Earth

Climate

Desert songbirds increasingly at risk of dehydration

With no efforts to curb climate warming, hot spots in the U.S. Southwest could turn uninhabitable for some songbirds.

Oceans

Fleeting dead zones can muck with seafloor life for decades

Low-oxygen conditions can fundamentally disrupt seafloor ecosystems and increase carbon burial, new research shows.

Earth

Dual magma plumes fueled volcanic eruptions during final days of dinosaurs

Two magma plumes fueled the Deccan volcanic eruptions around the time of the dinosaur extinction 66 million years ago.

Climate

Hot nests, not vanishing males, are bigger sea turtle threat

Climate change overheating sea turtle nestlings may be a greater danger than temperature-induced shifts in their sex ratios.

Earth

Oxygen flooded Earth’s atmosphere earlier than thought

The Great Oxidation Event that enabled the eventual evolution of complex life began 100 million years earlier than once thought, new dating of South African rock suggests.

Anthropology

DNA points to millennia of stability in East Asian hunter-fisher population

Ancient hunter-gatherers in East Asia are remarkably similar, genetically, to modern people living in the area. Unlike what happened in Western Europe, this region might not have seen waves of farmers take over.

Genetics

CRISPR used in cows to help fight tuberculosis

Chinese researchers used a CRISPR/Cas 9 gene editor to make cows more resistant to tuberculosis.

Genetics

CRISPR used in cows to help fight tuberculosis

Chinese researchers used a CRISPR/Cas 9 gene editor to make cows more resistant to tuberculosis.

Oceans

Cone snails wander in circles, lose focus with boosted CO₂

Deadly cone snails wander in circles and become less capable hunters when exposed to higher levels of carbon dioxide in seawater.

Oceans

Cone snails wander in circles, lose focus with boosted CO₂

Deadly cone snails wander in circles and become less capable hunters when exposed to higher levels of carbon dioxide in seawater.

Earth

3-billion-year-old crystals hint at lost continent’s fate

Zircon crystals from a long-gone continent called Mauritia may have resurfaced during volcanic eruptions on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.

Oceans

Climate change may boost toxic mercury levels in sea life

Increased runoff to the ocean due to climate change could raise neurotoxic mercury in coastal sea life by disrupting the base of the food web.