Life

Plants

Bleeding Trees: Microbial suspect named in beech deaths

A microbe related to the one that caused the Irish potato famine may be killing majestic old beech trees in the northeastern United States.

Animals

Dragonfly Glitter

Dragonflies bring a lot of glitter to glamour shots. Texas A&M’s entomology program offers a variety of stunning images to illustrate the considerable diversity of dragonfly species. A video captures a female laying eggs, and a sequence of images shows how junior grows up. Go to: http://stephenville.tamu.edu/~fmitchel/dragonfly/index.html

Paleontology

Bone Crushers: Teeth reveal changing times in the Pleistocene

Tooth-fracture incidence among dire wolves in the fossil record can indicate how much bone the carnivores crunched and, therefore, something about the ecology of their time.

Paleontology

Unknown creature made birdlike tracks

Paleontologists have found a multitude of birdlike footprints left by a yet undiscovered creature in rocks more than 60 million years older than Archaeopteryx, the first bird to have left fossils of its body parts.

Ecosystems

Making Scents of Flowers

Science gets the tools to start sniffing around the ecology of floral scent.

Paleontology

Skimming the Surface: Flying reptile may have scooped its meals

Fossils unearthed in Brazil strengthen the idea that some species of ancient flying reptiles snatched their meals on the fly, snapping up fish as they swooped low over the water's surface.

Animals

Redder is healthier in squawking birds

When barn swallow nestlings open wide for food, their parents may be looking for the healthiest throats.

Animals

Why don’t racing horses fry their brains?

Lumpy sacs bulging out of a horse's auditory tubes may solve the mystery of how such an athletic animal keeps its brain from overheating during exercise.

Animals

Altruistic Sperm: Mouse gametes team up to power one winner

The sperm of wood mice hook together by the thousands to form high-speed teams racing toward an egg, even though only one of the pack will get the prize.

Animals

Pesticides Mess with Immunity: Double whammy promotes frog deformities

Agricultural pollutants may conspire with parasites to cause the epidemic of limb deformity that's sweeping through North America's frog populations.

Paleontology

Fossil leaves yield extinction clues

Analyses of fossil leaves provide more evidence that the mass extinctions that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago were sudden and probably brought about by an extraterrestrial impact.

Paleontology

Into the Gap: Fossil find stands on its own four legs

A fossil originally misidentified as an ancient fish turns out to be the nearly intact remains of a four-limbed creature that lived during an extended period noted for its lack of fossils of land animals.