❌

Reading view

New Feathered Dinosaur from China Had Peacock-Like Tail

Changzhousaurus sinensis. Image credit: Connor Ashbridge / CC BY 4.0.

A new genus and species of four-winged pennaraptoran dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of northern China is adding another twist to the story of how birds evolved from their dinosaur ancestors.

The post New Feathered Dinosaur from China Had Peacock-Like Tail appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

  •  

Human-Dog Bond is Ancient, Universal and Strikingly the Same Everywhere: Study

Testing situation and hunters with their dogs -- examples from each of the four non-WEIRD societies: (a) pointing test in Mongolia, (b) unsolvable problem test in Vanuatu, (c) showing test in Mongolia, (d) Vanuatu, (e) Mongolia, (f) Madagascar, (g) Peru. Image credit: Bräuer et al., doi: 10.1038/s41598-026-57657-1.

New research spanning five continents and vastly different cultures -- from the steppes of Mongolia to the rainforests of the Pacific -- shows that hunting dogs and their owners cooperate, communicate and rely on each other in nearly identical ways, suggesting the relationship was forged in deep evolutionary time, perhaps 30,000 years ago.

The post Human-Dog Bond is Ancient, Universal and Strikingly the Same Everywhere: Study appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

  •  

Domestic Cats Age Like Humans, New Study Shows

Lauren Scott & Brittany Florkiewicz show that cat facial signals correspond to different social functions, which have likely been influenced by domestication. Image credit: Sci.News / Makieni777 / Rise-a-mui / Alexas_Fotos / Dorothe / Vaclav Zavada / Artem Makarov / Daga Roszkowska / Birgit / Pasi Mammela.

Domestic cats (Felis catus) develop the same patterns of brain shrinkage and neurological decline as aging humans, and scientists think that makes them an ideal window into dementia and aging.

The post Domestic Cats Age Like Humans, New Study Shows appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

  •  

Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Formed Up To 12 Billion Years Ago, New Observations Suggest

Hubble captured this image of 3I/ATLAS on July 21, 2025, when the comet was 446 million km (277 million miles) from Earth. Image credit: NASA / ESA / David Jewitt, UCLA / Joseph DePasquale, STScI.

The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS carries a chemical fingerprint unlike anything in our Solar System, and it may have formed 10 to 12 billion years ago, before our Sun even existed, according to two papers published in the journal Nature.

The post Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Formed Up To 12 Billion Years Ago, New Observations Suggest appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

  •  

Secret to Heliconius Butterflies’ Longevity May Be Hidden in Pollen

Heliconius hecale. Image credit: Robert Lawton / CC BY-SA 2.5.

Entomologists have compiled decades of data from butterfly houses, wild field studies, and lab experiments to build the most comprehensive picture yet of how long Heliconius butterflies live and how slowly they age.

The post Secret to Heliconius Butterflies’ Longevity May Be Hidden in Pollen appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

  •  

Asteroid Donaldjohanson is Wobbly, Peanut-Shaped Object with Watery Past, Scientists Say

The asteroid Donaldjohanson is composed of two heavily cratered lobes, connected by a smoother neck, with overall dimensions 8.8 km by 4.4 km by 3.1 km. Image credit: NASA / Goddard / SwRI / Dan Gallagher.

The main-belt asteroid Donaldjohanson, a heavily cratered fragment born from a catastrophic breakup 155 million years ago, appears to wobble through space while preserving clues to the migration of water-rich worlds in the early Solar System, according to a new analysis of images and data from NASA’s Lucy spacecraft.

The post Asteroid Donaldjohanson is Wobbly, Peanut-Shaped Object with Watery Past, Scientists Say appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

  •  

Webb Sees Jupiter-Size Exoplanet Being Roasted by Its Star

An artist’s impression of the hot-Jupiter exoplanet HD 80606b. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Joseph Olmsted, STScI.

HD 80606b has one of the most extreme orbits of any known exoplanet and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope just caught it getting flash-fried as it whipped past its star.

The post Webb Sees Jupiter-Size Exoplanet Being Roasted by Its Star appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

  •  

113-Million-Year-Old Pterosaur Fossil Reveals What Flying Reptiles Ate

Grice et al. integrate organic geochemical analyses with high-resolution micro-mineral imaging of a three-dimensionally preserved Cretaceous pterosaur wing phalanx from Brazil to reveal steroid biomarkers and multi-stage mineralization pathways underlying its preservation. Image credit: Grice et al., doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2026.116199.

A 113-million-year-old pterosaur fossil from northeastern Brazil has yielded rare evidence of soft tissues, organic molecules and chemical traces of a diet heavy in fish and cephalopods such as squid or nautilus relatives.

The post 113-Million-Year-Old Pterosaur Fossil Reveals What Flying Reptiles Ate appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

  •  

Earth’s First Land Animals May Never Have Been Amphibian-Like After All

New fossil evidence suggests that embolomeres did not undergo a metamorphosis the way that modern amphibians do when growing up, which challenges a long-standing scientific belief that amphibians, reptiles, and mammals evolved from animals that had a tadpole stage. Image credit: Berit Godring.

Paleontologists from the Field Museum of Natural History have described the fossilized remains of baby embolomeres, crocodile-like predators that prowled ancient rivers and swamps between 350 and 280 million years ago.

The post Earth’s First Land Animals May Never Have Been Amphibian-Like After All appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

  •  

125-Million-Year-Old Crocodile Relative Reveals Its True Colors

The holotype specimen of Montsecosuchus depereti. Image credit: Castillo-Visa et al., doi: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlag076.

Exceptionally preserved skin of Montsecosuchus depereti, an extinct crocodylomorph no larger than a house cat that prowled the tropical wetlands of Early Cretaceous Spain, has allowed paleontologists to reconstruct details of its scales, sensory organs and even possible banded markings along its tail.

The post 125-Million-Year-Old Crocodile Relative Reveals Its True Colors appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

  •  

CERN Physicists Discover Third and Final Member of Doubly Charmed Baryon Family

An artist’s impression of the doubly charmed Ωcc⁺ baryon. Image credit: Daniel Dominguez / CERN.

Physicists with LHCb Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have detected the elusive Ωcc⁺ baryon, a particle containing two charm quarks and one strange quark, completing a long-sought family of doubly charmed baryons first predicted over half a century ago.

The post CERN Physicists Discover Third and Final Member of Doubly Charmed Baryon Family appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

  •  

Scientists Use Math to Solve Viral Word Game ‘Wordle’ with 99% Success Rate

Wordle, a popular word-guessing game, challenges players to identify a five-letter secret word through iterative guesses and feedback on letter placement. The players must figure out the secret word within six guesses. After each guess, the letters will be color-coded based on different criteria. Optimizing the choice of guesses is critical for maximizing success within the limited attempts allowed. Image credit: Aladaileh et al., doi: 10.63562/2577-8439.1146.

Researchers at Binghamton University have applied a 70-year-old theory of information to the viral word game Wordle, revealing how a carefully chosen first guess can dramatically improve a player’s chances of solving the puzzle.

The post Scientists Use Math to Solve Viral Word Game ‘Wordle’ with 99% Success Rate appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

  •  

Consciousness is Not Exclusive to Earth’s Biology, Philosophers Argue

Levin et al suggest that we could have more in common with our extraterrestrial neighbors than initially thought. Image credit: Fernando Ribas.

University of California, Riverside’s Professor Eric Schwitzgebel and University of Lisbon postdoctoral researcher Jeremy Pober argue that consciousness is substrate flexible, meaning it can arise not just in the biological tissue we find on Earth, but potentially in radically different physical materials found elsewhere in the cosmos.

The post Consciousness is Not Exclusive to Earth’s Biology, Philosophers Argue appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

  •  

Astronomers Find Four Separate Generations of Stars in ‘Globular Cluster’ Terzan 5

This Webb/NIRCam image shows the star cluster Terzan 5. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Webb.

New Webb and Hubble data not only confirm the existence of two distinct populations of stars in the ancient stellar system Terzan 5, once classified as a globular cluster, but also provides evidence for two more recent rounds of star formation.

The post Astronomers Find Four Separate Generations of Stars in ‘Globular Cluster’ Terzan 5 appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

  •  

Astronomers Trace Elusive High-Energy Neutrino to Star-Forming Galaxy in Early Universe

The origin of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos remains unresolved, and secure electromagnetic counterparts to individual events are rare despite rapid follow-up. Dusty star-forming galaxies at cosmic noon (redshift of z ≈ 1-4) are natural cosmic-ray calorimeters, yet observational links between these galaxies and neutrinos have remained unknown. Urata et al. report a compact-core, dusty star-forming galaxy within an IceCube localization, JCMT0402-0424, a quadruply lensed galaxy at z = 2.988 located inside the 90% containment region of the IceCube event IC 210922A. Image credit: International Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / T.A. Rector, University of Alaska Anchorage & NSF’s NOIRLab / D. de Martin & M. Zamani, NSF’s NOIRLab / Yuji Urata. MITOS Science Co., LTD.

JCMT0402-0424, a dusty starburst galaxy around 11 billion light-years away, is the strongest candidate yet for the source of the high-energy neutrino event IC 210922A, according to a team of astronomer led by Yuji Urata of MITOS Science Co.

The post Astronomers Trace Elusive High-Energy Neutrino to Star-Forming Galaxy in Early Universe appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

  •  

Radar Observations Reveal New Clues about Europa’s Hidden Interior

This artist’s impression shows radar waves from NASA’s Goldstone Solar System Radar pinging Europa; the radar waves penetrate Europa’s icy surface before bouncing back to be collected by NSF’s Green Bank Telescope on Earth. Image credit: NSF / AUI / NSF’s NRAO / P.Vosteen.

Using NASA’s Goldstone Solar System Radar and NSF’s Green Bank Telescope, astronomers from the University of California, Los Angeles, confirmed that the icy surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa scatters radio energy in an unusually strong and complex way not seen on rocky worlds.

The post Radar Observations Reveal New Clues about Europa’s Hidden Interior appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

  •  
  •  

New Duck-Billed Dinosaur Unearthed in Romania

Kryptohadros kallaiae. Image credit: Tibor Pecsics.

An international team of paleontologists from Romania, Hungary and Italy has identified a new genus and species of herbivorous, duck-billed dinosaur from an incomplete skeleton unearthed in the Hațeg Basin, a bowl-shaped depression in the Carpathians of present-day Romania.

The post New Duck-Billed Dinosaur Unearthed in Romania appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

  •  

New Species of Walking Shark Discovered off Papua New Guinea

Hemiscyllium dudgeonae, male paratype, Nubwageta, Milne Bay province, Papua New Guinea. Image credit: M.V. Erdmann.

Marine biologists have identified a new species of the shark genus Hemiscyllium in the waters of eastern Papua New Guinea, expanding a remarkable group of reef-dwelling sharks known for using their four fins to ‘walk’ across the seafloor.

The post New Species of Walking Shark Discovered off Papua New Guinea appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

  •  
❌