Dating dinosaur eggs is difficult: available methods are limited and prone to errors because measurement proxies – such as volcanic rocks or crystals – may have changed between egg laying and dating attempts. Now, in a first for paleontology, researchers used a new method to date dinosaur eggs by firing lasers at eggshell fragments. This way, eggs in central China have been dated to the late Cretaceous, making them about 85 million years old. The findings could tell researchers about dinosaur populations and the climate millions of years ago.

A new fossil from Devon reveals what the oldest members of the lizard group looked like, and there are some surprises, according to a research team from the University of Bristol.  The study is published today [10 September] in Nature.

Dr. Tanja Stratmann has been awarded the prestigious Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). Starting in 2026, Dr. Stratmann will spend five years researching the nitrogen cycle of living and fossil sponges at MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen.

LIFE SCIENCES

Daniele Canzio, PhD, University of California, San Francisco (Neuroscience)

Kaiyu Guan, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Agriculture & Animal Sciences)

Philip J. Kranzusch, PhD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; Harvard Medical School (Microbiology)

Elizabeth Nance, PhD, University of Washington (Biomedical Engineering & Biotechnology)

Tomasz Nowakowski, PhD, University of California, San Francisco (Neuroscience)

Samuel H. Sternberg, PhD, Columbia University/Howard Hughes Medical Institute (Molecular & Cellular Biology)

CHEMICAL SCIENCES

Song Lin, PhD, Cornell University (Organic Chemistry)

Joseph Cotruvo, Jr., PhD, The Pennsylvania State University (Biochemistry & Structural Biology)

Frank Leibfarth, PhD, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Polymer Chemistry)

Ryan Lively, PhD, Georgia Institute of Technology (Chemical Engineering)

Leslie M. Schoop, PhD, Princeton University (Inorganic & Solid-State Chemistry)

Yogesh Surendranath, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Inorganic & Solid-State Chemistry)

PHYSICAL SCIENCES & ENGINEERING

Charlie Conroy, PhD, Harvard University (Astrophysics & Cosmology)

Nathaniel Craig, PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara (Theoretical Physics)

Matthew McDowell, PhD, Georgia Institute of Technology (Materials Science & Nanotechnology)

Prateek Mittal, PhD, Princeton University (Computer Science)

Elaina J. Sutley, PhD, University of Kansas (Civil Engineering)

Zhongwen Zhan, PhD, California Institute of Technology (Physical Earth Sciences)