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environment

02/14/2020 / By Arsenio Toledo

Ancient ingenuity: Amazon tribes built fishponds to survive long droughts

According to a study led by researchers from the Federal University of Western Para in Brazil along with colleagues from France and Germany, ancient tribes that lived in the Llanos de Moxos region in Bolivia for thousands of years used a network of fish ponds to support their settlements. The researchers also believe that these fish ponds were used […]

02/05/2020 / By Michael Alexander

A quake in 1959 sent “time traveling” aftershocks that were felt 60 years later

Sixty years after it left a trail of death and destruction, a powerful earthquake is still making its presence felt, according to a new study. In a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers from the University of Utah determined that the small earthquakes that rocked Maple Creek, just outside of Yellowstone volcano […]

02/04/2020 / By Michael Alexander

Carnivorous pitcher plants have an occasional taste for vertebrates, study finds

While the northern pitcher plant (Sarracenia purpurea) is well-known for consuming insects and other invertebrates as supplementary food, a recent study published in the journal Ecology points out that about one in five pitcher plants in Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park has upgraded its menu to include juvenile salamanders. While Asiatic pitcher plants such as the Philippines’ Nepenthes attenboroughii are […]

02/02/2020 / By Michael Alexander

A nose for numbers: Elephants can “count” food using their sense of smell, study says

When it comes to function, elephant trunks are the Swiss army knives of the natural world. Bristling with over 150,000 individual muscle units, an elephant’s trunk is used for a wide variety of activities: sucking up water for drinking, blowing out dust for baths, picking up objects, sending out warnings and even using them to greet […]

12/28/2019 / By Grace Olson

Why do deep-sea dragonfish have invisible teeth?

The deep-see dragonfish is truly a predator meant for the murky depths of the ocean. Aside from its dark skin that allows it to blend in with the ocean’s depths, it has another tool in its arsenal: invisible teeth. A team of oceanographers and materials scientists from the University of California and the INM-Leibniz Insititute for New Materials in Germany discovered […]

12/28/2019 / By Michael Alexander

“Thai”-rannosaurus rex? Fossils unearthed in Thailand reveal link to fearsome therapod

Two distant relatives of the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex have been identified in Thailand, according to a new report. In an article published in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, paleontologists Adun Samathi and Martin Sander of the University of Bonn in Germany identified previously unrecognized fossils as those of megaraptors – cousins to the famed Jurassic Park predator. “We were […]

12/26/2019 / By Michael Alexander

A jaw-dropping find: High schooler from Iowa discovers a prehistoric mastodon jaw bone

Imagine stumbling upon a fossil from the Pleistocene era during a trek at a farm. That’s exactly what happened to a teenager who, while hunting for arrowheads, discovered a 30-inch-long fossilized mastodon jaw complete with teeth, on a farm in southern Iowa. According to paleontologists from the University of Iowa who analyzed the fossil, the […]

12/23/2019 / By Grace Olson

Weird wonders of the deep: The coffinfish can hold its breath for up to 4 minutes at a time

It’s not every day you get to see a fish holding its breath, let alone for up to relatively long stretches of time. But this is exactly the sight that greeted researchers Nicholas Long and Stacy Farina while observing footage captured by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) remotely operated vehicles (ROV). According to the […]

12/16/2019 / By Grace Olson

A different kind of volcano: Scientists find evidence of an “extreme chemical reservoir” beneath the Earth’s surface

Most volcanoes are formed through similar geological processes – except for the one in Bermuda. A recent study found that the volcano’s origins lay deep inside the mantle of the Earth, from a region called the transition zone. The study is a collaboration between researchers from Germany, Russia and the US. Their findings, which are […]

12/15/2019 / By Arsenio Toledo

Researchers design cost-efficient, clean fuel cells that might soon replace traditional gas engines in cars

Fuel cell technology has been around for some time. The first truly modern fuel cell vehicles came from the 1950s and 1960s, when they were used on experimental vehicles such as the 1966 Electrovan, a van which was outfitted with a fuel cell that took up so much space it could only fit two people. Fuel cell technology was even used by […]

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