Whale sharks, which grow to weigh as much as two or three adult elephants, are thriving in waters off Western Australia, a new study of underwater images suggests.
Butterflies Trick Ants Into Raising Young
Call it the cuckoo of butterflies. Like the well-known birds, the Alcon blue butterfly has found a way to get others to raise its offspring. Researchers in Denmark report that the large blue butterfly has managed to produce larvae with a chemical coating similar to that of the local Myrmica rubra ants.
Ancient Pandas Competed With Giant Apes For Bamboo
New fossils suggest ancient pandas ompeted with the largest known apes for habitat and food nearly half a million years ago on the tropical coast of southern China, scientists say. The 400,000-year-old fossils of a giant panda were uncovered alongside the remains of a titan-sized, ancient ape called Gigantopithecus blacki, said Huang Wanbo, a paleontologist at Beijing’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.
Granddaddy Of Kangaroos
A 25-million-year-old fossilized skeleton of a kangaroo is shedding new light on the evolution of the iconic Australian animal, scientists say.The nearly complete specimen reveals a creature that once plucked fruit from Australian rain forests and bounded on all fours like a modern-day possum.
Whales Evolved From Tiny Deerlike Mammals
The nearest ancestors of Earth’s largest-ever animals were tiny deerlike creatures that jumped into rivers to flee prehistoric predators, a new study suggests.These semiaquatic, raccoon-size mammals dubbed Indohyus lived in southern Asia some 48 million years ago.
Giant Rat Discovered In Foja Mountains
Researchers in a remote jungle in Indonesia have discovered a giant rat and a tiny possum that are apparently new to science, underscoring the stunning biodiversity of the Southeast Asian nation, scientists said Monday.
Mummified Hadrosaur Found In North Dakota
Preliminary studies of the 67-million-year-old hadrosaur, named Dakota, are already altering theories of what the ancient creatures’ skin looked like and how quickly they moved, project researchers say.
Long-Eared Jerboa
The “Mickey Mouse of the Desert” is ready for his close-up, courtesy of conservationists who are developing a plan to protect the endangered Mongolian species.
Monster Sea Waves
“These giant waves have been featured in many famous literary works from the Odyssey to Robinson Crusoe, but they were just thought to be the subject of myth for a long time,” said Daniel Solli of the University of California, Los Angeles, whose study appears in the journal Nature.
Bahamas Sinkhole
David Steadman, a University of Florida ornithologist, said the fossils allowed him to reconstruct the ancient plant and animal communities of the Bahamas, as well as the impact that humans had when they first arrived there, which he detailed in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.