More from Laura Baisas (Page 16)

An endangered Texas ocelot in the vicinity of the highway.

Wildlife exits on Texas roads could help endangered ocelots

By Laura Baisas

The cave lion remains from Siegsdorf, Germany are displayed alongside a reproduction of a wooden spear similar to those used by Neanderthals.

Neanderthals may have hunted mighty cave lions

By Laura Baisas

Travis Gienger of Anoka, Minnesota celebrates during a pumpkin-weighing contest in Half Moon Bay, California.

This year’s heaviest pumpkin could be baked into 700 pies

By Laura Baisas

Two frogs mating in a body of water.

Female frogs appear to play dead to avoid mating

By Laura Baisas

Two loaves of rustic sourdough bread on a wooden counter.

Why no two sourdoughs are exactly the same

By Laura Baisas

Sweet potato, brown eggs, and corn in a husk on a stove. Traces of sweet potato, peanut, chili peppers, papaya, and more were found in coprolite samples from Puerto Rico.

Mummified poop reveals a diverse ancient Caribbean diet

By Laura Baisas

This new infrared image of NGC 346 from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) traces emission from cool gas and dust. In this image blue represents silicates and sooty chemical molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. More diffuse red emission shines from warm dust heated by the brightest and most massive stars in the heart of the region. Bright patches and filaments mark areas with abundant numbers of protostars.

Space Telescope

Star-making hot spot looks like a glowing raven in new JWST image

By Laura Baisas

Grazer looking chunky and getting ready for winter on September 14, 2023. The bear is in the river intensely staring for salmon.

Fierce mama Grazer takes 2023’s Fat Bear Week crown

By Laura Baisas

This image shows many looping and overlapping orbits encircling the Sun, all of different colors (to differentiate between asteroids). The center of the image – representing an area within the orbit of Jupiter – is very densely packed with orbits, while the outer edges remain clearer, showing the background plane of the Milky Way.

A mission to map the universe unveils star clusters, asteroids, and tricks of gravity

By Laura Baisas

Human hand bones during an archaeological dig.

Sensitive to pain? It could be your Neanderthal gene variants.

By Laura Baisas

An underwater closeup of Cayo margarita (a new species) in the coral reef of the Florida Keys. Note the two long tentacles, used by the snail to spread the mucus net for feeding.

New neon-yellow snail from the Florida Keys gets a happy hour-ready name

By Laura Baisas

A capybara standing on a riverbank. Capybaras are semi-aquatic rodents that can weigh up to 174 pounds.

4 capybara facts you’ll love, and 1 you’d like to forget

By Laura Baisas

A dove is released at noon from a window of the Nobel Peace Center following the announcement of the laureates of the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo on October 6, 2023. The Nobel Peace Prize was on October 6 awarded to imprisoned rights campaigner Narges Mohammadi, honored for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran.

Meet the 2023 Nobel Prize winners

By Laura Baisas

A newly discovered sauropod dinosaur left behind some epic footprints

A newly discovered sauropod dinosaur left behind some epic footprints

By Laura Baisas

A pair of chickens at a poultry farm. Bird flu has been detected in at least 67 countries.

USDA bans French poultry imports over avian influenza vaccine

By Laura Baisas

A lioness bears her teeth. Mammals in a new study were twice as likely to abandon a waterhole when hearing human voices than the sounds of a lion.

Humans are now the African savannah’s top predator

By Laura Baisas

Exposed sedimentary rock on a mountain slope. High erosion in southern France exposes these sedimentary rocks to weathering, releasing carbon dioxide as the ancient organic carbon breaks down.

Rocks may be able to release carbon dioxide as well as store it

By Laura Baisas

Two chimpanzees share a meal. A new study found that same-sex sexual behavior helps establish and maintain positive social relationships in animals including chimpanzees, bighorn sheep, lions, and wolves.

Mammals may use same-sex sexual behavior for conflict resolution, bonding, and more

By Laura Baisas

The Morona-Santiago stubfoot toad (Atelopus halihelos) in Ecuador is listed as critically endangered.

Endangered Species

How we can help the most endangered class of animals survive climate change

By Laura Baisas

Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus, and Alexei Ekimov will share the 2023 Nobel prize in chemistry.

Discoverers of colorful quantum dot nanotech win 2023 Nobel Prize in chemistry

By Laura Baisas

A green monk parakeet standing in dirt. Parrots could have a unique tone of voice just like humans do.

No two parakeets sound exactly the same

By Laura Baisas

Artist conception of early starbursting galaxies. The image is rendered from FIRE simulation data used for this research that can explain recent JWST results. Stars and galaxies are shown in the bright white points of light, while the more diffuse dark matter and gas are shown in purples and reds.

Space Telescope

Bursting stars could explain why it was so bright after the big bang

By Laura Baisas

An illustration of Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L´Huillier. The three will share the 2023 Nobel prize in physics.

Winners of the 2023 Nobel Prize in physics measured electrons by the attosecond

By Laura Baisas

A map of Britain in the late 13th century.

Grisly medieval murders detailed in new interactive maps

By Laura Baisas

The 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is jointly awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman. This is an illustration of the two scientists.

mRNA vaccine innovators win the Nobel Prize in medicine

By Laura Baisas

Purple, blue, and white meteors fall at night during October stargazing

A ‘ring of fire’ eclipse and Hunter’s Moon will bring lunar drama to October’s skies

By Laura Baisas

A killer whale in the Salish Sea is observed harassing a porpoise, a behavior that has long perplexed scientists.

Why are these orcas harassing porpoises? Scientists have 3 theories.

By Laura Baisas

This 6-million-year-old turtle shell still has some DNA

This 6-million-year-old turtle shell still has some DNA

By Laura Baisas

A volcano spews lava and ash. In roughly 250 million years, massive tectonic activity could push together all of our current landmasses into a supercontinent like Pangea and make the climate inhospitable to humans and other mammals.

A boiling hot supercontinent could kill all mammals in 250 million years

By Laura Baisas

A row of organic orange carrots with their green stems still attached on a table.

How carrots get their trademark orange color

By Laura Baisas

A hyenea shows its jaws. Giant hyenas went extinct about 500,000 years ago, but were roughly 240 pounds and skilled scavengers like their modern counterparts.

How many ancient humans does it take to fight off a giant hyena?

By Laura Baisas

An illustration of Bohemolichas feeding on the seafloor, moments before it is engulfed, buried, and preserved by an underwater mud flow.

A fossilized trilobite stomach can show us clues to Cambrian cuisine

By Laura Baisas

Aerial view of a hot air balloon over Namib desert. The circular “fairy circles” are derived from any vegetation & surrounded by tall grass.

Mysterious ‘fairy circles’ may appear on three different continents

By Laura Baisas

$A close up of the black and white stripes of a zebra. The same patterns that dictate zebra stripes could also control the way sperm swim.$

The mathematical theory that connects swimming sperm, zebra stripes, and sunflower seeds

By Laura Baisas

An artistic representation of the TRAPPIST-1 red dwarf star, featuring its very active nature. Exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 b is the closest planet to the system’s central star and is featured in the foreground with no apparent atmosphere. The exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 g is in the background to the right of the star.

JWST just scanned the skies of potentially habitable exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 b

By Laura Baisas

A tarantula with a mostly black body, but bright blue legs and pincers. Chilobrachys natanicharum is the first tarantula species found in Thailand’s mangrove trees. CREDIT: Yuranan Nanthaisong/ZooKeys.

Meet the first electric blue tarantula known to science

By Laura Baisas

Rafflesia kemumu in the rainforest of Sumatra.

Earth’s stinkiest flower is threatened with extinction

By Laura Baisas

An MRI scan of a human brain on a screen. Scanning the brain can help clinicians find abnormalities and the links between them.

Substance use disorder may be connected to a specific brain circuit

By Laura Baisas

A high-density field of corals, including the spiraling Iridogorgia magnispiralis. Image courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2016 Deepwater Exploration of the Marianas.

The deepest known ocean virus lives under 29,000 feet of water

By Laura Baisas

Yellow pollen spring out from a coniferous tree. The pollen that makes us sneeze every spring, may have helped lay the groundwork for the migration of our very distant ancestors into Eurasia.

Pollen could hold clues to mysteries of early human migration

By Laura Baisas

A Caribbean box jellyfish on a black background. It has a round, bell shaped body, with about 11 visible tentacles. It also has four parallel brain-like structures with roughly 1,000 nerve cells in each.

These 24-eyed jellyfish learn from their mistakes

By Laura Baisas

A view of the Cueva de los Marmoles entrance from the inside. Skeletal remains from at least 12 prehistoric individuals have been found inside.

Early humans carved old skeletal remains from burial caves into tools

By Laura Baisas

A black and white French bulldog puppy sits in a garden with green grass and orange flowers. In an experiment where dogs had to find food hidden in a box, flat-faced dogs were more likely to look back at people than a breed with a mid-length muzzle.

Humans might just love French bulldogs because they remind them of babies

By Laura Baisas

Multiple reddish pink parasitic plants called balanophora growing in a forest. Balanophora shed one third of its genes as it evolved into a very streamlined parasitic plant.

These parasitic plants force their victims to make them dinner

By Laura Baisas

A pied tamarin monkey sits on a large rope. Pied tamarin monkeys live in a small geographic range in Brazil, where they eat fruits, flowers, and various tree gums and saps.

Endangered Species

As humans get louder, monkeys mark more territory

By Laura Baisas

An archeologist wearing gloves holes a wedge shaped piece of wood dating back to the Early Stone Age.

World’s oldest known wooden structure pre-dates our species

By Laura Baisas

Colored diamonds from the Argyle diamond mine in Australia.

The mystery behind pink diamonds just got some more clarity

By Laura Baisas

A doctor uses a blood pressure cuff to take a patient's blood pressure.

Treating high blood pressure can save 76 million lives in 30 years, WHO says

By Laura Baisas

A dissected ant and where you can see the encapsulated parasites (white oval structures) spilling out of the hind body.

This parasite deploys mucus slime balls to make ‘zombie ants’

By Laura Baisas

An Australian lungfish named Methuselah swims in a tank at the Steinhart Aquarium. The fish has a flat snout, olive-green scales, and a long torpedo-shaped body.

World’s oldest living aquarium fish could be 100 years young

By Laura Baisas

A giant panda eats a green plant.

‘Jet lag’ could be messing with pandas’ natural mating behaviors

By Laura Baisas

A black and white archival photo of the USS Arizona sinking during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Pearl Harbor dataset holds clues to how WWII may have shaped weather data

By Laura Baisas

Stone Age animal engravings in Namibian caves guided Indigenous trackers over time

Stone Age animal engravings in Namibian caves guided Indigenous trackers over time

By Laura Baisas

Dogs and wolves remember where you hide their food

Dogs and wolves remember where you hide their food

By Laura Baisas

An orca whale swims around an ice flow with a crabeater seal and penguin on the ice.

New series offers an intimate look into how climate change impacts the lives of wildlife

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s illustration of the 25 million year old Ditjimanka Lumakoala blackae, featuring (left to right) the wallaby-sized herbivore Muramura williamsi, an extinct koala relative named Madakoala devis,i and the calf-size lizard called Ilaria lawsone.

Scientists discover a cat-sized ancient koala in Australia

By Laura Baisas

A worker uncovers a mummy belonging to the pre-Inca Ychsma culture buried in a shallow funeral chamber on an ancient sanctuary during an excavation in the Huaca Pucllana, in the heart of a residential area in the district of Miraflores in Lima, on September 5, 2023.

1,000-year-old mummy with full head of hair and intact jaw found in Peru

By Laura Baisas

Colorful plastic cutlery on a white background. The United States uses more than 36 billion plastic utensils every year.

Millions of tons of waste could be eliminated by ‘nudging’ consumers to skip the plastic fork

By Laura Baisas

An optical image of the galaxy in which the new event occurred, taken from archival PanSTARRS data. The X-ray object was located to somewhere inside the white circle, which is about the size a pinhead 100m away would appear. The position of a 2 year old supernova is also shown.

A newly spotted black hole keeps munching on a star the size of our sun

By Laura Baisas

A blue semi circle on the right with a ball of blue light on the left on a black background. The orientation of the magnetic field in the distant 9io9 galaxy, seen here when the universe was only 20 percent of its current age and the furthest ever detection of a galaxy’s magnetic field.

Astronomers detect a distant galaxy’s magnetic field for the first time

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s illustration of Fujianvenator prodigiosus, an avialan theropod who lived during the Late Jurassic period and had a lower leg that was twice as long as its thigh.

Leggy dinosaur species could be the latest feathery clue to bird evolution

By Laura Baisas

Vegetation makes its way through the drought-ridden earth on the shores of the Viñuela reservoir in Spain. The reservoir feeds the tropical crops of Axarquía, such as mangoes and avocados. It is in a phase of desiccation, with no water inflow, but consumption that has led the municipalities of Málaga to impose restrictions on the consumption of drinking water.

A ‘season of simmering’: This summer’s 3-month streak was hottest ever recorded

By Laura Baisas

Two monkeys sitting in a forest. Dartmouth researchers report that apes and early humans evolved more flexible shoulders and elbows than monkeys to safely get out of trees. For early humans, these versatile appendages would have been essential for gathering food and deploying tools for hunting and defense.

Our tree-climbing ancestors evolved our abilities to throw far and reach high

By Laura Baisas

Fiver different types of paper cups sitting are sitting on a table. Some have eco-friendly labeling and one warns of plastic chemical leaching. Paper cups are replacing plastic cups on the market, but paper cups can also be toxic to living organisms, shows a new study from the University of Gothenburg.

Paper cups still use plastic—and it’s a problem for the planet

By Laura Baisas

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