Deborah Bloomfield

With some species reaching 1.8 meters (5.9 feet) in height, the majestic and ancient crane family look like they belong well and truly on the ground. But these gangly creatures are actually surprisingly nimble fliers, and some species cross entire continents, high mountain ranges, and oceans while migrating thousands of miles to reach their breeding […]

For the first time, scientists have discovered animal life under the seafloor around deep hydrothermal vent systems. The new discovery challenges the old idea that only microbes inhabit the subseafloor region and suggests that much more of Earth’s crust might harbor complex lifeforms. Researchers onboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute research vessel Falkor (too) used remotely […]

Take a look at the first column of the periodic table. The elements in this group include some of the most common and useful ones on the planet – and they probably all wish they weren’t associated with francium. Sitting at the bottom of this row of chemical workhorses, this spectacularly radioactive element would be […]

The Red Deer Cave People might have been some of the most unusual and mysterious humans to walk the Earth in the past 20,000 years. Despite being around 14,000 years old – exceptionally recent in terms of human evolution – their fossils show they possessed many “archaic” human features associated with more distant relatives in […]

The European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Mars Express has sent back new images of the south polar region of Mars, capturing features known as “cryptic terrain” emerging from beneath the Martian frost. The terrain at the Martian poles is covered in a mixture comprising mainly carbon dioxide ice, with some water ice mixed in there. In […]

Going trekking into the rainforests of Madagascar sounds like a grand adventure – but for one team of researchers, it has also provided a bountiful discovery. Seven new species of tree frogs have been revealed, and their new names pay tribute to Star Trek.  The seven newly discovered frogs don’t croak. In fact, their rather […]

A 5,000-year-old Neolithic site has been unearthed on a Danish island that holds an unusual secret: a stone-paved cellar associated with the Beaker Culture. The site, known as Nygårdsvej 3, is located near the Danish village of Eskilstrup on the island of Falster. It was discovered during the extension and electrification of a railway line […]

Zimbabwe is the latest country to report cases of mpox, the first in its history. Two people, an 11-year-old boy and a 24-year-old man, are known to have been infected, both with recent travel history to other countries. The variant of the virus has not been specified. South Africa’s SABC news broadcast an announcement from […]

When it comes to tall birds, your mind probably jumps to the ostrich – or maybe the magnificent chonk that is Pesto the king penguin – but many of the planet’s largest birds are flightless. So, what is the tallest bird that can actually take to the skies? This title belongs to a species of […]

Global demand for lithium is skyrocketing, and many countries are vying for dominance in the ballooning market. Fortunately for the US, it looks like a super-salty (and very smelly) lake in California is brimming with the coveted metal. However, obtaining it might be easier said than done.  The lake in question is the Salton Sea, […]

Waves breaking at the mouth of Brazil’s Doce River, where it meets the Atlantic, have become the first-ever waves and part of the ocean to be given legal personhood, in a decision made by the municipal council of the nearby city of Linhares. The new law, which was first approved as a bill in June […]

A chance encounter with a deeply mysterious cephalopod known as the whip-lash squid has been captured on camera some 1,000 meters (3,281 feet) below the sea’s surface in the Tonga Trench. The video was shot last month by researchers from Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre and Inkfish as part of the Tonga Trench Expedition 2024. Between […]

Some species need more conservation help than others and while this can come in many forms, some species at least have the decency to look grateful in the photo ops. The spotted handfish, however, is not one of them. Despite having its genome sequenced for the very first time, in a bid to improve conservation […]

Scientists watched as a population of sea snails evolved within just a few years. Along with documenting a vivid example of “rapid evolution,” the researchers were able to successfully predict how the snails would change at the start of the 30-year experiment, suggesting that evolutionary change is not always as unpredictable as it may seem. […]

The Sahara Desert might normally be one of the driest places on Earth, but September saw the northwest of the region flood for the first time in decades, after an extratropical cyclone brought with it rare heavy rainfall. According to NASA Earth Observatory, preliminary estimates suggest parts of the Sahara in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and […]

A new ultrasensitive, soft robotic “finger” has been developed by international researchers that can conduct medical tasks, like checking for a pulse and examining patients for lumps. Although robotic hands have been developed before, this new robo-finger has the ability to mimic both the feel and function of human touch. The hope is that this […]

Conspiracy theorists appear to believe that they have uncovered some sort of giant doorway at the top of Antarctica, to go nicely with the mysterious “pyramid” they got excited about in 2016. People have discovered all sorts of oddities while browsing through Google Maps, from “aliens” and camera-hogging cats to the answer to decades-old cold […]

A population of stars more than 13 billion years old represents the original disk from which the Milky Way formed, a team of astronomers claim. By studying this population’s movements, the authors have reconstructed what they think is the shape of the proto-Milky Way, which they say is a relatively unusual starting point for galaxies […]

The world, maybe more now than ever before, runs on battery power. So many everyday things – from your watch to your car to the cellphone you’re reading this on right now – are fueled by these little containers of stored electricity, that it’s easy to take the whole situation for granted. Until, that is, […]

An animation using data from the European Space Agency (ESA) allows you to listen to a “sounded visualization” of Earth’s magnetic field being disrupted during the Laschamp event. You probably don’t worry about the Earth’s magnetic fields too much, assuming you don’t have to rely on a compass for navigation. The magnetosphere generally sits up […]