Precise control of the tongue is often vital in life, from the way frogs capture flies to human speech (SN: 1/31/17). But much remains unknown about how the brain controls…
Category: Plants
Scientists remotely controlled the social behavior of mice with light
With the help of headsets and backpacks on mice, scientists are using light to switch nerve cells on and off in the rodents’ brains to probe the animals’ social behavior,…
How fossilization preserved a 310-million-year-old horseshoe crab’s brain
Paleontologists can spend years carefully splitting rocks in search of the perfect fossil. But with a 310-million-year-old horseshoe crab brain, nature did the work, breaking the fossil in just the…
A new book reveals stories of ancient life written in North America’s rocks
How the Mountains GrewJohn DvorakPegasus Books, $29.95 Imagine a world where pigeon-sized dragonflies soar above spiders with half-meter-long legs, where 2-meter-long millipedes slither and 20-kilogram scorpions hunt. About 300 million…
If confirmed, tubes in 890-million-year-old rock may be the oldest animal fossils
Pale, wormlike tubes in 890-million-year-old rock may be ancient sea sponges, a new study concludes. If confirmed, that controversial claim would push back the origin of the earliest sponges by…
3.42-billion-year-old fossil threads may be the oldest known archaea microbes
Threadlike filaments pressed in rock may be the remnants of archaea that burped methane near hydrothermal vents 3.42 billion years ago. If so, these strands in rock excavated in South…
Pterosaurs may have been able to fly as soon as they hatched
Pterosaur hatchlings may have been able to fly right out of the shell — although the flight of those ancient baby reptiles might have looked a bit different from that…
The first step in using trees to slow climate change: Protect the trees we have
Between a death and a burial was hardly the best time to show up in a remote village in Madagascar to make a pitch for forest protection. Bad timing, however,…
How Romanesco cauliflower forms its spiraling fractals
The swirling green cones that make up the head of Romanesco cauliflower also form a fractal pattern — one that repeats itself on multiple scales. Now, the genes that underlie…
A widely studied lab plant has revealed a previously unknown organ
A common lab plant that’s been poked and put under microscopes for decades may seem unlikely to keep secrets. But in widely studied Arabidopsis thaliana, scientists have identified the “cantil”…
