Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Paleontology
Study picks new site for dinosaur nostrils
A new analysis of fossils and living animals suggests that most dinosaurs' nostrils occurred at locations toward the tip of their snout rather than farther up on their face, a concept that may change scientists' views of the animals' physiology and behavior.
- Animals
Don’t look now, but is that dog laughing?
Researchers have identified a particular exhalation that dogs make while playing as a possible counterpart to a human laugh.
- Paleontology
For past climate clues, ask a stalag-mite
Mites fossilized in cave formations in the American Southwest show that at times during the past 3,200 years the climate there was much wetter and cooler.
- Animals
Condor chicks hatch in zoo and wild
Newly hatched California condor chicks indicate that reproduction is again taking place in the wild.
- Animals
Microbe lets mite dads perform virgin birth
A gender-bent mite—in which altered males give birth as virgins—turns out to be the first species discovered to live and reproduce with only one set of chromosomes.
- Animals
Fruit flies hear by spinning their noses
Drosophila have a rotating ear—and odor-sensing—structure that's new to science.
- Paleontology
Two new dinosaurs chiseled from fossil gap
A sleek predator and a pot-bellied giant dinosaur have emerged from North American rocks to fill in a 30-million-year gap in the dinosaur fossil record.
- Paleontology
Sahara yields second-largest dinosaur
Excavations near an Egyptian oasis have unearthed the fossils of an animal that probably ranks as the second-most-massive dinosaur known.
- Paleontology
Fossil footprints could be monumental
Trace fossils found in a vacant lot in a small town in Utah, including the footprints of meat-eating dinosaurs, could soon be protected as part of a new U.S. national monument.
- Paleontology
Beyond Bones
The forensic analysis of trace fossils such as footprints, nests, burrows, and even coprolites—fossilized feces—reveal subtle clues about ancient species, their behavior, and their environment.
- Ecosystems
Parrot survey finds poaching but also hope
The largest review yet of wild parrot nesting finds poaching worrisomely frequent but also sees cause for hope in the efects of a U.S. protection law.
- Paleontology
Early Mammal’s Jaw Lost Its Groove
A tiny fossil skull found in 195-million-year-old Chinese sediments provides evidence that crucial features of mammal anatomy evolved more than 45 million years earlier than previously thought.
