Life
- Paleontology
Deinonychus’ claws were hookers, not rippers
The meat-eating dinosaur Deinonychus probably used the large, sicklelike claw on its foot to grip and climb large prey, not disembowel it.
- Paleontology
The first matrushka
A newly found fossil preserves one creature inside another that lies nestled inside yet another, a Paleozoic version of the Russian nesting dolls known as matrushkas.
- Animals
Smells Funny: Fish schools break up over body odor
Just an hour's swim in slightly contaminated water can give a fish such bad body odor that its schoolmates shun it.
- Paleontology
Digging the Scene: Dinos burrowed, built dens
Dinosaurs remains fossilized within an ancient burrow are the first indisputable evidence that some dinosaurs maintained an underground lifestyle.
- Paleontology
Fossil mystery solved?
Experiments in a Florida swamp show how aquatic creatures can get trapped and preserved in amber, a form of hardened tree sap.
- Animals
Eat a Killer: Snake dines safely with strategic delays
An Australian snake kills dangerous frogs then waits for their defensive chemicals to degrade before eating them.
- Animals
Crowcam: Camera on bird’s tail captures bird ingenuity
Video cameras attached to tropical crows record the birds' use of plant stems as tools to dig out food.
- Paleontology
Just a quick bite
Saber-toothed cats living in North America around 10,000 years ago had a much weaker bite than modern big cats.
- Animals
Tough-guy bluebirds need a frontier
As western bluebirds recolonize Montana, the most aggressive males move in first, paving the way for milder-mannered dads to take over.
- Plants
Stalking the Green Meat Eaters
Pitcher plants in a New England bog hold little ecosystems in their leaves, and also act as indicators of the bog's ecological health.
- Animals
Not Your Ordinary Amphibians
They resemble mondo worms or perhaps eels and snakes. But caecilians (seh sil yenz) are actually legless amphibians, and along with deep sea fishes are among the least well known vertebrates on the planet. Some run to a meter or more in length. Although information on these elusive animals and photos of them are hard […]
- Paleontology
Unexpected Archive: Mammoth hair yields ancient DNA
Hair from ancient mammoths contains enough genetic material to permit reconstruction of parts of the animal's genome.
