During the Cambrian explosion, squid-shaped nectocaridids roamed the seas. Now, researchers in Science Advances have finally deduced where this long-extinct group lurks on the phylogenetic tree of life. scim.ag/4eZeN9b

About 3200 insect species around the world have evolved a structure on their back called a helmet. But the appendage isn’t just for show: It allows for the detection of electric fields—perhaps helping them distinguish friend from foe. scim.ag/3UwOyxs News from Science

OMG!

A fascinating study! Over 100 potato species radiated out from a single homoploid hybrid speciation event around 8-9 My ago. The parent taxa were ancestors of the "Etuberosum" roup of Solanum (with 3 spp. today), and of the tomatoes (16 species today). theguardian.com/science/2025/j…

A study in #BMCEcolEvol reveals Microraptor wasn’t just gliding—it was built for speed. Using 14 fossils, Maxime Grosmougin & Pittman Palaeo Lab show this “four-winged” dinosaur had flight abilities comparable to modern falcons and shorebirds. #FossilFriday go.sn.pub/6wxiu0

Bonobos are not peaceful chimpanzees that is an overstated animal meme. It is much more complex. Male bonobos are more aggressive than male chimps on average and female bonobos as well. They are just likely to escalate it to lethality.

Dude

Why did some #megafauna survive? 🦣🦘🦌 Our new study shows #extinction risk was higher for larger, flat-footed, island species & lower for those closely related to tropical African/Asian fauna, likely filtered by earlier #hominid impacts👣🍖 doi.org/10.1111/geb.70… #palaeolithic

1/16 🚨🚨 New paper!! I am thrilled to share our study that uses fossils, genomes, and a bit of geology to investigate how many times cavefishes evolved, and how they can help us figure out the ages of caves themselves! Link: doi.org/10.1093/molbev… #science #biology

This is my Roman empire. We could have had it all

The book Doctors by Nature "invites deeper reflection on what it means to medicate, how landscapes shape access to medicine, and whether we humans are as discerning in our self-medicating choices as our nonhuman counterparts." Read the #ScienceBooks Review on #BookLoversDay:

it is metaphysically impossible to go to the mountains and not gain wisdom. one of the wisdoms i acquired last night is that i am capable of underestimating how eerie it can be to walk through the woods in the dark.

Do ant colonies work like liquid brains? Check this great paper in pnas, led by CEAB-CSIC Pol Fernandez-Lopez and Frederic Bartumeus, explaining foraging behaviour by modelling ants as mobile neural agents Jordi pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…

I’m eating lab grown meat the second it’s mass market ready. It’s biologically identical to animal meat and will reduce suffering more than any technology in the history of our planet as long as enough people switch over from factory farmed meats.

Paleontologists have identified the myriad of animals that thrived in southern Pangea just before the end-Permian mass extinction, about 252 million years ago. sci.news/paleontology/t… #fossils #paleontology

Evolution is more like a tinkerer than an engineer. New things happen not by perfect engineering but by working with what's already available and repurposing existing objects through recombinations and modifications. This lesson holds for any innovation, including new ideas..

I wonder what books the Lemhi Shoshone chief Tendoy had on his book shelves

This brain implant can decode a person's internal chatter go.nature.com/41Bz0fQ

New paper out on the #Chinese #enantiornithine #Shangyang sp. A study of the melanosomes show that it likely has a deep red or blue iridescent crest; along with new melanosomes for previously unrecognized patterns of colour unseen in extant birds elifesciences.org/articles/103628