One hundred miles (160 kilometers) off the Californian coast, and a mile (1,600 meters) below the surface, researchers have discovered a totally new kind of nesting site. In the dark and rocky fissures of a submarine plateau, hundreds of odd-looking fish and octopus gather to care for their eggs.
Last May, a small fishing boat plied the waters of Mossel Bay, South Africa, in pursuit of great white sharks. Scientists hooked a seven-footer, fought it until it calmed, then towed it towards the 100-foot research vessel that waited nearby. Then, they hoisted it on deck with a hydraulic lift.
The fossil remains of a giant rodent that weighed an estimated 1,500 pounds (700 kilograms)—as large as a modern buffalo—is helping scientists form a clearer image of what northern South America was like some eight million years ago.
Male bowerbirds famously woo females by fashioning elaborate bowers—not nests but U-shaped showplaces with parallel walls of twigs. There the males prance and noisily serenade the females. New research, however, reveals that males that accurately mimic the calls of other bird species were most successful at winning mates.
If you expect equal pay for equal work, blame evolution. Researchers have found that the highly social and cooperative brown capuchin monkey shows a sense of fairness, the first observation of such behavior in a species other than humans. This suggests that knowing what's fair and what's not is a product of evolution.
A "living fossil" found only in Europe's oldest lake is facing extinction because of pollution and overfishing, scientists warn. If the Ohrid trout is to be saved, they say urgent conservation action is needed in Albania and Macedonia.
Researchers using sophisticated radio-dating techniques have
concluded that a tunnel running under ancient Jerusalem was indeed
constructed around 700 B.C., during the reign of King Hezekiah, just as
it is described in the Bible.
Hydrogen fuel cell cars present a paradox: While the zero emission vehicles don't pollute, most plans to mass-produce clean-burning hydrogen rely on dirty fuels like coal and gas. The recent blackout in the Northeast U.S. and Canada, however, may kick-start other uses of hydrogen fuel cells.
Tonight's full moon, also known as the harvest moon, will flood the twilight sky with natural light just after sunset, providing folks a few extra hours to complete outside shores. Artificial lighting long ago reduced the importance of the moon to farmers and gardeners, but the name has stuck.
Since the mid-19th century, scientists have been vexed to explain a simple question about bee reproduction: Why do unfertilized bee eggs become male, while fertilized eggs produce female worker or queen offspring? The answer, according to new research, is a unique genetic system.
In Alaska, the locals call it devil's club—a spiky plant mostly known for spoiling hikes and crowding out blueberry patches. So why are ecologists growing more of the stuff? Devil's club may find a use as a treatment for tuberculosis adapted from Native American folk medicine.
The Canadian lynx (Lynx canadensis) may creep for miles through dense, debris-strewn forest for the chance to pounce on a scarce snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus), but the stealthy feline is apparently seldom bothered to weather a crossing of the Rocky Mountains to find a mate.
A study of skulls excavated from the tip of Baja California in Mexico suggests that the first Americans may not have been the ancestors of today's Amerindians, but another people who came from Southeast Asia and the southern Pacific area.
