WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When the bones of the early armored dinosaur Scelidosaurus were unearthed in 1858 in west Dorset, England, they comprised the first complete dinosaur skeleton ever identified. But aside from cursory papers by pioneering British paleontol... More »
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – California fire officials on Sunday reported significant headway battling the two largest of dozens of lightning-sparked blazes raging in and around the greater San Francisco Bay area since mid-August, though 60,000 people remained unde... More »
(Reuters) – Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s neuroscience startup Neuralink on Friday unveiled a pig named Gertrude that has had a coin-sized computer chip in its brain for two months, showing off an early step toward the goal of curing human diseases with... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The tusks of a stoutly built plant-eating mammal relative that inhabited Antarctica 250 million years ago are providing the oldest-known evidence that animals resorted to hibernation-like states to get through lean times such as polar wi... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The skull of a dinosaur embryo from Argentina is providing surprising details about baby facial features present in one species from an important dinosaur group called titanosaurs that included the largest land animals that have ever liv... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Sharks have more complex social lives than previously known, as shown by a study finding that gray reef sharks in the Pacific Ocean cultivate surprising social networks with one another and develop bonds that can endure for years. The re... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists have identified a chemical compound released by locusts that causes them to swarm, opening the door to possible new ways to prevent these insects from devouring crops vital to human sustenance as they have for millennia. Resea... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – British actress Naomie Harris and musician Brian Eno have teamed up to produce a short film backing calls for urgent action to slow climate change, in support of civil disobedience campaign Extinction Rebellion. Harris, who plays Eve Moneype... More »
KUANTAN, Malaysia (Reuters) – Some skin, eggs and tissue samples are all that remain of Malaysia’s last rhino, Iman, who died last November after years of failed breeding attempts. Now scientists are pinning their hopes on experimental stem cell technology to ... More »
BERLIN (Reuters) – One creature’s droppings can be another’s treasure, as Germany’s Krone Circus is finding out during the new coronavirus pandemic. Home to 26 lions and tigers, the circus has found an unusual side income and raised money despite coronavirus-r... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When scientists first unearthed fossils of a horned dinosaur called Centrosaurus in the badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park in Canada’s Alberta province in 1989, they spotted a badly malformed leg bone they figured was a healed fracture... More »
DEL MAR, Calif. (Reuters) – Scientists are using drones and other technology to study great white sharks along the coast of Southern California to better understand interactions between these marine predators and people and assess the risks to human beachgoers... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Stone tools unearthed in a cave in central Mexico and other evidence from 42 far-flung archeological sites indicate people arrived in North America – a milestone in human history – earlier than previously known, upwards of 30,000 years a... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – For fish inhabiting the immense darkness of the deep sea, being ultra-black offers great camouflage in a fish-eat-fish world. Scientists studying some of these exotic creatures now have unraveled the secret behind their extreme color. Th... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New genetic research shows that there was mingling between ancient native peoples from Polynesia and South America, revealing a single episode of interbreeding roughly 800 years ago after an epic transoceanic journey. The question of suc... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Researchers diving into dark submerged caves on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula have found evidence of an ambitious mining operation starting 12,000 years ago and lasting two millennia for red ochre, an earth mineral pigment prized by prehist... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A powerfully built relative of modern wombats that was the size of a black bear roamed Australia’s woodlands about 25 million years ago, possessing shovel-shaped hands and strong forelimbs indicating it was an adept digger, scientists sa... More »
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s notorious dog-meat festival has opened in defiance of a government campaign to improve animal welfare and reduce risks to health highlighted by the novel coronavirus outbreak, but activists are hopeful its days are numbered. The an... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists have unearthed the first fossils of soft-shelled eggs laid by dinosaurs – two disparate species from Argentina and Mongolia – in a discovery suggesting that the earliest dinosaurs produced such eggs before some lineages turned... More »
(Reuters) – A mysterious 68-million-year-old fossil found on Seymour Island off Antarctica’s coast that looked like a deflated football has turned out to be a unique find – the second-largest egg on record and one that may have belonged to a huge marine reptil... More »
CHONBURI, Thailand (Reuters) – Volunteer pet groomer Kriengkai Thatwakorn is thrilled to be back helping out stray dogs in Thailand, some in urgent need of a shearing after waiting three sweltering months for a trim. A domestic travel ban to contain the novel ... More »
QALQILYA, West Bank (Reuters) – Peacocks, ostriches and baboons joined in an animal baby boom at a Palestinian zoo during the coronavirus closure as they let nature take its course free from human distractions. Fifteen animals were born at the tiny Qalqilya Zo... More »
POSTOJNA, Slovenia (Reuters) – Three rare aquatic creatures known as baby dragons are going on display in an aquarium at Slovenia’s Postojna Cave, one of the country’s biggest tourist attractions. The cave-dwelling animals, officially called proteus or olms, h... More »
SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Chilean and Argentine researchers have unearthed teeth in far-flung Patagonia belonging to a mammal that lived 74 million years ago, the oldest such remains yet discovered in the South American country, the Chilean Antarctic Institute repo... More »
PARIS (Reuters) – French police have taken away an emaciated lion from a circus in Vironvay, western France, following complaints from an animal rights organization. The prefecture for the Eure region said in a statement the lion had been seized as the circus ... More »
SYDNEY (Reuters) – The world’s largest population of nesting green turtles is nearly twice as big as previously thought, scientists said on Wednesday, after drones enabled better surveys of the animals. Australian scientists determined that there were about 64... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In a forest rebounding after a wildfire 110 million years ago, an armored dinosaur devoured a meal of tender ferns in western Canada before suffering a sudden death – perhaps drowning in a river or a flash flood – and being washed out to... More »
SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) – Indian police have released a pigeon belonging to a Pakistani fisherman after a probe found that the bird, which had flown across the contentious border between the nuclear-armed nations, was not a spy, two officials said on Friday.... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Fragmentary bone fossils and a molar found in Bulgaria dated to roughly 45,000 years ago show that Homo sapiens populations swept into Europe – until then a bastion for the Neanderthals – earlier than previously known, scientists said on... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The huge African predator Spinosaurus spent much of its life in the water, propelled by a paddle-like tail while hunting large fish – a “river monster,” according to scientists, that showed that some dinosaurs invaded the aquatic realm.... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When paleontologist Thomas Mörs was peering into a microscope while sorting through tiny 40 million-year-old fossils unearthed on Seymour Island near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, he came across quite a surprise – hip and skull bon... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The world’s ants, bees, butterflies, grasshoppers, fireflies and other land-dwelling insects have been suffering population drops of about 9% per decade but freshwater bugs such as dragonflies and mosquitoes have been rallying, researche... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A wondrous lineage of crocodile relatives that developed into fast-swimming seagoing predators at a time when dinosaurs dominated the land adapted to life in the open ocean with a pivotal evolutionary modification also present in whales.... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Indigenous elders from Alaska to Australia have come together to deliver some tough love in a new film for Earth Day: the human race will only survive if we start putting our minds at the service of our hearts. Produced by Academy and Emmy a... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – For human beings, “stink flirting” may not sound like a prudent dating strategy. For ring-tailed lemurs, it is the way to go. Scientists on Thursday described the results of a comprehensive study of this behavior – unique in the animal k... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Neanderthals used plant fibers to create string more than 40,000 years ago at a site in France where they hunted reindeer, further evidence according to scientists of the ingenuity and cognitive capabilities of our closest extinct human ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists have figured out how to calculate the age of whale sharks – Earth’s largest fish – with some guidance from the radioactive fallout spawned by Cold War-era atomic bomb testing. By measuring levels of carbon-14, a naturally occu... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists have extracted from dental enamel the oldest human genetic material ever obtained, helping clarify the pivotal place in the human evolutionary lineage of a mysterious extinct species called Homo antecessor known from Spanish c... More »
(Reuters) – A tiger at the Bronx Zoo in New York City has tested positive for the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, in the first known case of a human infecting an animal and making it sick, the zoo’s chief veterinarian said on Sunday. Nadia... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Antarctica is now a harsh land of ice and snow, but has not always been that way. Earth’s southernmost continent long ago was home to temperate, swampy rainforests teeming with life, scientists said on Wednesday based on pristinely prese... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists have solved a longstanding mystery over the age of a landmark skull found in 1921 in Zambia – the first fossil of an extinct human species discovered in Africa – in research with big implications for deciphering the origin of ... More »
ROVANIEMI, Finland (Reuters) – When Peruvian musician Victor Alarcon set out on his dream trip to shoot a music video in the Finnish Arctic for his single called ‘Aurora Boreal’ (Northern Lights), he did not expect the coronavirus outbreak to leave him strande... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists have unearthed fossils of a fearsome feathered dinosaur in northwestern New Mexico that was a quick and agile predator that could chase down smaller prey or swarm larger prey in pack attacks 67 million years ago. And, judging ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A worm-like creature smaller than a grain of rice that burrowed on the sea floor in search of meals like dead organic matter about 555 million years ago may be the evolutionary forerunner of most animals living today – including people. ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Inside the stout fins of a fish that prowled the shallow waters of an estuary in what is now eastern Canada about 380 million years ago, scientists have found what they call the evolutionary origins of the human hand. The researchers exa... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A fossil unearthed in Belgium dubbed the “Wonderchicken” is providing a rare glimpse into the early evolution of modern birds at the twilight of the age of dinosaurs, right before an asteroid impact altered the course of life on Earth. R... More »
HAMBURG (Reuters) – A case of H5N8 bird flu has been confirmed in a poultry farm in the eastern German state of Saxony, German authorities said on Monday. The social affairs and protection ministry in the state of Saxony said the case involved bird flu of type... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists are marveling over the exquisitely preserved skull of what appears to be the smallest-known bird – tinier than any hummingbird – encased in 99-million-year-old amber and boasting many odd traits including jaws studded with num... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – On a crag of rock called Brother’s Point on Scotland’s Isle of Skye, scientists have identified two bustling footprint sites that reveal an abundance of dinosaurs that thrived 170 million years ago including an early member of a celebrat... More »
MOGADISHU (Reuters) – The growls from the caged hyena reverberate through the room as Mohamed Sheikh Yakub slumps silently in a chair nearby, hoping the animal will frighten away the evil spirits he says have troubled him since his divorce. The traditional tre... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists have spotted in rocks from northern China what may be the oldest fossils of a green plant ever found, tiny seaweed that carpeted areas of the seafloor roughly a billion years ago and were part of a primordial revolution among ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Neanderthal skeleton unearthed in an Iraqi cave already famous for fossils of these extinct cousins of our species is providing fresh evidence that they buried their dead – and intriguing clues that flowers may have been used in such r... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The world’s last woolly mammoths, sequestered on an Arctic Ocean island outpost, suffered from serious genetic defects caused by generations of inbreeding that may have hampered traits such as sense of smell and male fertility in the doo... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Fireflies are under threat globally, with familiar hazards such as habitat loss and pesticides compounded by another peril: humankind’s ubiquitous nighttime artificial light that plays havoc with their balletic nocturnal courtship, scien... More »
KAJIADO, Kenya (Reuters) – Two life-size lions crafted from scrap metal guard the entrance to the studio of Kenyan metal sculptor Kioko Mwitiki. Nearby a leopard, with holes in its metal body to mimic spots, crouches next to a giant elephant sculpture. Mwitiki... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – About 183 million years ago during the early part of the Jurassic Period, enormous amounts of lava flowed across the landscape in what is now South Africa, transforming the environment into a land of fire. But fossil footprints described... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists have identified Earth’s oldest-known impact crater, and in doing so may have solved a mystery about how our planet emerged from one of its most dire periods. Researchers have determined that the 45-mile-wide (70-km-wide) Yarra... More »
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro said on Tuesday he will create an “Amazon Council” to protect and ensure the “sustainable development” of the world’s largest rainforest, following intense criticism of his environmental polici... More »
MANILA (Reuters) – A restive volcano in the Philippines has a high risk of eruption as it is “recharging” with fresh magma and rising emissions of toxic gas, a top scientist said on Monday, while authorities ordered commercial establishments to stay shut. Eart... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An exquisite fossil of a fierce little Chinese dinosaur dubbed the “dancing dragon” that lived 120 million years ago – an older cousin of the Velociraptor – is showing scientists that feathers grew differently on dinosaurs than on birds.... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A microorganism scooped up in deep-sea mud off Japan’s coast has helped scientists unlock the mystery of one of the watershed evolutionary events for life on Earth: the transition from the simple cells that first colonized the planet to ... More »
(Reuters) – Australian insurer Suncorp Group (SUN.AX) said on Thursday it has received since September 2,600 bushfire-related claims worth up to A$345 million ($237.05 million), of which nearly a third was recorded in the first few days of the month. Suncorp o... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A cousin of the starfish that resides in the coral reefs of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico lacks eyes, but can still see, according to scientists who studied this creature that expands the boundaries of the sense of sight in the animal... More »
YANDERRA, Australia (Reuters) – It was oppressively hot, above 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), and the wind was picking up. Bushfires were devastating nearby towns and now threatened Yanderra, a small village with just over 600 people located south of Sydney. Dia... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A lovelorn singing whale, a world-famous feline sourpuss and ravenous goats credited with thwarting a dangerous California wildfire were among animals whose escapades across the United States made news in 2019. Animal antics drawing attent... More »
PALISADES, N.Y. (Reuters) – Some 20 miles north of New York City, a team of scientists is searching for clues about how the environment is changing by studying organisms not usually found in the woods around here: corals. In the labs of the Lamont-Doherty Eart... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Since 1978, researchers have scooped up and measured tens of thousands of birds that died after crashing into buildings in Chicago during spring and fall migrations. Their work has documented what might be called the incredible shrinking... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Braving perils from blood-sucking leeches to tigers and using transport as basic as elephants, scientists have journeyed like “Indiana Jones” to remote locations to collect wild cousins of crop seeds in a project to help tackle climate chang... More »
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro claimed on Friday that Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio financed fires being set in the Amazon rainforest, without presenting any evidence, the right-wing leader’s latest broadside in casting blame over ... More »
DAX, France (Reuters) – The ducks on a small French smallholding may carry on quacking, a French court ruled on Tuesday, rejecting a neighbor’s complaint that the birds’ racket was making their life a misery. The court in the town of Dax ruled that the noise f... More »
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China reported a third case of bubonic plague on Sunday after two other plague cases were revealed last week, but the disease remains rare despite its fearsome reputation and authorities say the cases appear unrelated. HOW DOES INFECTION O... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Genetic material extracted from a 1.9 million-year-old fossil tooth from southern China shows that the world’s largest-known ape – an extinct creature dubbed “Giganto” that once inhabited Southeast Asia – was an oversized cousin of today... More »
(Reuters) – Ben & Jerry’s has been sued by an environmental advocate who said it deceived consumers by touting that the milk and cream it uses to make ice cream came exclusively from “happy cows.” In a complaint filed last week, James Ehlers said Ben & Jerry’s... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Fossils unearthed in southern Germany of a remarkable ape that lived about 11.6 million years ago may dramatically alter the understanding of the evolutionary origins of a fundamental human trait – walking upright on two legs. Scientists... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A large ancient wetlands region spanning northern Botswana – once teeming with life but now dominated by desert and salt flats – may represent the ancestral homeland of all of the 7.7 billion people on Earth today, researchers said on Mo... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A revelatory cache of fossils dug up in central Colorado details as never before the rise of mammals from the post-apocalyptic landscape after an asteroid smacked Earth 66 million years ago and annihilated three-quarters of all species i... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – For a strange little lemur native to Madagascar that boasts one of the most unusual hands in the animal kingdom, a “high five” is more like a “trick six.” Scientists have discovered that this nocturnal tree dweller, called an aye-aye, po... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Climate change activists, including one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion, targeted Britain’s transport ministry in central London on Tuesday to protest against a proposed high-speed rail project known as HS2. Gail Bradbrook, one of th... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. regulators on Friday gave the green light for genetically modified cotton to be used for human consumption, paving the way for a protein-packed new food source – edible cottonseed that tastes a bit like chickpeas – that its develope... More »
((This story corrects to remove temperature conversions in fifth paragraph)) By Barbara Goldberg NEW YORK (Reuters) – Two-thirds of bird species in North America, already disappearing at an alarming rate, face extinction unless immediate action is taken to slo... More »
(Reuters) – Squirreling away supplies for winter took on a whole new meaning for a couple in the United States, after they discovered a hoodful of walnuts and grass in their car. Holly Persic was driving to a library in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, when she... More »
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – A highly poisonous fungus, with toxins that can be absorbed through the skin, has been identified for the first time in the rain forest near the Great Barrier Reef, Australian scientists said on Thursday. The Fire Coral fungus, which is b... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A winged beast dubbed the “iron dragon” soared above Australia during the age of dinosaurs, hunting fish in rivers and lakes, according to scientists who found that continent’s most complete fossil representing the flying reptiles called... More »
BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungary’s national food safety authority Nebih has found five cases of African swine fever in wild boar carcasses near Budapest, it said on Sunday. The causes of the infections found in a closed hunting area in Budakeszi, west of the Hunga... More »
KEY WEST, Fla. (Reuters) – Emily Hower, a research assistant at Nova Southeastern University doing field work on coral off Key West in Florida, bobs up out of the water and removes her diving mask. The news is not good. Most of the pillar coral that her team h... More »
ST THOMAS, Virgin Islands/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Off the coast of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, a group of scientists is tearing a reef apart in a feverish attempt to save some of its coral. They are battling a fast-moving, lethal disease that researche... More »
MIKHMORET, Israel (Reuters) – On a Mediterranean beach in Israel, a newly-hatched baby turtle fumbles along the sand, making its way to the sea for the very first time. The hatchling, one of 60 to be released into the wild this week, is part of a unique conser... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Scientists behind a landmark study of the links between oceans, glaciers, ice caps and the climate delivered a stark warning to the world on Wednesday: slash emissions or watch cities vanish under rising seas, rivers run dry and marine lif... More »
NAIROBI (Reuters) – This Sunday in South Africa, an accountant, an entrepreneur and a boxing executive are among 20 friends running the Cape Town marathon – with saplings strapped to their backs. The group are promoting the planting of native trees amid a nati... More »
JAKARTA (Reuters) – Thousands of Indonesians prayed for rain in haze-hit towns on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo on Wednesday, as forest fires raged at the height of the dry season, the state Antara news agency reported. Fires have burnt through parts of Su... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Artifacts including stone tools and animal bone fragments found in Idaho dating back about 16,600 years represent what may be the oldest evidence of humans in the Americas and offer insight into the routes people took as they spread into... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists on Wednesday announced the landmark discovery in Ethiopia of a nearly complete skull of an early human ancestor that lived 3.8 million years ago, a species boasting an intriguing mixture of apelike and humanlike characteristic... More »
KOMODO, Indonesia (Reuters) – Almost every day 20-year-old Rizaldian Syahputra puts on his blue uniform, laces up his high boots and leaves his wooden house on stilts for a job many nature-lovers would envy. But by next year, he may no longer be employed. Syah... More »
BIARRITZ, France (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump, responding to a question about climate change after skipping a G7 session on the issue, said on Monday that American wealth is based on energy and he will not jeopardize that for dreams and windmills. T... More »
TOKYO (Reuters) – A crisis over burning forest in the Amazon is “incredibly tragic”, actor Leonardo DiCaprio said on Monday, urging governments to do more, amid growing international outrage over the damage to the world’s largest tropical rain forest. A record... More »
NAIROBI (Reuters) – Seven eggs from the world’s last two remaining northern white rhinos have been successfully fertilized artificially, reviving hopes of saving the endangered animals, scientists said on Monday. The world’s last male northern white rhinoceros... More »
APOLLO BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) – Scientists in Florida have artificially induced reproductive spawning of an endangered Atlantic coral species for the first time in an aquarium setting, a breakthrough they say holds great promise in efforts to restore depleted r... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Genetic research that reconstructed the past population dynamics of the cave bear, a prominent prehistoric denizen of Europe, implicates Homo sapiens rather than climate cooling in the Ice Age extinction of these brawny plant-loving beas... More »
SRAGEN, Indonesia (Reuters) – An Indonesia man is walking backwards from his home in eastern Java to the capital Jakarta to raise awareness of deforestation in a country with one of the highest rates in the world. The more than 700 km (435 miles) would be ardu... More »
(Reuters) – An Indian man who was bitten by a snake got his revenge on the reptile by biting it back and killing it, the man’s father said on Monday. The man, Raj Kumar, was relaxing at home, enjoying a drink on Sunday, when a snake slithered into his house in... More »
