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Orcas push a juvenile great white shark up to the surface in a clever hunting manoeuvre Marco Villegas Orcas in the Gulf of California have been hunting juvenile great white sharks using a clever tactic: flipping them upside down to render them immobile. The discovery suggests there may be a previously unrecognised group of orcas…

Two Irish scientists have created a groundbreaking method for recovering fingerprints from fired bullet casings — something long believed to be impossible. Dr. Eithne Dempsey and her former PhD student, Dr. Colm McKeever, from the Department of Chemistry at Maynooth University in Ireland, have designed a novel electrochemical process that reveals fingerprints on brass casings…

Earth’s oceans hold extraordinary biodiversity, yet only a small portion of an estimated two million marine species have been formally identified and described. One of the biggest hurdles in ocean science is the lengthy delay — sometimes lasting decades — between when a species is first discovered and when it is officially documented. To overcome…

Scientists at the University of California, Davis report the discovery of a previously unrecognized trapdoor spider that lives in California’s coastal sand dunes. The species, named Aptostichus ramirezae, is closely related to Aptostichus simus, which occurs along the shoreline from Monterey to Baja California, Mexico. Findings published in the journal Ecology and Evolution indicate that…

Over a few million years, the spider Dysdera tilosensis (a species found only in the Canary Islands) has accomplished something extraordinary: it has cut its genome size nearly in half while adapting to its island environment. Despite this dramatic reduction, the genome of this species is not only more compact but also contains a higher…

Available for over a year What’s been called the storm of the century – Hurricane Melissa – has barrelled through Jamaica, Cuba, and the Bahamas over the past two days. Hannah Cloke, Professor of Hydrology at the University of Reading, explains whether Melissa was caused – or made worse – by human-made climate change. As…