New laboratory experiments show that a bacterium that lives on grape plants can break down guaiacol—an unpleasant-tasting substance which ruins wines made from grapes exposed to wildfire smoke. Claudia Castro of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on October 1, 2025.

New research has uncovered a species of hook-toothed lizard that lived about 167 million years ago and has a confusing set of features seen in snakes and geckos—two very distant relatives. 

Climate change poses a major threat to the organisms such as plankton that form the base of the marine food web. A team of scientists from MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen have used the fossil record to show that only a relatively minor amount of climatic change is needed to affect plankton communities. They have published their findings in Communications Earth & Environment.

Glacial melting in Switzerland was once again enormous in 2025. A winter with low snow depth combined with heat waves in June and August led to a loss of three per cent of the glacier volume. This is the fourth largest level of shrinkage since measurements began. Consequently, the ice mass reduced by one quarter in the last ten years. This was reported by GLAMOS, the glacier monitoring network in Switzerland, and the Swiss Commission for Cryosphere observation (SCC) of the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT).

A newly described fossil reveals that leeches are at least 200 million years older than scientists previously thought, and that their earliest ancestors may have feasted not on blood, but on smaller marine creatures. 

Scientists have unveiled a pioneering method that could help farmers reclaim lands blighted by toxic metals and boost the safety of crops grown in contaminated soils. The study, led by a research team in China, reveals that phosphorus-modified biochar, a carbon-rich material derived from apple tree branches, can dramatically reduce the threat posed by heavy metals in agricultural soils near mining areas.