More from Laura Baisas

A fossilized dinosaur skin specimen under natural light (upper half) and ultraviolet light (lower half) showing the orange-yellow fluorescence of the fossil skin.
Biology

Rare skin fossil sheds new light on dinosaur feathers

By Laura Baisas

An aerial view of the rust-colored Kutuk River in Gates of the Arctic National Park in Alaska. Thawing permafrost is exposing minerals to weathering, increasing the acidity of the water, which releases metals like iron, zinc, and copper.
Climate Change

Why are Alaska’s rivers turning orange?

By Laura Baisas

An illustration of what exoplanet WASP-39 b could look like. It is also a hot and puffy gas giant like exoplanet WASP 193b.
Deep Space

A massive cotton candy-like exoplanet stumps astronomers

By Laura Baisas

an orangutan sits in the forest with its mouth open wide, showing its teeth
Animals

Orangutans’ distinct yells decoded with help from AI

By Laura Baisas

two mantis shrimp punching one another
Animals

Bullet-fast mantis shrimp punches caught by super-speed cameras

By Laura Baisas

rock art depicting a human hunting various animals
Biology

How sweat and stamina helped make humans exceptional runners–and hunters

By Laura Baisas

a volcano spews firey lava over molten rock and snow
Science

‘Buoyant’ magma offers clues about the power of volcanoes

By Laura Baisas

A dog dyed black and white to mimic a panda cub at Cute Pet Games cafe in Chengdu in China's southwestern Sichuan province on October 23, 2019.
Animals

Chinese zoo dyes chow chows to look like ‘panda dogs’

By Laura Baisas

a small, blue fish called the Devils Hole pupfish swims in a hole
Animals

Devils Hole pupfish are clawing their way back from the brink of extinction

By Laura Baisas

A male African elephant named Doma and a female named Kariba greet one another. Doma touches Kariba´s temporal gland while flapping his ears and Kariba holds her ears spread.
Animals

Expressive elephants use gestures and vocal cues to communicate

By Laura Baisas

two adult green-rumped parrots with three nestlings behind them with their mouths open waiting for food
Animals

Why these parrots sometimes kill each other’s chicks

By Laura Baisas

In this illustration, parts of the ancient planet Theia sink and accumulate at the bottom of the Earth’s mantle. This forms two ‘blobs’ called large low-velocity provinces (LLVPs) deep underneath the Earth.
Science

Two giant blobs lurk deep within the Earth, but why?

By Laura Baisas

three sperm whales swimming near the surface of the ocean
Animals

Sperm whales may have their own ‘alphabet’

By Laura Baisas

an adult peregrine falcon feeds four chicks
Animals

Watch four Peregrine falcon chicks in a nest on Alcatraz Island

By Laura Baisas

The planet Venus is dry thanks to water loss to space as atomic hydrogen. In the dominant loss process, an HCO+ ion recombines with an electron, producing speedy hydrogen atoms (orange) that use CO molecules (blue) as a launchpad to escape.
Science

Why Venus is so dry

By Laura Baisas

a seagull stands on a post by a large and sparkling body of blue water
Animals

Bigger-brained gull species thrive in urban spaces

By Laura Baisas

a small asteroid orbits around a larger one
NASA

‘Lucy’s baby’ asteroid is only about 2 to 3 million years old

By Laura Baisas

a hollow 12-sided object with knobs on each face on display at a musuem.
Archaeology

Ancient, mysterious 12-sided object still baffles archeologists

By Laura Baisas

Intercropped tomato (left) compared to monocropped tomatoes (right). Both were planted on the same day, but here we can see that the intercropped tomato plant is larger, bears more fruit, and the tomatoes ripened earlier than its monocropped counterpart.
Agriculture

Ancient farm practice could help sustain future humans on Mars

By Laura Baisas

A mechanical analysis of the distinctive canines of California's saber-toothed cat (Smilodon fatalis) suggests that the baby tooth that preceded each saber stayed in place for years to stabilize the growing permanent saber tooth, perhaps allowing adolescents to learn how to hunt without breaking them.
Animals

How saber-toothed cats’ baby teeth kept their adult fangs from breaking

By Laura Baisas

a pink-hued full moon rises above the new york city skyline
Science

Zippy meteors, a globular cluster, and more light up May’s night sky

By Laura Baisas

a ring affixed to a wall in the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza
Archaeology

Plants detected in ancient Mayan ‘ballcourts’ point to a sacred spot

By Laura Baisas

a scan of a t. rex skull, with is brain colored in
Biology

T. rex was probably about as intelligent as a crocodile

By Laura Baisas

white cow's milk on a grocery store shelf
Diseases

Bird flu virus traces detected in 1 in 5 pasteurized cow milk samples

By Laura Baisas

a small red squirrel with perked up ears sits on a tree branch
Animals

Early trauma can shorten a red squirrel’s lifespan

By Laura Baisas

left image- This rectangular image shows part of the martian surface as if the viewer is looking down and across the landscape, with the irregular, mottled ground appearing in swirled tones of brown and tan. right image- A slice of the martian surface is shown here. A rounded segment of an eroded crater basin is visible to the right. The key features seen across the image are dark spots with tendrils that are eerily reminiscent of spiders. These are visible in large numbers to the left, and scattered irregularly across the rest of the image.
Mars

Gassy geysers create ‘spiders’ on Mars

By Laura Baisas

a spike-toothed salmon fossil with its mouth open
Animals

This 400-pound prehistoric salmon had tusks like a warthog

By Laura Baisas

a bioluminescent coral shaped like a fan with a central hub
Animals

Bioluminescence may have evolved 300 million years earlier than scientists previously thought

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s concept of NASA’s Voyager 1 traveling through interstellar space–or the space between stars.
Deep Space

Greetings, Earth! NASA can understand Voyager 1 again

By Laura Baisas

an orange, black, and white lemur sits in a tree
Animals

Critically endangered lemur attacked by vulnerable fosa in Madagascar

By Laura Baisas

a handwritten letter to ruth mallory from george mallory before he died on mount everest
Archaeology

Read the last letters by George Mallory, who died exploring Mt. Everest in 1924

By Laura Baisas

a circular lamprey mouth dotted with teeth
Animals

Lampreys offer clues to the origin of our fight-or-flight instinct

By Laura Baisas

an artist's illustration of a lava lake on one of jupiter's moons. it is primarily black as the magma has cooled with orange lava encircling it
Moons

Smooth lava lake on Jupiter’s moon sizzles in NASA aerial animations

By Laura Baisas

a juvenile shark following an autonomous underwater robot
Animals

Baby sharks stick to the shallows

By Laura Baisas

a cyllinder shaped new organelle called a nitroplast under a microscope
Biology

For the first time in one billion years, two lifeforms truly merged into one organism

By Laura Baisas

a galaxy that looks like an hourglass pinched at the center with a shining protostar
Deep Space

Plunge into an immersive IMAX movie featuring the James Webb Space Telescope

By Laura Baisas

an illustration of a large marine reptile beached on the sand, surrounded by two two-legged dinosaurs and several flying dinosaurs
Animals

New species of extinct marine reptile found with help from 11-year-old child

By Laura Baisas

an orange and black butterfly lands on a green leaf with purple flowers
Animals

This butterfly hybrid thrived against evolutionary odds

By Laura Baisas

a tardigrade floating around
Animals

How super resilient tardigrades can fix their radiation-damaged DNA

By Laura Baisas

an infected periodical cicada with a white fungal plug on its abdomen
Animals

This gnarly fungus makes cicadas hypersexual

By Laura Baisas

an illustration of a black hole with a companion star. the star is bright with a blue line indicating where the black hole is.
Black Holes

Humongous stellar-mass black hole is the biggest ever found in Milky Way

By Laura Baisas

a toucan with an orange beak and black and white plumage sits in a tree with its mouth open
Animals

How fruit-eating birds could help regrow tropical forests

By Laura Baisas

a cicada with red eyes and large wings sits in a leaf
Animals

The Cicadapocalypse is nigh. 7 cicada facts to know before it hits.

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s impression of southeastern South Australia during the Pleistocene epoch showing various plants and animals that lived there alongside Protemnodon. The almost one-tonne Zygomaturus trilobus in the bottom right. None of the kangaroos shown is a Protemnodon, but there are two short-faced kangaroos in the center-right. One wallaby is also being attacked by a Tasmanian tiger (top left).
Animals

Super-muscular 374-pound kangaroos once thumped around Australia and New Guinea

By Laura Baisas

one bonobo yells at another bonobo in a tree
Animals

‘Peaceful’ bonobos bite and push each other, actually

By Laura Baisas

a close-up of an octopus eye
Animals

Why counting octopus ‘rings’ is crucial

By Laura Baisas

an illustration of a shiny baby star surrounded by lines indicating magnetic fields
Science

Baby stars release gassy ‘sneezes’ while forming

By Laura Baisas

a green sea turtle swims in a large aquarium tank.
Animals

Myrtle the Turtle ‘in robust condition’ at age 95

By Laura Baisas

two white beluga whales at the surface of the water
Animals

Toothed whales traded chewing for echolocation to evolve

By Laura Baisas

a transparent marine worm with two large reddish-orange eyes on the top of its head
Animals

Tiny worm with enormous eyes may have a ‘secret language’

By Laura Baisas

several grey and brown coins dating back from 650 to 670 CE
Archaeology

Lasers provide clues to an early medieval money mystery

By Laura Baisas

a close up of a brown-colored frog called Haddadus binotatus
Animals

Humans can’t hear these frogs screaming

By Laura Baisas

shelled and unshelled peanuts on a table
Food Safety

After 100 years, new guidelines propose rules for common food allergy treatment

By Laura Baisas

an insect called a matador bug on a green leaf. these bugs have red flag lookingsdecorations on their hind legs
Animals

These insects give off major red flags

By Laura Baisas

a small ferrit-like mammal from the jurassic period goes after a winged insect
Animals

New fossils of tiny, toothy early mammals could be a major missing link

By Laura Baisas

a juvenile chimpanzee in a forested habitat
Animals

Mining of materials needed for ‘green revolution’ puts great ape population at risk

By Laura Baisas

a swirling, purple galaxy in space
Science

Older galaxies are more chaotic

By Laura Baisas

an yellow-ish bag of liver cells in a suspension.
Diseases

Experimental treatment grows livers from lymph nodes

By Laura Baisas

three baby chickens standing in a nest with open and unopened eggshells
Agriculture

Why chickens probably crossed the Silk Road

By Laura Baisas

a flock of flamingoes standing
Animals

We were very wrong about birds

By Laura Baisas

a women blows her nose into a facial tissue while standing next to blooming white flowers
Climate Change

Spring allergy season is off to an even earlier start this year

By Laura Baisas

a full moon with some clouds obscuring it
Moons

April skygazing: A total solar eclipse, a meteor shower, and the Pink Moon

By Laura Baisas

a gecko with spots and a brown back
Animals

New tiny gecko species named after Vincent van Gogh

By Laura Baisas

a small bird called a chickadee with black, white, and grey feathers stands on a stick
Animals

How these feathery ‘memory geniuses’ remember where they stashed their food

By Laura Baisas