Tag: Science Daily

Scientists have discovered a new species of mosasaur, a sea-dwelling lizard from the age of the dinosaurs, with strange, ridged teeth unlike those of any known reptile. Along with other recent finds from Africa, it suggests that mosasaurs and other marine reptiles were evolving rapidly up until 66 million years...

Surprisingly, genome comparisons have failed to resolve a major question in animal evolution: Which living animals are the descendants of the earliest animals to evolve in the world's oceans? Scientists performed a detailed chromosomal analysis that comes down definitively in favor of comb jellies, or ctenophores, as the most recent...

A species of tiny, colorful jumping spider employs two lines of defense to avoid being eaten: camouflaging with plants and walking like an ant. Researchers report that this combination of camouflage and movement mimicry helps the spiders evade spider-eating spiders but does not deter hungry praying mantises.

A new study examines indicators of mental wellbeing in wild animals to improve conservation efforts.

Individual fish in schools scatter in unison when a predator is in their midst. Such precisely coordinated group movements and immobility during threats have long been observed in insects and mammals. Now, a brain pathway has been discovered that enables individual animals to rapidly coordinate a unified response, with no...

There's something most species -- from baboons to humans to horses -- have in common: When they suffer serious adversity early in life, they're more likely to experience hardship later on in life.

A research team, composed of climatologists and an astronomer, have used an improved computer model to reproduce the cycle of ice ages (glacial periods) 1.6 to 1.2 million years ago. The results show that the glacial cycle was driven primarily by astronomical forces in quite a different way than it...

Scientists have discovered where butterflies originated and which plants the first butterflies relied on for food. To reach these conclusions, researchers created the world's largest butterfly tree of life, which they used as a guide to trace trace the evolution of butterflies through time in a four-dimensional puzzle that led...

Researchers have used a common disinfectant and antiseptic to create a new antimicrobial coating material that effectively kills bacteria and viruses, including MRSA and SARS-COV-2.

In the autumn, when right whales swim towards the coasts of South Africa, they ought to be fat and stuffed full. But in recent years, they have become thinner because their food is disappearing with the melting sea ice.