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Once, there were 29. Now at least one is gone, maybe three. Those that remain are almost half the size they used to be. Mount Rainier is losing its glaciers. That is all the more striking as it is the most glacier-covered mountain in the contiguous United States. The changes reflect a stark global reality:…
Paleontologists in Egypt found the fossil of one of the smallest extinct whales. The announcement comes just a week after scientists said they had found a species of ancient whale that might be the heaviest animal ever found. The “tiny” fossil, dug up in Wadi el-Hitan, or Whale Valley, belongs to a whale that lived…
Thousands of invasive species introduced to new ecosystems around the world are causing more than $423 billion in estimated losses to the global economy every year by harming nature, damaging food systems and threatening human health, a wide-ranging scientific report published on Monday has found. The costs have at least quadrupled every decade since 1970,…
A sharp increase in the number of an invasive species of hornets in Britain is raising concerns that they could threaten native bee populations. There have been 22 sightings of the so-called Asian hornet, or Vespa velutina, this year, more than in the past six years combined, according to British officials. The number of sightings,…
Beneath the turquoise waters of Lake Ohrid, the “Pearl of the Balkans,” scientists have uncovered what may be one of Europe’s earliest sedentary communities, and are trying to solve the mystery of why it sheltered behind a fortress of defensive spikes. A stretch of the Albanian shore of the lake once hosted a settlement of stilt…
No place on the planet has escaped the influence of Homo sapiens, from the rainforests cleared for farms to microplastic-laced deep oceans to climate-altered jet streams. Last November, the world population reached eight billion. But as omnipresent as humans may be today, a team of scientists now claims that our species came very close to…
Ferid Murad, a pharmacologist whose research into the effects of nitric oxide on the heart and blood vessels enabled widespread advancements in the treatment of cardiovascular disease, hypertension and erectile dysfunction, and which earned him a share in a Nobel Prize in 1998, died on Monday at his home in Menlo Park, Calif. He was…
Located along Mexico’s southwest coast in the state of Guerrero, the village of Barra de Potosí is a bit off the beaten path. You won’t find any mega resorts full of tourists here, but the area is a popular vacation destination for humpback whales, which travel thousands of miles just to breed in this patch…
Art cannot save us. This is the problem with art that seeks to address climate change. Weeks ago, I could feel in my lungs and smell the smoke from fires engulfing Canadian forests thousands of miles away, while walking between galleries on the streets of Lower Manhattan. During this summer that promises to be the…
Millions of years ago, a simian ancestor of humanity decided to climb a tree. It may have been looking for a meal, escaping a predator or seeking a shady place to rest. Later, like anyone who has ascended high into a forest’s canopy, our relative discovered that getting down in one piece is less simple…
