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. A new raptor-like dinosaur from some 70 million years ago that ate fish and behaved like modern herons has been unearthed from southern Patagonia. The new species, which has been named Kank australis, was identified based on the discovery of fossil remains including teeth, vertebrae, and toe bones. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-heron-fish-dinosaur-million-years.html Paleontology & Fossils Thu, 28 May 2026 19:10:06 EDT news699176102 They already have the bill of a duck, the tail of a beaver, lay eggs like reptiles and have venom like snakes. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-platypus-weirder-thought-scientists.html Plants & Animals Sat, 25 Apr 2026 09:10:01 EDT news693068589 A surprising observation in the lab has revealed a remarkable ability in Stentor coeruleus, a single-celled organism about one millimeter long. Sometimes nicknamed the "platypus" of microorganisms for its trumpet-like shape, this tiny creature appears to have a distinct preference for corners. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-tiny-simply-corners-geometry-world.html Cell & Microbiology Thu, 02 Apr 2026 17:40:03 EDT news694360802 The combination of a beaver-like body and duck-like bill of the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) is only the first of a long list of strange features on this unique creature. These odd mammals also lay eggs, have venomous spurs, sense electricity, glow under UV light, and harbor five times more sex chromosomes than many other animals. Now, a study published in Biology Letters reveals that their fur also contains melanosomes that are unlike in any other animal—and scientists can't figure out why. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-platypus-fur-strange-feature.html Plants & Animals Wed, 18 Mar 2026 11:40:07 EDT news693050820 In a dry riverbed in Brazil, in a dense forest near the Amazon, a team of paleontologists found a fossilized jawbone from an ancient animal. Over the course of their fieldwork, they found eight similar bones, each around six inches long—but no other bones that they could confidently use to complete a skeleton for one of these mystery animals. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-ancient-eater-jaw-sideways-teeth.html Paleontology & Fossils Tue, 03 Mar 2026 19:10:08 EST news691774442 Millions of years of isolation have shaped Australia's extraordinary mammal fauna into species unlike anywhere else in the world, from platypus to koalas and wombats. Tragically, Australia is the world leader in mammal extinctions. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-feral-cats-foxes-driven-australian.html Plants & Animals Sun, 25 Jan 2026 11:00:01 EST news688373506 Cell division is an essential process for all life on Earth, yet the exact mechanisms by which cells divide during early embryonic development have remained elusive—particularly for egg-laying species. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-mechanical-ratchet-mechanism-cell-division.html Cell & Microbiology Wed, 07 Jan 2026 16:30:15 EST news687025794 After combing through NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's archive of sweeping extragalactic cosmic fields, a small team of astronomers at the University of Missouri says they have identified a sample of galaxies that have a previously unseen combination of features. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-webb-reveals-sample-galaxies-unusual.html Astronomy Tue, 06 Jan 2026 14:42:26 EST news686932922 Scientists at the University of Missouri have identified a small group of unusual objects in the early universe. Using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Haojing Yan and his team at Mizzou's College of Arts and Science spotted these strange objects, which seem like one galactic thing but have the unmistakable fingerprints of something else entirely. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-platypus-early-universe-stars-galaxies.html Astronomy Tue, 06 Jan 2026 13:10:01 EST news686927308 In most narratives, the story of evolution is the story of organisms emerging from the ocean and eventually populating the land. But for some species, that evolution also involved a return trip. Dozens of major mammal and reptile groups ultimately made their way back to the beach and into the water. A new Yale study has undertaken the task of explaining when and how this happened—and which species fully re-committed to the life aquatic. The study is published in the journal Current Biology. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-beach-evolution-animals.html Evolution Thu, 20 Nov 2025 13:20:01 EST news682866051 Scientists have discovered the fossil of a tiny mouse-sized mammal that lived in the time of the dinosaurs in Chilean Patagonia. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-scientists-million-year-mammal-fossil.html Paleontology & Fossils Tue, 12 Aug 2025 03:30:17 EDT news674188206 From the ultra-high frequency hearing of the Greater Wax Moth to the polarized light-detecting eyes of mantis shrimp, evolution by natural selection has produced a spectacular array of sensory adaptations that enhance survival. One of the most uncanny sensory adaptations found in nature is electroreception, the ability to detect faint electrical fields. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-treehoppers-spectacular-headgear-spidey-electrical.html Plants & Animals Wed, 23 Jul 2025 07:40:01 EDT news672467864 Researchers from the University of Adelaide, in collaboration with the University of Melbourne, University of Queensland and Monash University, have discovered that the genetic mechanism that determines sex in monotremes is different from that in all other mammals. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-monotreme-sex-gene-mammals.html Plants & Animals Wed, 11 Jun 2025 08:10:05 EDT news668848202 James Cook University scientists have been trying to discover exactly why some animals glow under ultraviolet light. JCU researcher Linda Reinhold led the study, which is published in PLOS One. She said photoluminescence in mammal fur is common. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-mammals-ultraviolet.html Plants & Animals Tue, 06 May 2025 14:06:03 EDT news665759162 A small bone found 30 years ago at Dinosaur Cove in southeastern Australia could turn what we know about the evolution of echidnas and platypuses on its head. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-extremely-rare-event-bone-analysis.html Evolution Mon, 28 Apr 2025 15:00:09 EDT news665050741 Giant freshwater crayfish, longer and bulkier than today's species, roamed New Zealand 20 million years ago. They would have made a perfect snack for the crocodiles and trout-sized whitebait that cruised the waters of ancient New Zealand. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-mystery-molars-discovery-giant-crayfish.html Paleontology & Fossils Thu, 17 Apr 2025 09:24:03 EDT news664100641 While it may be an unfamiliar sensation to humans, electroreception is relatively commonplace in the animal kingdom. Sharks, bees and even the platypus all share this ability to detect electric fields in their environment. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-scientists-fruit-fly-larvae-electric.html Cell & Microbiology Wed, 09 Apr 2025 10:35:06 EDT news663413702 The short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus) is one of Australia's most iconic animals. Belonging to a unique group of mammals called "monotremes" (with the platypus as the other prominent member). Echidnas may at first glance be mistaken for a weird-looking hedgehog, but they are in fact egg-laying mammals. https://phys.org/news/2025-01-echidna-genome-unravels-events-multiple.html Evolution Thu, 09 Jan 2025 12:36:50 EST news655648598 Research from Western Sydney University has discovered PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonate) chemical contamination in the livers of deceased platypuses across eastern New South Wales. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-pfos-chemical-pollution-platypuses.html Environment Tue, 20 Aug 2024 11:12:03 EDT news643371121 UNSW Sydney researchers have made new discoveries of fundamental differences in biological processes between males and females—by interrogating the unique and diverse sex chromosome systems of the platypus and the chicken. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-platypus-chicken-reveal-chromosomes-sexes.html Plants & Animals Tue, 30 Jul 2024 06:41:57 EDT news641540511 The identification of a key gene in monotremes has increased our understanding of why the stomachs of platypuses and echidnas are atypically small, non-acidic, and, in the instance of platypuses, lack a pyloric sphincter. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-egg-laying-mammals-unique.html Plants & Animals Tue, 23 Jul 2024 11:31:03 EDT news640953061 Published today in the Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology, evidence of an "Age of Monotremes" has been unearthed by a team of Australian scientists at the Australian Museum (AM), Museums Victoria and Australian Opal Centre. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-fossils-evidence-age-monotremes.html Evolution Sun, 26 May 2024 10:00:01 EDT news635770504 Images from the JunoCam visible-light camera aboard NASA's Juno spacecraft supports the theory that the icy crust at the north and south poles of Jupiter's moon Europa is not where it used to be. Another high-resolution picture of the icy moon, by the spacecraft's Stellar Reference Unit (SRU), reveals signs of possible plume activity and an area of ice shell disruption where brine may have recently bubbled to the surface. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-nasa-juno-high-definition-views.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 15 May 2024 15:06:03 EDT news635004361 Living beings can evolve to lose biological structures due to potential survival benefits from such losses. For example, certain groups of ray-finned fishes show such regressive evolution—medakas, minnows, puffera, and wrasses do not have a stomach in the gastrointestinal tract, making them agastric or stomachless fishes. However, the specific evolutionary mechanisms underlying the evolution of agastric fishes remain unclear. https://phys.org/news/2024-04-advances-evolution-stomach-loss-agastric.html Plants & Animals Tue, 23 Apr 2024 12:24:53 EDT news633093891 Parental care for offspring occurs in many animals and is an essential part of the reproduction, propagation and development of an organism. An international research team from Brazil, the U.S. and Germany, including Dr. Alexander Kupfer, curator of Amphibians and Reptiles at the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart, have revealed for the first time how egg-laying female caecilian amphibians successfully raise their offspring in the nest. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-egg-laying-caecilian-amphibians-young.html Plants & Animals Fri, 08 Mar 2024 10:11:13 EST news629115051 A multi-institutional team of archaeologists and paleontologists has unearthed and identified a new species of mammal from the Maastrichtian age. In their paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers note that the mammal was much larger than any other known examples of its kind. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-larger-prehistoric-mammal-species-uncovered.html Paleontology & Fossils Fri, 23 Feb 2024 09:30:01 EST news627901050 In the animal kingdom, there are many grand examples of species that make sense of their world by expertly deciphering even weak signals from their surroundings. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-mathematical-reveals-pit-viper-dinner.html Plants & Animals Fri, 02 Feb 2024 14:28:44 EST news626106521 A small team of bio-scientists from the University of Rostock's Institute for Biosciences and Nuremberg Zoo's Behavioral Ecology and Conservation Lab, both in Germany, has found evidence that bottlenose dolphins can sense electric fields. In their study, reported in the Journal of Experimental Biology, the group tested the ability of two captive bottlenose dolphins to sense a small electric field. https://phys.org/news/2023-12-bottlenose-dolphins-electric-fields.html Plants & Animals Sun, 03 Dec 2023 08:20:01 EST news620648234 More than 60 years after it was last recorded, an expedition team has rediscovered an iconic, egg-laying mammal in one of the most unexplored regions of the world. Attenborough's long-beaked echidna, named after famed broadcaster Sir David Attenborough, was captured for the first time in photos and video footage using remote trail cameras set up in the Cyclops Mountains of Indonesia's Papua Province. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-bizarre-egg-laying-mammal-rediscovered-years.html Plants & Animals Fri, 10 Nov 2023 12:20:01 EST news618833094 A large Australian team led by Monash University has devised a new approach to killing antibiotic-resistant bacteria using lipid nanoparticles that target specific layers on the surface of the bacterial cell. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-combined-treatment-lipid-nanoparticles-antibiotic.html Bio & Medicine Tue, 07 Nov 2023 09:13:02 EST news618570781