The history of a major animal group, composed of millions of species of insects, arachnids, and nemotodes, has been elusive - until now. A UC Riverside-led team has now identified the oldest known ecdysozoan in the fossil record and the only one from the Precambrian period.

A newly discovered pterosaur fossil is shedding light on the evolutionary journey of these ancient flying reptiles. This complete specimen, named Skiphosoura bavarica, provides crucial insights into how pterosaurs transitioned from early, smaller forms to the later, gigantic species.

By analysing the unique features of Skiphosoura, paleontologists can now trace the step-by-step evolution of pterosaurs, including changes in head size, neck length, wing structure, and tail length. This groundbreaking discovery offers a clearer understanding of how these magnificent creatures soared through the prehistoric skies.

NJIT biologist Eric Fortune and a team of scientists called “Limelight Rainforest” have won the five-year XPRIZE Rainforest Competition, securing half of the competition's $10 million prize purse. The team's dramatic victory was announced Nov. 15 at the G20 Social Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the culmination of a global competition that began in 2019 when the nonprofit XPRIZE Foundation challenged innovators around the world to “develop technology to capture the true biological diversity of rainforests…and show the value of protecting the natural resources within them.”

The next time you see an interesting bug, take a photo on your smartphone, and post it online. You just might catch an invasive species new to your area. That's the call to action a group of entomologists are issuing to the public in a new article published this month in Environmental Entomology. Platforms like iNaturalist, Observation.org, and others allow users to post images of animals and plants with no prior knowledge of what they're seeing, and such "passive surveillance" is playing an increasingly common role in early detection of invasive species.

An international team of scientists, robotics engineers and naturalists has won first place in the five-year XPRIZE Rainforest competition. The winners were announced Friday, Nov. 15 at a summit held in Rio de Janeiro. More than $7 million was awarded to the top-ranked teams in a competition that spurred the development of new technology to aid global conservation efforts. 

SAN ANTONIO — November 18, 2024 —Southwest Research Institute is working to expand software normally used to model electrolytes and predict corrosion and turn it into a tool that can help determine whether ice-covered worlds have the right conditions for microbial life. The project is supported by NASA’s Habitable Worlds program, which seeks to use knowledge of the history of the Earth and the life upon it as a guide for determining the processes and conditions that create and maintain habitable environments.

For the first time, β- and γ-naphthocyclinones were successfully synthesized in a laboratory, report scientists from Science Tokyo. By combining originally developed tactics and innovative strategies, they overcame big challenges in producing these complex molecules, which had eluded synthesis efforts for decades. This breakthrough contributes to our understanding of naphthocyclinone chemistry and opens doors to the development of compounds with potential applications in medicine and biotechnology.