Gorillas have been caught on camera for the first time performing face-to-face intercourse.
All posts by Brent
Frog From Hell Fossil Found In Madagascar
The bad-tempered Beelzebufo, or “devil frog,” also poses a big mystery. Why do its closest relatives live half a world away in South America?
Bizarre Furry Mammal Is A Giant Sengi
In the 1970s, Rathbun first described the monogamous behavior of elephant-shrews, which maintain exclusive mating pairs. They got their nickname due to the animals’ long, flexible snouts. But recent research has shown that elephant-shrews, also called sengis, are more closely related to elephants than to shrews.
A Rare Find In Madagascar Gets Its Own Genus
The palm, which researchers say essentially “flowers itself to death,” is not only a new species. It has forced palm biologists to invent an entirely new genus to accommodate it. That is an almost unheard of event in modern palm tree classification, but one made necessary by its many unique traits and by DNA testing suggesting the tree has been evolving independently of other palms for millions of years.
A Rodent As Big As A Bull
Uruguayan scientists say they have uncovered fossil evidence of the biggest species of rodent ever found, one that scurried across wooded areas of South America about four million years ago, when the continent was not connected to North America.
Dwarf Salamanders Found In Costa Rica
Two of the new salamanders are from the Bolitoglossa genus and are nocturnal, coming out at night to feed. The first Bolitoglossa species is 3 inches (8 centimeters) long and black, with a bold red stripe down its back and small yellow markings on its side.
Mammoth Blondes
Museum dioramas typically portray mammoths as having shaggy brown coats, but some of the hairy beasts might have been blonde, raven-haired or red-bodied in real life, thanks to a gene that controls hair color in humans and other mammals.
France Was Once An Amazon-like Jungle
The new study, detailed in the Jan. 4 issue of The Journal of Organic Chemistry, reports the discovery of a new organic compound in amber called “quesnoin,” whose precursor exists only in sap produced by a tree currently growing only in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. The researchers say the amber likely dripped from a similar tree that once covered France millions of years before the continents drifted into their current positions.
Papua New Guinea Glaciers
For 5,000 years, great tongues of ice have spread over the 3-mile-high slopes of Puncak Jaya, in the remotest reaches of this remote tropical island. Now those glaciers are melting, and Lonnie Thompson must get there before they’re gone.
Advanced Life Created In Two Ancient Explosions
Earth’s biggest species diversification occurred 542 million years ago, during what’s called the Cambrian explosion. But a similar and rapid burst in evolution occurred 33 million years prior, researchers now think. They’ve dubbed the event the Avalon explosion.