Earth
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Paleontology
Early meat-eating dinosaur unearthed
Pint-sized, two-legged runner from Argentina dates back to the dawn of the dinos, 230 million years ago.
- Humans
Night owls may want to dim their lights
People who spend their evenings in relatively bright light run the risk of stressing their bodies by ratcheting down the production of melatonin. This hormone plays a pivotal role in setting the body’s biological clock – and, potentially, in limiting the development of certain cancers.
- Life
Aspens bust, diseased mice boom
As trees decline, populations of rodents that carry the deadly sin nombre virus are on the rise.
- Science & Society
Methane from BP spill goes missing
Latest sampling suggests either that microbes have already devoured the most abundant hydrocarbon produced by the leak — or that researchers have simply lost track of it.
- Paleontology
An ammonite’s last supper
A detailed X-ray image of a fossil reveals an ancient marine creature’s diet.
- Paleontology
Oceans may have poisoned early animals
High sulfur and low oxygen produced a deadly brew nearly 500 million years ago that apparently stalled a burst of evolutionary change.
- Life
Flower sharing may be unsafe for bees
Wild pollinators are catching domesticated honeybee viruses, possibly by touching the same pollen.
- Earth
Bugged forests bad for climate
Trees savaged by pine beetles are slow to recover their ecological function as greenhouse gas sponges.
- Earth
Climate action could save polar bears
Cutting fossil fuel emissions soon would retain enough sea ice habitat for threatened species, scientists say.
- Earth
Gassy volcanoes tied to mass extinction
Chemicals from a massive Siberian eruption 250 million years ago may have polluted the atmosphere and killed off most life on the planet.
- Humans
Apartments share tobacco smoke
Children in nonsmoking families have higher levels of secondhand exposure if they live in multifamily dwellings.
- Earth
Clouds warm things up
Satellite data from the last decade put hard numbers on a key and little-understood climate player.
