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Rangers setting out to install stoat traps in the Kea Basin, New Zealand Robin Hammond/Panos Pictures Across New Zealand, a vast conservation effort is under way to wipe out invasive species and enable various native and endangered birds to rebound. The ground-dwelling kiwi Robin Hammond/Panos Pictures The country’s Predator Free 2050 project, documented here by…

A team of scientists from Korea and Japan has discovered a new type of crystal that can “breathe” — releasing and absorbing oxygen repeatedly at relatively low temperatures. This unique ability could transform the way we develop clean energy technologies, including fuel cells, energy-saving windows, and smart thermal devices. The newly developed material is a…

A University of Queensland study suggests the antivenom given to people bitten by Eastern Brown Snakes may not be as effective as it could be, prompting a review of hospital cases. Professor Bryan Fry from UQ’s School of the Environment led a team which assessed the blood-clotting toxins in venoms from every Australian brown snake…

Research team: “This discovery reveals the world’s earliest known human fossil showing morphological traits of both of these human groups, which until recently were considered two separate human species. The current study shows that the five-year-old child’s skeleton is the result of continuous genetic infiltration from the local — and older — Neanderthal population into…

A team of international scientists has discovered new fossils at a field site in Africa that indicate Australopithecus, and the oldest specimens of Homo, coexisted at the same place in Africa at the same time — between 2.6 and 2.8 million years ago. The paleoanthropologists discovered a new species of Australopithecus that has never been…

Are there unseen planets in our solar system? Peter Jurik/Alamy Somewhere at the edge of the solar system a new Earth-sized world might be lurking, dubbed Planet Y. Astronomers have long proposed that there might be hidden planets beyond the Kuiper belt, a region of icy objects that is home to Pluto. Some of the…