Giant scorpions the size of a baseball bat with pincers the size of a pencil once stalked what is now England and Wales. Praearcturus gigas is believed to be the largest scorpion to ever roam the Earth, and was discovered from fossils that have been tucked away in London’s Natural History Museum for more than 150 years. The findings are detailed in a study published in the journal Palaeontology.

Praearcturus gigas stalked the region’s floodplains about 415 million years ago, during the Early Devonian. Small plants and fungi had only recently begun to spread, and more complex land ecosystems like forests did not exist yet.

“When we think of giant arthropods, people often picture Carboniferous rainforests with giant millipedes or dragonfly-like insects from later in Earth’s history,” Dr. Richard J. Howard, a study co-author and the Curator of Fossil Arthropods at the Natural History Museum, said in a statement. “But Praearcturus lived at least 50 million years earlier, well before the evolution of trees, when life on land was only just getting started.”

Howard and the team believe that Praearcturus’ enormous size indicates that they had very little competition from other large predators roaming around. Praearcturus might have grown to three-feet-long with six-inch pincers simply because there weren’t any other large animals nearby, so it could dominate its environment in a way that wouldn’t be possible years down the road. 

Praearcturus gigas was first scientifically decided in 1871. Scientists originally thought it was some kind of giant crustacean, similar to a woodlouse. The fossils were very fragmented, and lacked key features (such as a tail) that help classify it. To get a better picture, the team compared their fossils with some more well-preserved specimens found in 1972 and 2010.

“Praearcturus has puzzled us palaeontologists for more than a century,” added Dr. Russell Garwood, a study co-author and palaeontologist at The University of Manchester. “By bringing together material from several collections and using cutting edge imaging techniques, we’ve been able to build a clearer picture of the animal than was previously possible, which is really exciting.”

The fossils hint that this giant scorpion may have lived in the water some of the time. Some specimens have flap-like structures on the abdomen that are similar to those found in modern crustaceans like lobsters. These flaps suggest Praearcturus may have been capable of moving between water and land. Their place in the wider arachnid fossil record shows that most scorpions are unusually abundant in rocks dating back to this time period, compared with other arachnid species. This supports the idea that Praearcturus may have lived in freshwater environments, where they are more likely to survive as fossils. Excitingly, it shows that Praearcturus lived at a pivotal moment in our planet’s history, when animals were first experimenting with living life outside the oceans.

“The boundary between land and sea was much less defined at this time,” said Dr. Greg Edgecombe, a study co-author and Natural History Museum researcher. “Praearcturus gives us a fascinating glimpse into how early animals adapted to these changing environments. It may even represent a lineage that returned to the water after earlier ancestors had already begun living on land.”

According to the team, a breakthrough like this shows how important discoveries are still being made from museum collections. It also challenges assumptions about why prehistoric arthropods reached such enormous sizes. Instead of being driven solely by environmental factors like oxygen levels, a lack of competition, and other ecological opportunities may have played a crucial role.

“Confirming that this animal is a scorpion fundamentally changes our understanding of how and when these creatures evolved to such extraordinary sizes,” said Howard. 

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Coral reefs may soon have new swimming visitors observing their life-rich aquatic metropolises. But  that visitor isn’t a fish—or even a human. It’s an autonomous, multi-sensor survey robot. Developed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Reef Solutions Initiative, this new underwater surveyor uses a combination of hydrophones, high-resolution cameras, and an onboard computer to find signs of marine life hotspots. It then moves in closer for a better look, creating data-rich maps that would likely take many human divers multiple trips to produce.

The system, appropriately called the Curious Underwater Robot for Ecosystem Exploration (CUREE), does all this all by itself. Well, that’s the goal, at least. In actual testing around Joel’s Shoal in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the curious robot was able to home in on the distant crackle of shrimp, and even tailed a barracuda for more than 984 feet. That last barracuda tracking bit required some human intervention to get it back on course, but the majority of the barracuda tracking occurred totally autonomously. The findings were published this week in the journal Science Robotics. 

Keeping tabs on coral reef’s inhabitants 

Coral reefs are like a busy neighborhood or bustling bar in the ocean. Though they account for less than 0.1 percent of physical ocean space, roughly a quarter of all marine species spend some part of their lives there. But overfishing, human development, and warming ocean temperatures are putting those bustling ecosystems at risk. Because of this threat, it’s more important than ever for marine biologists to have an accurate and timely sense of what those environments look like.

Getting a clear sense of what species are where in a reef isn’t simple, though. At any given time, most of a reef is barren, with marine life typically clumping into hotspots distributed throughout the reef. Currently, researchers primarily track those hotspots with  trained human divers, though that approach isn’t perfect. Our pesky lungs and limited oxygen tanks mean human divers run  on a short clock. It’s also costly for research teams to properly train and equip a human diver, which limits the amount of time and frequency with which they can take a plunge.

An underwater robot could potentially solve both those problems, but it would need the right tools for the job. That’s where CUREE comes in. Engineers outfitted the robot with a variety of sensors that can detect both visual and auditory signals. The system can analyze far-off audio signals in real time to hear distant noises as subtle as fish calling out to each other. It can then triangulate that data using an onboard computer system that moves toward areas it suspects have a high chance of containing marine life. If it spots life once there, it can then use its cameras to provide more precise data about the species and their behavior.

“In some sense, they’re almost a perfect compliment for each other,” WHOI roboticist Seth McCammon said of the multiple sensor method in a statement. “Passive acoustics gives you a broad sense of the environment, while vision is short range, but is this really information-rich data stream.” 

Curious robot stalks a barracuda 

The team put CUREE to the test near Joel’s Shoal, a coral reef located on the coast of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In one test,  the robot could accurately find and count the number of fish in a region. It was able to detect signs of fish from up to 82 feet away and then use those clues to identify life hotspots.

However, the  most interesting result was CUREE’s successful barracuda tracking. Once locked on to its target, CUREE followed the apex predator for a total of nine minutes and 55 seconds, as the fish weaved its way around, looking for lunch. The tracking video in the study shows the barracuda traveling first to a hotspot and then backtracking to another spot where it had previously startled a large reef snapper. And while a human diver had to initiate the robot’s lock on the barracuda,and had to re-lock on the target several times, CUREE did most of the work on its own. The team says eight minutes and 59 seconds of the tracking was done with full autonomy.

Though this isn’t the first underwater robot, its use of multiple sensor types makes it unique because it’s eventually a jack of all trades. Researchers can, in theory at least, drop the robot in a broad area of water and let it get to work surveying. 

The post It’s a barracuda! It’s a shrimp! It’s a robot helping coral reefs. appeared first on Popular Science.

The Changma Basin in northwest China’s Gansu province is famous for its many ancient bird fossils. Or, at least, pieces of fossils. Paleontologists have documented over 100 prehistoric avian dinosaur remains buried across the region, many resembling the digestive pellets regurgitated by owls living today. For years, researchers suspected that a similar predator was responsible for the fossil fragments, but lacked a convincing candidate.

Experts now have a plausible suspect. According to a study published today in the Annals of Carnegie Museum, a cousin of the fearsome Velociraptor stalked the Changma Basin around 120 million years ago. But with its long feathers and four “wings,” Jian changmaensis didn’t ambush its prey from high in the air like a falcon. Instead, it more likely swooped in like a flying squirrel.

“It’s the only dinosaur found at this site that wasn’t a bird, it was a carnivore, and it was much bigger than everything else that we’ve found there,” Jingmai O’Connor, a study co-author and Field Museum associate curator of fossil reptiles, explained in a statement.

Named after a winged mythological creature from Chinese folklore, J. changmaensis belongs to a dinosaur subgroup known as microraptors. These feathered predators were speedy and small, often only about the size of a crow. J. changmaensis was comparatively large, however. While O’Connor’s team has so far only recovered a portion of its upper arm, they believe the dinosaur likely featured a roughly four-foot wingspan. That puts it at about the size of a barn owl.

Although larger than its fellow microraptors, paleontologists believe J. changmaensis physically resembled its relatives. This means the dinosaur likely featured both forearm wings as well as rudimentary “wings” on its hind legs. Microraptors couldn’t soar through the skies, but their feathers served a purpose

“Jian and the other microraptors probably weren’t capable of true, powered flight, but they could probably glide like a flying squirrel,” explained O’Connor.

Matt Lamanna, a study co-author and Carnegie Museum’s curator of vertebrate paleontology, said the team’s discovery offers “critical new insight” into the Changma region’s biological history while helping contextualize today’s avian dinosaur descendents.

“For decades, the Changma site has been renowned among paleontologists for its extraordinary bird fossils,” Lamanna added. “Now, with the discovery of Jian, we finally know what was eating them.”

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Researchers believe the same pair of birds has been mating and nesting in the unusual spot in the Daintree Rainforest for 15 consecutive years

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It started by chance – but it should have come as no surprise that two ospreys would pick a hi-tech research facility to make their home.

James Cook University’s 47-metre tall crane towers over the far-north Queensland rainforest canopy, making it the perfect nesting place for the seabird.

Routine checkups for humans are usually straightforward. The doctor tells you what to do, and unless you’re a squirming baby or terrified of needles, you pretty much follow instructions. 

But what happens when the patient is a giant yellow-orange eel with sharp teeth? Things get a bit slippery. At the New England Aquarium, experts need to follow a complicated process in order to get Thomas, a green moray eel (Gymnothorax funebris), ready for his yearly checkup. 

The first step consists of retrieving Thomas from the aquarium’s giant ocean tank. Divers get him into a plastic barrel.Thomas and the barrel are then submerged into a different water tank with powdered anesthetic water, Melissa Joblon, New England Aquarium’s director of animal health, tells Popular Science. 

“We have to be really cautious to make sure that he’s fully anesthetized before we handle him because they can be dangerous,” she adds, “and they’re very slippery and can kind of slither away if we’re not really careful.”

Once Thomas is essentially knocked out, the team lifts him from his sedation bin and onto a rack. They then flush water—with more of the anesthesia agent—which allows him to continue breathing. 

The medical exam is preventative care, meaning the team is on the lookout for any health issues to catch them before they become serious. The session includes a physical exam, bloodwork, a full ultrasound, and an electrocardiogram. The team is essentially investigating the eel’s outsides and insides. 

“We do full routine annual exams on the majority of the animals that live at the aquarium, similar to bringing your cat or dog to a vet once a year,” Joblon explains. 

Thomas is probably 18 to 21 years old, but he was a juvenile when the New England Aquarium took him in. A pet owner donated him after wisely deciding that they couldn’t care for the eel anymore—Thomas was becoming too big. Green moray eels are, after all, among the largest morays—they can be eight feet long.

Here’s to making sure Thomas eels good. 

The post Thomas the moray eel goes to the doctor appeared first on Popular Science.

Famed British naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough turns 100 years old on May 8, and a team of researchers has prepared a special present: an entire new genus of wasp named in his honor. 

Meet Attenboroughnculus tau, a tiny parasitic wasp discovered in Chile. The specimen is 0.14 inches long and has a T-shaped marking on its abdomen that inspired the species name, “tau.” The insect was collected from Chile’s Valdivia Province in 1983, and it took over four decades for someone to officially recognize it as something new.  

“We hope to inspire global scientists to take another look in their collections to see if there is something small that could contribute to our collective understanding and therefore the future of our natural world,” Jennifer Pullar, science communications manager at London’s Natural History Museum, says in a statement. 

It was volunteer Augustijn De Ketelaere, a graduate student at Ghent University in Belgium, who noticed the insect’s unexpected traits while the team was examining the museum’s ichneumonid collections. Attenboroughnculus tau has a unique combination of anatomical features that make it different from already established genera: a strongly curved abdominal segment, toothlike structures on the ovipositor (which they use to lay eggs), and distinctive wing and leg morphology.

If you think Attenborough will be offended by the unsavory nature of the bug named in his honor, think again. Parasitoid wasps have appeared in his documentaries, such as the BBC nature documentary series The Trials of Life, in which he dubbed them the “bodysnatcher wasp.”

“David Attenborough has featured Chile’s diverse, extreme landscapes in several documentaries, emphasising the unique environmental challenges and ecological resilience of species within the country,” De Ketelaere, Pullar, and lead author Gavin Broad—principle curator of insects at the museum—write in a recent Journal of Natural History study. “He has used his work to reveal the intimate, unseen or overlooked within nature. This resonates in the discovery of this species in an unsorted drawer within the collections of the Natural History Museum, London.” 

This isn’t the first time Attenborough is honored by taxonomists. In fact, the man has over 50 species named after him, including the carnivorous plant Nepenthes attenboroughii. 

Happy Birthday Sir David Attenborough! 

The post Sir David Attenborough’s 100th birthday present is… a parasitic wasp appeared first on Popular Science.

A recently discovered box jellyfish species living in near Singapore looks nearly identical to another jellyfish previously discovered by the same scientist. But regardless of whether or not you can tell Chironex blakangmati and Chironex yamaguchii apart, you’ll want to steer clear of both of them. Box jellyfish didn’t earn their “sea-wasp” nickname for yellow-and-black stripes.

Cheryl Ames, a marine biologist at Japan’s Tohoku University, collected C. blakangmati during an expedition near the coast of Singapore’s Sentosa Island. The team initially assumed the invertebrate was an example of C. yamaguchii, but later genomic testing revealed something else entirely.

“We realized they were completely distinct,” Ames explained in a statement. “I actually went back to dust off an old sample of C. yamaguchii I still had in storage in Okinawa to help with the comparisons.”

Apart from genetics, the key difference setting C. blakangmati apart from its three known Chironex relatives is its perradial lappets. This anatomical feature on the bottom of the box jellyfish’s bell-shaped body strengthens the pulsating musculature that propels it through the water. Other Chironex species include pointy canals at the tips of their perradial lappets, but C. blakangmati notably does not.

Canals or not, they are remarkable creatures. The vast majority of jellyfish don’t rely on vision and passively float in ocean currents, but members of the Chironex genus do not. Instead, they have evolved complex eye organs that help them locate prey. They then use that same musculature supported by the perradial lappets to actively swim through the water towards its target.

In this sense, C. blakangmati certainly lives up to its scientific name. Sentosa may be Malay for “peace and tranquility,” but the island once called something very different. Historically, it is also known as Pulau Klakang Mati, which translates to the “Island of Death from Behind.”

The post New box jellyfish name warns of ‘death from behind’ appeared first on Popular Science.

Raccoons are cute and curious creatures, but frequently carry infectious diseases. This poses serious problems for humans, especially when evidence indicates the animals are increasingly accustomed to more populated areas including cities and farms. Researchers at Japan’s Osaka Metropolitan University (OMU) say that the omnivores are now vectors for an emerging bacterium called Escherichia albertii, that’s already responsible for multiple severe outbreaks of food poisoning. However, monitoring raccoons isn’t enough. To formulate the best public health policies, experts should also focus on rivers, according to a study published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

The teams led by OMU veterinary scientist Atsushi Hinenoya recently conducted an extensive survey of both the wild raccoons and waterways in southern Japan’s Osaka Prefecture, which is known for its high concentration of the sneaky omnivores. They flagged the presence of E. albertii in 77 percent of water samples across six of the eight rivers examined,but only during the late spring, summer, and fall. Any negative samples were otherwise collected during the winter and early spring,when infected raccoon numbers are known to decline.

Moreover, Hinenoya’s team identified E. albertii upstream from populated areas and in water sources far removed from places like neighborhoods and recreational parks. Because riverborne bacteria typically accumulate downstream, this further supports the theory that wildlife—not humans—are responsible for the contamination.

From there, researchers studied 122 wild raccoons and discovered 56-percent were carrying E. albertii. Subsequent whole-genome analysis confirmed an array of bacterial strains, many aligning with those found in the water samples. This means that E. albertii was already entrenched in the ecosystem instead of starting from one outbreak. These also appeared remarkably similar to the strains documented in human patients which can cause severe diarrhea and vomiting sometimes requiring hospitalization.

“These findings are strong indicators that these [variants] pose a potential risk to public health,” Hinenoya said in a statement.

If E. albertii can survive for prolonged periods of time in both rivers and in wildlife, then that may significantly increase the risk of repeated exposure. This would make future outbreaks much harder to trace.

So what can be done about it? Hinenoya and the team emphasize the importance of adopting a “One Health” strategy that doesn’t only track human infections, but also the interconnected ecological, agricultural, and wildlife systems. From here, researchers intend to focus on more specific contamination routes that involve the raccoons, local farms, food products, and waterways. They also add that the approach will hopefully be applied to other diseases.

“We hope to expand this research toward the development of comprehensive strategies for infectious disease control,” said Hinenoya.

The post Raccoons might be spreading diarrhea-causing bacteria in Japan appeared first on Popular Science.

Red means stop. Red means danger. Red means passion. The color conjures up a whole range of emotions and associations. It inspired an entire Taylor Swift album. And yet if someone asked you to describe what red actually looks like, without pointing at something red, you’d hit a wall almost immediately. 

So why is it that a color so evocative and distinctive as red (or any color, for that matter) still manages to elude our attempts to nail it down with words? 

If you just now said, “It’s because color doesn’t exist,” well played!  If you’re like me and your face just turned an indescribable shade of red, welcome to the club. 

“There is no color in the world,” says American neuroscientist Christof Koch. “There are photons of a particular wavelength emitted by the sun that strike an object, and then get reflected into the eye of the viewer. The electrical activity that’s generated there then travels up into the cortex of the brain, and gets processed into something we call color.”

In other words, red isn’t something out there in the world waiting to be objectively and uniformly experienced. It’s something your brain makes up. So does color even actually exist? Neuroscientists think maybe not. At least not in the way we think it does. 

Does color even exist? Short answer: Not really.

Koch, a Meritorious Investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, discusses the subjective experience of color using a famous thought experiment called Mary’s Room. Introduced in the 1980s by the philosopher Frank Jackson, the experiment involves a hypothetical neuroscientist, Mary, who lives in a black-and-white room. Mary knows everything there is to know about color: the wavelengths, the photoreceptors, the way color is processed within the visual cortex. She has read every paper and has conducted every experiment. But Mary has never actually seen color.

One day, Mary leaves the black-and-white room. And for the first time in her life, she sees a red tomato.  

The question Jackson posed is deceptively simple: When Mary sees the red tomato, does she learn something new?

Jackson’s answer was yes. Despite knowing everything science could conceivably tell her about color, Mary is confronted by something that no textbook could convey—the actual experience of seeing red. 

“The feeling, the phenomenal quality, whatever you call it—the experience is subjective,” Koch says. “People have invented a dozen words or more to describe it. It remains inexplicable.”

That “it,” Koch says, is the experience itself—the felt sensation of seeing red that no amount of scientific language has ever quite managed to pin down.

Philosophers call that experience a quale (pronounced KWAH-LAY) the felt, first-person experience of something: the redness of red, the sharpness of pain, the taste of coffee. Unlike the wavelength of red, which can be measured precisely, a quale can’t be objectively measured. It’s entirely an inside job.

Koch says the Mary’s Room thought experiment argues against materialism—the philosophical view that everything in the universe, including human experience, can be explained by physics. If materialism is right, there’s nothing science can’t eventually account for. Mary’s Room suggests otherwise: There are some things that science simply can’t explain.

Everyone see colors differently, but not that differently

For the most part, we go about our days equipped with this surprisingly loose consensus on our shared reality. If your blue isn’t quite the same as my blue, it’s close enough not to cause trouble most of the time. But every once in a while, something happens that reminds us how differently our brains can construct the same reality. 

In 2015, a photograph of a striped dress went viral for a reason that had nothing to do with fashion. The dress appeared blue and black to many, but millions of people looking at the same image saw white and gold, and couldn’t fathom how anyone could see it differently. In what now seems like a quaint public rift, the internet divided around the hotly debated reality of blue/black versus white/gold.

“It’s as though they were looking at the same screen,” says Koch. But “half the population saw one movie and the other half saw a different movie.” 

The explanation, says Koch, has to do with how the brain handles ambiguous lighting. Every time you look at an image, your brain makes an automatic, unconscious calculation about the overall brightness of it. This calculation is based on your habits and life experience. 

Research by NYU neuroscientist Pascal Wallisch, drawing on more than 13,000 participants, found that early risers were significantly more likely to see the dress as white and gold, while night owls tended to see blue and black

Because early risers spend more waking hours in natural daylight, their brains are calibrated to filter out blue light, leaving white and gold. Night owls, accustomed to warmer artificial light, filter that out instead and land on blue and black. 

“You get up early in the morning and see a lot of sunlight, or you get up very late and are primarily up at night with artificial light,” Koch says. “So depending on that implicit assumption, your brain gives rise to these two different percepts: white and gold, or blue and black.” It’s not a conscious, deliberate decision you take to view the dress one way or the other. 

For Koch, the dress is a window into something fundamental about human perception.

“There is input from the world, but then your particular brain might make a set of assumptions, and my brain might make a different set of assumptions,” he adds. “We obviously agree most of the time, though, or else we wouldn’t have evolved.”

And for the most part, we do agree. A species that couldn’t agree on some basic shared realities wouldn’t have gotten very far. So don’t worry: Your understanding of red is probably pretty similar to my understanding of red.

We all have unique, built-in filters that change how we see the world

The dress, it turns out, is just the beginning. Koch cites the concept of the “perception box.” Writer and researcher Elizabeth R. Koch (no relation) coined the term in 2021 to describe the hidden forces that shape how we see the world. 

According to this theory, we each have our own unique perception box. Think of two people standing in front of the same abstract painting. One sees something beautiful and moving: The other sees a mess. Same painting, completely different experience. That’s your perception box at work. It’s shaped by your genes, your upbringing, and every experience you’ve ever had. 

“We all live in slightly different perception boxes,” he says. “The walls are invisible, and they can expand or shrink, driven by our genes, our neural wiring, our experience.”

Those walls, Koch says, determine far more than which colors we see. They shape how we interpret relationships, how we process emotions, and even how we react to the evening news. Two people can look at the same event and come away with completely different realities, not because one of them is lying, but because their perception boxes are simply built differently.

When it comes to the color red, you can measure its wavelength. You can map exactly what happens in the brain when the eye encounters it. But the actual experience of redness—that felt, interior, indescribable thing—lives inside your perception box, and nowhere else.

“This applies to any conscious experience,” he says. “It applies to pain, say, due to an infected tooth, or the distress you experience when someone leaves you. It’s true for taste, for boredom, for mystical experience, and for psychedelic experience. It has the same ineffable quality.”

Which brings us back to red. You’ve always known it when you’ve seen it. But that color you see? It’s yours and yours alone.

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

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A tiny, bright blue octopus Microeledone galapagensis is small enough to fit inside the palm of your hand, but good luck trying to meet one. According to marine biologists, you’ll likely have to settle with admiring it from afar for now unless you have access to a deep sea submersible—and a ticket to the Galápagos Islands.

M. galapagensis is described for the first time in a study published today in the journal Zootaxa, but scientists actually first encountered the octopus in 2015. While conducting a deep sea expedition aboard the research vessel E/V Nautilus, biologists spotted the diminutive invertebrate as they piloted a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) along the ocean floor near Darwin Island. Its vibrantly blue coloration stood out from the underwater mountainslope at a depth of about 5,800 feet, prompting a closer inspection.

“Is that a cute little guy, or what?” one researcher can be heard saying over the audio feed of an ROV recording.

The team successfully soon scooped up the specimen and eventually recorded footage of two others during their expedition. A closer lab inspection stumped the experts, however, which prompted them to send a photo along to Field Museum octopus expert Janet Voight.

“Right away, I knew it was something really special. I’d never seen anything like it,” the study co-author recalled in a statement.

There was a big problem, however. Determining if a specimen is a never-before-seen species usually requires a full autopsy that inevitably destroys the sample. Since this was the only M. galapagensis ever collected, Voight didn’t want to lose such a valuable example.

The solution eventually came in the form of micro-computer tomography (CT) scanning technology. With the help of Field Museum X-ray CT laboratory manager Stephanie Smith, the team could finall get a highly detailed look at M. galapagensis’ anatomy by compiling thousands of thin X-ray images into a 3D model.

“Because CT imaging is non-destructive, it’s especially important for type specimens like this one. And that’s great for me because people are often bringing me these incredibly rare and stunningly beautiful specimens that I get the privilege of virtually opening up,” explained Smith, also a study co-author. 

After years of work, Voight and colleagues could finally confirm the octopus belonged to a novel species that deserved its own name. What’s more, M. galapagensis represents the first octopus species officially described by Voight in her over 40-year career.

“These are little octopuses that live in the deep sea, and hardly anybody on Earth has ever gotten to see them. I just feel lucky that I got to work with them,” she said.

“Getting the specimen to Janet was a long process, but one I would gladly repeat if it means getting to know the most precious parts of our ocean just a little bit better,” added study co-author and University of California Los Angeles marine scientist Salome Buglass.

The post Golf ball-sized octopus discovered near the Galápagos Islands appeared first on Popular Science.

For decades, many paleoarchaeologists believed Neanderthals went extinct largely because they just weren’t intelligent enough to compete with their Homo sapien relatives. However, mounting historical evidence suggests this was far from the case. The latest discovery to help the Neanderthal’s reputation ion? The ancient hominins knew when and how to safely snack on shellfish potentially thousands of years before their human descendants.

The findings published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences focus on Neanderthals who lived at Los Aviones Cave in present-day Cartagena, Spain. Researchers discovered the remains of 115,000-year-old mollusks including gastropods and limpets that were clearly harvested as food. This contradicts past theories about Neanderthals, which suggested they had difficulty adapting to coastal environments and utilizing marine resources. What’s more, the Neanderthals here didn’t eat shellfish in large quantities all the time. Instead, they knew to make the most of them between November and April during the colder seasons.

“They consumed marine resources throughout the year, but with a very clear preference for winter and autumn months,” explained Asier García-Escárzaga, a study co-author and archaeologist at Spain’s Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Institute of Environmental Science and Technology.

García-Escárzaga says this seasonal pattern often followed by more modern human populations in Europe wasn’t a coincidence. The winter reproduction cycle of many mollusks also results in higher amounts of meat as well as improved flavor and texture. Summer months increase health risks like toxic algae contamination or rapid spoiling.

But how did researchers determine exactly when these shellfish were harvested? It all has to do with the mollusks’ shell carbonate and their oxygen isotopic levels. This level fluctuates depending on seawater temperature and functions like a “prehistoric thermometer,” according to García-Escárzaga.

The findings reveal that Spain’s coastal Neanderthals relied on a diverse diet featuring high-quality oceanic proteins filled with Omega-3 and zinc, both of which aid in reproductive health and brain development. With that in mind, it’s entirely possible that humans’ closest evolutionary ancestors influenced our own love of shellfish.

“What we see at Los Aviones is a fully modern subsistence strategy,” García-Escárzaga and his colleagues wrote in their study.

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On April 21, a baby horse was born at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bronx Zoo in New York City. But it wasn’t just any foal that came into the world—this newest resident of the Big Apple is a Przewalski’s horse (Equus ferus przewalskii), an endangered species that has been pulled back from the brink of extinction. 

Przewalski’s horses look more like a mule than your average horse. For starters, their mane sticks up straight into the air and they don’t have a forelock (horse bangs, basically). Przewalski’s horses are also short, light brown, and—excuse the necessary slang—exceptionally chonky. They also have a really thick neck. 

They are also referred to as the Mongolian wild horse, and they are the only truly wild horse species left, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Though the species used to exist across Asia and Europe, their numbers plummeted so much that at one point they were deemed Extinct in the Wild. 

“The Bronx Zoo has played a pivotal role in the conservation of Przewalski’s horse,” the Bronx Zoo wrote in a statement announcing the birth. “Through breeding programs aimed at maintaining a genetically diverse population of the species and through reintroduction efforts, zoo-bred Przewalski’s horses were successfully returned to their native grasslands in China in 1989 and in Mongolia beginning in 1992.”

Przewalski’s horses now live in Mongolia, China, and Kazakhstan, as well as in zoos. Rather shockingly, the entire extant population (which researchers estimate is less than 2,000 individuals) descends from only 12 horses. 

In Mongolia, the Wildlife Conservation Society supports Protected Areas with wild horses. As for the Bronx Zoo, the foal is part of a herd. Visitors can see it from the Wild Asia Monorail, where the adorable baby is sure to develop a colt (young male horse) following. 

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