Trilobites

A 161 million-year-old fossil, linked to a line of extinct frog-like amphibians, is the oldest tadpole ever found.

By Asher Elbein

A “toadlet” in Brazil is the second-smallest vertebrate known to exist on the planet.

By Sofia Quaglia

Fossils reveal that prehistoric cicadas’ wings evolved to help them evade hungry predators with feathers and beaks, scientists say.

By Jack Tamisiea

Scientists say they have observed one of the highest-altitude acts of bird predation ever recorded.

By Jason Bittel

The discovery may push back the emergence of the reptiles that once ruled the Earth, and clarify how dinosaurs like the Triceratops and Stegosaurus emerged.

By Asher Elbein

Using Google’s AlphaFold, researchers identified the bundle of three sperm proteins that seem to make sexual reproduction possible.

By Elizabeth Preston

With a new kind of microscope, researchers got a different view of how marine snow falls to the seafloor.

By Veronique Greenwood

In an elaborate experiment, scientists discovered that the insects chose to hibernate in soil full of pesticides and other poisons.

By Darren Incorvaia

The Tsavo man-eaters terrorized railroad workers in British East Africa in the 19th century, but their tastes went well beyond human flesh.

By Jack Tamisiea

The discovery that sound improves the growth rate of beneficial fungus suggests that dirges in the dirt may help restore forests.

By Veronique Greenwood

Male locusts have long been observed shielding mates from other males. Researchers say this behavior may also protect the females from desert temperatures.

By Gennaro Tomma

Researchers say that two rivers merged some 89,000 years ago and gave the mightiest peak in the Himalayas a huge growth spurt.

By Robin George Andrews

A researcher followed up on a study warning that the massive trees were in danger, and found many venerable specimens thriving.

By Rachel Nuwer

While the sea robin has legs, it still doesn’t need a bicycle.

By Sofia Quaglia

Scientists say that the fossil of a close relative of Tyrannosaur rex bolsters their case for a distinctive southern population of the fearsome dinosaurs.

By Asher Elbein

The cheese was dug up with mummified human remains in the Xinjiang region of China and offers insights into the origins of the dairy product known as kefir.

By Kate Golembiewski

Octopuses and fish are routinely seen working together on the ocean floor, and now scientists say that the cephalopods are the leaders of the pack.

By Elizabeth Preston

The artwork suggests that the San people of South Africa have an Indigenous knowledge of paleontology that predated Western approaches to the field.

By Jack Tamisiea

Almost every animal in the rainforest enjoys snacking on water anoles, but slippery skin and an ability to carry an air bubble underwater help them survive.

By Sara Novak

Gibbons move with rhythm and intention. Dare we say style?

By Elizabeth Preston

Marmosets are the first nonhuman primates known to use name-like labels for individuals, a new study suggests.

By Emily Anthes

X-ray videos showed that some young Japanese eels demonstrated that they were not content to become a predator’s meal.

By Annie Roth

Scientists in Brazil identified marine worms that made at least some trace fossil burrows called Bifungites.

By Priyanka Runwal

In China, the arachnids seem to somehow manipulate the flashing of a caught male firefly to resemble a female’s come-hither signal.

By Darren Incorvaia

Specimens of what appear to be the largest eurypterid species found in Australia could shed light on the sudden extinction of the massive arthropods.

By Rebecca Dzombak

Scientists studied the unusual chemical reaction used by a species of the insect in an act of self-sacrifice to save nests from invaders.

By Veronique Greenwood

Old Timer, a male first photographed in 1972, was spotted last month near Alaska, enduring in the Pacific Ocean while some other humpbacks have struggled in a changing environment.

By Emily Anthes

The aquatic reptiles cannot resist eating invasive toads that are toxic, so scientists gave the crocodiles a dose of nonlethal food poisoning to adjust their behavior.

By Jack Tamisiea

Although an extinct animal was from a different group of marine mammals, an examination of fossils showed it evolved a way of eating that was very similar to that of modern walruses.

By Asher Elbein

Daphne, Phoebe, Iris and Pasithea demonstrated how marine mammals can help scientists understand mysterious places that humans may never visit.

By Kate Golembiewski

You’ve heard of a “frog in your throat,” but probably not like this.

By Asher Elbein

Like Olympic cyclists, fish expend less effort when swimming in tight groups than when alone. The finding could explain why some species evolved to move in schools.

By Katrina Miller

Videos in India show that sloth bears seem unaware of being stalked by the ferocious felines. When the tigers try to strike, the bears often get the better of them.

By Andrew Chapman

Scientists found an unexpected aging pattern in a mostly intact juvenile mammal skeleton from the paleontological period.

By Jack Tamisiea

An examination of an aquatic, shrimplike creature that lived half a billion years ago offers insight into how arthropods with mandibles became so common.

By Rebecca Dzombak

While the volcano’s eruption was deadly, research shows that many people in the ancient Roman city died in building collapses from the earthquake associated with the outburst.

By Jordan Pearson

Asian honeybees protect their hives by making insect intruders go airborne.

By Elizabeth Anne Brown

It’s not easy being green, golden and male, according to a researcher’s observation of attempted frog cannibalism in Australia.

By Joshua Rapp Learn

Discovering evidence of deadly deluges of snow from the past could help protect people on mountains around the world, researchers say.

By Katherine Kornei

More than 100 million years ago, scientists say, warming seas and reduced oxygen may have sent some sharks higher into the water column, where they evolved to be fierce and hungry.

By Jeanne Timmons

Scientists used techniques from the field of gravitational wave astronomy to argue that the Antikythera mechanism contained a lunar calendar.

By Becky Ferreira

An ancient aquatic predator resembling a giant salamander turned up in an African fossil deposit, suggesting unwritten chapters of how animals moved onto land.

By Asher Elbein

The insects seem to know which injuries to treat as they engage in a behavior that seems almost human.

By Annie Roth

A fossil bed in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco is allowing new insights into the anatomies of arthropods that lived a half-billion years ago.

By Jack Tamisiea

A fatal fungal disease has devastated the world’s amphibians. But the fungus has a vulnerability: It cannot tolerate heat.

By Emily Anthes

Researchers discovered painted ladies on a South American beach and then built a case that they started their journey in Europe or Africa.

By Monique Brouillette

There has long been anecdotal evidence of the wormy creatures taking to the air, but videos recorded in Madagascar at last prove the animals’ acrobatics.

By Veronique Greenwood

Researchers analyzed a skull found in Montana of a plant-eating member of the ceratops family, finding distinct traits.

By Asher Elbein

Researchers say the nearly mile-long swim was the longest by big cats ever recorded.

By Anthony Ham

Computer simulations suggest that a collision with another planetary object early in Earth’s history may have provided the heat to set off plate tectonics.

By Lucas Joel

An analysis of elephant calls using an artificial intelligence tool suggests that the animals may use and respond to individualized rumbles.

By Kate Golembiewski

They build extensive burrow networks and don’t seem to mind when other woodland creatures use them as flameproof bunkers.

By Darren Incorvaia

During a chaotic period some 50 million years ago, the strange deep-sea creatures left the ocean bottom and thrived by clamping onto their mates.

By William J. Broad

Cuts in the cranium, which is more than 4,000 years old, hint that people in the ancient civilization attempted to treat a scourge that persists today.

By Jordan Pearson

A genetic analysis of the German cockroach explained its rise in southern Asia millenniums ago, and how it eventually turned up in your kitchen.

By Sofia Quaglia

Videos filmed by divers show that choking, blinding and sacrificing limbs are all in the cephalopods’ repertoire.

By Joshua Rapp Learn

If spiders use their webs like a large external eardrum, researchers reasoned, perhaps spider silk could be the basis for a powerful listening device.

By Jordan Pearson

New research shows the “upside-down trees” originated in Madagascar and then caught a ride on ocean currents to reach mainland Africa and Australia.

By Rachel Nuwer

The brittle star specimen suggests that the sea creatures have been splitting themselves in two to reproduce for more than 150 million years.

By Jack Tamisiea

By sequencing an enormous amount of data, a group of hundreds of researchers has gained new insights into how flowers evolved on Earth.

By Veronique Greenwood

Divers and marine biologists are getting a window into the lives of a red crustacean most often found in the guts of other species.

By Jules Jacobs

A science video maker in China couldn’t find a good explanation for why hot and cold water sound different, so he did his own research and published it.

By Sam Kean

Dice snakes found on an island in southeastern Europe fully commit themselves to the role of ex-reptile.

By Asher Elbein

For the first time, scientists observed a primate in the wild treating a wound with a plant that has medicinal properties.

By Douglas Main

The scene ends badly, as you might imagine.

By Lesley Evans Ogden

Indigenous rangers in Australia’s Western Desert got a rare close-up with the northern marsupial mole, which is tiny, light-colored and blind, and almost never comes to the surface.

By Anthony Ham

A series of foot tracks in southeastern China points to the discovery of a giant velociraptor relative, paleontologists suggest in a new study.

By Jack Tamisiea

A new study resets the timing for the emergence of bioluminescence back to millions of years earlier than previously thought.

By Sam Jones

Over time researchers have found fewer of the insects turning up in light traps, suggesting they may be less attracted to some kinds of light than they once were.

By Veronique Greenwood

Ancient humans left behind numerous archaeological traces in the cavern, and scientists say there may be thousands more like it on the Arabian Peninsula to study.

By Robin George Andrews

When Ruby Reynolds and her father found a fossil on an English beach, they didn’t know it belonged to an 82-foot ichthyosaur that swam during the days of the dinosaurs.

By Kate Golembiewski

An ascending jet’s contrail over Montreal added to the wonder of last Monday’s eclipse.

By Chloe Rose Stuart-Ulin

Extinct foxes and other animals were an important part of early South American communities, a new study has found.

By Jack Tamisiea

The study could help identify wood from Russia, which has been banned by many countries because of the war.

By Alexander Nazaryan

These reptiles and their social networks are understudied, according to researchers applying scents to different snakes to assess their behavior.

By Asher Elbein

A nearly 2,000-year-old stash pouch provides the first evidence of the intentional use of a powerful psychedelic plant in Western Europe during the Roman Era.

By Rachel Nuwer

How do you design an app for a parrot? Consider games that are “made to be licked,” a new study suggests.

By Emily Anthes

The observation suggests that seals join cobras, archerfish and other animals known to spit, although researchers can only speculate about the reason for the mammal’s expectoration.

By Douglas Main

Scientists never imagined that the blind cave salamanders called olms willingly left their caves. But at numerous aboveground springs, there they were.

By Elizabeth Anne Brown

A new study reveals that cicadas can discharge urine with far more force than their size would suggest. This spring’s output could be significant.

By Alla Katsnelson