Gigantic toothy swimming reptile was among the largest beasts ever
Big-toothed animals that swam in the Triassic seas grew as large as sperm whales, fossil evidence suggests. Image: Laurent Garbay/Univ. Bonn and Rosi Roth/Univ. Zurich
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Category: Life
Greenland’s Vikings may have vanished because they ran out of water
For more than 450 years, Norse settlers from Scandinavia lived—sometimes even thrived—in southern Greenland. Then, they vanished. Was it drought that drove their disappearance? Image: gordontour
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Sharks save energy with daytime naps
Sharks benefit from some shuteye, and biologists in Australia and New Zealand think they’ve begun to understand why. Image: Darren Shilson
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Fossil fish reveal timing of asteroid that killed the dinosaurs
Winter began in spring for many animals during the final year of the age of dinosaurs. Palaeontologists studying fossilized fish suggest that spring was in full bloom in the Northern Hemisphere when an asteroid slammed into Earth, triggering a devastating global winter and mass extinction. Image: Joschua Knüppe
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Deepest land-dwelling microbes found at bottom of 5km hole in China
There are microbes near the bottom of the third deepest hole in the world. The cells, recovered from rocks almost 5 kilometres below the surface in China, are the deepest so far found anywhere on land – and they may push beyond the known heat tolerances of life on Earth. Image: Qin Wang et al
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Bacteria dug up from beneath the seabed may be 100 million years old
Microbes that have been hibernating deep below the Pacific Ocean since the reign of the dinosaurs have been revived in the lab. Some may be 100 million years old, perhaps making them the longest-lived life forms on Earth. Image: Matt McGee
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World’s highest mammal discovered at the top of a Mars-like volcano
At the summit of Llullaillaco, a volcano in the Andes that rises 6739 metres above sea level, lives a mouse. It is the highest dwelling mammal in the world – and how it survives in an environment so hostile that it has been compared to Mars has left scientists baffled. Image: Dick Culbert
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Monty Python’s Silly Walk is exactly 6.7 times more silly than normal
Monty Python’s Minister of Silly Walks has been making audiences laugh for 50 years, and now we have a sense of just how silly his walking style is. An analysis shows that John Cleese’s iconic walk is about 6.7 times more variable – sillier – than standard human walking. Image: iT@c
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The mysterious microbes shifting humanity’s place in the tree of life
Strange microbes called the Lokis have reignited an argument about the shape of the tree of life, one of biology’s most fundamental ways of describing the rise of life on Earth, with implications for all of us. Image: david.mclanahan
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Hagfish tie their bodies into complicated knots to escape tight spots
Hagfish literally tie themselves in knots to escape a tricky situation – and that includes tying their bodies into complicated three-twist knots. Image: Haney and Uyeno
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We contain microbes so deeply weird they alter the very tree of life
Recent research shows that our bodies are home to microbes unlike anything science has encountered before – some so alien that they are rewriting the tree of life. Image: ibmphoto24
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DNA-eating bacteria lurk beneath the Atlantic Ocean floor
For a few species of microbe, DNA is more than a library of genetic information: it’s also lunch. Some bacteria that live in the mud below the seafloor appear to survive by eating DNA trapped in the dirt. Image: thdoubleu
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