Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Plants
Fringy flowers are hard to dunk
The fringe on the edges of the floating blooms of water snowflake flowers helps protect the important parts from getting drenched in dunkings.
- Ecosystems
Are They Really Extinct?
A few optimists keep looking for species that might already have gone extinct.
- Paleontology
Duck-faced croc had a gap-toothed grin
Paleontologists have unearthed fossils of a tiny crocodile that boasted a smile like no other: The animal had no teeth across the entire front of its mouth.
- Animals
Honey-Scented Elephants: Young males’ faces drip sweet signals
An Asian bull elephant just reaching maturity secretes a liquid from glands on its face that smells like honey.
- Paleontology
No Olympian: Analysis hints T. rex ran slowly, if at all
Tyrannosaurus rex, a bipedal meat eater considered by many to be the most fearsome dinosaur of its day, may not have been the swift Jeep-chaser portrayed by Hollywood.
- Ecosystems
Cryptic Invasion: Native reeds harbor aggressive alien
A mild-mannered reed native to the United States is getting blamed for the mayhem caused by an evil twin.
- Paleontology
Dinosaur tracks show walking and running
A single trail of dinosaur footprints found in a British limestone quarry preserves a record of two different walking styles in the same animal, a tantalizing clue that some types of lumbering, bipedal dinosaurs could also run if the need arose.
- Ecosystems
Biodiversity Hot Spots: Top 10 sea locales make sobering list
Biologists have identified the world's most vulnerable coral reefs, each with organisms found nowhere else and threatened by human influence.
- Animals
Yellower blue tits make better dads
The yellow feathers on a male blue tit's breast could tell females that he'll be a good provider for the chicks.
- Plants
Tropical plants grow cool flowers
Tropical plants that position their flowers in the general direction of the sun are keeping the temperature comfortable for pollinators.
- Plants
Petite pollinators: Tree raises its own crop of couriers
A common tropical tree creates farms in its buds, where it raises its own work force of tiny pollinators.
- Ecosystems
Genetic lynx: North American lynx make one huge family
A new study of lynx in North America suggests the animals interbreed widely, sometimes with populations thousands of kilometers away.
