New reptile on the block: A new iguana species discovered in China
A new iguana joins Asia’s rich reptile fauna, officially described as new to science in the open-access journal ZooKeys. “From 2009 to 2022, we conducted a series of field surveys…
First high mountain settlers at the start of the Neolithic already engaged in other livestock activities apart from transhumance
An archaeological find in the Huescan Pyrenees allowed researchers to identify for the first time livestock management strategies and feeding practices which demonstrate how the first high mountain societies, at…
A carbon-lite atmosphere could be a sign of water and life on other terrestrial planets
Scientists at MIT, the University of Birmingham, and elsewhere say that astronomers’ best chance of finding liquid water, and even life on other planets, is to look for the absence,…
Insects already had a variety of defense strategies in the Cretaceous
Analyses of amber show that insect larvae were already using a wide variety of tactics to protect themselves from predators 100 million years ago. Early life stages of insects fulfill…
New tool unifies single-cell data
A new methodology that allows for the categorisation and organisation of single-cell data has been launched. It can be used to create a harmonised dataset for the study of human…
How jellyfish regenerate functional tentacles in days
At about the size of a pinkie nail, the jellyfish species Cladonema can regenerate an amputated tentacle in two to three days — but how? Regenerating functional tissue across species,…
Five new species of soft-furred hedgehogs from Southeast Asia
A new study led by scientists at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History identifies five new species of soft-furred hedgehogs from Southeast Asia. The study, published in the Zoological…
Where you live matters: A first-of-its-kind study illustrates how racism is interrelated with poor health
A team of health equity researchers from several institutions has leveraged a complex web of data to test a hypothesis: That structural racism is associated with resources and structures at…
Supernova encore: Second lensed supernova in a distant galaxy
In November 2023, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed a massive cluster of galaxies named MACS J0138.0-2155. Through an effect called gravitational lensing, first predicted by Albert Einstein, a distant…
Astronomers detect seismic ripples in ancient galactic disk
A new snapshot of an ancient, far-off galaxy could help scientists understand how it formed and the origins of our own Milky Way. At more than 12 billion years old,…