Scientists have debated the evolution of the world’s five living rhinoceros species ever since Charles Darwin addressed the question in a treatise in the mid-1800s, predating On the Origin of…
Picking out the fluty whistle of a Sulawesi babbler (Pellorneum celebense) is easy. Spotting it is far more difficult: these shy and diminutive birds, endemic to the forests of the…
A mysterious disease is wiping out one of the world’s smallest bats, the aptly named “little brown bat,” which has an extensive range across the United States and Canada. But…
Large biomes, like the Amazon rainforest, have closely linked habitats and species, which could lead to a domino effect and a rapid ecosystem collapse; even small effects can cause a crash over time.
A 66-million-year-old fossil has allowed scientists to describe a bizarre new species of mammal that lived in Madagascar during the time of the dinosaurs. They’ve christened it Adalatherium hui, which in Malagasy…
Surrounded by darkness, many deep-sea creatures emit light to help find prey or avoid predators. Scientists have long known that small organs called photophores are responsible for this bioluminescence. Now…
Today we speak with award-winning science writer, author, and journalist David Quammen about some of the most promising and fascinating trends in conservation and evolutionary science. Listen here: In…
Over the past decade, archaeologists have dug out several pieces of bones and teeth from a cave on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. These fossil remains, all estimated…
The yellow-bellied three-toed skink is not your typical lizard. Vertebrates or animals with backbones usually reproduce in one of two ways: they either lay eggs or they give birth to…
The ensatina is a fairly common salamander. From southern British Columbia in Canada to northern Baja California in Mexico, it can be found lurking under logs in forests along the…
Scientists have long wondered why zebras wear striped coats — none other than Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin are known to have debated the question well over a century…
From the Amazon and Orinoco river basins in South America, researchers have described six new species of catfish that have tentacles on their faces, spines sticking out from their heads, and…
A team of biologists surveying remote parts of the Cordillera del Cóndor (Condor mountain range) in Ecuador’s eastern Andes have described a species of tree frog that’s new to science.…
Researchers have described a new species of giant salamander that has remained shrouded in mystery for several decades. Known from swamps in Alabama and Florida in the southern United States,…
At first glance, the slender-snouted crocodiles living in Lake Tanganyika in Central Africa look very similar to the ones in the Gambia River in West Africa. But as it turns…
Scientists searching for snake-like amphibians discovered a new species of swamp eel living in the rainforest of northeastern India. According to a paper published in the journal of Ichthyological Exploration…
Nearly 70 years ago, Edwin Ujor of the Nigerian Forestry Service collected a specimen of a tree from a forest high up in the Bamenda highlands in Cameroon. The specimen…
In a remote part of the Atlantic Ocean off Brazil, researchers have found a stunning pink-and-white neon-colored fish that’s new to science. Luiz Rocha, an ichthyologist at the California Academy…
Marine ecologists have described a bright-red species of coral from Panama that’s new to science. The researchers found the coral growing at a depth of 45 to 50 meters (148…
Amazonian rivers don’t often drive the creation of new species, but do help maintain distinct populations, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances last month. Amazonian rivers…
Scientists have discovered a new species of orchid in the Amazonian rainforests of Peru. SERNANP, Peru’s national parks service, announced that the new species was discovered on Bella Durmiente mountain,…
In a counterintuitive surprise, a new study finds that fish species evolve more than twice as rapidly at the poles than in the tropics. The reason why isn’t currently known.
Evolution takes time and space. Enough time needs to pass for genetic differences to crop up in a population of animals and make them distinct from their forebears. And enough…
A new study drastically upends conventional wisdom about when plants colonized land, pushing back the date about 80 million years to around half a billion years ago. The new date…
Although they may lie thousands of miles apart and house different species, the world’s tropical forests may not be as different from each other as they seem to be. A…
Scientists have compiled a list of every known vascular plant found in North and South America, providing a new tool to understand how species are distributed throughout the two continents.…
A team of scientists from Seychelles, the United States and the United Kingdom has found a new caecilian, perhaps the smallest species of the legless amphibian on Earth. "As soon…
Camera trap footage has shown, for the first time, that a threatened bat species in Malaysia is an important pollinator of durian trees (Durio zibethinus). Past research in other parts…
Stable climates tend to have more bird species, according to new research. There’s a widespread notion that climate change encourages the proliferation of new animal species. But ecologist Roland Jansson…
The first DNA analysis of ancient straight-tusked elephant fossils may be changing what we know about elephant evolution. Scientists have presumed that a species of giant elephant called Palaeoloxodon antiquus,…
