From radar to reptiles, scientists trace the evolution of ancient swimmers
Key Points Convergent evolution occurs when completely unrelated groups of animals evolve similar features in response to similar environmental pressures….
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Scientists discover chameleon’s telephone-cord-like optic nerves once overlooked by Aristotle and Newton
C hameleons’ wandering eyes have fascinated and puzzled scientists since the days of ancient Greece. Now, after millennia of study,…
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When only the strong shells survive: Archaeology’s fresh approach to turn oyster shells into tools of conservation
Key Points As global oyster populations decline and fisheries collapse, archaeologists may be able to inform effective management with valuable,…
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Tempered by time, Choctaw pottery connects ancestral past with living present
Key Points Archaeologists rely on pottery artifacts to understand the everyday lives of the people who made them. Analyzing the…
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Some plants can make their own fertilizer with this one weird trick. Scientists say they learned it more than once.
Key points Low nitrogen availability is the number one limitation to plant growth in most ecosystems. Farmers compensate by adding…
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Disease experts team up with Florida Museum of Natural History to create a forecast for West Nile virus
Key points State and local officials in Florida maintain hundreds of coops with what are referred to as sentinel chickens,…
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No eyes, no brain, no problem: Brittle stars have traveled the world over, and scientists have figured out how
A ncient, gangly cousins of sea stars, brittle stars crawl the seafloor on five flexible arms, which in some cases…
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Paleontologists go back to the future, reconstruct fossilized functional diversity to inform conservation goals
Key points Scientists have demonstrated for the first time that functional diversity can be accurately inferred from the marine fossil…
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Archaeologists use X-rays to distinguish iron from different periods of America’s colonial past
Key points Iron artifacts from early Spanish expeditions in North America often look too similar to tell apart, making it…
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There’s something fishy going on with great white sharks that scientists can’t explain
Key points White sharks exhibit stark differences between the DNA in their nuclei and the DNA in their mitochondria. Until…
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