Scientists have recovered DNA from a well-preserved horned lark found in Siberian permafrost. The results can contribute to explaining the evolution of sub species, as well as how the mammoth steppe transformed into tundra, forest and steppe biomes at the end of the last Ice Age. In 2018, a well-preserved frozen bird was found in…

Though discovered more than 45 years ago, fossils of Earth’s largest flying animal, Quetzalcoatlus, were never thoroughly analyzed. Now, a scientific team provides the most complete picture yet of this dinosaur relative, its environment and behavior. The pterosaur, with a 40-foot wingspan, walked with a unique gait, but otherwise filled a niche much like herons…

By uprooting carbon trapped in soil, wild pigs are releasing around 4.9 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide annually across the globe, the equivalent of 1.1 million cars, according to new research. An international team led by researchers from The University of Queensland and The University of Canterbury have used predictive population models, coupled with…

Upcoming 5G wireless networks that will provide faster cell phone service may lead to inaccurate weather forecasts, according to a new study on a controversial issue that has created anxiety among meteorologists. «Our study — the first of its kind that quantifies the effect of 5G on weather prediction error — suggests that there is…

Australia’s beaver-like, duck-billed platypus exhibits an array of bizarre characteristics: it lays eggs instead of giving birth to live babies, sweats milk, has venomous spurs and is even equipped with 10 sex chromosomes. Now, researchers have conducted a unique mapping of the platypus genome and found answers regarding the origins of a few of its…

Molting is thought to be unorganized in the first feathered dinosaurs because they had yet to evolve flight, so determining how molting evolved can lead to better understanding of flight origins. Recently researchers discovered that the earliest record of feather molting from the famous early fossil bird Archaeopteryx found in southern Germany in rocks that…

New research discovered a unique class of medications that act as blood thinners by inhibiting an enzyme in the genes of tick saliva. The research focused on novel direct thrombin inhibitors from tick salivary transcriptomes, or messenger RNA molecules expressed by an organism. The result is the development of new anticoagulant medications that can be…

Nerve cells have a special ion channel that has a key role in starting the electrical impulse that signals pain and is sent to the brain. New research finds that people who inherited the Neanderthal variant of this ion channel experience more pain. As several Neanderthal genomes of high quality are now available researchers can…

Normally, we think of the freezing point of water as 32°F — but in the world of weather forecasting and hydrologic prediction, that isn’t always the case. In the Lake Tahoe region of the Sierra Nevada, the shift from snow to rain during winter storms may actually occur at temperatures closer to 39.5°F, according to…

NASA and other U.S. agencies and space science institutions, along with international partners, will participate in a ‘tabletop exercise’ that will play out a realistic — but fictional — scenario for an asteroid on an impact trajectory with Earth. For more than 20 years, NASA and its international partners have been scanning the skies for…