Animal Life news stories

One of the world’s greatest fossil finds made in Wales
1st May 2023 | independent.co.uk | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

A large number of extraordinary new fossils, including many soft-bodied creatures, have been discovered near Llandrindod Wells in Powys.

Worms crave junk food after consuming cannabis, study suggests
21st April 2023 | theguardian.com | Animal Life, Humans

It is not just humans that get the munchies: worms also display the same craving for their favourite snacks after consuming cannabis, new research has found.

Sleeping beauties: the evolutionary innovations that wait millions of years to come good
19th April 2023 | theguardian.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth, Humans

What are the most successful organisms on the planet? Some people might think of apex predators like lions and great white sharks. For others, insects or bacteria might come to mind. But few would mention a family of plants that we see around us every day: grasses.

Ancient DNA Sheds Light on Wooly Mammoth Evolution, And They Weren’t Always So Fluffy
19th April 2023 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Animal Life

As wooly mammoths grazed frigid Siberian steppes for more than half a million years, they evolved increasingly fluffy fur, large fat deposits, and smaller ears, according to a new study.

Cave diving detectives search for fossils in hidden depths to shed light on giant life forms
12th April 2023 | abc.net.au | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

In the depths of a network of underwater caves, Julien Louys has been on the trail of some rather unusual animals. Despite the sunken setting, these creatures weren’t forms of marine life — they were giant marsupials, and they became extinct tens of thousands of years ago.

Got milk? The ancient Tibetans did, according to study
12th April 2023 phys.org | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

New research into ancient populations that resided on the Tibetan Plateau has found that dairy pastoralism was being practiced far earlier than previously thought and may have been key to long-term settlement of the region’s extreme environment.

52 million-year-old bat skeleton is the oldest ever found and belongs to a never-before-seen species
12th April 2023 | livescience.com | Ancient, Animal Life

The bat skeletons unearthed in southwest Wyoming are the oldest ever found, and their discovery has sparked a reshuffle in the bat family tree. See the research here.

An ancient gene stolen from bacteria set the stage for human sight
11th April 2023 | science.org | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth, Humans

The eye is so complex that even Charles Darwin was at a loss to explain how it could have arisen. Now, it turns out that the evolution of the vertebrate eye got an unexpected boost—from bacteria, which contributed a key gene involved in the retina’s response to light.

What did Homo sapiens eat 170,000 years ago? Roasted, supersized land snails
3rd April 2023 | sciencenews.org | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

Until now, the oldest evidence of Homo sapiens eating land snails dated to roughly 49,000 years ago in Africa and 36,000 years ago in Europe. But tens of thousands of years earlier, people at a southern African rock shelter roasted these slimy, chewy — and nutritious — creepers that can grow as big as an adult’s hand, researchers report in the April 15 Quaternary Science Reviews.

Horses Transformed Native American Life Far Earlier Than We Thought, New Study Reveals
3rd April 2023 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

Native American people integrated horses into their communities much earlier than European colonial records suggest, according to an innovative study that combined archaeological and genetic analysis with Indigenous oral traditions.

Oldest Ichthyosaur Known to Science Discovered on Remote Arctic Island
28th March 2023 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

Bones found on the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen suggest the ancient marine reptiles known as ichthyosaurs roamed Earth’s oceans for much longer than we thought.

It Turns Out Mushrooms Have a Language—And We’re Just Figuring Out How to Decipher It
27th March 2023 doubleblindmag.com | Animal Life, Earth, Humans

It’s easy to see why most folks think of mushrooms as some type of weird plant, popping out from under the soil when it rains and found in the vegetable aisle of the grocery store…

Octopus Farming Is Deeply Disturbing. A Professor Explains Why.
24th March 2023 | sciencealert.com | Animal Life, Humans

Scientists at Dartmouth College in the US have studied how octopuses experience reality in a specialist lab…They question the appropriateness of this for a species that has a sophisticated capacity for processing information, rudimentary tool use, complex visual pathways and, not least, the capacity for pain.

‘Gargantuan’: China fossils reveal 70-tonne dinosaur had 15-metre neck
16th March 2023 | theguardian.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

A dinosaur that roamed east Asia more than 160m years ago has been named a contender for the animal with the longest neck ever known.

Ancient Structures in The Arabian Desert Reveal Fragments of Mysterious Rituals
16th March 2023 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

According to an in-depth new analysis, the mysterious, rectangular enclosures were used by Neolithic people for unknown rituals, depositing animal offerings, perhaps as votives to an unknown deity or deities.

Ancient platypus-like fossil could rewrite the history of egg-laying mammals
11th March 2023 | livescience.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

Fossils of a 70 million-year-old platypus relative called Patagorhynchus pascuali found in South America show that egg-laying mammals evolved on more than one continent.

News stories covering Animal Science, bacterial life, DNA.