Science

A fossil found in southern Brazil is giving researchers a closer look at the reptiles that lived near the beginning of the archosaur lineage, the group that would eventually include dinosaurs and crocodile-line animals. The animal has been named ‘Silescelida acristata’ and is identified as an early-diverging eucrocopodan archosauriform from the Middle Triassic. A recent…

Image Credit: Brad Leue/AWC Australia’s effort to bring digging mammals back to an 8,000-hectare wildlife sanctuary has produced changes below the surface. Researchers studying Scotia Sanctuary in south-eastern Australia found that 8 years after reintroduced mammals were given access to areas, the communities of insects emerging from the soil had changed. The mammals, including greater…

Nepal’s mid-hills are places where farming has long meant working with the landscape rather than against it. Terraces cut into steep slopes turn difficult ground into fields for maize, millet, rice and other crops, with generations of farmers maintaining the walls and soil that make cultivation possible. But the balance between people, farmland and wildlife…

Liquid hydrogen Tank at NASA Kennedy Space Center. Image Credit: US Department of Energy Scientists working on a cleaner way to produce hydrogen have discovered an unexpected second product which is high-quality graphite. The finding emerged from research into methane pyrolysis, a process that splits methane into hydrogen and solid carbon instead of producing CO2…

Restoring damaged land can look straightforward on paper: plant trees, repair soils and wait for vegetation to return. On the ground, the work is less predictable. Young plants have to survive drought, poor soils, fire, grazing and the other pressures that caused landscapes to deteriorate in the first place.Mexico’s National Forestry Commission, known as CONAFOR,…

Four concrete barriers blocked the way for salmon that once swam freely between the Pacific Ocean and the high desert reaches of Oregon and California for more than a hundred years. The dams were removed in 2024 as part of one of the largest dam removal projects in U.S. history, letting the river flow freely…

Chen Yuanhui. Image Credit: South China Morning Post Chen Yuanhui has spent more than four decades studying one of China’s rarest venomous snakes, even though his work has cost him part of a finger and repeatedly put his life in danger. The 77-year-old, widely known as the ‘Snake Doctor,’ discovered the ‘Mangshan pit viper’ and…

This photo taken on Aug. 10, 2026 shows a view of the Muz Taw Glacier in Altay, northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (Photos: Xinhua net) Researchers in China have tried to make artificial snow over China’s Muz Taw Glacier to slow its melting. The experiment conducted in 2018 involved seeding clouds with silver iodide,…

Image Credit: AI Generated Two Canadian students have developed a colour-changing toothpaste designed to make toothbrushing easier for children to understand. Ella Zhang and Gillian Leung, students at Havergal College in Canada, created ‘ToothTint’ as a school project that uses a natural pigment to change colour in response to conditions inside the mouth. The idea…

In 1980, conservationists began an ambitious ecological restoration programme on Santa Cruz Island, off the coast of Southern California. The main goal was to remove tens of thousands of feral sheep whose uncontrolled grazing was damaging native plants and threatening wildlife habitats. Over the next seven years, organised eradication efforts dramatically changed the island’s landscape….

The study, published in Nature, could also change how scientists identify links between gut bacteria and disease.​ The human gut is home to trillions of microorganisms that together form the gut microbiome. These microbes play important roles in digestion, immune function and metabolism. Now, researchers led by the University of Vienna have found that common…

Quote of the day by Albert Einstein (Image: Wikipedia) Albert Einstein‘s famous words offer a genuinely different way of looking at achievement. In a world where success is often measured through money, job titles and public recognition, this line asks people to look beyond what they have actually achieved and think honestly about what kind…