Search Results for: Vertebrates
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1,544 results for: Vertebrates
- Animals
Velvet ants have the Swiss Army knife of venoms
A velvet ant bite like “hot oil from the deep fryer” delivers an array of peptides that inflicts pain on insects and mammals alike.
By Amanda Heidt - Life
The oldest known fossil tadpole was a big baby
Fossils of the ancient frog Notobatrachus degiustoi push the known tadpole timeline back more than 30 million years.
By Jake Buehler - Animals
American burying beetles are making a comeback in Nebraska
Thanks to decades of conservation to restore private grasslands, numbers of the threatened insect are on the rise in the Loess Canyons.
- Animals
These hornets may be the alcohol-detox champs of the animal world
Vespa orientalis fed an 80-percent-ethanol brew still did hornet tasks and had normal life spans. This trick may be an adaptation to gut-dwelling yeast.
By Susan Milius - Neuroscience
Some healthy fish have bacteria in their brains
Animals including mammals usually protect their brains from infiltrating microbes that can cause disease. But some fish seem to do just fine.
- Life
Megalodon, the largest shark ever, may have been a long, slender giant
The ancient shark is typically imagined with the scaled-up stout frame of a modern great white. But in life, the giant may have been more elongated.
By Jake Buehler - Life
The ‘Blob,’ an unprecedented marine heat wave, killed 4 million seabirds
Millions of other animals may have perished too, suggesting the die-off event might be one of the worst in modern times.
By Jake Buehler - Animals
50 years after ‘Jaws,’ sharks face their own terror
Humans have driven sharks and their cousins to the brink of extinction. The health of the entire ocean is at stake.
- Paleontology
An extinct sofa-sized turtle may have lived alongside humans
Peltocephalus maturin was one of the biggest turtles ever, but unlike similarly sized prehistoric freshwater turtles, it lived thousands of years ago.
By Jake Buehler - Paleontology
The oldest known fossilized skin shows how life adapted to land
The nearly 290 million-year-old cast belonged to a species of amniotes, four-legged vertebrates that today comprises all reptiles, birds and mammals.
By Nikk Ogasa - Science & Society
Will the Endangered Species Act survive Trump?
President Trump has already begun to introduce changes that weaken the Endangered Species Act, a cornerstone of U.S. conservation law.
By Amanda Heidt - Animals
The story of dire wolves goes beyond de-extinction
Some question whether the pups are really dire wolves, or just genetically tweaked gray wolves. But the technology could be used to help at-risk animals.
By Meghan Rosen