A study in PLOS One found that the plant-eating dinosaur Nigersaurus taqueti had one of the most extreme dental systems ever identified in a dinosaur. Its mouth held roughly 500 teeth and the study estimated that each tooth could be replaced about every two weeks. That finding turned a strange Cretaceous herbivore into a vivid…
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A study in Science has opened a rare window into one of evolution’s deepest mysteries: how complex animals began to take over Earth’s oceans before the famous Cambrian explosion. The fossils, found in southwest China, include evidence for animals linked to deuterostomes, the great branch of life that includes humans and our closest invertebrate relatives.…
A 2016 Oceanography study documented sharks and other marine life inside the active crater of the Kavachi submarine volcano in the Solomon Islands. Cameras lowered into the crater during a rare quiet period recorded silky sharks, scalloped hammerheads, bony fish and microbial communities living amid volcanic emissions. The discovery presented researchers with an ecological puzzle.…
A study in Current Biology found that survival in the wild can depend on the strength of everyday social ties. In free-ranging female baboons, the animals with stronger and more stable bonds lived longer than females whose relationships were weaker or less consistent. The finding comes from decades of fieldwork on baboons, animals whose societies…
