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. Using a new combination of computational tools to analyze ancient DNA, Yale researchers have discovered two ancient, extinct giant tortoise lineages that once lived on the Galapagos Islands. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-degraded-dna-reveals-extinct-galapagos.html Evolution Thu, 27 Aug 2026 09:40:03 EDT news707039701 Scientists have described a new species of lizard from the high mountain forests of western Thailand and have given it a name straight out of an American fantasy drama television series: Acanthosaura syrax, named after Syrax, the dragon ridden by Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen in "House of the Dragon." https://phys.org/news/2026-08-species-mountain-horned-dragon-thailand.html Plants & Animals Mon, 10 Aug 2026 10:40:04 EDT news705575461 Some insects and microbes develop symbiotic partnerships that become so interdependent they can no longer survive without each other. But how specific are these heritable symbioses? Is it possible for the same species of bacteria to flourish across different species of insect hosts, or are these partnerships more fixed, honed over millions of years of evolution? https://phys.org/news/2026-06-symbiotic-partner-swapping-term-fidelity.html Ecology Tue, 23 Jun 2026 17:40:05 EDT news701446562 A new study of British wrens has provided new insights into the inner workings of "island syndromes," according to research led by the University of Birmingham. The paper, published in the Evolutionary Journal of the Linnean Society, reveals that different subspecies of island wrens are evolving independently, with the team finding particularly strong evidence of "island gigantism" in two of the studied populations. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-scientists-evolution-gigantism-scottish-island.html Evolution Thu, 28 May 2026 06:00:01 EDT news699103081 The Galápagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador are home to more than a thousand plant and animal species found nowhere else on Earth—things like marine iguanas and giant tortoises. In a new paper in the journal Zootaxa, scientists have announced the discovery of the newest animal found in the Galápagos: a tiny blue octopus. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-tiny-blue-octopus-galpagos-deep.html Plants & Animals Sun, 24 May 2026 21:00:01 EDT news698660703 The south coast of South Africa's Western Cape province is a rich source of fossil tracks and traces—clues suggesting what this environment may have been like many thousands of years ago. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-bird-tortoise-fossil-tracks-south.html Paleontology & Fossils Thu, 16 Apr 2026 16:00:09 EDT news695567462 A recent study by Dr. John Moretti of the University of Texas and local caver John Young uncovered the remains of Ice Age megafauna, revealing an entirely new ecosystem that once thrived on the Edwards Plateau. Among the finds were a genus of giant tortoise (Hesperotestudo) and a large armadillo-like pampathere (Holmesina septentrionalis). The work is published in the journal Quaternary Research. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-extinct-ice-age-giants-bender.html Paleontology & Fossils Sun, 12 Apr 2026 14:00:03 EDT news694775469 Researchers at the University of Manchester have used artificial intelligence to uncover a complex picture behind England's long-running productivity puzzle, challenging the idea that the country's economic performance can be explained by a simple North-South divide. In a major study published in the Spatial Economic Analysis journal, Professor Cecilia Wong and Dr. Helen Zheng applied "GeoAI" techniques—combining geography and artificial intelligence—to analyze how productivity varies across local authorities in England between 2010 and 2022. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-ai-reveals-england-productivity-complex.html Economics & Business Wed, 01 Apr 2026 22:50:01 EDT news694258406 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 Before leaving on a fossil-hunting trip for a summer 2021 field paleontology class, a Montana State University junior made an apparently fate-tempting plea. "I kept joking through that whole class, 'Oh, please, just anything but a turtle,'" said Jack Prall, now a doctoral student in MSU's Department of Earth Sciences in the College of Letters and Science. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-turtle-fossil-narrows-timeline-cretaceous.html Paleontology & Fossils Mon, 09 Feb 2026 16:26:25 EST news689876762 Jurassic Park—and its never-ending sequels and spinoffs—starts with a basic premise: extracting the DNA of long-dead dinosaurs from mosquitoes frozen in amber. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-echo-jurassic-mosquitoes-capture-entire.html Ecology Wed, 17 Dec 2025 14:47:20 EST news685205221 New research conducted by paleontologists from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (MfN) and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin reveals a burst in jaw variety in the earliest amniotes—which includes the ancestors of all reptiles, birds and mammals. The international team led by former MfN doctoral student Dr. Jasper Ponstein analyzed more than 200 fossilized jaws from periods when tetrapods first adapted to life on land. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-jaw-versatility-enabled-ecological-success.html Evolution Thu, 04 Dec 2025 10:10:33 EST news684065402 On islands, many plants rely on animals such as birds, bats and reptiles to disperse their seeds and help them grow in new places. When native animals go extinct, this naturally reduces seed dispersal. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-animals-island-global.html Plants & Animals Wed, 08 Oct 2025 16:12:03 EDT news679158721 A new study, led by experts at the University of Nottingham, provides the strongest evidence to date that cancer is extremely rare in turtles—a finding that could offer valuable clues for preventing or fighting cancer in humans. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-turtles-remarkably-cancer-defying-large.html Plants & Animals Thu, 10 Jul 2025 05:00:03 EDT news671119958 Animal behavior and cognition experts at the University of Lincoln, U.K., have made new discoveries about reptile sentience which could reshape how they are cared for in captivity. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-tortoises-similar.html Plants & Animals Tue, 08 Jul 2025 06:51:05 EDT news671176262 A Smithsonian-led team of researchers have discovered North America's oldest known pterosaur, the winged reptiles that lived alongside dinosaurs and were the first vertebrates to evolve powered flight. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-north-america-oldest-pterosaur-unearthed.html Paleontology & Fossils Mon, 07 Jul 2025 15:00:01 EDT news671101022 A fossilized colony of small burrowing reptiles that lived some 250 million years ago was recently found in South Africa. It's the first time that the Procolophon trigoniceps, which lived in the lowlands of what was then the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana (today the central Karoo), has been found to have lived and died communally in complex, underground burrows. Up till now, they have only been found as single specimens. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-fossils-colonies-reptiles-communally-million.html Paleontology & Fossils Tue, 10 Jun 2025 16:00:01 EDT news668789519 In most vertebrates, skin appendages such as hair, feathers, or scales originate from placodes—small, specialized skin regions whose spatial organization is controlled by well-conserved genetic signals. Crocodiles are an exception: their head scales do not emerge from placodes but result from simple mechanical folding of the growing skin. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-patterns-sculpted-physics-evolution-revealed.html Evolution Tue, 10 Jun 2025 12:18:04 EDT news668776682 Seafaring hunter-gatherers were accessing remote, small islands such as Malta thousands of years before the arrival of the first farmers, a new international study has found. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-hunter-sea-journey-malta-predates.html Archaeology Wed, 09 Apr 2025 11:00:21 EDT news663407462 When we picture sea turtles in the wild, it's easy to envision them as armored warriors—their hard, resilient shells serving as near-impenetrable shields against oceanic threats like sharks. These sleek, streamlined shells aren't just defensive—they're engineered for speed, efficiency and survival. Designed to minimize drag, they allow sea turtles to glide effortlessly through the water, dive to astonishing depths, and handle the immense pressure shifts as they surface. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-flex-appeal-armor-efficiency-sea.html Plants & Animals Tue, 08 Apr 2025 10:31:04 EDT news663327062 Around 45 million years ago, a 4.6 foot-tall (1.40 meters) flightless bird called Diatryma roamed the Geiseltal region in southern Saxony-Anhalt. An international team of researchers led by the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt report on the bird's fully preserved skull in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica. https://phys.org/news/2025-01-rediscovered-fossil-reveals-rare-bird.html Paleontology & Fossils Wed, 22 Jan 2025 09:12:04 EST news656759521 As the Earth faces unprecedented climate change, a look into the planet's deep past may provide vital insights into what may lie ahead. Knowledge of the natural world millions of years ago is fragmented, but a 15-year study of a site in Bolivia by an international team led by Case Western Reserve University provides a comprehensive view of an ancient ecosystem when the Earth was much warmer than today. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-ancient-climate-reconstruction-andes-mountains.html Earth Sciences Mon, 04 Nov 2024 11:46:04 EST news649943161 By studying rare fossils of jaws and other skull parts of a long-extinct Caribbean monkey, a team of researchers that includes a Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine professor says it has uncovered new evidence documenting the anatomy and ecology of an extinct primate once found on Hispaniola—the Caribbean island on which Haiti and the Dominican Republic are located. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-monkey-fossils-cave-animals-extinction.html Ecology Wed, 02 Oct 2024 14:08:04 EDT news647096881 The Greenland Shark (Somniosus microcephalus), an elusive dweller of the depths of the northern Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean, is the world's longest-living vertebrate, with an estimated lifespan of about 400 years. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-international-team-decodes-genome-greenland.html Plants & Animals Wed, 11 Sep 2024 13:03:49 EDT news645278624 Like many threatened land turtle species, the spur-thighed tortoise had no complete genome. Now for the first time, researchers from the Ecology departments at Miguel Hernández University of Elche (UMH) and the University of Alicante (UA) have successfully sequenced the genome of the spur-thighed tortoise, using the genome of another closely related native American tortoise as a reference. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-sequence-genome-spur-thighed-tortoise.html Plants & Animals Tue, 10 Sep 2024 16:32:04 EDT news645204721 As the hare learned from the tortoise, speed isn't everything. Theoretical computer scientists at Sandia National Laboratories and Boston University have discovered that quantum computers are unrivaled at solving an advanced math problem. Unusually, they proved quantum computers are not faster than regular computers; instead, they use far less memory. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-exponential-quantum-advantage-natural-streaming.html Quantum Physics Mon, 01 Jul 2024 14:30:03 EDT news639063001 Paleontologists have discovered giant tortoise fossils in Colombia dating back some 57 million years, the university leading the excavation said, with the findings key to understanding South America's prehistoric eras. https://phys.org/news/2024-04-ancient-giant-tortoise-fossils-colombian.html Paleontology & Fossils Thu, 25 Apr 2024 03:54:31 EDT news633236066 During the Late Pleistocene, California—at least at its lower elevations—was teeming with vegetation. While much of North America was covered in Ice Age glaciers, here, mastodons lumbered across verdant meadows, stopping to feed on brush, warily eyeing the forest's edge for saber-tooth cats on the prowl for their calves. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-anthropologists-likelihood-future-animal-extinctions.html Ecology Wed, 27 Mar 2024 12:06:05 EDT news630759961 An international research team led by Dr. Gabriel S. Ferreira from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen has described a new species of giant turtle from the late Pleistocene. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-newly-fossil-giant-turtle-stephen.html Paleontology & Fossils Wed, 13 Mar 2024 10:04:03 EDT news629543041 An international team of wildlife researchers has found that the giant tortoises living on the Galápagos islands may be in danger of losing a major food resource due to the encroachment of invasive Cedrela odorata trees. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-galpagos-giant-tortoises-danger-due.html Plants & Animals Wed, 06 Mar 2024 11:20:01 EST news628946004