In the lightless depths of the Gulf of Alaska, approximately 3,251 m (two miles) below the surface, a softball-sized golden object clinging to a rock left marine scientists and the general public equally baffled. Was it an egg? A sponge? Something altogether unknown? New research led by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History suggests…
The Galápagos lava heron, a small heron that stalks the lava-strewn shores of the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador, may finally have secured its place as a distinct species. The Galápagos lava heron (Butorides sundevalli). Image credit: Casey Klebba / CC BY-SA 4.0. The Galápagos lava heron, a slate-gray to black heron endemic to the Galápagos Islands,…
Scientists have extracted and analyzed DNA from 216 canid remains, including 181 from Paleolithic and Mesolithic Europe. The oldest data that they recovered are from a 14,200-year-old dog from the Kesslerloch site in Switzerland. Their results suggest that domesticated dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) predate farming and share deep ancestry with wolves (Canis lupus) from Eurasia,…
A team of researchers from the United States and Germany has identified fungal proteins that can freeze water at relatively warm subzero temperatures, raising the prospect of safer cloud seeding, improved climate models and new advances in food preservation and medicine. Mortierellomycetes and Umbelopsidomycetes fungi from freshwater ecosystems in Korea. Image credit: Goh et al.,…
Genetic and acoustic evidence show that the rare Ijima’s leaf warbler (Phylloscopus ijimae) is actually two distinct bird species, including the newly-identified Tokara leaf warbler — both with small, vulnerable populations. The Tokara leaf warbler (Phylloscopus tokaraensis) on Nakanoshima, the Tokara Islands, in June 2017. Image credit: Per Alström / Uppsala University. The Ijima’s leaf…
Samples returned by JAXA’s Hayabusa-2 mission from the C-type asteroid (162173) Ryugu contain all five canonical nucleobases — purines (adenine and guanine) and pyrimidines (cytosine, thymine and uracil) — pointing to a cosmic origin for some of life’s fundamental chemistry. Hayabusa-2 image of the asteroid Ryugu as seen from a distance of 3.7 miles. A…
An artist’s impression of how Visigoth warriors may have looked in the 5th century The Creative Assembly (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) The Goths were a multi-ethnic society, according to a study of DNA from Gothic graves. The people buried there had ancestry from places as far afield as Scandinavia, modern-day Turkey and North Africa. The findings…
