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Galapagos Lava Heron is Distinct Bird Species, New Study Shows

The Galápagos lava heron (Butorides sundevalli). Image credit: Casey Klebba / CC BY-SA 4.0.
Mar 30, 2026 by Natali Anderson

The Galápagos lava heron, a small heron that stalks the lava-strewn shores of the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador, may finally have secured its place as a distinct species. The Galápagos lava heron (Butorides sundevalli). Image credit: Casey Klebba / CC BY-SA 4.0. The Galápagos lava heron, a slate-gray to black heron endemic to the Galápagos Islands, has long puzzled ornithologists. Some classified it as a subspecies of the widespread striated heron...

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Life reconstruction of Masripithecus moghraensis. Image credit: Mauricio Antón.

Early Miocene Fossil Fills Gap in Ape Family Tree

Mar 29, 2026 by News Staff

Paleontologists have identified a new genus and species of fossil ape that lived about 17-18 million years ago in northern Egypt. The discovery suggests...

Life reconstruction of Cistecynodon parvus. Image credit: Morgan Hopf.

CT Scans Solve Decades-Old Mystery of Triassic Cynodont

Mar 23, 2026 by Sergio Prostak

Known from a single skull discovered in South Africa in 1952, Cistecynodon parvus has been shuffled across the evolutionary tree: described at various...

An artist’s impression of the doubly charmed baryon Ξcc⁺, which contains two charm quarks and one down quark. Image credit: CERN.

CERN Physicists Discover Heavier Cousin of Proton

Mar 23, 2026 by News Staff

Physicists from the LHCb experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have discovered a new kind of heavy proton-like particle. Known as Ξcc⁺,...

An artist’s interpretation of a juvenile Doolysaurus huhmini. Image credit: Jun Seong Yi.

New Species of Plant-Eating Dinosaur Unearthed in Korea

Mar 19, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new species of small plant-eating dinosaur has been identified from a partial skeleton of a juvenile individual discovered in the Republic of Korea. An...

The Tokara leaf warbler (Phylloscopus tokaraensis) on Nakanoshima, the Tokara Islands, in June 2017. Image credit: Per Alström / Uppsala University.

Ornithologists Identify Cryptic New Bird Species in Japan

Mar 17, 2026 by Natali Anderson

Genetic and acoustic evidence show that the rare Ijima’s leaf warbler (Phylloscopus ijimae) is actually two distinct bird species, including the newly-identified...

Yunnanocyclus fortis. Image credit: Sun et al., doi: 10.1002/spp2.70052.

Early Triassic Cyclidan Crustacean Had Powerful Jaws

Mar 16, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have described a new species of enigmatic cyclidan crustacean on the basis of three well-preserved specimens from the Early Triassic Guiyang...

Cercomacra raucisona. Image credit: Fernando Zurdo.

Two New Bird Species Identified in Amazonia

Mar 9, 2026 by Natali Anderson

An antbird long thought to be a single widespread species across the Amazon rainforest is, in fact, several different ones. Among them are two newly-described...

An artist’s impression of 3I/ATLAS is shown as it passes near the Sun, illuminating one side of the comet; on the side of the comet closer to the Sun, the methanol gas is shown in blue, with icy dust grains still present in the gas; on the dark side of the comet, the hydrogen cyanide is shown in orange. Image credit: NSF / AUI / NRAO / M.Weiss.

3I/ATLAS is Unusually Rich in Methanol, ALMA Observations Show

Mar 9, 2026 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have detected hydrogen cyanide (nitrogen-bearing organic molecule commonly seen...

An artist’s reconstruction of Sonselasuchus cedrus in its environment in what is now Petrified Forest National Park, 215 million years ago. Image credit: Gabriel Ugueto.

Triassic Crocodile Relative May Have Learned to Walk on Two Legs

Mar 9, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Fossils from the Chinle Formation of Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, the United States, reveal that Sonselasuchus cedrus, a species of shuvosaurid...

Vishal Gajjar & Grayce C. Brown report one of the first quantitative frameworks for assessing the impact of stellar environments on the detectability of narrowband technosignatures. Image credit: Sci.News.

Stellar ‘Space Weather’ Could Be Blurring Radio Signals from Extraterrestrial Civilizations

Mar 9, 2026 by News Staff

Stellar activity and plasma turbulence could distort narrow radio signals before they leave their home planetary systems, potentially explaining part of...

Pluridens imelaki, holotype, close-up of the dentaries. Scale bar - 10 cm. Image credit: Nicholas R. Longrich & Nour-Eddine Jalil, doi: 10.3390/d18030159.

New Giant Mosasaur Species Discovered in Morocco

Mar 6, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have identified a new, giant species of the mosasaur genus Pluridens from the Late Cretaceous phosphate deposits of Morocco. Named Pluridens...

Graecopithecus freybergi lived 7.2 million years ago in the dust-laden savannah of the Athens Basin. This view from Graecopithecus freybergi’s place of discovery, Pyrgos Vassilissis, to the southeast over the plain of Athens and under a reddish cloud of Sahara dust; in the background: Mount Hymettos and Mount Lykabettos. Image credit: Velizar Simeonovski.

Graecopithecus May Have Been Partially Bipedal, New Fossil Suggests

Mar 5, 2026 by Sergio Prostak

A 7.2-million-year-old thigh bone unearthed at the fossil site of Azmaka in southern Bulgaria displays a mosaic of features suggesting a unique combination...

Life reconstruction of the pachycephalosaur individual CMNFV 22039 in an environment typical of the Upper Maastrichtian Frenchman Formation. Image credit: Kaitlin Lindblad.

Rare Fossil of Baby Dome-Headed Dinosaur Unearthed in Canada

Mar 2, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

For many years, the fossil record of pachycephalosaurs (dome-headed dinosaurs) has been dominated by fossilized skulls. The postcranial material of young...

Neanderthals. Image credit: Gemini AI.

Study: Ancient Mating Preferences Helped Shape Human Genome

Mar 2, 2026 by News Staff

Prehistoric humans and Neanderthals didn’t just interbreed, they did so with a consistent sex bias, as male Neanderthals and female modern humans mated...

Coronae glow on the tips of spruce needles, induced by charged metal plates in a laboratory. Image credit: William Brune.

Scientists Observe Electrical Discharges on Trees under Thunderstorms

Feb 26, 2026 by Sergio Prostak

Most people know about lightning and the havoc it wreaks on forests. They do not know about the weak electrical glow, called a corona, that is thought...

Plaquette with hybrid creature (so-called ‘Adorant’), ivory, from the Swabian Aurignacian. Image credit: Christian Bentz & Ewa Dutkiewicz, doi: 10.1073/pnas.2520385123.

Early Humans May Have Invented System of Symbols Long Before Writing

Feb 25, 2026 by Sergio Prostak

Early humans living in Europe some 40,000 years ago developed a conventional system of geometric signs — deliberate, repeatable markings that went...

Schematic of the expansion of the Universe from the Big Bang to the present day. Image credit: NASA / EFBrazil.

Astrophysicists Propose New Method to Measure Hubble Constant

Feb 25, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astrophysicists from the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago have developed an innovative method to measure the Hubble constant —...

Spinosaurus mirabilis is one of the last-surviving spinosaurid species. Image credit: Dani Navarro.

New Spinosaurus Species Discovered in Niger

Feb 19, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have identified the first unequivocal new species of the fish-eating dinosaur Spinosaurus in more than a century. Spinosaurus mirabilis...

Isolated colonies of Psychrobacter SC65A.3 on R2A medium at 4 degrees Celsius (A) and on TSA medium at 15 degrees Celsius (B). Image credit: Ioana Paun et al., doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1713017.

Multidrug-Resistant Bacterial Strain Found Preserved in 5,000-Year-Old Cave Ice

Feb 17, 2026 by Natali Anderson

Scientists have isolated a new strain of the Psychrobacter cryohalolentis species from 5,000-year-old ice from Scarisoara Ice Cave in Romania. Remarkably,...

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