Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Paleontology
Did ancient wildfire end in barbecue?
Small pieces of large bones and petrified wood that show distinct signs of being burned may be evidence of a 74-million-year-old wildfire in central Wyoming.
- Paleontology
Fossil Fingerprints: Rare earths tie bones to burial ground
The soil in which fossilization occurs leaves a chemical imprint on the bones, suggesting that scientists can use this soil signature to identify more precisely a fossil's original home.
- Animals
A tale of new whiskers
A newly discovered, featherweight tree mouse with an unexpected evolutionary past has survived widespread habitat destruction on the Philippine island of Luzon.
- Animals
Well-Tuned Bats: These animals are what they hear
Two studies of bats find that neighbors can live in virtually different worlds because their echolocation calls are tuned to detect different prey.
- Animals
Turtle Trekkers: Atlantic leatherbacks scatter widely
Satellite monitoring of leatherback turtles in the Atlantic show that these animals range widely instead of sticking to "turtle corridors."
- Paleontology
Crawling through Time: Fish bones reveal past climate change
The timing of ancient migrations of snakehead fish from the Indian subcontinent into Europe, Asia, and Africa tells scientists about temperature and humidity changes in those locations.
- Animals
Red Sweat: Hippo skin oozes antibiotic sunscreen
The hippo version of sweat, which is red-orange, contains pigments that can block microbial growth and some ultraviolet light.
- Plants
Wind Highways: Mosses, lichens travel along aerial paths
Invisible freeways of wind may account for the similarity of plant species on islands that lie thousands of kilometers apart.
- Paleontology
Rare English bits are oldest known charcoal
Analyses of small black chunks of material extracted from 420-million-year-old rocks found along the England-Wales border suggest that they're remnants of the earliest known wildfire.
- Paleontology
Fossil confirms that early arthropods molted
A 505-million-year-old fossil provides hard proof of that ancient arthropods shed their exoskeletons during growth, just as their modern relatives do.
- Paleontology
Ancient Buzzing: German site yields early hummingbird fossils
Excavations in Germany have yielded the only known fossils of hummingbirds from the Old World and by far the oldest such fossils unearthed anywhere.
- Animals
Toxin Takeout: Frogs borrow poison for skin from ants
Scientists have identified formicine ants as a food source from which poison frogs acquire their chemical weapons.
