In June 1991, Mount Pinatubo, a volcanic peak on the Philippine Island of Luzon, literally blew its top. It was the second-most powerful volcanic eruption of the 20th century, ten times stronger than Mount Saint Helens, and ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 22, 2021
4
2544
Tyrannosaurus rex was one of the biggest meat-eating dinosaurs of all time—it measured up to 42 feet long from snout to tail and would have weighed in at around 16,000 pounds. And it wasn't alone—some of its less-well-known ...
Archaeology
Nov 24, 2020
0
600
Picture the Amazon. You're thinking lush rainforests teeming with animals, right? It turns out, the Amazon Basin contains other less-famous ecosystems that have been under-studied by biologists for years, including patches ...
Evolution
Nov 17, 2020
1
226
On the night of January 16, 2018, a fireball meteor streaked across the sky over the Midwest and Ontario before landing on a frozen lake in Michigan. Scientists used weather radar to find where the pieces landed and meteorite ...
Space Exploration
Oct 27, 2020
0
1173
All good things must come to an end. Whether societies are ruled by ruthless dictators or more well-meaning representatives, they fall apart in time, with different degrees of severity. In a new paper, anthropologists examined ...
Social Sciences
Oct 16, 2020
14
4154
Ninety-three years ago, a scientist trapped a mouse in a stream in Ethiopia. Of all the mice, rats, and gerbils in Africa, it stood out as the one most adapted for living in water, with water-resistant fur and long, broad ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 8, 2020
1
558
Birds tweet, squawk, chirp, hoot, cluck, and screech to communicate with each other. Some birds have found another way to talk, though: they make sounds by fluttering their feathers or smacking their wings together really ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 22, 2020
0
262
If you've ever seen a bat flying around at sunset, chances are good it was a vesper bat. They're the biggest bat family, made up of 500 species, found on every continent except Antarctica. And most of them look a lot alike—they're ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 27, 2020
0
1243
Male lions typically have manes. Male peacocks have six-foot-long tail feathers. Female eagles and hawks can be about 30% bigger than males. But if you only had these animals' fossils to go off of, it would be hard to confidently ...
Archaeology
Aug 27, 2020
0
363
Lichens may be the most easily overlooked life forms in nature. If you spend much time outside, you probably see some every day, although you might not know it—most people are likely to think they're moss. However, lichens ...
Evolution
Aug 11, 2020
0
582
