Humans are exterminating animal and plant species so quickly that nature's built-in defence mechanism, evolution, cannot keep up. An Aarhus-led research team calculated that if current conservation efforts are not improved, ...
Evolution
Oct 15, 2018
16
14557
Allowing forests to regenerate on their own has been championed as a strategy for reducing planet-heating carbon in the atmosphere while also boosting biodiversity, the benefits ecosystems offer and even the fruitfulness ...
Environment
Aug 13, 2023
0
292
When eight-year-old Hugo Deans discovered a handful of BB-sized objects lying near an ant nest beneath a log in his backyard, he thought they were a type of seed. His father, Andrew Deans, professor of entomology at Penn ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 2, 2022
2
5245
Before being colonised by the Vikings, Iceland was lush with forests but the fearsome warriors razed everything to the ground and the nation is now struggling to reforest the island.
Environment
Jul 17, 2019
13
21885
The black rats weren't supposed to be there, on Palmyra Atoll. Likely arriving at the remote Pacific islet network as stowaways with the U.S. Navy during World War II, the rodents, with no natural predators, simply took over. ...
Ecology
Nov 5, 2020
1
138
The houting, a fish species that lived in North Sea estuaries and is officially extinct, turns out to be alive and well. Researchers from the University of Amsterdam and the Natural History Museum London extracted DNA from ...
Ecology
Oct 13, 2023
2
813
Just before the closing scenes of the Cretaceous Period, India was a rogue subcontinent on a collision course with Asia. Before the two landmasses merged, however, India rafted over a "hot spot" within the Earth's crust, ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 17, 2022
1
1264
In the Wasatch Mountains of the western US on the slopes above a spring-fed lake, there dwells a single giant organism that provides an entire ecosystem on which plants and animals have relied for thousands of years. Found ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 24, 2021
0
413
The discovery of a 1.8-million-year-old skull of a human ancestor buried under a medieval Georgian village provides a vivid picture of early evolution and indicates our family tree may have fewer branches than some believe, ...
Archaeology
Oct 17, 2013
57
2
In a forest in southern Chile, a giant tree has survived for thousands of years and is in the process of being recognized as the oldest in the world.
Ecology
Apr 22, 2023
0
301
