect it.”

Rouse and other researchers from Scripps are planning on heading back out to sea later this year to explore deep methane seeps off the coasts of Alaska and Chile. 

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If dissecting a frog in biology class had you begging to be sent home, new 3D scans of thousands of vertebrate species are here to help by letting you peek at animal insides without the mess. The newly completed openVertebrate (oVert) project took five years and brought together 18 natural history institutions to create the free online museum, showing the anatomy and physiology of over 13,000 specimens. A summary of the work was published March 6 in the journal BioScience. 

From 2017 to 2023, oVert project members took detailed CT scans of more than half the genera of all amphibians, reptiles, fishes, and mammals. The scanners used high-energy X-rays to look past the organism’s scales, fur, or skin to view the dense bone structure beneath. Scientists stained some of the specimens with a temporary contrast-enhancing solution that allows the team to visualize their soft tissues, including muscle, skin, and other organs. 

“Museums are constantly engaged in a balancing act,” David Blackburn, principal investigator of the oVert project and curator of herpetology at the Florida Museum, said in a statement. “You want to protect specimens, but you also want to have people use them. oVert is a way of reducing the wear and tear on samples while also increasing access, and it’s the next logical step in the mission of museum collections.”

Take a look at some of the incredible scans below. It will be like stepping back into high school biology, without the scalpel, Bunsen burners, or safety glasses.  

Check out more of the scans here.

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If you take a look at a horseshoe crab, you are essentially peering back in time millions of years. Animals like horseshoe crabs, coelacanths, and the duck-billed platypus are what Charles Darwin called “living fossils” since alive specimens show very few physical differences from their ancestors in the fossil record dating back millions of years.

[Related: A new evolutionary theory could explain the mystery of shrinking animals.]

Now, an ancient group of ray-finned fishes called gars may be the ultimate living fossils, evolving slower than any other of these vertebrates. A study published March 4 in the journal Evolution found that they have the slowest rate of molecular evolution among all jawed vertebrates and its genome changes much more slowly than other animals.

What are gar?

There are seven known species of gar. They are found in North America and can live in fresh, brackish, and salt water and commonly live in slow-moving bodies of water like estuaries. They have bodies shaped like darts and a long beak that acts like a pair of forceps. They also lay green colored eggs that are highly toxic to any predators who want to eat them.

All seven living species of gar species are nearly identical to the earliest known fossil gars. These specimens date back about 150 million years ago to the Jurassic period. As early as 100 million years ago (Mid-Cretaceous period) one of the two living major lineages of gars began to appear in the fossil record. 

Looking at hybridization

In this new study, the team analyzed a dataset containing 1,105 exons–DNA’s coding region–from a sample of 471 jawed vertebrate species. They found that the gars’ DNA consistently evolves up to three times more slowly than any other major group of vertebrates. Sturgeon and paddlefish also showed slow rates of change, but their rate of changes was not as relaxed as gar. 

Researchers then looked at a process called hybridization, where two different species produce viable offspring that have the ability to reproduce when they reach maturity. For example, a horse and a donkey are two different species, but they can mate and produce mules. However, mules are usually born sterile and can’t reproduce. Some gar species can mate and their offspring will remain fertile when they reach sexual maturity. 

The team looked at the alligator gar and longnose gar, two different gar species found in the Brazos and Trinity River systems in Texas. Both species last shared a common ancestor at least 100 million years ago, yet are still producing viable and fertile babies, but not new species. This successful reproduction by two different species of gar is likely linked to how slowly their DNA changes  and keeping their numbers of species at only seven.  

“The slower a species’ genome is mutating, the more likely it is that it will be able to interbreed with a separate species that it’s been genetically isolated from over a long stretch of time,” study co-author and Yale University PhD student Chase D. Brownstein said in a statement. 

According to the study, gars have the oldest identified parental split among all animals, plants, and fungi that can produce offspring that can survive and reproduce. The previous record holders were two fern species and the gar’s common ancestor is about 60 million years older than the shared ancestor of both ferns.

Not an evolutionary accident

The team believes that gars have an unusually strong DNA repair apparatus. This allows the fish to correct somatic and germline mutations. These mutations are changes to the DNA that occur both before and after conception. Gars may be able to alter these mutations more efficiently than many other vertebrates and understanding that process could have future implications for human health.

[Related: We probably have big brains because we got lucky.]

“Most cancers are somatic mutations that represent failures of an individual’s DNA repair mechanisms,” study co-author and Yale University evolutionary biologist Thomas J. Near said in a statement. “If further study proves that gar DNA repair mechanisms are extremely efficient, and discovers what makes them so, we could start thinking about potential applications to human health.”

According to the team, the study indicates that Earth’s living fossils are not just freak evolutionary accidents.They are living, breathing depictions of how evolution works in nature.

“It shows that analyzing patterns in living fossils’ evolutionary history might have implications for our own story,” said Brownstein. “It not only helps us better understand the planet’s biodiversity, but potentially could one day be applied to medical research and improve human health.”

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A volcano located on an uninhabited island in the Galapagos has begun to erupt, sending lava gushing down the sides of the mountain towards the ocean beneath it. Located roughly 600 miles from Ecuador’s mainland, the La Cumbre volcano on the island of Fernandina started to erupt on Saturday March 2 at about midnight local time.

[Related: Geologists: We’re not ready for volcanoes.]

According to Ecuador’s Geophysical Institute, this may be the 4,842-foot volcano’s largest eruption since 2017.  

“Gas emission and thermal anomalies were detected through satellite systems,” said Ecuador’s environmental ministry in a statement according to Reuters. They added that they will continue to monitor the eruption, but that it would not likely affect tourism to the islands.

This volcano system has produced close to 30 recorded eruptions since 1800. The La Cumbre volcano is one of the most active in the Galapagos Island chain. It last erupted in 2020, following an earthquake with a magnitude of 4.7 that produced 29 aftershocks. Most of the recent eruptions have occurred along fissures around the summit crater. 

The eruption does not pose a risk to humans, but Fernandina Island is home to a number of unique animal species. Penguins, iguanas, snakes, an endemic rat species, flightless cormorants and more all live on the third largest island in the Galapagos. In 2019, a team of scientists discovered a giant tortoise on Fernandina that they feared had gone extinct. The island chain in the Pacific Ocean is known throughout the world for helping Charles Darwin develop his theory of evolution in the 19th Century. Many of the animal species here hold “very important” ecological value, according to Galapagos National Park.

An ‘imminent eruption’ in Iceland

Over 5,000 miles to the north and east, another looming volcanic eruption prompted the evacuation of Iceland’s famed Blue Lagoon on March 2. Seismic activity on southwest Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula warned of an “imminent” volcanic eruption nearby. Between 600 and 800 guests of the resort and spa were evacuated, according to the Iceland Monitor.

[Related: How the Tonga eruption rang Earth ‘like a bell’]

Grindavík was also evacuated again, as cracks in the Earth opened up within fenced areas of the fishing town. According to the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO), the volume of magma building up beneath an area about two miles north of Grindavík called Svartsengi, will reach about 318 million cubic feet by the end of the day on Tuesday, March 5. This is well within the range of the previous eruptions and a hazard map released by the IMO depicted the areas that are most at risk.  

“It is to be expected that another magma flow can occur in the next few days and there is an increased probability of an eruption,” wrote IMO representatives in a translated statement. “[The timing of] the next magma flow depends on how fast the pressure due to the accumulation of magma under Svartsengi builds up to set it off.”

Grindavík residents were allowed to return to the town, following the last eruption on February 8.   

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The desert’s enormous star dunes are mysterious structures. These sand dunes are found in some of Earth’s largest modern deserts, but also on the planet Mars and Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Star dunes are giant sand dunes that get their name from the arms of sand and rock that spread down from a central peak. When viewed from above, they can resemble stars. 

Scientists have now pinpointed the age of one of Earth’s oldest star dunes for the first time. The Lala Lallia star dune in southeastern Morocco is estimated to have formed 13,000 years ago, according to a study published March 4 in the journal Scientific Reports. 

[Related: The Sahara Desert used to be green and lush. Then humans showed up.]

Star dunes are found in sandy seas across Africa, Arabia, China, and North America. They are believed to be the tallest dunes on the planet, with a star dune in China’s Badain Jaran Desert climbing to 984 feet. 

Despite being very common today, evidence of star dunes have almost never been found in Earth’s geological record. The geologic record is like a time capsule made up of rock and sediment layers that allows geologists to get a glimpse of what the Earth looked like thousands of years ago. The absence of star dunes in rocks has puzzled scientists, since past deserts are a common part of Earth’s geological history, but not the types of dunes. Only one ancient star dune has been uncovered preserved in sandstone. It dates back about 250 million years and was found in present-day Scotland. 

“This research is really the case of the missing sand dune–it had been a mystery why we could not see them in the geological record,” Geoff Duller, a geologist and Earth Scientist at Aberystwyth University in Wales, said in a statement. “It’s only because of new technology that we can now start to uncover their secrets.”

This new study used ground penetrating radar to peer into the internal structure of Lala Lallia. Its name means ‘highest sacred point’ in the Berber language and the dune sits in the Erg Chebbi area of the Sahara Desert, near the border with Algeria. 

Researchers found that the sand pyramid reached its current 238 feet height and 2,296 feet width due to rapid growth over the past millennium as it slowly shifted towards the west. The oldest parts of the dune are 13,000 years old. 

According to the study, the star dune likely formed at the same time as the Younger Dryas event. This was a very abrupt period of global cooling around 12,900 and 11,600 years ago, and it returned some parts of the planet to Ice Age-like conditions, before a rapid warming period. 

The testing also revealed that the dune stopped growing for a period of 8,000 years. Some pottery found near the sites indicates that humans could live in the region that was not as dry as it is today. A period of additional rainfall or even an enlarged monsoon stabilized the dune before a large drought began. 

Why is Lala Lallia moving?

The ground-penetrating radar showed the structure of the dune’s layers and revealed how the natural changes in the environment like rainfall and wind built it over time. The wind coming from several directions likely helped form the giant dunes. Using this structural data, they also determined that the Lala Lallia dune is moving west at a speed of about 1.6 feet per year. Since the dune was formed by winds coming from two different directions, it’s a third wind blowing in from the east shifting the dune slowly towards the west.

To determine the star dune’s age, the team used luminescence dating techniques to pinpoint  the last time that minerals in the sand were exposed to sunlight. They did not look at when the sand itself was formed, but when it was deposited onto the dune.  

[Related: World’s oldest known wooden structure pre-dates our species.]

“The grains of quartz have a property like a mini rechargeable battery,” Duller told The Guardian. “It can store energy that it gets from naturally occurring radioactivity. When we bring it back to the laboratory, we can get it to release that energy. It comes out in the form of light. We can measure that and the brightness tells us the last time the sand grain saw daylight.”

By looking at the amount of energy in the grains of sand, researchers could determine that it took about 900 years for the Lala Lallia star dune to form. It accumulates roughly 6,400 metric tons of sand annually, as the wind blows sand in the desert. 

The techniques used in this study can be applied to other sand dunes to tell us more about Earth’s climatological history. Luminescence dating has already been used to discover the world’s oldest known wooden structure in 2023. 

According to study co-author and sedimentologist Charlie Bristow of University College London, “Using ground penetrating radar to look inside this star dune has allowed us to show how these immense dunes form, and to develop a new model so geologists know better what to look for in the rock record to identify these amazing desert features.”

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Space produces some otherworldly sounds–black hole songs, Martian dust tornadoes, and meteorites crashing into the Red Planet to name a few. Now, NASA has released three new sonifications of images taken from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes.

The new sonifications highlight different celestial objects observed by NASA telescopes.

[Related: NASA turns spectacular space telescope images into vibey ‘cosmic sonifications.’]

What is sonification?

Sonification translates data into sound. Scientific data is collected by Chandra and other space telescopes as digital signals that are usually turned into the dazzling visuals that we see on Earth. Sonification takes that information and maps it into sound. 

According to NASA, the sonification scans data from one side to the other and each wavelength is mapped out to a different range of tones that our ears can hear. The light of objects is pitched higher and the intensity of the light controls the volume. Radio waves are given the lowest tones, the medium tones are visible data, and the X-rays have the highest tones. 

MSH 11-52–The Cosmic Hand

The first sonification is of MSH 11-52. This is a supernova remnant that is releasing a large cloud of energized particles that looks somewhat like a human hand. It’s estimated that light from this supernova reached Earth roughly 1,700 years ago. The supernova is seen and heard here using data from Chandra, NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), and ground-based optical data.

M74–The Phantom Galaxy

This sonification features M74, which is a spiral galaxy like our Milky Way. It is about 3.2 million light-years away from earth in the constellation Pisces. Spiral galaxies like these typically have a rotating disc with spiral ‘arms’ that curve out from a dense central region. This sonification combines data taken with NASA’s James Webb and Hubble Space Telescopes and X-rays from Chandra.

IC 443–The Jellyfish Nebula

The third sonification trio IC 443, nicknamed the Jellyfish Nebula. This nebula is about 5,000 light years away and is the expanding debris cloud from a very large star that exploded. The light from this supernova reached planet Earth more than 30,000 years ago. The data in this sonification include X-rays from Chandra and the now-retired German ROSAT mission. It also uses  radio data from NSF’s Very Large Array and optical data from the Digitized Sky Survey.

NASA’s sonification project began in 2020 and built off of other Chandra projects aimed at reaching blind and visually-impaired audiences. A new documentary, Listen to the Universe, is   now available on NASA+ and explores how these sonifications are created and tells the story of the team that makes them possible. 

[Related: Listen: Meteoroids make little ‘bloop’ noises when crashing into Mars.]

“Sonifications add a new dimension to stunning space imagery, and make those images accessible to the blind and low-vision community for the first time,” Liz Landau, who leads multimedia efforts for NASA’s Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters, said in a statement. “I was honored to help tell the story of how Dr. Arcand and the System Sounds team make these unique sonic experiences and the broad impact those sonifications have had.”

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When their kin aren’t attacking boats and porpoises or monitoring their large adult sons, some pods of orca whales are also known to attack the fearsome great white shark. Groups of these marine mammals are known to hunt and kill these giant fish in an epic battle of apex predators. Now, a solitary orca–aka killer whale–has been observed eating a great white shark for the first time. The findings are described in a study published March 1 in the African Journal of Marine Science.

“The astonishing predation, off the coast of Mossel Bay, South Africa, represents unprecedented behavior underscoring the exceptional proficiency of the killer whale,” Alison Towner, a study co-author and shark biologist from Rhodes University in South Africa, said in a statement. 

Pack hunters–Willy vs. Jaws

Typically, orcas work together in groups to catch their prey–most often sea lions, seals, sharks and even other whales. When hunting together in a pod, they surround their prey and use combined strength and intelligence to attack. South Africa’s white sharks are predators in their own right and known for their stunning acrobatics and solo hunting. 

[Related: Watch what can happen when killer whales tangle with great white sharks.]

In 2022, the same research team revealed that a pair of orca named Port and Starboard had been hunting and killing South Africa’s white sharks since 2017. Their predatory behavior has since driven large numbers of the sharks away from their natural aggregation sites. While orca whales can hunt large animals individually, this most recent occurrence is the first time that a single whale has been observed attacking a great white shark.

‘The scent of shark liver oil’

This incident was observed in June 2023 near Seal Island in Mossel Bay, about 248 miles east of Cape Town and is challenging conventional beliefs about the cooperative hunting behaviors in the region. Starboard the orca was working alone to “incapacitate and consume” an eight foot-long juvenile white shark in only two-minutes. Later, the orca was observed carrying the shark’s liver in its mouth. 

“Upon reaching Mossel Bay’s Seal Island, the scent of shark liver oil and a noticeable slick indicated a recent kill. Tracking Port and Starboard near the island, they remained separated,” Esther Jacobs, from marine conservation initiative Keep Fin Alive, said in a statement recounting the day. “Witnessing a white shark’s fin break the surface initially sparked excitement, but that turned to a somber realization as Starboard swiftly approached. The moment Starboard rapidly preyed on my favorite shark species was both devastating and intensely powerful.”

What Jacobs and the others on the water that day were observing is a specialized feeding behavior. Orca in South Africa appear to have a strong preference for eating the lipid-rich livers of white sharks.

[Related: This could be the first newborn great white shark ever captured on camera.]

“Over two decades of annual visits to South Africa, I’ve observed the profound impact these killer whales have on the local white shark population,” added Primo Micarelli, from the Shark Studies Centre and Siena University in Italy. “Seeing Starboard carry a white shark’s liver past our vessel is unforgettable.”

At least two great white sharks were killed during these interactions, as a second carcass measuring 11.6 feet was also found nearby. 

“This sighting revealed evidence of solitary hunting by at least one killer whale, challenging conventional cooperative hunting behaviors known in the region,” said Towner. 

Shifting dynamics at sea

In addition to offering some new insight into predatory behavior in orcas, it’s also helping provide context to the ecosystem changes that may happen when orcas displace sharks as the apex predator. Understanding the dynamics at play as killer whales continue to prey on large sharks underscores the need for conservation strategies that can be adapted in a timely manner as the environment and ecosystem changes. 

[Related: Great whites don’t hunt humans—they just have blind spots.]

“The observations reported here add more layers to the fascinating story of these two killer whales and their capabilities,” ecologist Simon Elwen said in a statement. “As smart, top predators, killer whales can rapidly learn new hunting techniques on their own or from others, so monitoring and understanding the behaviors used here and by other killer whales in South Africa is an important part of helping us understand more about these animals.”

Elwen is a whale ecology expert at the University of Stellenbosch and Founding Director and Principal Scientist at Sea Search Research & Conservation. He was not an author of this specific study. 

These new findings and future studies should provide scientists in the region with more insight in how to adapt conservation measures. According to Towner, skilled “shark spotters” in Cape Town documented a record of over 300 great white shark sightings across eight beaches in 2011. Since 2019, there haven’t been any sightings in the area, as the sharks are moving further away from Cape Town. Threats from orcas like Port and Starboard and dwindling resources have prompted these great white sharks to begin to move further away. 

“Despite my awe for these predators, I’m increasingly concerned about the coastal marine ecology balance,” said Micarelli.

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All eyes are on two new avian internet celebrities and their cozy home in Southern California. Three bald eagle chicks could hatch any day now from their nest atop a Jeffrey pine tree overlooking Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles. Onlookers from near and far can follow along via a live stream monitored and maintained by the nonprofit Friends of Big Bear Valley.

[Related: Lockdown made cities friendlier for some birds.]

The eggs were laid in late January by a bald eagle named Jackie. According to the nonprofit Friends of Big Bear Valley, she sat on the eggs for over two and a half days when the region was hit with a snowstorm. She sat there keeping those eggs warm for 61 hours and 58 minutes without a single break. Incubating duties have been shared with their father, Shadow, who has also supplied Jackie with plenty of fish. 

The nest is about five feet across and five feet deep and offers beautiful lake and mountain views. According to the nonprofit,  a three-egg clutch like this is rare for bald eagles and is a first for Jackie. Biologists monitoring the situation are watching for a “pip.”

“The pip is when there’s a visible bump or crack in the eggshell that we can see,” biologist and Friends of Big Bear Valley executive director Sandy Steers told the Los Angeles Times. “Even when there’s a pip, it’s going to take at least a day—sometimes longer—for the chick to hatch. With nature, we need to be patient. It can teach us to just breathe and enjoy the process instead of focusing on the result.”

March 1 officially marks 36 days since the first egg was laid and Jackie’s eggs have previously piped at 38 and 39 days.

The weather is also adding to the excitement and anticipation. Another winter storm is barreling towards the region, with a winter storm watch posted for Big Bear Lake for the evening of Friday March 1 through the afternoon of Sunday March 3. Because of the storm, it is possible that the hatching will happen off camera, as Jackie or Shadow will sit on the nest to keep them protected from the cold and wet weather. Adult eagles have about 7,000 waterproof feathers that should help keep the chicks warm if they hatch in the storm. 

[Related: Thriving baby California condor is a ray of hope for the unique species.]

This nest camera was installed in 2015 by Friends of Big Bear Valley and documents breeding successes and failures every season. In that time, Jackie and Shadow have laid five eggs that have produced eggs. In January 2023, Jackie laid eggs and spent weeks incubating them. The two then began to leave them unattended. Ravens breached the eggs in March, but revealed no obvious signs of development inside. Only about 50 percent of bald eagle eggs hatch.

The large and iconic American bald eagle has been brought back from the brink of extinction. According to the American Eagle Foundation, there were only 417 known nesting pairs in the lower 48 states in 1963. Since then, it has since skyrocketed to at least 316,700 known individual bald eagles, including 71,400 nesting pairs. Banning the pesticide DDT and other conservation measures enforced during the 1970s have helped the species rebound. However, they are still in danger of lead poisoning, bird flu, habitat destruction, and collisions with human made infrastructure. 

This is a developing story, please check back for updates. 

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is recommending that Americans ages 65 and older get a second dose of this season’s COVID-19 vaccine. Under this new guidance, an additional dose of the vaccine can be given at least four months after the previous shot. 

[Related: mRNA vaccine innovators win the Nobel Prize in medicine.]

“Most COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations last year were among people 65 years and older,” CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen said in a statement. “An additional vaccine dose can provide added protection that may have decreased over time for those at highest risk.”

A CDC report published in February said that the 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine is about 54 percent effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19, compared with those who had not received the latest vaccine. The CDC estimates that only 22 percent of adults in the US have gotten a COVID-19 booster this season. A little over 40 percent of Americans ages 65 and over have gotten the 2023-2024 shot.

The CDC’s independent Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 11-1 with one abstention on the new recommendations. A subgroup of advisers suggested softer language in the recommendation that would have suggested that older adults “may” get a second dose of the vaccine instead of “should.” These committee members felt that this language shift would have given clinicians added flexibility and also takes growing vaccine hesitancy into account. 

According to The Washington Post, Camille Kotton of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston pushed for stronger language so that the recommendations would be more clear to patients. Kotton said that using the word “may” is “too soft, especially for the most vulnerable,” and that many Americans remain unaware that they should be getting a COVID-19 vaccine.

CDC data shows that older adults have been the most vulnerable to COVID-19’s most severe effects. Hospitalizations related to the virus have been consistently higher in this age group than others, with about two-thirds of COVID-19 hospitalizations occurring in patients over 65. Senior citizens also make up the largest proportion of those who have died in the hospital from COVID-19 and have the highest numbers to fatalities after being discharged from the hospital. 

[Related: How to check your measles vaccination status amid outbreak.]

COVID-19 remains a threat. The CDC reports that there were roughly 20,000 new hospital admissions and 2,000 COVID-19 deaths per week as of February 17. Even when reported cases were at their lowest in summer 2023, about 500 Americans were still losing their lives to COVID-19 every week. 

Updates vaccines are available at most pharmacies and at doctors offices. 

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The countdown to April’s solar eclipse has begun, but there is still a month of fun stargazing opportunities to keep us excited before the big show. Weather folklore says that in the Northern Hemisphere, the third month of the year goes “in like a lion, out like a lamb.” Usually, we can expect fierce wintery weather to kick off March and calm springlike weather to end it. While it is tough to predict exactly what kind of weather that the transitional and temperamental month of March brings, there are some cosmic events to keep your eye on as the days start to get a little bit longer.

[Related: Delta’s solar eclipse flight sold out, but your best bet to see it is still down here.]

March 15 through 31– Look for Mercury

With a radius of only 1,516 miles, Mercury is our solar system’s smallest planet and the closest to our sun. Since it is located so near the sun’s bright rays and is so tiny, it can be more difficult to spot in the night sky. Starting around March 15, Mercury’s apparent distance from the sun will be just far enough away for stargazers to get a look at this planet.

According to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, it’s best to begin looking to the western sky about 40 minutes after sunset. It will be about seven to 10 degrees above the horizon, so try to have a clear sightline without a lot of interference from buildings or trees. It will reach its greatest eastern elongation on March 24, and then get slightly dimmer as the month winds down. 

March 20–Vernal Equinox

The Vernal Equinox is also known as the first day of spring. The season technically arrives in the Northern Hemisphere at 11:06 p.m. EDT on March 19, or March 20 at 3:06 a.m. Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). This is the standard measurement used to keep time zones organized and is maintained by very precise atomic clocks that are housed at laboratories all over the world. The United States Naval Observatory keeps official time in the United States. 

The equinox occurs twice a year (once in the spring and once in the fall). The March equinox brings earlier sunrises, later sunsets and sprouting plants to the Northern Hemisphere and the opposite effects to the Southern Hemisphere.

March 25– Full Worm Moon

This month’s full moon will reach peak illumination at 3:00 a.m. EDT on Monday, March 25. Beginning on March 24, the bright moon will begin to rise above the horizon. This month’s moon is also the Paschal Full Moon. This is what determines when Easter is celebrated. The holiday is always commemorated on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring, so this year Easter will be on Sunday, March 31.

[Related: Why scientists think it’s time to declare a new lunar epoch.]

The origin of the name worm moon has a few different stories. Originally, it was believed to refer to the time of year when earthworms emerge, as snow melts and soil warms. However, recent research from the Farmer’s Almanac found that during the 1760s, Captain Jonathan Carver, a colonial explorer from Massachusetts, visited the Naudowessie (Dakota) and other Native American tribes and wrote that “Worm Moon” refers to beetle larvae which start to emerge from the thawing bark of trees and places they hide out during the winter.

Additional names for March’s full moon include the Snowshoe Breaking Moon or Bebookwedaagime-giizis in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), the Hackberry Month or Niyó’not’à:h in Seneca, and the Spring Moon or Upinagasraq or in the Inupiat language.

March 25– Penumbral Lunar Eclipse

While not quite as dramatic as next month’s solar eclipse, there will be a penumbral lunar eclipse on March 25. This occurs when the moon passes through the Earth’s partial shadow, or penumbra. The moon will darken slightly, but not completely. According to NASA, this month’s eclipse will be visible throughout all North America, Mexico, Central America, and South America. For the best viewing time near you, check out timeanddate.com.

The same skygazing rules that apply to pretty much all star gazing activities are key this month: Go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let your eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour.

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It has been an enduring evolutionary mystery since the days of Charles Darwin: When did humans lose their tails? Apes–including humans and chimpanzees–are all primates who do not have long tails like lemurs and our other monkey relatives. Thanks to some advances in gene-editing technology, a new clue to ape tail loss has been uncovered. A genetic diversion in our ancient ancestors about 25 million years ago, according to a study published February 28 in the journal Nature.

[Related: Our tree-climbing ancestors evolved our abilities to throw far and reach high.]

Apes vs. monkeys

Tail loss in apes began as the group evolved away from Old World monkeys between 20 and 25 million years ago. After this evolutionary split, apes evolved the formation of fewer tail vertebrae. This formed our coccyx–or tailbone. 

While the reason why apes lost their tails in the first place is uncertain, some scientists not having a tail may have been better suited for vertical bodies living on the ground. Tailed primates generally use these appendages to help them swing from tree branches and walk on along them horizontally. Gibbons and orangutans are tailless apes that still live in trees, but they move differently than monkeys who have tails and hang below branches. 

Previous studies have linked over 100 genes to the development of tails in vertebrates, so the general belief has been that tail loss occurred through changes in DNA’s code–or mutations–on more than one gene. 

Jumping genes

In the new study, a team of researchers compared the DNA of six species of apes–including humans–and 15 species of monkeys. They found an insertion of DNA that is shared by apes and humans, but is not present in monkeys. It is located on a gene called TBXT, which is known to affect animal tail length. 

Once they pinpointed this mutation, they used CRISPR to edit the same spot on the gene of mouse embryos in a lab. The mice with the altered TBXT genes were born with a variety of tail effects, including some that were born without tails at all. 

Interestingly, the differences in tail outcomes didn’t just result from the mutations to TBXT genes. DNA is in a twisted-ladder or double-helix of bundles of different genes with various functions. DNA allows animals to evolve with changes to genes, but some of the changes only occur on a single rung of DNA’s twisted ladder. Other changes are more complicated and happen on multiple rungs. These Alu elements are repetitive DNA sequences that can create bits of RNA that can then change back to DNA. Once they’ve switched back to DNA, they randomly insert themselves into the genome. These types of “jumping genes” can then disrupt or enhance a gene’s function when it is inserted. 

[Related: A scientific exploration of big juicy butts.]

The team found two Alu elements in the TBXT gene that are present in great apes, but not in monkeys. These jumping genes exist only in primates and have been behind this genetic diversion for millions of years.  

Genetic trade-off?

According to the team, any advantage of tail loss must have been very powerful. Genes can often influence more than one bodily function, changes that bring an advantage in one area may prove detrimental somewhere else. The team did find a small increase in neural tube defects in the mice they had inserted with the TBXT gene.  

Future studies could test the theory that an ancient evolutionary genetic trade-off of losing a tail contributed to neural tube birth defects. These defects include spina bifida, which is seen in roughly one in 1,000 human babies. 

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Humans’ early ancestors in Europe may not have spent their days eating Nutella on toasted bread, but hazelnuts were a valuable resource thousands of years ago. The way this vital source of energy was cultivated and harvested evolved as the landscape changed as giant glaciers retreated. Isotope analysis of the carbon in archaeological traces of hazelnuts in southern Sweden show that the nuts were harvested in progressively more open environments, according to a study published February 29 in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology. The findings paint a more detailed picture of what the landscape looked like as hunter-gathering gave way to farming. 

[Related: Neanderthals and modern humans intermingled in Europe 45,000 years ago.]

A shifting forest landscape

Around 14,000 BCE slowly melting glaciers allowed for more vegetation to grow and created open woodlands with pine and birch trees in the area for the first time. By the Mesolithic era (about 8,000 BCE) hazel trees started to become one of the dominant woodland species throughout the southern part of Sweden. Along with pine trees, the hazel forests formed a unique woodland that does not have any known comparison today, according to the study. More broadleaved trees such as oak and linden began to fill in, but hazel remained important as farming began in the Neolithic era around 4,000 BCE. 

“Farming started in southern Sweden and marked a transition to more open areas with grasslands,” Karl Ljung, a study co-author paleoecologist at Lund University in Sweden, tells PopSci. “Hazel continued to be an important species in this progressively more open landscape and was likely favored by people.”

The hazel trees provided a source for both raw materials and food, similar to seaweed. The nuts are a good source of protein and energy and have a long shelf life. Hazelnut shells can also be used as fuel in fires.

‘Plants act as time capsules’

Hazel trees and all plants contain carbon, which exists on Earth in various forms known as isotopes. Conducting stable isotope analysis of what isotopes are present at archaeological sites can give scientists valuable data on long gone environments.

“Plants act as time capsules of the environmental conditions that they experience when they grow,” Amy Styring, a study co-author and archaeological chemist at the University of Oxford in England, tells PopSci. “When we recover the remains of plants on archaeological sites, the chemistry of these plant remains can tell us about the water availability, soil fertility, and light intensity at the site where the plant grew. Given that hazelnuts are so frequently found on archaeological sites, we thought they were the perfect candidate to test whether they record environmental information in their chemistry.”

The proportions of different carbon isotopes is changed by the ratio of how much carbon dioxide is concentrated between leaf cells and their surrounding environment. For hazel and other plants, the ratio is affected by the amount of sunlight and water available to them. Regions near the poles like Sweden see nearly 24 hours of light during the summer months and almost no sunlight in the winter. This means that the sunlight affects the isotope ratio more than water, since water is not quite as scarce. 

“This means that a hazelnut shell recovered on an archaeological site provides a record of how open the environment was in which it was collected,” Ljung said in a statement. “This in turn tells us more about the habitats in which people were foraging.”

Digging into shell fragments

In the study, the team gathered hazelnuts from trees growing in various light levels at three locations in southern Sweden. They analyzed the variation in their carbon isotope values and the relationship between those values and how much light they were exposed to. 

[Related: Archery may have helped humans gain leverage over Neanderthals.]

Next, they looked at the carbon isotope values of hazelnut shells unearthed from archaeological sites in southern Sweden. The shell fragments came from four Mesolithic hunter-gatherer sites and 11 sites ranging from the Neolithic up to the Iron Age. Some of these sites had also been occupied during more than one period.

They combined the archeological and modern data and ran a model to assign the hazelnut samples to one of three categories based on where they grew–closed, open, and semi-open. 

They found that the nuts from the Mesolithic had been collected from more closed environments with more tree cover. 

“The biggest surprise was probably that light levels have such a strong effect on the carbon isotopes in hazelnut shells! Biology can be so noisy that the effect of a single factor is not always so clear,” says Styring.

By the Iron Age, most of the hazelnuts appear to have been gathered in an open area and not a woodland like the ones that existed as the glaciers retreated. Their microhabitats had entirely changed.

“Forests are dynamic places, shaped by the establishment of new species after the glacial period, diseases like the elm disease, that provided diverse environments for foraging,” say Ljung and Styring. “But people also modified the landscape, the most dramatic form being the clearing of trees to make way for fields of crops once farming became widespread.”

In future studies, the team would like to directly radiocarbon date and measure the carbon isotopes of hazelnut shells from other archeological sites and environments. These deeper looks could provide more detail into past woodlands and ecosystems and help us better understand how humans have shaped our environment over time. 

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Some of Earth’s fish are known for their Herculean strength and funky vision. For the less than one inch long Danionella cerebrum, it’s their loud vocals. This tiny fish in the minnow and carp family can produce sounds louder than an airplane taking off as perceived by human ears at a distance of 328 feet, according to a study published February 26 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

[Related: World’s oldest living aquarium fish could be 100 years young.]

Danionella cerebrum is a small and translucent fish that was first discovered in 2021 in shallow and murky mountain streams in southern and eastern Myanmar. It has the smallest known vertebrate brain, but can hold its own with other members of the animal kingdom of all sizes when it comes to making noise. Small snapping shrimp can produce popping sounds of up to 250 decibels, while large elephants use their trunks to make noises up to 125 decibels. 

“This tiny fish can produce sounds of over 140 decibels at a distance of 10 to 12 millimeters [about 0.4 inches],” Ralf Britz, a study co-author and ichthyologist at the Senckenberg Natural History Collections in Germany, said in a statement. “This is comparable to the noise a human perceives of an airplane during take-off at a distance of 100 meters [328 feet] and quite unusual for an animal of such diminutive size.”

For Danionella cerebrum, its impressive vocals come from sound-generating apparatus that helps them communicate with one another through cloudy waters. An international team of researchers took high-speed videos of groups of fish in a tank to observe how this specialized muscle works to make noise. It is made up of drumming cartilage, a specialized rib, and even some fatigue-resistant muscle. 

To make noise, it hits the drumming cartilage against a gas-filled organ that helps them stay underwater called a swim bladder. This drumming produces rapid pulses in high and low frequencies. The higher frequency pulses are generated by compressing the swim bladder from the left and right in an alternating pattern. Lower frequency pulses are created with repeated compressions on the same size of the fish’s body. According to the study, no other fish is known to generate sound from repeated unilateral muscle contractions.

[Related: How echolocation lets bats, dolphins, and even people navigate by sound.]

The team assumes that competition between males in a very dark and murky environment has contributed to the development of this special noise making organ. Understanding the extraordinary adaptation of Danionella cerebrum is helping scientists learn more about animal movement and all of the different  propulsion mechanisms different species use. 

See-through fish like zebrafish are often used as a model organism in biomedical research since it is possible for scientists to easily study their organs and larvae since they are transparent. The fish in the Danionella genus like Danionella cerebrum offers scientists a similar opportunity to compare how the mechanisms behind sound generation differ between species. 

“The sounds produced by other Danionella species have not yet been studied in detail,” the team writes. “It would be interesting to learn how their mechanism of sound production differs and how these differences relate to evolutionary adaptation.” 

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The Florida Department of Health is investigating eight cases of measles due to an outbreak of the highly contagious disease in a school in Broward County. Six of the previously known cases are in students from Manatee Bay Elementary School, in the town of Weston, near Fort Lauderdale. New data from the state shows two more cases this week in Broward County, one case in a child under five and another in a child between five and nine-years-old. 

[Related: Some vaccinated adults may not be protected against measles.]

The United States officially got rid of endemic measles in 2000. However, the illness has begun to circulate in the US and around the world due to widespread misinformation and challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

These new cases come just a few days after Florida Surgeon General Doctor Joseph Ladapo contradicted both medical and federal guidance on when students can return to school and how to contain the spread of this preventable disease. 

What is measles?

Measles is a highly contagious respiratory disease. It is estimated that 90 percent of non-immune people exposed to an infected individual will contract the virus. Symptoms may include, cough, runny nose, watery eyes, fever, and red spots that look like a rash. It is spread through coughs and sneezes and can linger in a room for up to two hours. 

In some rare cases, measles may lead to pneumonia, encephalitis, or death. It can also weaken a patient’s immune system, making fighting future illnesses more difficult. 

How do I know if I’ve been vaccinated?

There is no one national organization that maintains vaccination records in the US. According to the CDC, a good first step is to ask parents or guardians for copies of vaccination records. These are sometimes kept in baby books, photo albums, or filing cabinets since most vaccinations are given during early childhood. 

[Related: What to know about polio boosters, oral vaccines, and your medical history records.]

If you do not have a copy at home, contact your pediatrician or doctor’s office. Depending on your age, this could take a while since records may be in deep storage. Your high school or college may also have medical records still on file. Older adults also may need additional doses of the measles vaccine. 

You can also reach out to your state’s health department, since some have registries called Immunization Information Systems. These may even include adult vaccines, like those for shingles or yearly flu and COVID-19 shots. 

If you have moved to the US from another country, vaccination information may have also been collected during the visa process. Paperwork from the medical exam may have proof of certain vaccinations.

A last step is making an appointment with a doctor or pharmacy to have a blood titer test to see what level of immunity you have to measles, chicken pox, and other diseases. This is also where you can set up an appointment for a booster or first round of vaccinations. Those vaccinated against measles are about 97 percent protected against the virus. 

What is happening in Florida?

Typically, doctors and public health officials recommend children who are not vaccinated for measles isolate for a period of 21 days if they are exposed to the virus at school. In the letter sent to parents and guardians at Manatee Bay Elementary School, Dr. Ladapo, said it was up to individual families to determine when their children can return to school.

“Because of the high likelihood of infection, it is normally recommended that children stay home until the end of the infectious period,” the letter dated February 20 read. However, Ladapo continued saying that the state “is deferring to parents or guardians to make decisions about school attendance. This recommendation may change as epidemiological investigations continue.”

[Related: The deadliest viruses in human history, from COVID to smallpox.]

This break from traditional protocol has some physicians in the area concerned. According to family physician and public health specialist Doctor George Rust, most students in Florida public schools have been vaccinated, but that number has started to decline in recent years.

“There’s the possibility that children who are not immunized and who are susceptible to measles are attending school, potentially getting measles and then transmitting it to other kids,” Rust told CNN. “Now, you’ve, on the one hand, allowed parents to make their own choices for the child who was not immunized, but you’ve also taken away some choices for those parents who may feel that their children should be protected.”

Why is measles having a resurgence?

Florida is one of 11 states who have seen cases this year alone. According to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there have been 35 measles cases reported in 15 states already this year. By comparison, there were 58 reported cases in 2023 alone. 

The current resurgence can be tied to vaccine hesitancy and misinformation surrounding the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine and a struggle in vaccinating young children due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The CDC warned physicians to “stay alert for measles” in January, as more cases emerged particularly among unvaccinated children and adolescents. 

In the US, about 92 percent of children had received their MMR vaccine by the age of two in 2023. However, this is below the federal target for herd immunity of 95 percent vaccinated. 

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Our oceans are vast and discovering new and lost species are among some of the most exciting discoveries in the big blue. An international team of scientists may have found more than 100 new species, during a mission to explore seamounts off the coast of Chile. These creatures who look like they come from a sci-fi novel call the 1,800-mile-long Salas y Gómez Ridge home. 

[Related: A sea creature extinct for half a billion years inspired a new soft robot.]

Seamounts are large underwater mountains that are often formed by volcanic activity and can be found in every ocean basin on Earth. They are a critical habitat for everything from corals and mollusks, up to crustaceans, fish and marine mammals. This newly explored underwater mountain chain comprises more than 200 seamounts and stretches from offshore Chile to Rapa Nui (Easter Island). 

Over the course of the expedition, the team mapped an area of more than 20,000 square miles of seafloor and discovered four new seamounts within Chile’s waters. They also explored two of Chile’s marine protected areas–the Juan Fernandez and Nazca-Desventuradas marine parks.

[Related: New jellyfish discovered near Japan may contain multitudes of venom.]

Researchers deployed an underwater robot named ROV SuBastian to collect data from the seamounts. ROV SuBastian can safely dive more than 14,000 feet under the Pacific and the data it collected will be used to advance protection of these underwater habitats. The scientists found that each seamount hosted distinct ecosystems. Many of these ecosystems are vulnerable, including sponge gardens and deep-sea coral reefs. 

Back on dry land, the team will spend the next several years analyzing the genetics and physiology of the specimens that they believe are new to science to confirm if they actually are new species.

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Astronomers are adding three newly discovered moons to our solar system’s growing list of known celestial bodies.  A team of international researchers spotted an additional moon circling Uranus’ for the first time in almost two decades and two new moons orbiting the planet Neptune. The discoveries were announced on February 23 by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center, a scientific organization who is responsible for designating our solar system’s comets, planets, and moons.

[Related: Neptune’s faint rings glimmer in new James Webb Space Telescope image.]

“The three newly discovered moons are the faintest ever found around these two ice giant planets using ground-based telescopes,” Scott S. Sheppard, an astronomer with the Carnegie Institution for Science who collaborated on the moons’ discovery, said in a statement. “It took special image processing to reveal such faint objects.”

Uranus’ new moon will have a dramatic name

The planet Uranus now has 28 known moons. The new moon is temporarily named S/2023 U1, but it will eventually be named after a character from a Shakespearean play. Uranus moons including Puck, Titania, and Oberon reference A Midsummer Night’s Dream, while the moon Miranda is a reference to The Tempest, both plays written by the English playwright.

At only five miles wide, S/2023 U1 is likely Uranus’ smallest known moon. It takes the tiny satellite 680 days to orbit the planet. Shepherd first spotted S/2023 U1 on November 4, 2023, using the Magellan telescopes at Carnegie Science’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Followup observations were conducted one month later. Marina Brozovic and Bob Jacobson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory then helped Shepherd determine a possible moon orbit.

New Neptunian moons–one bright, one faint

With this new discovery, the planet Neptune now has 16 known satellites. The brighter of Neptune’s two newly discovered moons is tentatively named S/2002 N5. It is 14 miles wide and appears to be in a 9-year orbit around Neptune. The fainter moon is named S/2021 N1 and it is about 8.6 miles wide. It circles the planet once every 27 years. Both of these moons will eventually be given names based on sea gods and nymphs in Greek mythology.

The two new Neptunian moons were first observed in September 2021. Shepherd worked with David Tholen of the University of Hawaii, Chad Trujillo of Northern Arizona University, and Patryk Sofia Lykawa of Kindai University, and the Subaru telescope to detect the moons. They confirmed the orbit of the brighter moon (S/2002 N5) over about two years and conducted followup observations with the Magellan telescopes.  

“Once S/2002 N5’s orbit around Neptune was determined using the 2021, 2022, and 2023 observations, it was traced back to an object that was spotted near Neptune in 2003 but lost before it could be confirmed as orbiting the planet,” said Sheppard. 

Detecting the fainter moon (S/2021 N1) required some special observing time under “ultra-pristine conditions” at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and on Gemini Observatory’s 8-meter telescope in order to secure its orbit. 

[Related: Expect NASA to probe Uranus within the next 10 years.]

By using these telescopes, shepherd and colleagues snapped dozens of five-minute exposures over three- or four-hour periods on a series of nights. The short-burst images were then layered so that all three new moons could come into view. 

“Because the moons move in just a few minutes relative to the background stars and galaxies, single long exposures are not ideal for capturing deep images of moving objects,” Sheppard said. “By layering these multiple exposures together, stars and galaxies appear with trails behind them, and objects in motion similar to the host planet will be seen as point sources, bringing the moons out from behind the background noise in the images.” 

More understanding of how these moons were captured can help astronomers learn about the tumultuous early years of our solar system and how the planets at the out edge move. Future missions to Uranus and Neptune are in the preliminary planning stages, and more data on their moons will allow the team to better study these far-flung planets. 

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Coral reefs all over the world are in serious danger. However, a critical way to keep reefs healthy likely comes from a lowly animal, some of whom spray goo out of their butts in self-defense. According to a study published February 26 in the journal Nature Communications, about 25 percent of coral reef’s health is dependent on sea cucumbers that keep the reefs clean. 

[Related: Surprise! These sea cucumbers glow.]

Over harvesting a critical member of the reef

Coral reefs currently face numerous threats, from ocean temperatures soaring to 100 degrees Fahrenheit to light harming their reproduction to bleaching. Reef health also may depend on sea cucumbers and the role that they play in the reef ecosystem. There are more than 1,200 species of sea cucumbers in the world’s oceans. These marine invertebrates can be less than an inch long up to six feet long and use their butts for both eating and breathing. They gobble up sediments on the ocean floor and on coral reefs similar to robot vacuum cleaners, sucking up, digesting, and then excreting sediments and eating bacteria. However, sea cucumbers have been over harvested for hundreds of years and cannot cannot reproduce in low density areas and are much more difficult to find.

“Humans have largely extirpated sea cucumbers from much of the world’s oceans and are still collecting thousands of tons per year,” Georgia Tech university marine ecologist Mark Hay tells PopSci. 

Between 2022 and 2020, annual wild harvests of sea cucumbers increased by about 30 percent. According to the authors of this study, this overharvesting is likely having direct effects on reefs, since removing predators from the ecosystem can have cascading effects on the ecosystem. Overhunting of otters for their pelts has led to degradation of kelp forests in California. Wolves can help keep the beaver population in check, and prevent their dams from creating ponds that turn forests into wetlands.

‘Scum suckers in the great fishtank of Earth’

To gather more concrete data on the role sea cucumbers play on the reef, Hay and research scientist and ecologist Cody Clements looked at Mo’orea, a tropical island in French Polynesia. Clements has planted upwards of 10,000 corals over the course of his career. He was planting coral in the sand off the island shore where many sea cucumbers were present. When he cleared them out, he noticed that the corals started to die. 

[Related: Scientists are intentionally bleaching and ‘cryopreserving’ coral.]

“I’ve planted a lot of corals in my day, and my corals generally don’t die,” Clements said in a statement. “So I thought there must be something to this.” Clements is also a co-author of this new study.

With this oddity in mind, Hay and Clements designed an experiment. The team set up patches to monitor the health of the coral with and without sea cucumbers. They marked the patches with GPS and monitored their health daily. 

They found that the coral patches without sea cucumbers had a white band developing at the base of the corals. This white band would eventually work its way up and kill the entire coral colony. Hay refers to this as the “white band of death” and it is associated with coral diseases seen all over the world.

The presence of sea cucumbers appeared to suppress the spread of coral disease. Hays and Clements found that corals without sea cucumbers present were 15 times more likely to die. They conducted a similar experiment in Palmyra Atoll, part of the U.S. Minor Outlying Islands. This experiment used different coral species and different sea cucumbers, but yielded similar results. Sea cucumbers seemed to be a major missing component of what had previously been an intact ecological system. 

“If you remove all the scum suckers in the great fish tank of Earth, you’re going to get a dirty tank eventually,” Clements said. “People have paid lip service to the idea that sea cucumbers could be important for a long time, but we didn’t know the scale of their importance until now.”

An ecological fuse?

In future studies, Hay says the team hopes to investigate which coral species are most susceptible and most resilient to a drop in sea cucumber populations, which sea cucumber species are the most critical to reef function, and study the effects of warming ocean temperatures and added nutrients on reef and sea cucumber health. 

The team also warns of the effects of removing so many sea cucumbers from the ecosystem, and urges major cutbacks to pollution and overharvesting in order to increase sea cucumber populations and reef health at the same time.

“This removal may have lit an ecological fuse that has been slow burning for decades but is now blowing up as devastating episodes of coral disease as we nutrify and heat the ocean, both of which advantage pathogens,” says Hay. “Just as sanitation workers were ‘essential workers’ during COVID, sea cucumbers may be essential workers on the reef. But we are only now recognizing their role and critical importance.”

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The Year of the Dragon is off to an exciting paleontological start. Only a few weeks following Lunar New Year celebrations around the world, an international team of scientists have fully described a 240-million-year old aquatic Chinese reptile for the first time. With its impressively long neck with 32 separate neck vertebrae, Dinocephalosaurus orientalis resembles the mythological fire breathers and water beasts of ancient lore. The species is described in a study published February 23 in the journal Earth and Environmental Science: Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

[Related: Bite marks on Triassic fossils show signs of bloody dino decapitation.]

Dinocephalosaurus lived in what is now China about 240 million years ago during the Triassic Period. It likely used its signature long neck to hunt smaller aquatic creatures. According to the study, it was well adapted to life in the ocean, due to its flippered limbs and some well-preserved fish found in its abdomen. While it may look like the more famous long-necked plesiosaurs, Dinocephalosaurus was not closely related to them. Plesiosaurs evolved around 40 million years later, but likely inspired the myth of the Loch Ness Monster. 

The fossils were first discovered in Guizhou Province in southern China in 2003. The remains were not initially complete, but further excavations allowed paleontologists to find the more complete remains. Over 10 years, researchers studied the fossil at the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology in Beijing. The institute is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. 

“This has been an international effort. Working together with colleagues from the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Europe, we used newly discovered specimens housed at the Chinese Academy of Sciences to build on our existing knowledge of this animal,” study co-author and Chinese Academy of Sciences paleontologist Li Chun said in a statement. “Among all of the extraordinary finds we have made in the Triassic of Guizhou Province, Dinocephalosaurus probably stands out as the most remarkable.” 

It also looks like another marine reptile from Europe and China in the Middle Triassic called Tanystropheus hydroides. Both reptiles were a similar size and shared some skull features. However, Dinocephalosaurus has more vertebrae in the neck and torso, making it look more like a snake.  

“This discovery allows us to see this remarkable long-necked animal in full for the very first time,” study co-author and Keeper of Natural Sciences at National Museums Scotland Nick Fraser said in a statement. “It is yet one more example of the weird and wonderful world of the Triassic that continues to baffle paleontologists. We are certain that it will capture imaginations across the globe due to its striking appearance, reminiscent of the long and snake-like, mythical Chinese Dragon.” 

[Related: This ancient reptile had a super long neck to sneak up on unsuspecting fish.]

China has been a fossil treasure trove over the past several years. Scientists in southern China discovered a fossilized egg containing the most complete dino embryo to date in late 2021. The embryo is estimated to be roughly 10.6 inches long. In September 2023, a new species Fujianvenator prodigiosus was uncovered in the Middle–Late Jurassic Yanliao Biota in northeast China that filled in some major gaps in dinosaur to bird evolution.

“As an early-career researcher, it has been an incredible experience to contribute to these significant findings,” Stephan Spiekman, a study-co author and paleontologist at Germany’s Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History, said in a statement. “We hope that our future research will help us understand more about the evolution of this group of animals, and particularly how the elongate neck functioned.” 

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Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may be the winners of a mysterious 37-year-long game of hide-and-seek and solved a stellar death mystery in the process. They detected the best known evidence for a neutron star laying in the remnants of one of the most famous supernovae in space. 

This massive star explosion created so much debris that it took several years and one of the most powerful space telescopes ever created to peer through the wreckage of its stellar death. The findings are detailed in a study published February 22 in the journal Science and advances the study of these dramatic celestial deaths. 

“The mystery over whether a neutron star is hiding in the dust has lasted for more than 30 years and it is exciting that we have solved it,” study co-author and University College London astrophysicist Mike Barlow said in a statement.

[Related: An amateur astronomer spotted a new supernova remarkably close to Earth.]

What is a supernova?

A supernova is the explosive final death of some of the most massive stars in the known universe. They occur in stars that are eight to 10 times the mass of our sun, so it can take years for all of that gas and energy to collapse in on itself. Its final initial death blows can end within a few hours, but the brightness of the explosion will generally peak within a few months. Importantly, supernovae offer a way for scientists to study a key astronomical process in real time. Explosions like these fill space with the iron, silicon, carbon, and oxygen that build future stars and planets. They can even create the molecules that create life. 

In the study, the team looked at Supernova (SN) 1987A. This well known supernova occurred 160,000 light-years from Earth in a region called the Large Magellanic Cloud. Its light was first observed on Earth in February 1987, with its brightness peaking that May. It was the first supernova that could be seen with the naked eye since Kepler’s Supernova in 1604.

“Supernovae are the main sources of chemical elements that make life possible–so we want to get our models of them right,” said Barlow. “There is no other object like the neutron star in Supernova 1987A, so close to us and having formed so recently. Because the material surrounding it is expanding, we will see more of it as time goes on.”

SN 1987A is also considered a core-collapse supernova, where its compacted remains could form a neutron star or a black hole. Some incredibly small subatomic particles produced by the supernova called neutrinos indicated that a neutron star may have formed. However, in the almost 40 years since SN 1987A was detected, it has not been clear if this neutron star persisted or collapsed into a black hole. The star has been hidden by dust from the explosion.  

How JWST confirmed a neutron star

The observations for this work were taken on July 16, 2022, just after the space telescope became operational. The team in the study used JWST instruments–MIRI and NIRSpec–that can observe the supernova at infrared wavelengths to peer beyond the dust. They found evidence of heavy argon and sulfur atoms whose outer electrons had been stripped off near where the explosion occurred. This process is called ionization. 

[Related: See the stunning Supernova 1987A in a whole new light.]

They modeled multiple scenarios and found that the atoms may have been ionized by ultraviolet and X-ray radiation from a hot cooling neutron star. It also could have been due to the winds of relativistic particles that were accelerated by a quickly rotating neutron star and interacting with material from the supernova. 

“Our detection with James Webb’s MIRI and NIRSpec spectrometers of strong ionized argon and sulfur emission lines from the very center of the nebula that surrounds Supernova 1987A is direct evidence of the presence of a central source of ionizing radiation,” said Barlow. “Our data can only be fitted with a neutron star as the power source of that ionizing radiation.”

The findings are consistent with several theories about how neutron stars form. Models suggest that sulfur and argon are produced in large amounts inside of a dying star just before it goes supernova. Scientists studying SN 1987A and other supernovae predicted that ultraviolet and X-radiation in a supernova remnant would indicate that a newborn neutron star was present. Now, using ultraviolet and X-ray radiation was what helped us find it. 

“This supernova keeps offering us surprises,” study co-author and Sweden Royal Institute of Technology astrophysicist Josefin Larsson said in a statement. “Nobody had predicted that the compact object would be detected through a super strong emission line from argon, so it’s kind of amusing that that’s how we found it in the JWST.”

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