Scientists keep peeling back new layers of life on our planet like a seemingly endless onion. Most recently, aquanauts on board a vessel from the Schmidt Ocean Institute used an underwater robot to turn over slabs of volcanic crust in the deep, dark Pacific. Underneath the seafloor of this well-studied site, the international team of

The Dune books (and subsequent movies) are some of the most epic in all of sci-fi, and the iconic Shai-Hulid sandworms from Dune have now inspired the naming of a new species of ancient sea worm, the Shaihuludia shurikeni. The discovery was made in a geologic formation crossing northern Utah and southern Idaho, well known

In 1956, a teenage girl by the name of Tina Negus was summering in the United Kingdom’s Charnwood Forest with her family, when she noticed a curious imprint on an overhanging rock face. It looked like a fern. But as a budding geologist, Negus knew these 600 million year old rocks were too old to

A massive viper is wriggling through the forests of Africa right now that has a bite like no other. Its 5-centimeter-long (2 inches) retractable fangs are the largest of any snake on Earth, capable of taking down prey as large as an antelope. The Gaboon viper’s (Bitis gabonica) sheer size makes it a fearsome predator

“A diamond is forever.” That iconic slogan, coined for a highly successful advertising campaign in the 1940s, sold the gemstones as a symbol of eternal commitment and unity. But our new research, carried out by researchers in a variety of countries and published in Nature, suggests that diamonds may be a sign of break up

The bones of a whale that lived 39 million years ago are seriously testing what we thought was possible for the size of vertebrates. The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) has long been considered the heaviest animal ever to have lived on Earth. But the newly discovered Perucetus colossus could leave it in the dust. Measurements

Divers in California have captured a rare video of a killer whale “slurping” the liver out of a live shark. The gruesome footage shows an orca tearing into the stomach of a 30-foot (9 meter) long whale shark before removing its liver. Other nearby orcas are heard clicking excitedly as the killer whale swims away

The earliest impact scars from asteroids that bombarded Earth’s surface may be lost forever to the ravages of time. According to a new analysis, there’s a reason scientists have been unable to find any craters older than about 2 billion years. The constant erosion and geological processes on Earth have likely erased them from the

Something truly and wonderfully special has been found in a 505-million-year-old Canadian fossil bed. There, preserved in the especially fine silt of a lagerstätte, paleontologists found more than 170 exquisite fossils of ancient jellyfish that swam Earth’s waters hundreds of millions of years before the first dinosaurs trod its soil. The find is incredible because

Until the late 19th century, the success of criminal investigations largely hung on witness reports and (often extorted) confessions. A lack of scientific tools meant investigators needed advanced deductive reasoning abilities – and even then they’d often hit a dead end. Today, investigations demand an interdisciplinary and high-tech approach, involving experts from diverse scientific disciplines.

Caecilian mothers grow a fatty skin layer for their babies to tear off and eat. It offers not only nourishment for their offspring but also microbes, providing a starter kit for their young’s own microbiome, new research has discovered. Caecilians are weird, mysterious creatures. They look sort of like huge worms or small snakes, but

Scientists have discovered an “astounding diversity” of giant viruses taking on “previously unimaginable” shapes and forms in just a few handfuls of forest soil. These giant viruses have alien-looking appendages and internal structures that have never been seen before. The soil sample was collected in 2019 from Harvard Forest, a short drive from Boston in

Scientists have discovered an exceptional case of a partially warm-blooded fish, fundamentally changing our understanding of fish physiology. The fact that basking sharks (Cetorhinus maximus) show elevated body temperatures while swimming is like “finding that cows have wings,” says marine biologist Nicholas Payne from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. Of all the shark and fish

Scientists said on Friday they have genetically engineered female fruit flies that can have offspring without needing a male, marking the first time ‘virgin birth” has been induced in an animal. The offspring of the flies were also able to give birth without mating, showing that the trait could be passed down generations, in another

Digging deep into the Volyn quartz mine, near the city of Zhytomyr in Ukraine, scientists have discovered the oldest three-dimensional microfossils ever found – trapped in time some 1.5 billion years ago. Being able to get a window that far back into history is of course hugely exciting for experts. Fossils can tell us a

Playful behavior was once considered a rare phenomenon in the animal kingdom, and yet recent evidence suggests birds, bees, apes, marsupials, lizards, turtles, crocodiles, and maybe even fish can all engage in play. A new study on the ‘rough and tumble’ play of young rats supports the idea that social amusement is instinctual among mammals

An international effort to revive an ancient roundworm, frozen in Siberian permafrost for millennia, has unleashed a lifeform even older than scientists once thought. In 2018, several resurrected nematodes, of the genus Panagrolaimus, were dated to around 32,000 years old. But now, more precise radiocarbon dating suggests these soil worms have remained ‘dead awake’ in

Venus flytraps (Dionaea muscipula) are some of the most ferocious plants on Earth. These carnivorous plants appear most fearsome in the moments before they pounce, when they are poised to ensnare their prey. Fangs agape, the Venus flytrap waits. Until an insect or spider tickles one of its sensory hairs – once, twice – then

For years, as the climate warms, Siberia’s permafrost has been showing signs of collapse, with sinkholes appearing out of nowhere and bubbles of gas erupting under people’s feet. The biggest and most well known of those sinkholes is known by the local Yakutian people as the ‘doorway to the underworld’. When we reported on the

A giant creature thought to inhabit the waters of Scotland’s Loch Ness remains a popular subject of speculation, in spite of pretty thorough debunkings. One of the last plausible explanations for the beast has now too joined the discard pile. After careful investigation, data scientist Floe Foxon of Pinney Associates and the Folk Zoology Society

A beautifully preserved fossil forest uncovered on a river bank in Japan has been described in detail for the first time. The rare site takes scientists one step closer to reconstructing an entire Eurasian plant from the late Miocene epoch, and filling in one of the many gaps in the botanical tree of life. The

Tiger sharks are usually solitary creatures, but nothing brings the scavengers together like the delicious scent of a dead whale. These big blubber buffets can draw dozens of sharks all at once, yet such feasts are seldom caught on camera. In late June, a drone flying off the coast of Queensland, Australia captured an exceptional

Deep under the ocean, not all ecosystems are built alike. And, as an international team of scientists has now found, the very deepest depths are dominated by a particular kind of organism. Below a depth of around 4,400 meters (14,436 feet), most of the creatures lurking in the darkness have soft, squishy bodies. It’s only

A submerged volcano is exuding hot fluid deep below the sea off the Pacific coast of Canada, and thousands of eggs look like ravioli on its summit. The crew of the 2023 Northeast Pacific Deep-sea Expedition provided a captivating wrap-up video of their once-in-a-lifetime scientific expedition to the underwater volcano that was believed to be