Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Life
Asteroid barrage, ancient marine life boom not linked
Impacts from asteroid debris probably didn’t trigger the boom in marine animal diversity around 471 million years ago during the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event.
- Paleontology
Baby dinosaurs took three to six months to hatch
Growth lines on teeth indicate a surprisingly long incubation period.
- Life
What a mosquito’s immune system can tell us about fighting malaria
Immune system messengers carried in microscopic sacs help mosquitoes fend off malaria, new research suggests.
- Animals
Desert ants look to the sky, rely on memory to navigate backward
Desert ants appear to use a combination of visual memory and celestial cues to make it back to the nest walking butt-first, researchers find.
- Animals
How desert ants navigate walking backward
Desert ants appear to use a combination of visual memory and celestial cues to make it back to the nest walking butt-first, researchers find.
- Ecosystems
In debate over origin of fairy circles, both sides might be right
Odd bare spots called fairy circles in African grasslands might be caused by both termites and plants.
- Life
A message to rock climbers: Be kind to nature
Scientists are only just starting to figure out the impacts that the sport of rock climbing is having on cliff ecosystems.
- Earth
Coastal waters were an oxygen oasis 2.3 billion years ago
Coastal waters contained enough oxygen to support complex life-forms including some animals hundreds of millions of years before fossils of such life first appear.
- Life
Here’s how earwax might clean ears
Science seeks inspiration in earwax for dreams of self-cleaning machinery.
- Neuroscience
How mice use their brain to hunt
Messages from the brain’s amygdala help mice chase and kill prey.
- Life
Shimmering soap bubbles have a dark side
Merging dark spots are indicators that a bubble is about to burst.
- Animals
It takes guts for a sea spider to pump blood
Most sea spiders have hearts, but what really gets their blood flowing are gut contractions.
