6+ hour, 29+ min ago   (1063+ words) Perching birds evolved their body shapes in rare, sudden bursts that lined up with moments of upheaval in Earth’s climate. A new study reconstructs about 50 million years of change in their skeletons. Most of that change was packed into a…...

18+ hour, 18+ min ago   (1075+ words) A new study has found that the ferns which took over Europe after the mass extinction 201 million years ago were the fuel for enormous fires. Those fern savannahs burned again and again for tens of thousands of years. The finding…...

2+ day, 9+ hour ago   (810+ words) Seventy million years ago, titanosaur carcasses lay exposed in what is now central Spain, long enough for specialized beetles to bore into their bones and armor plating. A new study has identified the telltale perforations those beetles left behind. The…...

2+ day, 13+ hour ago   (939+ words) Carnivores can have teeth that slice or teeth that crush, but not both. Researchers found this trade-off is so strict that it has repeatedly steered unrelated predators toward the same few tooth designs. Tested directly for the first time, that…...

2+ day, 13+ hour ago   (1038+ words) A new study has found that animal bones lying on the floors of underwater caves carry a hidden record of how they got there. The record reveals whether each bone settled while submerged or while sitting on dry ground. Much…...

2+ day, 15+ hour ago   (757+ words) Long before coral reefs or modern seafloor ecosystems existed, the ocean floor was littered with something surprisingly unused: empty mollusk shells. New research reveals that around 470 million years ago, marine animals began colonizing the hollow interiors of these shells for…...

4+ day, 7+ hour ago   (936+ words) Marsupials grow their newborns’ arms before nearly anything else forms, building working forelimbs while the embryo is still a flat sheet of cells, according to a new study. In the two marsupials studied, a featureless bud becomes a clawed, working…...

5+ day, 1+ hour ago   (906+ words) Every movement you make begins with the same tiny molecular interaction. A protein called myosin grabs onto another protein, actin, and pulls. That pull is what makes muscles contract. Scientists first worked out this mechanism in mammals about a century…...

5+ day, 8+ hour ago   (895+ words) For a long time, the story of the tuna began with a catastrophe. An asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago, wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs, and cleared the oceans of their largest predatory fish. The tidy version says tunas and…...

1+ week, 2+ day ago   (849+ words) Long before the first dinosaur took a step, strange sea creatures shaped like stalked flowers were already thriving in some of Earth’s earliest coral reefs. This was before plants or animals had even made their way onto dry land. Now,…...