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Categories: Biology: Zoology, Offbeat: Paleontology and Archeology

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A long-beaked echidna named after Sir David Attenborough and last seen by scientists in 1961 has been photographed for the first time in an Indonesian tropical forest. An international team of researchers worked with local communities to deploy over 80 camera traps to film the elusive animal. Besides rediscovering the echidna, the team uncovered a wealth of species completely new to science, including beetles, spiders, and a remarkable tree-dwelling shrimp.

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An analysis of beeswax in managed honeybee hives in New York finds a wide variety of pesticide, herbicide and fungicide residues, exposing current and future generations of bees to long-term toxicity.

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Desert birds lay larger eggs when they have more helpers to feed their chicks, new research shows.

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Mosasaurs, those large marine reptiles from the long-gone Cretaceous world, were quite picky in their choice of diet. Researchers came to this conclusion after studying the wear marks on mosasaur teeth.

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Unlike their relatives, individuals of the poison frog Allobates femoralis are not poisonous but are captivating due to their different behavioral profiles: They successfully reproduce with different strategies depending on whether they are bold, aggressive or explorative. In addition, certain character traits are already present in this species at the tadpole stage.

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A new analysis of 14,669 threatened species of plants and animals found in Europe reveals that about one fifth face the risk of extinction, and that agricultural land-use change poses a significant threat to these species.

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A new analysis of lice genetic diversity suggests that lice came to the Americas twice -- once during the first wave of human migration across the Bering Strait, and again during European colonization.

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Researchers say they have discovered high diversity of Darwin wasps in a tropical rainforest in Brazil, wasps which were previously thought to thrive more in cooler habitats.

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The fascinating world of bacteria that live as symbionts or parasites in animal hosts often remains a mystery to researchers. A research team has made a breakthrough that provides insights into this mysterious micro-world.

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Over 100 letters sent to French sailors by their fianc es, wives, parents and siblings -- but never delivered -- have been opened and studied for the first time since they were written in 1757-8.

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Researchers have used fossil evidence to engineer a soft robotic replica of pleurocystitids, a marine organism that existed nearly 450 million years ago and is believed to be one of the first echinoderms capable of movement using a muscular stem.

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New research combines microscope and video technology to analyze how different species develop, and how changes in the timings of any developments can be tracked. A detailed analysis of the Energy Proxy Traits (EPTs) that result from these processes has provided researchers with the first evidence that traditionally measured timings of developmental events are associated with far broader changes to the full set of an embryo's observable characteristics.

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They say two heads are better than one. But in the world of fish, it appears two fins are better than one. Researchers have produced a theoretical model that demonstrates the underlying mechanisms behind how fish will synchronize their fin movements to ride each other's vortices, thereby saving energy.

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The hunter-gatherers who settled on the banks of the Haine, a river in southern Belgium, 31,000 years ago were already using spearthrowers to hunt their game. The material found at the archaeological site of Maisières-Canal permits establishing the use of this hunting technique 10,000 years earlier than the oldest currently known preserved spearthrowers. This discovery is prompting archaeologists to reconsider the age of this important technological innovation.

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Sharks and rays from threatened species are being caught off northern Cyprus, according to a new study by scientists who are working with local authorities and fishers to protect the animals.

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By comparing genomes of several cat species, the project has helped researchers understand why cat genomes tend to have fewer complex genetic variations (such as rearrangements of DNA segments) than other mammal groups, like primates. It also revealed new insights into which parts of cat DNA are most likely to evolve rapidly and how they play a role in species differentiation.

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Researchers have developed a novel system to probe a rat's thoughts, finding that animals can control their brain activity to imagine remote locations.  

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The chance discovery of a note written in a 15th century Hebrew prayer book fills an important gap in the historical Italian earthquake record, offering a brief glimpse of a previously unknown earthquake affecting the Marche region in the central Apennines.  

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Carnivorous dinosaurs might have evolved to take advantage of giant carcasses, according to a new study.

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A new study that combines genetic and molecular techniques helps solve the riddle of sea star (commonly called starfish) body plans, and how sea stars start life with bilateral body symmetry -- just like humans -- but grow up to be adults with fivefold 'pentaradial' symmetry.