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Two New Bird Species Identified in Amazonia

Cercomacra raucisona. Image credit: Fernando Zurdo.
Mar 9, 2026 by Natali Anderson

An antbird long thought to be a single widespread species across the Amazon rainforest is, in fact, several different ones. Among them are two newly-described species — Cercomacra mura and Cercomacra raucisona — that inhabit separate regions of southern Amazonia. The discovery emerged from a comprehensive analysis of museum specimens and vocal recordings of birds in the gray antbird (Cercomacra cinerascens) complex. Cercomacra raucisona....

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An artist’s impression of 3I/ATLAS is shown as it passes near the Sun, illuminating one side of the comet; on the side of the comet closer to the Sun, the methanol gas is shown in blue, with icy dust grains still present in the gas; on the dark side of the comet, the hydrogen cyanide is shown in orange. Image credit: NSF / AUI / NRAO / M.Weiss.

3I/ATLAS is Unusually Rich in Methanol, ALMA Observations Show

Mar 9, 2026 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have detected hydrogen cyanide (nitrogen-bearing organic molecule commonly seen...

An artist’s reconstruction of Sonselasuchus cedrus in its environment in what is now Petrified Forest National Park, 215 million years ago. Image credit: Gabriel Ugueto.

Triassic Crocodile Relative May Have Learned to Walk on Two Legs

Mar 9, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Fossils from the Chinle Formation of Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, the United States, reveal that Sonselasuchus cedrus, a species of shuvosaurid...

This artist’s illustration shows the ejection of a cloud of debris after NASA’s DART spacecraft collided with the asteroid Dimorphos. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser.

NASA’s Planetary Defense Test Changed Binary Asteroid’s Orbit around the Sun

Mar 9, 2026 by News Staff

New measurements show that the DART impact in 2022 not only shortened the orbit of the moonlet Dimorphos around its parent asteroid, Didymos, but also...

Vishal Gajjar & Grayce C. Brown report one of the first quantitative frameworks for assessing the impact of stellar environments on the detectability of narrowband technosignatures. Image credit: Sci.News.

Stellar ‘Space Weather’ Could Be Blurring Radio Signals from Extraterrestrial Civilizations

Mar 9, 2026 by News Staff

Stellar activity and plasma turbulence could distort narrow radio signals before they leave their home planetary systems, potentially explaining part of...

Pluridens imelaki, holotype, close-up of the dentaries. Scale bar - 10 cm. Image credit: Nicholas R. Longrich & Nour-Eddine Jalil, doi: 10.3390/d18030159.

New Giant Mosasaur Species Discovered in Morocco

Mar 6, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have identified a new, giant species of the mosasaur genus Pluridens from the Late Cretaceous phosphate deposits of Morocco. Named Pluridens...

Graecopithecus freybergi lived 7.2 million years ago in the dust-laden savannah of the Athens Basin. This view from Graecopithecus freybergi’s place of discovery, Pyrgos Vassilissis, to the southeast over the plain of Athens and under a reddish cloud of Sahara dust; in the background: Mount Hymettos and Mount Lykabettos. Image credit: Velizar Simeonovski.

Graecopithecus May Have Been Partially Bipedal, New Fossil Suggests

Mar 5, 2026 by Sergio Prostak

A 7.2-million-year-old thigh bone unearthed at the fossil site of Azmaka in southern Bulgaria displays a mosaic of features suggesting a unique combination...

Renderings of an exemplary Antscan specimen: subsoldier of Eciton hamatum. Image credit: Katzke et al., doi: 10.1038/s41592-026-03005-0.

Entomologists Create Digital Library of Global Ant Diversity

Mar 5, 2026 by News Staff

Using powerful X-ray beams, automated robotics and AI, entomologists have created interactive digital images representing 212 genera and 792 species of...

Webb captured the auroral footprints of Io and Europa, providing spectral measurements for the first time, and revealing extreme changes in the physical properties within Io’s auroral footprint that are likely linked to the electrons crashing into the top of Jupiter’s atmosphere. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Webb / NIRCam / Jupiter ERS Team / Judy Schmidt / Katie L. Knowles, Northumbria University.

Webb Captures Io’s and Europa’s Auroral Footprints in Jupiter’s Atmosphere

Mar 5, 2026 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope conducted a clockwise scan around the entire limb of Jupiter, chasing aurora as it rotated into view. This...

The occasional use of stone tools as ‘strike-a-lights’ was a technocultural feature shared among Neanderthals in France.

Neolithic Europeans Had Surprisingly Complex Cuisine, Archaeologists Say

Mar 5, 2026 by News Staff

An international team of archaeologists has examined a total of 85 pottery sherds with substantial amounts of foodcrusts from 13 archaeological sites across...

Section of the Line Intensity Map created by charting the distribution and concentration of excited hydrogen (via the Lyman alpha wavelength) in the Universe around 10 billion years ago. The stars mark where HETDEX has found galaxies. The inset simulates the structure present in this map once it is zoomed in on and background noise is removed from the data. Image credit: Maja Lujan Niemeyer / Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics / HETDEX / Chris Byrohl / Stanford University.

Astronomers Find Hidden Structures in Early Universe

Mar 5, 2026 by News Staff

Using spectral data from the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory, astronomers have produced the most detailed 3D map yet of faint cosmic structures...

This is an artist's impression of a rocky and water-rich asteroid being torn apart by the strong gravity of the white dwarf star GD 61. Image credit: Mark A. Garlick, Space-art.co.uk / University of Warwick / University of Cambridge.

Extremophile Bacteria May Hitch Rides on Asteroid Fragments

Mar 4, 2026 by News Staff

Earlier work has demonstrated that an extremophile bacterium species called Deinococcus radiodurans can survive the radiation, cold, and desiccation associated...

In this image, Hubble captures the very core of the billowing gas in the Cat’s Eye Nebula. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Z. Tsvetanov.

Hubble and Euclid Telescopes Highlight Hidden Complexity of Cat’s Eye Nebula

Mar 4, 2026 by News Staff

New images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ESA’s Euclid mission have revealed the complex, multi-shell structure of the extraordinary planetary...

Shortly after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, the earliest known primates, such as Purgatorius mckeeveri shown in the foreground, quickly set themselves apart from their competition -- like the archaic ungulate mammal on the forest floor -- by specializing in an omnivorous diet including fruit found up in the trees. Image credit: Andrey Atuchin.

Southernmost Fossils of Earliest Primate Relative Unearthed in Colorado

Mar 3, 2026 by News Staff

The newly-discovered minuscule fossils of Purgatorius — a shrew-sized mammal considered the earliest known relative of all primates, including humans,...

Reconstruction of the face of StW 573. Image credit: A. Beaudet.

Scientists Digitally Reconstruct Face of ‘Little Foot’

Mar 3, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Beyond their value for classification and evolutionary relationships, changes in the size and shape of the hominin face through time can reflect important...

Skeletal reconstruction of Diadectes sideropelicus with overlaid left and right tooth and bore marks in right lateral view. Image credit: Young et al., doi: 10.1038/s41598-026-38183-6.

280-Million-Year-Old Fossil Provides Earliest Direct Evidence of Land Predators Attacking Herbivores

Mar 3, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists at the University of Toronto Mississauga have found dozens of tooth marks on the fossilized bones of three juveniles of Diadectes, one...

Life reconstruction of the pachycephalosaur individual CMNFV 22039 in an environment typical of the Upper Maastrichtian Frenchman Formation. Image credit: Kaitlin Lindblad.

Rare Fossil of Baby Dome-Headed Dinosaur Unearthed in Canada

Mar 2, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

For many years, the fossil record of pachycephalosaurs (dome-headed dinosaurs) has been dominated by fossilized skulls. The postcranial material of young...

This is a mosaic image, one of the largest ever taken by Hubble of the Crab Nebula, a 6-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star’s supernova explosion. Japanese and Chinese astronomers recorded this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago in 1054, as did, almost certainly, Native Americans. Image credit: NASA / ESA / J. Hester / A. Loll, Arizona State University.

Astronomer Deciphers Crab Pulsar’s Zebra Stripes

Mar 2, 2026 by News Staff

New research from the University of Kansas untangles a decades-old astrophysical puzzle, showing how competing forces — gravity’s pull and magnetospheric...

This VLT/HAWK-I image shows the emission nebula RCW 36; while the dark clouds in the middle of the image make up the head and body of the bird of prey, the filaments extending away from the body to the left and right compose its wings; below it, is a mesmerising blue nebula with massive newly born stars, whose intense radiation make the gas around them glow brightly. Image credit: ESO / do Brito do Vale et al.

VLT Focuses on Brown Dwarfs and Infant Stars in RCW 36

Mar 2, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using the High Acuity Wide-field K-band Imager (HAWK-I) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have captured a new image of the emission nebula...

Neanderthals. Image credit: Gemini AI.

Study: Ancient Mating Preferences Helped Shape Human Genome

Mar 2, 2026 by News Staff

Prehistoric humans and Neanderthals didn’t just interbreed, they did so with a consistent sex bias, as male Neanderthals and female modern humans mated...

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