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 Feral cats and foxes now roam across almost all of Australia. These predators are a major reason why many species have been driven to extinction. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-safe-havens-australian-mammals-invasive.html Plants & Animals Thu, 13 Aug 2026 17:20:02 EDT news705853982 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 The dodo has been extinct for more than 300 years, wiped out within decades of humans arriving on its home island of Mauritius, but it lives on in the public imagination. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-dodos-werent-stupid-historians.html Paleontology & Fossils Sat, 08 Aug 2026 10:00:01 EDT news705231121 A new study by San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance researchers has identified a less invasive way to estimate the body temperature of hatchling Mojave desert tortoises, offering scientists a promising tool for studying endangered reptiles while reducing disturbance and handling stress. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-invasive-thermal-imaging-endangered-hatchling.html Plants & Animals Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:40:01 EDT news705226322 It wouldn't make much sense to prohibit people from shooting a threatened woodpecker while allowing its forest to be cut down, or to bar killing endangered salmon while allowing a dam to dry out their habitat. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-redefining-word-endangered-species-ability.html Ecology Mon, 13 Jul 2026 20:40:04 EDT news703156053 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 On the strictly protected island of Golem Grad in North Macedonia, the tortoises are destroying their own population. During prolonged courtship, aggressive males are exhausting the females and frequently pushing them off the cliffs. Consequently, there are now one hundred males for every female capable of laying eggs. This is the only known example of demographic suicide in the wild to date. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-selfdestructive-behavior-hermann-tortoises-macedonian.html Plants & Animals Sun, 10 May 2026 14:30:01 EDT news697298090 There are tens of thousands of near-Earth objects (NEOs) that represent some of the most easily accessible resources in the solar system. Planning trajectories to rendezvous with these miniature worlds is notoriously difficult, and requires a massive amount of computational power to calculate. But a new paper from astrodynamicist Alessandro Beolchi of Khalifa University of Science and Technology and his co-authors offers a much less computationally intensive way to find these trajectories, and has the added bonus of finding much less energy-intensive paths to boot. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-trajectories-asteroids.html Space Exploration Fri, 01 May 2026 13:20:07 EDT news696850261 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 Anybody who has seen "Finding Nemo" knows about those captivating monsters of the sea: anglerfishes. Variously horrific or alien-looking, many female anglerfishes sport long, protruding lures used for enticing prey or signaling during mating. Additionally, the dizzying variety of lures doesn't just include motion-based ones. Some anglerfish species have bioluminescent lures, while others have lures that release chemicals to attract prey or signal potential mates. Now, research from the University of Kansas appearing in Ichthyology & Herpetology is giving new detail to the evolutionary history of anglerfishes' lures, studying more than 100 species to see how the lures evolved. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-evolution-anglerfishes-famed-fishing-rod.html Plants & Animals Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:00:04 EDT news694878902 Reports on April Fools' Day of the death of the world's oldest living land animal—a 193-year-old tortoise called Jonathan—were greatly exaggerated. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-world-oldest-tortoise-alive-death.html Plants & Animals Thu, 02 Apr 2026 10:00:08 EDT news694342567 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 History can sometimes take an unexpected turn. One of these curious, revolutionary twists came in the mid-19th century, when the tale of an unassuming everyday object—the billiard ball—ended in cinematic proportions. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-celluloid-story-plastic-hollywood.html Materials Science Wed, 25 Mar 2026 17:00:01 EDT news693666525 The desert tortoise, a once-resilient reptile, is a keystone species in the Mojave Desert, where other animals depend for their survival on the burrows it digs. But it is imperiled in California thanks in part to an unusual predator: off-road vehicles that race through thousands of miles of trails—official and unofficial—that crisscross millions of acres of tortoise habitat. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-mojave-hot-roading-miles-trails.html Ecology Thu, 26 Feb 2026 07:40:03 EST news691313150 More than 150 giant tortoises have been reintroduced to Floreana Island in Ecuador's famed Galapagos archipelago where they disappeared more than a century ago, the environment ministry said Friday. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-giant-tortoises-reintroduced-galapagos-island.html Ecology Sat, 21 Feb 2026 13:49:26 EST news690904141 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 An estimated 8,000 invasive green iguanas were removed from various Florida communities this week after a record-breaking freeze event that sent overnight temperatures down to the mid-30s for two nights in a row. On Wednesday, the Florida Fish and Wildlife and Conservation Commission released official numbers for its iguana drop-off sites. All told, the five sites collected 5,195 dead or cold-stunned iguanas. The drop-off sites were in Marathon, Sunrise, Tequesta, Fort Myers and Lakeland. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-cold-stunned-iguanas-florida.html Plants & Animals Thu, 05 Feb 2026 16:47:32 EST news689532421 Turning on the light to turn off pain: This is the principle behind a new analgesic method called light-induced analgesia (LIA), discovered by scientists from the CNRS1 in rodents. Noninvasive and drug-free, LIA proves to be more effective and longer-lasting than commonly used analgesics such as ibuprofen. The study was published in Nature Communications on 26 January 2026. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-invasive-alternative-painkillers-veterinary-medicine.html Biotechnology Sat, 31 Jan 2026 16:00:01 EST news688751554 For thousands of years, one tree species defined the cultural and ecological identity of what is now the American South: the longleaf pine. The forest once stretched across 92 million acres from Virginia to Texas, but about 5% of that original forest remains. It was one of North America's richest ecosystems, and it nearly disappeared. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-people-history-south-iconic-longleaf.html Ecology Tue, 27 Jan 2026 13:27:29 EST news688742762 A museum scientist has paid homage to the renowned British naturalist and author Gerald Durrell, whose stories inspired him to become a researcher when he was growing up in what was then the Soviet Union. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-species-beetle-honor-gerald-durrell.html Plants & Animals Mon, 22 Dec 2025 15:24:11 EST news685639441 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 South Africa is well known for its fossil heritage, a record of plants and animals that tells us what the world was like long ago. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-fossil-hunters-tracks-animals-million.html Paleontology & Fossils Tue, 02 Dec 2025 21:10:01 EST news683905164 A growing exotic pet trade has conservationists calling for stronger regulations to protect the reptiles, birds and other animals in the wild that are increasingly showing up for sale on internet marketplaces and becoming popular on social media. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-endangered-species-convention-exotic-pet.html Ecology Tue, 02 Dec 2025 04:21:24 EST news683871650 After more than a century of munching on her favorite foods of romaine lettuce and cactus fruit, beloved Galapagos tortoise Gramma, the oldest resident of the San Diego Zoo, has died. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-gramma-galpagos-tortoise-oldest-resident.html Plants & Animals Tue, 25 Nov 2025 04:17:25 EST news683266639