These Eyes Shine Light on the Path of Evolution
Explore Biologists have often wondered what would happen if they could rewind the tape of life's history and let evolution play out all over again. Would lineages of organisms evolve…
A Crystal Ball for Evolution
Explore Eevolution is happening all the time, all around us. It can reshape entire populations of a species in a wink of time—just a couple of generations. Take Darwin's finches,…
Puberty in the Ice Age was Much Like Today
Explore Biological anthropologist April Nowell had been studying the skeletons of Ice Age children for two decades when she began to see her own kids in a new light. They…
The Last Hominin Standing – Nautilus
Explore A surprising discovery about human evolution began with a research study about, surprisingly, birds. Five years ago, evolutionary biology Laura van Holstein at the University of Cambridge read a…
The Mystery of the Cave Cats
Explore Last year, cavers rappelled into Natural Bridges Caverns in Texas—a popular commercial tourist cave that reaches 230 feet into the ground—and picked up two small cat skeletons that were…
The Origins of Animal Consciousness According to Peter Godfrey-Smith
Explore Philosopher of science Peter Godfrey-Smith has spent decades considering the mental life of animals. His ongoing work on octopus cognition has helped to frame the discussion about how we…
Invasive Species Found
Explore The Yangtze River is one of the longest rivers in the world, flowing nearly 4,000 miles from the western interior of China to the coast in Shanghai, and the…
Solving the Siberian Crater Mystery
Explore In the northern reaches of Russia, enigmatic craters have begun appearing in broad expanses of windswept tundra. These craters can reach 230 feet across and plunge more than 100…
What Extinct Sea Mink Reveals About Ecological Change
Explore Two hundred years ago, a small but fierce predator stalked the rocky coasts and islands of Maine. About the size of a housecat, but shaped more like a ferret,…
Industrial Smog is Triggering Snowfall in Canada and Russia
Explore Humans can't control the weather. But we certainly make a mess of it, often in ways we're just beginning to understand. Four years ago, Velle Toll, a climate researcher…