Animals, features and articles | Educational Science

Dec 31, 2019

Dying Fish Revealed Congo Is World's Deepest River

SAN FRANCISCO — A mysterious case of dying fish in the lower Congo River helped scientists discover that this body is the deepest river on the planet. It's also a place where raging rapids, powerful currents and even submerged waterfalls divide the water, much as mountain ranges can separate habitats...

Dec 31, 2019

Nutria: The invasive, unusually large rodents

Nutria, also known as coypu, are large rodents that live in areas with lots of freshwater. Despite sometimes being called swamp rats, nutria are not rats. These mammals are native to South America and were introduced into the United States between 1899 and 1930 through the fur industry, according to...

Nov 30, 2021

55-foot-long Triassic sea monster discovered in Nevada

A sea monster that lived during the early dinosaur age is so unexpectedly colossal, it reveals that its kind grew to gigantic sizes extremely quickly, evolutionarily speaking at least. The discovery suggests that such ichthyosaurs — a group of fish-shaped marine reptiles that inhabited the dinosaur-era seas — grew to...

Oct 31, 2021

Are zebras white with black stripes or black with white stripes?

Zebras are iconic for their distinctive coats, but have you ever wondered whether zebras are white with black stripes or black with white stripes? The stunning black-and-white coloration of the zebra's hide stands out in stark contrast with the dry, brown-and-green, treeless grasslands and savannah woodlands of their home territories...

Sep 30, 2021

Tardigrade trapped in amber is a never-before-seen species

Scientists discovered an incredibly rare fossil suspended in 16 million-year-old amber: a never-before-seen species of tardigrade, a pudgy, aquatic critter that rarely crops up in the fossil record. Modern-day tardigrades, also known as water bears or moss piglets, can be found in just about any environment with liquid water, from...

Sep 30, 2021

Michigan boy finds 'dragon's tooth' that belonged to a mastodon

A boy in Michigan was recently hiking with his family when he stepped into a creek and stumbled over something rocky that resembled a tooth. At first, he thought it belonged to a dinosaur, but paleontologists later found that the massive molar came from a mastodon. Julian Gagnon, age 6,...

Sep 30, 2021

'Explosive' photo captures 'otherworldly beauty' of spawning fish during a full moon

A striking photo capturing the explosive creation of life of spawning groupers beat more than 50,000 other photographs to win the grand prize at the 2021 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. The underwater image, called Creation, shows camouflage groupers (Epinephelus polyphekadion), a species vulnerable to extinction, emerging from a...

Aug 31, 2021

Who will buy 'Big John,' the biggest triceratops ever found?

An enormous triceratops nicknamed Big John is expected to fetch big bucks on the auction block in France, in October. The skeleton, which is more than 66 million years old and is approximately 60% complete, is the largest triceratops ever found. It measures about 26 feet (8 meters) long; the...

Aug 31, 2021

Tyrannosaurs bit each other's faces in dino fight clubs

Tyrannosaurs viciously bit each other on the face, though likely not with the intention to kill. Rather, these biting brawls were probably the result of different individuals' competing for prizes, such as territory, mates or higher status, a new study finds. Researchers made the discovery after analyzing 202 tyrannosaur skulls...

Jul 31, 2021

(VIDEO) Watch squirrels perform parkour-like stunts for peanuts

New high-speed videos show squirrels performing daring, parkour-like stunts — all in pursuit of peanuts. In a new study, published Thursday (Aug. 5) in the journal Science, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley tested the agility of fox squirrels (Sciurus niger) on the university campus. Their goal was to...

Jul 31, 2021

Fish with 'human teeth' caught in North Carolina

Last week (Aug 3), anglers at Jennette's Pier in North Carolina pulled up something unexpected — and uncanny — from the Atlantic: a fish with human teeth. Yes, this fish — and its teeth — are real. But fortunately, there's nothing human about it. It's called a sheepshead fish (Archosargus...

Jul 31, 2021

Rare embryo from dinosaur age was laid by human-size turtle

About 90 million years ago, a giant turtle in what is now central China laid a clutch of tennis ball-size eggs with extremely thick eggshells. One egg never hatched, and it remained undisturbed for tens of millions of years, preserving the delicate bones of the embryonic turtle within it. In...

Jun 30, 2021

What's the chattiest animal?

A pandemonium of parrots, a cackle of hyenas, an exaltation of larks — these are just a few of the animals that we define by the sounds they make. For humans, communication is the bedrock of our relationships and part of how we successfully function in our daily lives. Animals...

Jun 30, 2021

Manatees are dying in record numbers in Florida

A record-breaking number of manatees have died this year in Florida's waters, mostly due to starvation, according to recent news reports. Between Jan. 1 and July 2, 841 manatees died near and off the coast of Florida, according to a preliminary mortality report published by the Florida Fish and Wildlife...

Jun 30, 2021

Pristine DNA recovered from 1,600-year-old sheep mummy

A lone sheep leg, likely discarded by hungry mine workers, lay hidden in a salt mine in Iran for over a thousand years, during which time the salinity of the surrounding environment naturally mummified the limb. Now, scientists have extracted pristine DNA from the mummified leg and dated the sample...