1+ hour, 25+ min ago   (831+ words) Most sea turtle bones from old Caribbean sites are small, burnt, and broken. For a long time, that was the end of the road because a broken piece could be called a sea turtle and nothing more. A new protein…...

4+ hour, 35+ min ago   (875+ words) A western diamondback rattlesnake makes a venom strong enough to kill a person. The same venom does little to the snake that produced it. That resistance has been noted for a century. What no one had pinned down was the…...

1+ day, 21+ hour ago   (706+ words) For more than 20 years, a small gray “dwarf fox” on the Mexican island of Cozumel lived more like a legend than a real animal. Locals talked about it and scientists had dug up its bones. But nobody could prove it…...

2+ day, 3+ hour ago   (1276+ words) Think about the last time you fell asleep. Your body went still. Your breathing slowed. You didn’t have to do anything to stay put. Now picture a version of sleep where your own body keeps trying to float you up…...

2+ day, 2+ hour ago   (778+ words) Bats spend every night making split-second decisions in complete darkness. They avoid obstacles, chase insects, and stay close to other bats by listening to echoes from sounds they produce themselves. It sounds simple, but it becomes much harder when dozens…...

2+ day, 4+ hour ago   (835+ words) Seabirds that struggle through an especially demanding breeding season don’t just recover quietly afterward. New research shows they respond by migrating farther, which sets them up to raise more chicks the following year. However, the strategy comes at a real…...

2+ day, 22+ hour ago   (693+ words) An exceptionally preserved fossil from Brazil is giving scientists one of their clearest views yet of how the earliest snakes evolved. The 3D skeleton suggests that some ancient snakes adapted to life underground long before modern species appeared. The fossil also…...

2+ day, 23+ hour ago   (738+ words) At least one species of pterosaur had body coverings capable of producing shimmering, iridescent colors, according to a new analysis. Depending on the viewing angle, those colors may have shifted from green to magenta. The research has been published as…...

3+ day, 22+ hour ago   (794+ words) For decades, a coral reef off the coast of Benin was treated as little more than an old mystery. Historical surveys from the 1960s had identified a potential reef present beneath the ocean’s surface at depths of more than 160 feet (50 meters)....

4+ day, 5+ min ago   (856+ words) Blue is one of nature’s rarest colors. When it does appear, it is usually created by microscopic structures that bend and scatter light rather than by blue pigments themselves. Now, scientists have discovered that one Australian frog, the green and…...