Life

Animals

Roach gals get less choosy as time goes by

As their first reproductive peak wanes, female cockroaches become more like male ones, willing to mate with any potential partner that moves.

Paleontology

Study picks new site for dinosaur nostrils

A new analysis of fossils and living animals suggests that most dinosaurs' nostrils occurred at locations toward the tip of their snout rather than farther up on their face, a concept that may change scientists' views of the animals' physiology and behavior.

Animals

Don’t look now, but is that dog laughing?

Researchers have identified a particular exhalation that dogs make while playing as a possible counterpart to a human laugh.

Paleontology

For past climate clues, ask a stalag-mite

Mites fossilized in cave formations in the American Southwest show that at times during the past 3,200 years the climate there was much wetter and cooler.

Animals

Condor chicks hatch in zoo and wild

Newly hatched California condor chicks indicate that reproduction is again taking place in the wild.

Animals

Microbe lets mite dads perform virgin birth

A gender-bent mite—in which altered males give birth as virgins—turns out to be the first species discovered to live and reproduce with only one set of chromosomes.

Animals

Fruit flies hear by spinning their noses

Drosophila have a rotating ear—and odor-sensing—structure that's new to science.

Paleontology

Two new dinosaurs chiseled from fossil gap

A sleek predator and a pot-bellied giant dinosaur have emerged from North American rocks to fill in a 30-million-year gap in the dinosaur fossil record.

Paleontology

Sahara yields second-largest dinosaur

Excavations near an Egyptian oasis have unearthed the fossils of an animal that probably ranks as the second-most-massive dinosaur known.

Paleontology

Fossil footprints could be monumental

Trace fossils found in a vacant lot in a small town in Utah, including the footprints of meat-eating dinosaurs, could soon be protected as part of a new U.S. national monument.

Paleontology

Beyond Bones

The forensic analysis of trace fossils such as footprints, nests, burrows, and even coprolites—fossilized feces—reveal subtle clues about ancient species, their behavior, and their environment.

Ecosystems

Parrot survey finds poaching but also hope

The largest review yet of wild parrot nesting finds poaching worrisomely frequent but also sees cause for hope in the efects of a U.S. protection law.