New research suggests that the dodo, an extinct bird whose name has entered popular culture as a symbol of stupidity, was actually fairly smart. The work, published today in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 23, 2016
8
1131
Fighting ants, giant solider termites, and foraging worker ants recently discovered in 100-million-year-old amber provide direct evidence for advanced social behavior in ancient ants and termites—two groups that are immensely ...
Archaeology
Feb 11, 2016
5
225
Researchers have named a new leech after best-selling author Amy Tan based on an innovative method for peering inside soft-bodied animals. Chtonobdella tanae, a terrestrial leech from Australia, is the first new species of ...
Archaeology
Jan 21, 2016
1
12
New research led by the American Museum of Natural History reveals that the evolution of modern birds was greatly shaped by the history of our planet's geography and climate. The DNA-based work, published today in the journal ...
Evolution
Dec 11, 2015
0
309
The La Brea Tar Pits, the world's richest Ice Age fossil site, is famous for saber-toothed cats, mammoths, and giant sloths, but it also has numerous insect and plant fossils. New research on fossil galls—abnormal plant ...
Archaeology
Nov 9, 2015
0
56
As climate change accelerates ice melt in the Arctic, polar bears may find caribou and snow geese replacing seals as an important food source, shows a recent study published in the journal PLOS ONE. The research, by Linda ...
Ecology
Sep 4, 2015
2
65
New research shows that the fearsome teeth of the saber-toothed cat Smilodon fatalis fully emerged at a later age than those of modern big cats, but grew at a rate about double that of their living relatives. The findings, ...
Archaeology
Jul 1, 2015
0
73
Somehow, colorful tropical scarlet macaws from tropical Mesoamerica—the term anthropologists use to refer to Mexico and parts of northern Central America—ended up hundreds of miles north in the desert ruins of an ancient ...
Archaeology
Jun 22, 2015
1
984
For the first time, researchers have created a visual atlas and dictionary of terms for the many strange features on the fearsome-looking jaws of a little known group of arachnids. Called camel spiders, baardskeerders [beard-cutters], ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 22, 2015
0
28
Conservation scientists have demonstrated a new technique to non-invasively survey tigers using their scent sprays, which are detected much more frequently in the wild than scat—the "breadcrumb" that researchers have traditionally ...
Ecology
Jun 18, 2015
0
18
