Invading mantid lures natives to their deaths

Native male New Zealand praying mantises are lured to their death by the irresistible scent of invading females.  The native males are more attracted to the invading South African species than they are to females of their own kind.

Fossilised sap points to low oxygen past

Amber may not preserve ancient DNA, but a new study has shown it can provide insights into the composition of the atmosphere.  The results suggest dinosaurs inhaled air with far less oxygen than we breathe today and may cause a rethink into how they became so big.

“Freakish” asteroid

Astronomers have found a “weird and freakish object” resembling a spinning lawn sprinkler in the asteroid belt.  Normal asteroids appear simply as tiny points of light. This bizarre one has six comet-like tails of dust radiating from it like spokes on a wheel.

Dogs descended from European wolves

A new comparison of DNA from modern canines and ancient fossils suggests that today's pets are descended from now-extinct populations of wolves in Europe.

T. rex's oldest known cousin: Lythronax argestes

A new species of tyrannosaur has been unearthed in Utah, with skull bones showing an 80 million-year-old beast that is the oldest known cousin of the legendary T. rex. The meat-eating Lythronax argestes, which means "king of gore," had wide-set eyes that helped it track prey and a load of teeth packed into a more slender snout than T. rex.

Penguin split more recent than thought

Today's penguin species, from the massive emperor penguin through to the tiny blue penguin, all originated from an ancestor that lived just 20 million years ago.

Kraken theory resurfaces with new 'evidence'

A recent fossil find is renewing interest in the search for the ancient giant cephalopod known as the kraken.

Giant toothed platypus roamed Australia

A giant platypus with powerful teeth roamed the rivers of northern Australia between 5 and 15 million years ago.  Dubbed 'Platypus Godzilla', the creature was twice the size of a modern platypus and had teeth to chew crayfish, frogs and small turtles.  Palaeontologists say the fossil is forcing a re-think about the evolution of the species, and warn it could indicate the smaller modern platypus is on track to extinction.

Bees avoid hard choices to cut their losses

When the bees were given the choice of opting out, they did so more often when the task got harder, and their performance at these more difficult tasks improved.  Similar experiments have found that dogs, dolphins and rats all do this.

Com­mon an­ces­tor of mod­ern hu­ma­ns and Ne­an­der­thals still unknown

None of the creatures usually proposed as a common ancestor is a good match. These human forms include fossils dubbed Homo heidelbergensis, Homo erectus and Homo antecessor.  The lines that led to Neanderthals and modern humans branched apart nearly a million years ago, much earlier than studies based on molecular evidence have suggested.

Meerkat females rewarded for killing rivals’ pups

Meerkat females at the top of their group’s pecking order will kill rivals’ babies and go on to receive wet nurse services from the victimized mothers. The same service is sometimes extracted from recently “exiled” meerkats who have returned, suggesting it’s a sort of “rent” paid to stay in the community.

Marmoset monkeys chat politely

Humans aren’t the only species that knows how to carry on polite conversation. Marmoset monkeys, too, will engage one another for up to 30 minutes at a time in vocal turn-taking.

Elephants understand human pointing

Elephants spontaneously get the gist of human pointing and can use it as a cue for finding food. That’s all the more impressive given that many great apes don’t understand human caretakers’ pointing gestures.

Findings could simplify human lineage

Several ancestral forms of humans were really one species, not separate ones as previously thought, according to new research. These earliest members of the Homo genus included the species Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, and Homo erectus. The findings are based on an analysis of a complete skull of a hominid, or human-like creature, from Dmanisi, Georgia, dated to about 1.8 million years ago.

“Free-floating planet” photographed for first time

Astronomers say they’ve photographed a free-floating planet, a type of body theorised for years to exist but never imaged directly. But other new findings are also blurring the boundaries between such planets, and stars.

Kep­ler-78b

Kepler-78b is a planet that shouldn’t exist: this scorching lava world, scientists say, circles its star every 8½ hours at a distance of less than a million miles — one of the tightest known orbits. According to current theories of planet formation, it could­n’t have formed so close to its star, nor could it have moved there.

Bees use 'biological autopilot' to land

Bees get a perfect touchdown by detecting how fast their landing site 'zooms in' as they approach, new research has found.