Fungus-farming ants cultivate multiple species of fungi for food, but the history of fungus-ant co-evolution is poorly known. In a new study published this week in the journal Science, researchers found that fungus-ant agriculture originated approximately 66 million years ago when the end-of-Cretaceous asteroid impact temporarily interrupted photosynthesis, causing global mass extinctions but favoring the

Prior studies found signs of ice in the permanently shadowed regions near the south pole of the Moon, including areas within Cabeus, Haworth, Shoemaker and Faustini craters. A new analysis of data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) shows there is widespread evidence of water ice within permanently shadowed regions outside the south pole, towards

Centaurs are former trans-Neptunian objects that have been moved inside Neptune’s orbit by subtle gravitational influences of the planets in the last few million years, and may eventually become short-period comets. An artist’s concept of 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1’s outgassing activity as seen from the side. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / L. Hustak, STScI.

Play is a widespread behavior present in distant species that, in its social form, relies on complex communication. Playful communication has been largely neglected in marine mammals. In new research, scientists from the University of Pisa and colleagues focused on playful visual communication in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). “We’ve uncovered the presence of a distinct

A new genus and species of silesaurid being named Gondwanax paraisensis has been identified from the fossilized remains discovered in Southern Brazil. Gondwanax paraisensis. Image credit: Rodrigo Temp Müller, doi: 10.1016/j.gr.2024.09.007. Silesauridae are an extinct group of Triassic reptiles related to dinosaurs. These creatures had a fairly long neck and legs, and possibly quadrupedal habits.

TIC 290061484 contains a pair of stars orbiting each other every 1.8 days, and a third star that circles the pair in just 25 days. The discovery smashes the record for shortest outer orbital period for this type of system, set by Lambda Tauri in 1956, which had a third star orbiting an inner pair

In August 2024, ESA’s JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer (JUICE) made history with a daring Moon-Earth flyby and double gravity assist maneuver. As the spacecraft zipped past our Moon and home planet, NASA’s Jovian Energetic Neutrals and Ions (JENI) instrument onboard JUICE captured the sharpest-ever image of Earth’s radiation belts — swaths of charged particles trapped

Mount Everest, also known as Chomolungma in Tibetan or Sagarmāthā in Nepali, is about 15 to 50 m taller than it would otherwise be because of uplift caused by a nearby eroding river gorge, and continues to grow because of it, according to new research. Han et al. found that erosion from a river network