Red blood cells, collagen fibres found in poorly preserved, 75-million-year-old dinosaur bones

Scientists say they have discovered what appear to be red blood cells and collagen fibres in dinosaur bones, a find that may boost prospects of prising organic remains from a much wider range of fossils.

Chimps understand the concept of cooking

Chimpanzees and humans share some of the basic brain skills needed for cooking, a finding that may explain a turning point in the story of humankind.  Experiments at a chimp sanctuary suggest a common ancestor imparted these cognitive abilities to apes and humans alike.

(What the experiments actually demonstrate is the chimps' ability to reason how to satisfy desire in a novel situation.)

Bird cries wolf to fool a predator

The little brown thornbill (Acanthiza pusilla) protects its young by using vocal mimicry to trick its predator into thinking that they themselves are under attack.  It does this by mimicking a chorus of other species' alarm calls that are normally used to warn of an approaching hawk.

First 'virgin birth' fish found in the wild

An endangered species of fish can produce offspring without mating.  The discovery is the first-known example of the asexual reproductive process known as parthenogenesis to have been uncovered in the wild.

The oldest evidence of murder?

Lethal wounds on a Neanderthal skull may point to a bloody encounter some 430,000 years ago.

Stone tools pre-date the genus Homo

Newly discovered stone tools pre-date the emergence of Homo. Scientists dated the artefacts, found in Kenya, to 3.3 million years ago.

CERN discovery backs physics' Standard Model

Researchers at the world's biggest particle collider have observed an extremely rare event — the decay of the neutral B meson into a pair of muons, the heavy cousins of electrons.  The results provide further support for the 'Standard Model', the conceptual framework for the particles and forces that constitute the cosmos.

Deep-sea fish found to be warm-blooded

While it was previously known that the opah (Lampris guttatus) could heat its eyes and brain, it can also heat its entire body. This makes the opah the only known fish species to be whole-body endothermic, or warm-blooded.

Europa's red bands may be salt seeping through its icy crust

Reddish bands that criss-cross the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa may be caused by salt seeping from an underground sea to the surface, then darkening as it is exposed to radiation.

Archaeornithura meemannae

Modern birds may have evolved six million years earlier than thought, say palaeontologists after analysing the fossil remains of a previously unknown prehistoric relative.  The extinct species, of which two fossils were discovered in China's northeastern Hebei province about two years ago, is the oldest known relative of all birds alive today.  The new bird, named Archaeornithura meemannae, shared many features with its modern cousins, apart from tiny, sharp claws on its wings.  It stood about 15 centimetres tall on two legs that had no feathers — suggesting it may have been a wader from a lake shore environment.

Chilesaurus diegosuarezi

Tyrannosaurus rex had a vegetarian cousin with a tiny head, long neck and stubby fingers.  Chilesaurus diegosuarezi had a bird-like beak with leaf-shaped teeth, evidence that it feasted on plants, but with hind leg features similar to theropod dinosaurs, the group into which it was slotted with notorious killers like Tyrannosaurus rex,Velociraptor and the horned Carnotaurus.

Briny water under Antarctica's surface could host life

An airborne survey of a presumably dry Antarctic valley has revealed a stunning and unexpected interconnected subsurface briny aquifer deep beneath the frozen tundra.  The finding not only has implications for understanding extreme habitats for life on Earth, but the potential for life elsewhere in the solar system, particularly Mars.

Lapita colonised Tonga within two generations

It only took a generation or two for the first settlers of Polynesia to spread from their original colonisation site in Tonga.  The rapid spread could have been driven by resource depletion and sibling rivalry.

Female chimps more likely to make and use spears

Female adult chimps made and used spears more often than adult males. The males relied more on their size and strength for hunting. Female chimps are almost always hindered by infants that ride on their backs or bellies, so spear hunting is far more effective for them than attempting to chase down prey.

Dark matter may not be completely dark

Scientists have found tantalising evidence suggesting dark matter may be more dynamic than thought.  For the first time dark matter may have been observed interacting with other dark matter in a way other than through the force of gravity.

Brontosaurus reinstated as a dinosaur genus

More than 100 years after it was banished from existence, Brontosaurus can be reinstated as a dinosaur genus, according to a detailed study of the iconic dinosaur's family tree.  Palaeontologists from the UK and Portugal conducted a comprehensive anatomical survey of 81 specimens of the Diplodocidae superfamily of large long-necked dinosaurs, which includes Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, and once again, Brontosaurus.

'Little Foot' fossil sheds light on human forerunners

A sophisticated new dating technique has shown that Little Foot — an important early hominid fossil unearthed in the 1990s in South Africa — is roughly 3.7 million years old.  Previous estimates had been as broad as from 1.5 to four million years.  Little Foot — a member of the species Australopithecus prometheus — lived at roughly the same time as Australopithecus afarensis, the species whose most famous fossil, known as Lucy, comes from Ethiopia. Both species blended ape-like and human-like traits but with different features.

How Jupiter survived

A new model could explain how giant gas planets like Jupiter can exist.  Planets such as Jupiter are thought to be very common in the Universe. But computational models of planetary system evolution to date have struggled to explain how these gas giants survive beyond the embryonic stage.  According to these models, gas giants should migrate inwards and eventually fall into their host star within about 100,000 years.  Now, new computer simulations indicate that planetary embryos heat their surrounding environments, countering the forces dragging them into their stars.

Dark matter is non-interactive

A new study of colliding galaxy clusters has found that dark matter doesn't even interact with itself. The findings mean some existing dark matter models — which give the mysterious substance properties similar to normal matter — will need to be revised.

Cosmic dust survived in denser universe

Scientists finally have an explanation as to how cosmic dust - which provides the building blocks for stars - survived the supernova explosions of stars in the early universe.  These primordial stars blew up in dense environments, which prevented their dust from being destroyed, according to a new study.

Jupiter's migration key to our unique solar system

Earth and the other terrestrial planets are late arrivals, forming only after the original planets of the inner solar system were destroyed, according to a new model explaining our solar system's unique architecture.

People recognise written words like they do faces

Experienced readers recognise whole words in much the same way we recognise a face, according to scientists who have observed the changes in brain scans that occur as a new word is added to our 'visual dictionary'.

Mystery of Darwin's strange South American mammals solved

Charles Darwin thought they were the strangest animals yet discovered. One creature looked like a cross between a hippo, rhino and rodent; the other resembled a humpless camel with an elephant's trunk.  Ever since Darwin first collected the fossils about 180 years ago, scientists had been baffled about where these odd South American beasts, that went extinct just 10,000 years ago, fit on the mammal family tree.  The mystery has now been solved.  Researchers undertook a sophisticated biochemical analysis of bone collagen extracted from fossils of the two mammals, Toxodon and Macrauchenia, and demonstrated that they were related to the group that includes horses, tapirs and rhinos.

Rainbow lorikeets eating meat

Rainbow lorikeets who frequent a backyard feeding station on a property north of Brisbane are eating meat.  Lorikeets usually eat nectar and pollen which they obtain from native plants and shrubs.

The Moon's past pyroclastic volcanism

The Moon's geologic history is far more complex than previously thought, according to preliminary results from China's Chang'E-3 spacecraft and its 'Jade Rabbit' lunar rover.  The findings indicate a world that experienced multiple lava flows, interspersed with explosive pyroclastic volcanism.

Spiders customise their webs to the conditions

Spiders can customise their webs to make sure they get the diet they need.  In response to their diet, they optimise the size, strength and stickiness of their webs for catching whatever prey is around.

Chameleon's colour magic revealed

The mechanism behind chameleons changing colour to dazzle mates, scare rivals and confuse predators has been shown to involve not pigments but nanocrystals in the skin that are tuned to alter the reflection of light.

Speeding star accelerated by exploding companion

One of the fastest moving stars in the Milky Way galaxy was accelerated to hypervelocity speeds by an exploding companion star.  The star called US 708 HVS 2 is travelling at over 1200 kilometres per second, so fast that it will escape the Milky Way Galaxy in 25 million years.

Milky Way may be 50 per cent bigger than thought

A ring-like filament of stars wrapping around the Milky Way may actually belong to the galaxy itself, rippling above and below the relatively flat galactic plane. If so, that would expand the size of the known galaxy by 50 per cent and raise intriguing questions about what caused the waves of stars.

Herders from the Great Steppe spread Indo-European languages

Nomadic pastoralists from the Great Steppe helped spread Indo-European languages, an analysis of ancient DNA confirms.  The findings give weight to one of two competing hypotheses about where this language group came from.

Ancient galaxy sheds light on dust in early Universe

One of the oldest galaxies ever observed has revealed that dust played a vital role in the infancy of the Universe.  Grains of dust made from carbon, silicon, magnesium, iron and oxygen are formed in the nuclear combustion of a star.  They are spewed into space when the star dies and explodes. Over aeons, clouds of dust and gas coalesce to form new star systems.  The theory is that in the fledgling Universe, gas must have formed the early galaxies as there was no dust to do the job.  But new research suggests dust played its creative part at a much earlier point than thought.

Fossil sheds light on hippos' relation to whales

An ancient relative of the hippopotamus likely swam from Asia to Africa some 35 million years ago, long before the arrival of the lion, rhino, zebra and giraffe.  Analysis of the previously unknown, long-extinct animal also confirms that cetaceans are the hippo's closest living cousins.

Gold rises in bubbles to Earth's surface

Valuable metals like gold, copper and platinum, reach the Earth's surface from deep underground by floating up on vapour bubbles.  The findings may also provide support for one hypothesis explaining the greatest mass extinction event in Earth's history.  Known as the great dying, the Permian-Triassic extinction event 252 million years ago killed off 70 per cent of terrestrial and 96 per cent of all marine life on Earth. Its cause remains a mystery.

Fossils push back snake origins by 65 million years

Palæontologists have described the four oldest-known fossils of snakes, the most ancient of which was a roughly 25-centimetre reptile called Eophis underwoodi that lived about 167 million years ago.  The remarkable fossils from Britain, Portugal and the United States rewrite the history of snake evolution, pushing back snake origins by tens of millions of years.

Astronomers find oldest-known solar system: Kepler-444

An ancient Sun-like star surrounded by orbiting planets dating back to the dawn of our galaxy has been discovered.  The discovery indicates that planets have been forming almost from the time the Universe began.  The star, known as Kepler-444, is 11.2 billion years old, and began forming at a time when the Universe was less than a fifth of its current age.

Big-toothed fossil may be new primitive human

The first known prehistoric human from Taiwan has been identified and may represent an entirely new species that lived as recently as 10,000 years ago.  The newly discovered big-toothed human, 'Penghu 1', strengthens the growing body of evidence that Homo sapiens was not the only species from our genus living in Europe and Asia between 200,000 and 10,000 years ago.  Anthropologists have learned that Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo floresiensis lived in Europe and Asia within that time frame.

Pitcher plant's tricky trap pulls in the ants

The pitcher plant has developed a clever way to help it dine on batches of ants at a time rather than individual ants.  The carnivorous plant adjusts the slipperiness of its pitfall traps according to changes in the weather to entice more visitors to their sticky downfall, a new study has found.

How the Earth got its nitrogen

Nitrogen may have arrived on Earth in ancient meteorites after the planet had already formed, according to a new study. Scientists have long puzzled over the origin of Earth's nitrogen because it has a different isotopic composition to nitrogen produced by the Sun, and is also different to the nitrogen found in comets.

Chimps 'talk' about favourite fruits, best trees

Researchers eavesdropping on wild chimpanzees have determined that the primates communicate about at least (!) two things: their favourite fruits and the trees where these fruits can be found.  Of particular interest to the chimps is the size of the trees bearing these fruits - the chimps yell out that information, according to a new study.  The study is the first to find that information about tree size and available fruit amounts are included in chimp calls, in addition to assessments about food quality.

Probe of comet’s water yields surprises

Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko is yielding surprising secrets about its water.  New data from the Rosetta spacecraft suggest most of Earth’s water came from asteroids, not comets, and that comets closer to our part of the Solar System have more diverse origins than previously suspected.

Axial alignments of quasars detected

New observations indicate that over distances of billions of light-years, certain types of super-bright galaxies tend to spin along the same axis.

Bird diversification after dinosaur extinction

A four-year project has decoded and compared the entire genetic fingerprint of 48 bird species to represent all these lineages — including the woodpecker, owl, penguin, hummingbird and flamingo.  Researchers also compared these genomes with those of three other reptile species and humans.  They found that birdsong evolved separately at least twice. Parrots and songbirds gained the ability to learn and mimic vocal activity independently of hummingbirds, despite sharing many of the same genes.  The findings are important because some of the brain processes that are involved in bird singing are also associated with human speech.

Methane gas spikes renew speculation of life on Mars

Methane in the Martian atmosphere and organic chemicals in the red planet's soil are the latest tantalising findings of NASA's Mars Curiosity rover as it hunts for clues about the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

Mars rock said to show traces of biological activity

A study published this month argues that a meteorite identified as coming from Mars contains traces of carbon with a likely biological origin, like coal, which comes from remains of long-ago plants.

MY Ca­mel­o­par­dalis: Two giant stars starting to merge

Scientists are reporting the discovery of a pair of huge stars that are circling each other and are starting to merge.  Theoretical models predict that the biggest stars form by merging with other smaller stars. These stars initially make up “binary” or “multiple” systems, in which two or more stars move around each other about a common central point.

The first evidence of diet allowing an animal to be chemically camouflaged

The coral-feeding fish Oxymonacanthus longirostris avoids predators not only by looking like the coral it depends on for food and shelter, but by smelling like it too.

Hot young stars limit galaxy growth

Scientists have captured the first evidence of a new stellar feedback mechanism controlling the amount of star stuff a galaxy can contain.

Human and mice genes: similar but different

Humans and mice have the same number of genes but humans have more instructions for controlling them.

Moon's magnetic core still a mystery

Billions of years ago the Moon had a magnetic field much stronger than the Earth does now, according to a new review of scientific data.  Today, the Moon has no global magnetic field.

The secret world of fungi revealed

A light has been shone on the world of fungi through a global study that reveals the staggering and previously unknown diversity of species.  The work shows that fungi diversity is not linked to plant diversity as previously thought. Instead distance from the equator is the key determinant, along with annual rainfall and soil characteristics such as pH and calcium concentration.  The study also reveals the diversity of fungal species does not decline with latitude as sharply as plant species diversity does.

Carnivorous plant fossil trapped in amber

Rare fossils of a carnivorous plant have been found preserved in a piece of Baltic amber.  The find has shed light on the origins of a plant that traps its food using leaves that act like fly paper.  The rare fossils date back to between 35 and 47 million years ago, during the Eocene.

Making fuel out of thin air

In a discovery that experts say could revolutionise fuel cell technology, scientists have found that graphene, the world's thinnest, strongest and most impermeable material, can allow protons to pass through it.  The new discovery raises the possibility that graphene membranes could one day be used to "sieve" hydrogen gas directly from the atmosphere to generate electricity.