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Categories: Ecology: General, Offbeat: Paleontology and Archeology

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Researchers have described some of the best-preserved three-dimensional trilobite fossils ever discovered. The fossils, which are more than 500 million years old, were collected in the High Atlas of Morocco and are being referred to by scientists as 'Pompeii' trilobites due to their remarkable preservation in ash.

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We often think of species as separate and distinct, but sometimes they can interbreed and create hybrids. When this happens consistently in a specific area, it forms what's known as a hybrid zone. These zones can be highly dynamic or remarkably stable, and studying them can reveal key insights into how species boundaries evolve -- or sometimes blur. Researchers now describe a hybrid zone between two manakin species in Panama that has overall remained relatively stable over the past 30 years.

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Researchers have identified the likeliest timeline of the famous Hellenistic-era Kyrenia shipwreck, discovered and recovered off the north coast of Cyprus in the 1960s.

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Researchers have projected future marine heatwaves will cause coral reefs to be at severe risk of bleaching for longer periods than previously seen.

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Researchers continue to expand the case for the Younger Dryas Impact hypothesis. The idea proposes that a fragmented comet smashed into the Earth's atmosphere 12,800 years ago, causing a widespread climatic shift that, among other things, led to the abrupt reversal of the Earth's warming trend and into an anomalous near-glacial period called the Younger Dryas.

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New biologist-designed shelters will help endangered frogs survive the devastating impacts of a deadly fungal disease by regulating their body temperature to fight off infections.

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There is a common belief that prescribed burning, thinning trees, and clearing underbrush reduce risks of the severity of future fires. But is that true? A new project analyzing 40 studies where wildfire burned into different vegetation treatments, spanning 11 western states. Researchers found overwhelming evidence that in seasonally dry mixed conifer forests in the western U.S., reducing surface and ladder fuels and tree density through thinning, coupled with prescribed burning or pile burning, could reduce future wildfire severity by more than 60% relative to untreated areas.

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Some 1,000 years ago, a small band of Polynesians sailed thousands of miles across the Pacific to settle one of the world's most isolated places -- a small, previously uninhabited island they named Rapa Nui. Eventually, their numbers ballooned to unsustainable levels, they wrecked the environment, and their civilization collapsed. At least that is the longtime story, told in academic studies and popular books. A new study challenges this narrative of 'ecocide' saying that Rapa Nui's population never spiraled to unsustainable levels.

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Protected areas, like nature reserves, can conserve biodiversity without harming local economic growth, countering a common belief that conservation restricts development. A new study outlines what is needed for conservation to benefit both nature and people.

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For centuries, scientists thought they knew where the griffin legend came from. A new study takes a closer look at the data and folklore's influence on science.

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A new dinosaur has been identified and named. The dinosaur's name, Lokiceratops rangiformis, translates roughly to 'Loki's horned face that looks like a caribou.'

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An international team of scientists has recently found that non-native species are expanding their ranges many orders of magnitude faster than native ones, in large part due to inadvertent human help. Even seemingly sedentary non-native plants are moving at three times the speed of their native counterparts in a race where, because of the rapid pace of climate change and its effect on habitat, speed matters. To survive, plants and animals need to be shifting their ranges by 3.25 kilometers per year just to keep up with the increasing temperatures and associated climactic shifts -- a speed that native species cannot manage without human help.

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Some areas of the Amazon rainforest are more resilient to drought than others, new research shows. But if not managed carefully, we could 'threaten the integrity of the whole system,' researchers say.

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A white wine over 2,000 years old, of Andalusian origin, is the oldest wine ever discovered.

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Natural hazards can speed up the extinction process of land animals that have limited distribution and/or small populations. But there is hope to turn the negative development around, says researchers behind new study.

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An international team of scientists has identified the oldest fossil of a sea-going reptile from the Southern Hemisphere -- a nothosaur vertebra found on New Zealand's South Island. 246 million years ago, at the beginning of the Age of Dinosaurs, New Zealand was located on the southern polar coast of a vast super-ocean called Panthalassa. 'The nothosaur found in New Zealand is over 40 million years older than the previously oldest known sauropterygian fossils from the Southern Hemisphere.

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New research has found that sharks retained high levels of functional diversity for most of the last 66 million years, before steadily declining over the last 10 million years to its lowest value in the present day.

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The new study provides unambiguous evidence that the inner core began to decrease its speed around 2010, moving slower than the Earth's surface.

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Paleontologists have identified a new genus of fossil goby, revealing evolutionary secrets of a lineage that stretches back millions of years.

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The increase in the frequency and intensity of marine heatwaves in recent decades is one of the effects of global climate change. A study shows that the extreme heatwave of 2022 caused an 'unprecedented' increase in mortality of the red gorgonian Paramuricea clavata, affecting 70% of the colonies located in the Montgr Natural Park, the Medes Islands and the Baix Ter. According to the researchers, these results are 'alarming and threaten the viability' of this species of great value for the biodiversity of benthic ecosystems, since it is considered to be an inhabitant-forming species.