In one of history’s weird coincidences, the second summer of a global pandemic brought Johns Hopkins biologist Ethan Allen Andrews out on a Baltimore lawn to watch the massive Brood…
Category: Life
‘Origin’ explores the controversial science of the first Americans
OriginJennifer RaffTwelve, $30 Scientific understanding of the peopling of the Americas is as unsettled as the Western Hemisphere once was. Skeletal remains, cultural artifacts such as stone tools and, increasingly,…
Scientists vacuumed animal DNA out of thin air for the first time
On a dreary winter day in December of 2020, ecologist Elizabeth Clare strolled through the Hamerton Zoo Park in England wielding a small vacuum pump. She paused outside of animal…
A genetic analysis hints at why COVID-19 can mess with smell
For many people, one of the fastest tip-offs that they have COVID-19 is the loss of taste or smell. Now researchers have pinpointed some genetic variants in people that may…
Drug-resistant bacteria evolved on hedgehogs long before the use of antibiotics
Beneath the prickly spines of European hedgehogs, a microbial standoff may have bred a dangerous drug-resistant pathogen long before the era of antibiotic use in humans. It’s no question that…
50 years ago, scientists were genetically modifying mosquitoes
Sterility gene for mosquito control — Science News, December 18, 1971 Scientists are working hard to find a substitute for DDT in the control of malaria vector mosquitoes.… Two experiments…
Fossils show a crocodile ancestor dined on a young dinosaur
For the first time, scientists have found indisputable evidence that an ancient crocodile ancestor chowed down on a dinosaur. Preserved within a fossilized crocodyliform, a member of a newfound species…
The Age of Dinosaurs may have ended in springtime
About 66 million years ago, a 10-kilometer-wide asteroid slammed into Earth and not long afterward, all nonbird dinosaurs, as well as many other species on land and in the sea,…
Fossils reveal what may be the oldest known case of the dino sniffles
The prehistoric world wasn’t a paradise free of disease, but diagnosing ancient ailments is tricky: Germs usually don’t fossilize well. Now, though, researchers have unearthed evidence of what appears to…
Fossils reveal that pterosaurs puked pellets
Picture it: Two hungry pterosaurs, one adult and one juvenile, settle down to dig in to a delicious lunch of fish. Down their gullets the whole fish go. A little…
