Illustration of Duonychus tsogtbaatari, a theropod dinosaur from the Cretaceous Period Masato Hattori A new species of dinosaur found at a Mongolian building site has the largest fully preserved claw ever found. The bipedal, herbivorous animal had only two fingers on each hand, which it may have used to grasp branches and pull them towards…
An artist’s impression of the solar system Shutterstock/Vadim Sadovski All of our solar system’s planets are lining up in the night sky at once this week. This extraordinary celestial event will see the sky scattered with seven visible planets in what is known as a great planetary alignment, or a “planetary parade”. The eight planets…
The vast majority of pangolin hunting in African forest landscapes is done for meat consumed by people in the region, rather than for scales shipped to East Asia, a new study led by the University of Cambridge suggests. Pangolins are the most heavily trafficked wild mammal in the world. A solitary, insect-eating animal about the…
The International Space Station may be a bit too clean Geopix/Alamy The strategy of keeping spacecraft as clean and sterile as possible to ensure astronauts don’t become ill may be a mistake. Our immune systems may need stimulation from certain kinds of molecules and microbes to stay healthy, say researchers who have been studying the…
Blue Ghost took a photo of its shadow on the lunar surface, with Earth in the sky above Firefly Aerospace A Texan company has achieved the second commercial landing on the moon – and the first that didn’t topple over on touchdown. The success comes amid a flurry of private and state lunar exploration. Firefly…
To allow studying the genetic causes of autism spectrum disorder, a Kobe University research team created a bank of 63 mouse embryonic stem cell lines containing the mutations most strongly associated with the disorder. The achievement was made possible by developing a new and more efficient method for changing the genome of embryonic stem cells….
Imagine looking out over a beautiful vista. The sun glances off the snowy peaks of distant mountains, a river winds through rolling hills. There is something wonderful about beholding the contours of a majestic landscape. It might not be obvious when you look at the night sky, but the universe has a landscape of its…
A black-and-white snub-nosed monkey and her infant Minden Pictures/Alamy Snub-nosed monkey mums are picky when choosing a babysitter, permitting experienced females to care for their infants more often than young and inexperienced ones. Many primates rely on the help of others when raising their offspring. This cooperative breeding strategy can provide the mother with some…
A visualisation of the Radcliffe wave, a series of dust and gas clouds (marked here in red) across the Milky Way. It is about 400 light years from our sun, marked in yellow Alyssa A. Goodman/Harvard University Our solar system passed through a vast wave of gas and dust around 14 million years ago, dimming…
Prototaxites formed tall structures like tree trunks, shown in this illustration of a landscape from the Silurian Period RICHARD JONES/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY A bizarre ancient organism previously thought to be a giant fungus may actually belong to an undiscovered branch of the tree of life that mysteriously went extinct. Prototaxites, which lived between 420 million…
