Earth
- Animals
Ways to beat heat have hidden costs for birds
Birds that look as if they’re coping with heat waves and climate change may actually be on a downward slide, with underappreciated disadvantages of panting and seeking shade.
- Oceans
Lack of nutrients stalled rebound of marine life post-Permian extinction
Warm sea surface temperatures slowed the nitrogen cycle in Earth’s oceans and delayed the recovery of life following the Permian extinction, researchers propose.
- Animals
Evidence piles up for popular pesticides’ link to pollinator problems
Neonicotinoid pesticides linked to population declines in California butterflies and wild bee extinctions in Great Britain.
- Earth
Americas’ hookup not so ancient after all
Debate lingers over when the Isthmus of Panama formed and closed the seaway that separated North and South America millions of years ago.
- Earth
General relativity has readers feeling upside down
Readers respond to the June 25, 2016, issue of Science News with questions on Earth's age, moaning whales, plate tectonics and more.
- Environment
New desalination tech could help quench global thirst
Designed with better, more energy-efficient materials, next-generation desalination plants may offer a way to meet the world’s growing need for freshwater.
- Climate
India’s monsoon winds trace back nearly 13 million years
The intense monsoon winds that carry torrential rain to India each year first started blowing around 12.9 million years ago, new research suggests.
- Science & Society
Sea life stars in museum’s glass menagerie
See Leopold and Rudolf Blaschkas’ delicate glass jellyfish, anemones, sea worms and other marine invertebrates at the Corning Museum of Glass.
- Earth
China’s mythical ‘Great Flood’ possibly rooted in real disaster
Folktales of an ancient flood that helped kick off Chinese civilization may reference a nearly 4,000-year-old deluge.
- Paleontology
Woolly mammoths’ last request: Got water?
Woolly mammoths survived on an Alaskan island thousands of years after mainland mammoths went extinct. But they died out when their lakes dried up, thanks to a warming climate and rising sea levels.
- Animals
Pup kidnapping has a happy ending when a seal gets two moms
A female fur seal kidnapped another seal’s pup. But this turned out to be a positive the young seal, scientists found.
- Oceans
50 years ago, humans could pick the oceans clean
Scientists have long recognized that we might overfish the oceans. Despite quotas, some species are paying the price of human appetite.
