Plants & Animals

Chimpanzee empire falls apart in rare instance of division and deadly violence

The largest group of wild chimpanzees known to scientists has permanently split in two. In a study published in Science, researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and other institutions report the first clearly documented ...

Evolution

Mammal ancestors laid eggs—and this 250-million-year-old fossil proves it

A remarkable new discovery is shedding light on one of the greatest survival stories in Earth's history, and answering a decades-old scientific mystery. Lystrosaurus, a hardy, plant-eating mammal ancestor, rose to prominence ...

What if dark matter came in two states?

The absence of a signal could itself be a signal. This is the idea behind a new study published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, which aims to redefine how we search for dark matter, showing that it ...

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Tech Xplore

It's OK to love all the bees (the honey bees, too)

North America's bee populations are in trouble, but don't blame the honey bees. While some people argue that an overabundance of managed honey bees—those raised to help pollinate crops and produce honey—is causing native ...

Study rethinks the dropout-crime connection

Dropping out of high school has been linked to higher rates of delinquency and lower socioeconomic status, but thinking of high school dropouts collectively, as one group, is a flawed belief that could be affecting interventions. ...

First close pair of supermassive black holes detected

Supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies are one of the most active fields of research in astronomy. In order to accumulate their enormous masses, they must merge with each other. A research team led by Silke Britzen ...

'Oldest octopus' fossil is no octopus at all, scans reveal

A famous 300-million-year-old fossil that was thought to be the world's oldest octopus—even featuring in the Guinness Book of Records—has turned out to be something else altogether. In what amounts to a case of mistaken identity, ...

Do you see faces in the clouds? Researchers examine pareidolia

Humans are masters of seeing faces in any old thing—a handbag, TV static, toasted white bread. Scientists want to know why. A few years ago, as the category 5 Hurricane Milton bore down on the Florida coast, the internet ...

Cryogenic microcalorimetry: New tool for nuclear dating

The moment nuclear material is produced, processed or purified, it sets off a hidden countdown, marked by the half-life of its radioactive atoms as they begin to decay. For scientists tracking the origins of these substances, ...

AI system can predict seasonal droughts

Researchers at the Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering (IIAMA) at the Universitat Politècnica de València have developed an advanced system for seasonal forecasting of meteorological droughts that enables these ...

How can science support and enable the High Seas Treaty?

The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) agreement—often known as the High Seas Treaty—came into force in January 2026 following almost two decades of negotiations. Its key objectives are the conservation and ...