Fossil evidence of early microbial life has been found in ancient hot spring deposits in the Dresser Formation in the Pilbara Craton, Western Australia, that date back approximately 3.48 billion years. A paper reporting this discovery is published in the journal Nature Communications. Spherical bubbles preserved in 3.48 billion-year-old hot …

A team of paleontologists from Canada, China, the United States and Slovak Republic has identified a partial clutch of large dinosaur eggs with a closely associated baby dinosaur skeleton as an embryo and eggs of a new, large caenagnathid oviraptorosaur, Beibeilong sinensis. A nesting cassowary-like dinosaur named Beibeilong sinensis in …

Two new tarsier species have been discovered in the forests of the northern peninsula of Sulawesi, Indonesia. The Gursky’s spectral tarsier (Tarsius spectrumgurskyae) from Tangkoko Nature Reserve, Sulawesi, Indonesia. Image credit: Alfrets Masala / Shekelle et al / Primate Conservation. Tarsiers are small, nocturnal, predaceous primates of the 45-million-year-old family …

Male great tits (Parus major) choose neighbors with similar personalities to their own, according to new research from the University of Oxford, UK. Johnson et al assessed whether a great tit breeding population is structured by personality. Image credit: Shirley Clarke / Fordingbridge Camera Club / CC BY-SA 3.0. Lead …

There are three different subspecies of the snow leopard (Panthera uncia), the world’s most elusive large big cat, according to a new study published in the Journal of Heredity. According to Janecka et al, the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) is actually three different subspecies. Image credit: Dingopup / The Cat …

A new species of the butterfly genus Melitaea has been discovered in northern Israel, according to a paper published in the journal Comparative Cytogenetics. The Acentria’s fritillary (Melitaea acentria), female, Mt. Hermon (1,800 m), Israel, May 7, 2016. Image credit: V. Lukhtanov, doi: 10.3897/CompCytogen.v11i2.12370. Butterflies of the genus Melitaea are …

A team of researchers from the Department of Applied Physics at Aalto University in Finland has invented a quantum-circuit refrigerator, which can reduce errors in quantum computing. Photo of the centimeter-sized silicon chip, which has two parallel superconducting oscillators and the quantum-circuit refrigerators connected to them. Image credit: Kuan Yen …

An international team of scientists has identified a long-sought protein that causes liver fibrosis (scarring), paving the way for new treatments. The research was published in the journal Nature Genetics. Stages of liver disease. Image credit: National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. The team, led by Professor …

According to a new study published today in the journal Cell, the enterococci — gram-positive aerobic bacteria and a leading cause of hospital-acquired infections — arose from an ancestor that dates back 450 million years (Ordovician period), about the time when animals were first crawling onto land. This digitally-colorized scanning …

A new movie sequence of images from Cassini shows the view as the orbiter swooped over Saturn during the first of its ‘Grand Finale’ dives between the gas giant and its rings on April 26, 2017. As Cassini made its first-ever dive through the gap between Saturn and its rings …