A hammerhead shark less than one meter long swims frantically in a plastic container aboard a boat in the Sanquianga National Natural Park, off Colombia’s Pacific coast. It is a delicate female Sphyrna corona, the world’s smallest hammerhead species, and goes by the local name cornuda amarilla — yellow hammerhead — because of the color of its fins and the edges of its splendid curved head, which is full of sensors to perceive the movement of its prey.Marine biologist Diego Cardeñosa of ...read more

The far side of the moon has been shrouded in mystery for years, and questions have piled up about its differences from the near side, which we see nearly every night here on Earth. In a push to ascertain the moon’s uncharted secrets, progress on exploring the far side has accelerated in recent years. In early June 2024, China made the news as its newest space probe, Chang’e 6, landed on the moon’s far side, marking a bold direction for future lunar exploration. What Is the Chang’e 6 Mi ...read more

It would seem obvious that rising sea levels that cut off the last population of woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island from the Siberian coast 10,000 years ago caused in-breeding, leading to their eventual extinction. But a new genetic analysis, reported in Cell, counters that claim.That result was unexpected, since an earlier report indicated that the mammoth population likely built up harmful genetic mutations, according to Love Dalén, a scientist with the Centre for Palaeogenetics of Sweden, and ...read more

Axolotls are perhaps the most instantly recognizable amphibians in the world. At once cute, curious, and infinitely fascinating due to their unique biological traits, these ever-young creatures capture the imagination. Axolotls are a type of salamander, endemic to Mexico and only found in two places; the waterways and canals of Lake Xochimilco and Lake Chalco around Mexico City. They are often photographed as seemingly grumpy or with a joyful, childlike grin. Their infinite likability aside, the ...read more

When Sydney hosted the 2000 Summer Olympics, an unlikely hero emerged: an unofficial mascot known as Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat. Introduced by comedians, it helped to kick off a wave of love for a critter not always adored by human Australians. Over the centuries, the native marsupial has been eaten in stew and maligned as a pest. Now, it’s a focus of conservation and animal welfare efforts.Wombats are closely related to koalas and nurture their young in pouches like other marsupials. Of the t ...read more

Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers produces a report card for the nation’s infrastructure that assigns grades based on the condition of structures like roads, bridges, and dams, and the investments that they need. Heavy rainfall generated widespread flooding. in the Upper Midwest in late June 2024, putting at least one aging dam at risk. In southern Minnesota, the Blue Earth River cut a path around the Rapidan Damin Rapidan Township, about 15 miles south of Mankato, on J ...read more

When most folks imagine the asteroids, they likely picture chunk of rocky rubble, maybe mixed in with some metals based on distant observations and flybys. They shouldn't be very complicated because they're just leftovers from the formation of the solar system. Most of the meteorites that have been sampled on Earth have a lot of the same basic minerals and elements as well.As it turns out, going out to the asteroid belt and directly sampling one of these primordial objects has turned that notion ...read more

Dating can be tricky. If your timing is off, it can result in misunderstandings. This is especially true in fields like archeology and paleontology. If an item is identified as hailing from an incorrect year, entire lines of research can be put into question. So when Sturt Manning, an archeologist from Cornell University, and colleagues received a radiocarbon date that didn’t appear to line up with the archeological evidence, they tweaked the dating technique and came up with a more definitive ...read more

For decades, the University of Michigan Library held an esteemed article. The precious paper was a letter penned by Italian scientist Galileo Galilei, which included sketches of Jupiter’s moons.The library acquired the letter in 1938 and considered it a prized possession because it was evidence of Galileo’s thought process as he worked toward his understanding that the planets revolved around the sun.But a historical detective sensed it was a fake and one of many manuscripts or documents tha ...read more

When you think about the word “art,” what comes to mind? A child’s artwork pinned to the fridge? A favorite artist whose work always inspires? Abstract art that is hard to understand?Each of these assumes that making art is something that other people do, such as children or “those with talent.”However, as I explain in my book “The Expressive Instinct,” art is intrinsic to human evolution and history. Just as sports or workouts exercise the body, creating art exercises the imaginat ...read more