Animals, features and articles | Educational Science

May 31, 2019

The Biggest Dinosaur to Ever Walk the Earth Just Wants to Text You

The biggest dinosaur ever discovered just wishes you'd drop him a line. In a new program launched by Chicago's Field Museum, the cast skeleton of the titanosaur dubbed Máximo will text you back answers to questions about the dinosaur's life in prehistoric Patagonia — or anything else you'd like to...

Apr 30, 2019

Car-Size 'Sea Monster' Terrorized Triassic Oceans

Researchers excavated the remains of four of these now-extinct sea monsters from the rocky slopes of the Austrian Alps. But even at 13 feet long (4 meters), these creatures — known as phytosaurs — weren't fully grown. The phytosaurs were only about 8 years old when they died, and they...

Apr 30, 2019

This Bird Evolved into Existence Twice — Thousands of Years Apart

On a ring-shaped reef in the Indian Ocean, a species of bird evolved to be flightless — twice. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, white-throated rails (Dryolimnas cuvieri) flew from their native home in Madagascar to the Aldabra atoll, a ring-shaped reef among the Seychelle Islands. The reef, free of...

Apr 30, 2019

Botswana Just Lifted Its Ban on Elephant Hunting. Conservationists Are Appalled.

Botswana has lifted its elephant hunting ban, after a five-year probation period. The country's officials said that the reversal of the ban followed extensive consultations with all the stakeholders, in a statement published yesterday (May 22) by Botswana's Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources Conservation and Tourism. The move was deeply...

Apr 30, 2019

Why These Human-Sized Beavers Suddenly Died Out 10,000 Years Ago

Giant beavers the size of black bears once roamed the lakes and wetlands of North America. Fortunately for cottage-goers, these mega-rodents died out at the end of the last ice age. Now extinct, the giant beaver was once a highly successful species. Scientists have found its fossil remains at sites...

Mar 31, 2019

Why Some Evangelical Christians See This Pet Technology as the Work of the Antichrist

An almost invisible electronic device used all over the world — best known to much of the public for helping reunite lost pets and their owners, but also found in subway cards, electronic tolling, luggage tags, passports and warehouse inventory systems — has alarmed some evangelical Christian communities, who see...

Mar 31, 2019

If the Animals from 'Game of Thrones' Houses Battled, Which One Would Win?

For nearly a decade, would-be kings and queens in HBO's Game of Thrones have stabbed, slashed and poisoned their way toward a seat on the Iron Throne. And the fierceness of the human combatants mirrors the ferocity of the animals displayed on these leaders' banners. Each of the show's dominant...

Feb 28, 2019

Why Are There So Many Marsupials in Australia?

Australia is the kingdom of marsupials, home to furry kangaroos, koalas and wombats. The continent has so many marsupials, it raises the question: Did these pouch-bearing mammals arise Down Under? The answer is an unqualified (or un-koalafied) no. Marsupials were around for at least 70 million years before they made...

Feb 28, 2019

The Megalodon Spent Tens of Millions of Years Honing Its Lethal, Knife-Like Teeth

But nature didn't just hand these instant-killing weapons to these prehistoric sharks, called megalodons. Rather, it took millions of years for the teeth to evolve into their final, lethal form, according to a new study published on March 1 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. To understand the evolution of...

Feb 28, 2019

Do Any Animals Know Their Grandparents?

Grandparents are revered in many human societies. But telling stories about old times and overfeeding grandchildren seem like distinctly human traits. Are these classic grandparent behaviors really limited to Homo sapiens? Do any animals know their grandparents the way people do? For most species on Earth, the answer is an...

Feb 28, 2019

Mammoth DNA Briefly 'Woke Up' Inside Mouse Eggs. But Cloning Mammoths Is Still a Pipe Dream.

A handful of 28,0000-year-old woolly mammoth cell parts were recently woken up for a short time in a new experiment, but cloning the ice age beasts is still a long way off. In the experiment, the researchers extracted cells from Yuka, a woolly mammoth mummy (Mammuthus primigenius) whose remains were...

Feb 28, 2019

What Is the Toothiest Animal on Earth?

Peek inside a few animal mouths and you'll see evidence of evolution's finest work. Take snakes, whose teeth are needle-thin and spiked with venom — excruciatingly efficient instruments for killing prey. Or walruses, which use their massive teeth like ice picks to haul their heavy bodies along the ground. In...

Feb 28, 2019

Enormous Great White Shark Pregnant with Record 14 Pups Was Caught and Sold in Taiwan

A large, female great white shark pregnant with a record 14 pups was accidentally caught by fishers off the coast of Taiwan and sold at a fish market on Wednesday (March 20). The enormous mamma was purchased for less than $2,000 by a Taiwanese taxidermy company, Taiwan English News reported....

Jan 31, 2019

This Spiky-Spined Beast Is the Most Punk-Rock Dino Ever Discovered

Some dinosaurs are known for their long necks, others for their horned heads or club-like tails. Bajadasaurus pronuspinax, a newly described dinosaur discovered in Patagonia, Argentina, will be known for its sexy mohawk. In a study published Feb. 4 in the journal Scientific Reports, a team of archaeologists from CONICET,...

Jan 31, 2019

Titanosaur the Size of a School Bus Had Heart-Shaped Tail Bones

A newfound dinosaur seems to wear its heart on its tail, according to paleontologists who found the enormous beast and realized this hopeless romantic had heart-shaped tail bones. But this dinosaur, named Mnyamawamtuka moyowamkia, is extraordinary beyond its lovely tail. Paleontologists spent five years climbing a steep cliff in Tanzania...