https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. The rise in infertility is not limited to humans, as environmental stressors are quietly undermining the reproductive potential of different forms of life. A recent review published in npj Emerging Contaminants investigated how today's environmental challenges are shaping the reproductive capacity of both humans and animals. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-invisible-fertility-crisis-chemicals-climate.html Environment Tue, 28 Apr 2026 14:00:02 EDT news696602190 Between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, many of the world's largest mammals disappeared. Picture creatures like saber-toothed cats with 7-inch fangs and elephant-sized sloths. Woolly mammoths whose curved tusks grew longer than 12 feet. Even a three-ton wombat the size of a car. After roaming Earth for millions of years, most large-bodied mammals—especially those weighing over a ton—were wiped out. Vanished. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-giants-years-triggered-ripple-effects.html Ecology Mon, 27 Apr 2026 15:00:11 EDT news696242881 Roaring over long distances is a key behavior of lions. They communicate within prides as well as with other animals using distinct sequences of moans and grunts. Scientists from the GAIA Initiative have now published a machine learning approach in the journal Ecological Informatics that improves how roaring behavior can be studied. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-machine-roars-lion-collars-actual.html Ecology Thu, 23 Apr 2026 14:20:02 EDT news696163502 Burning time for North American wildfires is going into overtime. Flames are lasting later into the night and starting earlier in the morning because human-caused climate change is extending the hotter and drier conditions that feed fires, a new study found. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-wildfires-night-climate-prime-hours.html Environment Sat, 18 Apr 2026 06:16:17 EDT news695711720 Animal communication can look wildly different—flashing lights, chirping calls, croaking songs and elaborate dances. But new research from Northwestern University suggests many of these signals share a surprising feature: They repeat at nearly the same tempo. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-nature-universal-rhythm.html Ecology Wed, 15 Apr 2026 09:20:09 EDT news695461382 Imagine a creature nearly twice the size of a modern African elephant, which can weigh up to 6,000 kg. This was Elephas (Paleoxodon) recki, a prehistoric titan that roamed the landscape of what is now Tanzania nearly two million years ago. Now, imagine a group of our ancestors standing over its carcass, then butchering it and eating it. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-elephant-fossil-tanzania-oldest-butchering.html Archaeology Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:00:02 EDT news694695961 A paleontologist from The University of Texas at Austin has discovered the fossilized remains of Ice Age animals that have never been found in Central Texas before—and he came across the bones while snorkeling for fossils in an underground stream. The new fossils are from a giant tortoise and an armadillo relative called a pampathere that was about the size of a lion. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-ice-age-animals-slice-earth.html Paleontology & Fossils Wed, 25 Mar 2026 21:20:03 EDT news693672121 When the H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza virus was discovered on a poultry farm in Asia in 1996, there was little indication that it would become so widespread and so destructive. Within 30 years, it reached every continental region except Oceania, infecting more than 400 million poultry, tens of thousands of elephant seals and sea lions, about 1,000 people and many other mammals and wild birds. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-h5n1-marine-mammals-tallies-sea.html Plants & Animals Thu, 19 Mar 2026 17:00:01 EDT news693153961 A humpback whale alters the pitch of its song when joined by a neighboring singer, a finding that opens a new chapter in the ongoing effort to understand whale song, some of the most structurally and acoustically complex vocal patterns produced by mammals. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-whale-song-remix-humpbacks-shift.html Plants & Animals Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:40:01 EDT news692883002 The More You Know: This week, researchers successfully reconstructed videos from the brain activity of mice. According to a new study, female birds are more likely to sing when their extended families help with childcare. And mathematicians have disproven a decades-old classical geometry rule by constructing two compact, self-contained torus objects that have the same metric and mean curvature but are structurally different on a global scale. So that's neat. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-saturday-citations-neurology-huge-croc.html Other Sat, 14 Mar 2026 09:00:02 EDT news692620799 Neuroscientists have uncovered new insights into a key evolutionary question: Why can humans talk when most animals can't? The journal Science published the research led by Emory University and the New College of Florida. The findings suggest that seals and sea lions may have vocal flexibility as a side effect of developing a brain "bypass" for voluntary breath control. This same bypass allowed them to adapt to aquatic life. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-sea-lions-clues-evolution-vocalization.html Plants & Animals Thu, 12 Mar 2026 17:10:01 EDT news692553061 A joint archaeological mission by the University of Tübingen and the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (MoTA) has documented the world's most extensive find of inscribed pottery sherds at the Upper Egypt site of Athribis. The archaeologists have recovered more than 43,000 ostraca between 2005 and 2026, more than 42,000 of them in the past eight years alone. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-upper-egypt-site-yielded-inscribed.html Archaeology Thu, 12 Mar 2026 15:20:10 EDT news692534522 More than 3 million years ago, when our ancient ancestors embodied by the iconic Lucy were roaming the African landscape, they would have feared a big, bad crocodile with a prominent lump on its head, patiently lurking in rivers and lakes to attack them. According to a research team led by the University of Iowa, that crocodile is a new species. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-crocodylus-lucivenator-foot-predator-iconic.html Paleontology & Fossils Thu, 12 Mar 2026 01:10:01 EDT news692452021 A team of researchers from The University of Texas at El Paso has uncovered new evidence explaining why the rattlesnake's rattle—one of nature's most iconic warning signals—has persisted and proven so effective across millions of years. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-3d-rattlesnake-reveals-rattle.html Plants & Animals Wed, 11 Mar 2026 14:00:14 EDT news692441101 A page long believed to have been lost from the Archimedes Palimpsest, one of the most important surviving manuscripts of antiquity, has been identified at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Blois, central France, by a CNRS researcher. Initial analysis confirms that the page corresponds to page 123 of the Palimpsest and contains a passage from Archimedes' treatise "On the Sphere and the Cylinder," Book I, Propositions 39 to 41. The discovery is presented in an appearing in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-lost-page-archimedes-palimpsest-blois.html Archaeology Mon, 09 Mar 2026 10:40:03 EDT news692268829 In 2022, a Russian whale researcher made a remarkable discovery on Bering Island off Russia's Pacific coast: a severed killer whale fin marked with the teeth of another killer whale. In 2024, it happened again. The two finds were two kilometers apart. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-killer-whales-cannibals-dont.html Plants & Animals Mon, 02 Mar 2026 18:40:01 EST news691685222 Members of the arachnid class—think spiders, scorpions and harvestmen (daddy long legs)—are often the targets of revulsion, disgust and fear. Yet, they are crucial for ecosystems to thrive. Given the crash in worldwide biodiversity, including what some call the "insect apocalypse," a pair of ecologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst decided to check in on the general state of insects and arachnids in the U.S.—only to discover massive gaps in the data. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-spiders-real-horror-story-world.html Plants & Animals Mon, 02 Mar 2026 15:00:01 EST news691340307 A new study spanning 11 years of data has revealed a clear link between wildfire smoke pollution and an increase in violent assaults in Seattle. These findings represent the first direct causal evidence that short-term exposure to wildfire-driven air pollution can increase interpersonal violence in an urban environment. The work is published in Environmental Research Letters . https://phys.org/news/2026-02-wildfire-linked-violent-assaults-year.html Environment Thu, 26 Feb 2026 04:00:01 EST news691231322 Scores of sea lions continue to beach themselves along the Southern California coastline, stricken with sickness. Toxic algae blooms are to blame, though a mechanical engineering innovation could shift the tide in favor of the marine mammals. Now, UNLV-led research published in Scientific Reports has successfully developed a synthetic California sea lion pelvic region, mimicking its bone and soft tissue. This allows medical professionals to conduct blood collection training on anatomically authentic models, improving efforts to treat the live animals. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-3d-synthetic-sea-lion-pelvis.html Biotechnology Wed, 25 Feb 2026 18:10:01 EST news691258501 Over 40,000 years ago, our early ancestors were already carving signs into tools and sculptures. According to a new analysis by linguist Christian Bentz at Saarland University and archaeologist Ewa Dutkiewicz at the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte (Museum of Prehistory and Early History) in Berlin, these sign sequences have the same level of complexity and information density as the earliest proto-cuneiform script that emerged tens of thousands of years later, around 3,000 B.C.E. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-year-stone-age-paved-mesopotamia.html Archaeology Mon, 23 Feb 2026 15:00:09 EST news690820220 Research from Adelaide University and the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) has shown for the first time that Australian sea lion pups can learn foraging behavior from their mothers. Social information transition exists in some mammals, such as sea otters, bottlenose dolphins and chimpanzees—the latter of which teaches their young to fish for termites using a stick. However, this type of behavior was not previously known in otariids, or "eared seals," the family of pinnipeds that comprises fur seals and sea lions. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-australian-sea-lion-pups-foraging.html Plants & Animals Sat, 21 Feb 2026 13:00:03 EST news690716191 A protein called neurofilament light chain (NfL)—studied in humans in the context of neurodegenerative diseases and aging—is also detectable in the blood of numerous animals, and NfL levels increase with age in mice, cats, dogs and horses. Experts from the DZNE and the Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research (HIH) at the University of Tübingen report these findings in PLOS Biology. In their view, this biomarker could help to assess the biological age of animals and estimate their life expectancy. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-blood-marker-dementia-track-aging.html Plants & Animals Fri, 20 Feb 2026 12:40:01 EST news690808575 There aren't any native lion or tiger populations living in Japan today, but this was not always the case. Fossil evidence indicates that at least one species of large cat roamed the archipelago during the Late Pleistocene—a period lasting from approximately 129,000 to 11,700 years ago. While researchers initially thought the fossils came from ancient tigers, new DNA evidence, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicates that the fossils actually came from an ancient species of lion. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-japan-ancient-tigers-cave-lions.html Molecular & Computational biology Mon, 16 Feb 2026 12:00:03 EST news690463233 More than 50 skuas in Antarctica died from the high pathogenicity avian influenza virus H5N1 in the summers of 2023 and 2024, marking the first documented die-off of wildlife from the virus on the continent. That is confirmed for the first time in a study led by Erasmus MC in The Netherlands and the University of California, Davis. It was published this week in the journal Scientific Reports. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-skua-deaths-wildlife-die-due.html Ecology Thu, 05 Feb 2026 11:50:41 EST news689514601 The mushrooms spread out on the chopping board seemed normal enough. They were rich and dense, and had a strong earthy aroma. In the saucepan, they melted—along with the cheese—to form a creamy pasta sauce. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-ate-space-mushrooms-survived-tale.html Space Exploration Tue, 03 Feb 2026 11:00:06 EST news689338528 It might be less visible than dwindling lion populations or vanishing pandas, but the quiet crisis of small mammal extinction is arguably worse for biodiversity. These species are crucial indicators of environmental health, but they can be very hard to monitor, and many species with very different ecological niches look almost identical. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-footprint-tracker-tiny-mammals-accuracy.html Plants & Animals Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:02 EST news688292761 In the Kenyan savanna, lions and livestock essentially live in shifts: Cattle graze during the day and are enclosed at night when lions are active. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-kenya-big-cats-pressure-cattle.html Plants & Animals Wed, 21 Jan 2026 14:47:19 EST news688229221 Previous research set off alarm bells by showing that mountain lion populations across California are more different genetically than normal for a wide-roaming predator. New findings published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment have provided an explanation. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-young-mountain-lions-barriers-roads.html Plants & Animals Thu, 04 Dec 2025 08:42:31 EST news684060121 A new study has found African lions produce not one, but two distinct types of roars—a discovery set to transform wildlife monitoring and conservation efforts. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-lion-roar-iconic-big-cats.html Plants & Animals Thu, 20 Nov 2025 19:10:03 EST news682792622 A new paper by evolutionary anthropologists Colin Shaw (University of Zurich) and Daniel Longman (Loughborough University) argues that modern life has outpaced human evolution. The study suggests that chronic stress and many modern health issues are the result of an evolutionary mismatch between our primarily nature-adapted biology and the industrialized environments we now inhabit. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-humans-evolved-nature-cities-anthropologists.html Evolution Tue, 18 Nov 2025 12:05:03 EST news682689901