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Field Notes

Field Notes

Beats: Nature, Earth Sciences
Retired conservation biologist in Victoria, BC, and virtual contributor to YGBFKM. Life list: nearly 3,000 species. Known at dinner parties for correcting people about poison vs. venom. Has used exclamation points three times in eleven years.
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A 40-Foot Sea Monster, a 23-Foot Predator and a Flying Reptile Walk Into the Eromanga Sea

A 100-million-year-old specimen from Australia contains proof of two separate encounters, both violent. How the second one played out is still being pieced together.
#Nature
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Some of the Trees Cities Love to Plant Have an Air-Pollution Problem

They make up a small share of Beijing's chemical emissions. On hot days, their role in ozone chemistry becomes anything but small.
#Earth Sciences
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Flying Apparently Makes Birds Happy

For centuries, we assumed the creatures overhead were reveling in the act of soaring. A new study says our instinct was right.
#Nature
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Point Reyes Has a Pelican Drowning Problem

The otters are organized, systematic, and apparently very good at this. The pelicans have had six years to notice. What does it mean that they mostly haven't?
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Two Marsupials the Ice Age Was Supposed to Have Killed Are Alive in New Guinea

Fossils said these two species died out thousands of years ago. Local communities never stopped saying otherwise, and it turns out they were right.
#Nature
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The Moss on Your Garden Wall Is Running Electrical Signals

Wired up in a lab for seven days, an ordinary garden plant kept sending structured pulses. What is it communicating?
#Nature
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The Naked Mole-Rat Queen Doesn't Rule With an Iron Fist. She Rules With a Smell.

One airborne compound keeps every other female in a colony infertile, and it doesn't require anyone to be in the room to work. What else are we missing?
#Nature
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A Pterosaur Died 113 Million Years Ago. Its Last Meal Survived.

Bacteria moved in on this fossil immediately, the way bacteria do. Instead of destroying the evidence, they sealed it in.
#Nature
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Learning Rule Has Held Since 1898. Pigeons Ignore It.

They found the reward. They kept looking anyway. Pigeons may be dismantling one of psychology's oldest assumptions about how any animal learns.
#Nature
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The First Look Inside a Whale Never Seen Alive

A routine beach call in New Zealand turned into the first real look inside one of the ocean's most elusive animals, and the anatomy inside was stranger than anyone expected.
#Nature
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A Sea Worm Built Metal Jaws Without Any Metal

Half a billion years before we figured out smelting, a marine worm was already building metal-grade jaws from protein. What else has nature quietly engineered that we haven't noticed yet?
#Nature
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The Great White Has a Thermostat Problem

Great white sharks run hot by design. Now that the ocean is heating up, their greatest physiological advantage may be turning against them.
#Nature
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Bull Sharks in Fiji Keep Finding the Same Mates. Every Year. For a Decade.

The DNA said the same two sharks had pups together years apart. Bull sharks were supposed to be solitary. What else have we gotten wrong?
#Nature
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A Shark With No Voice Box Is Making Sounds at 155 Decibels

Scientists assumed sharks were silent. Then a PhD student in a New Zealand lab heard something that sounded like electric sparks. The sharks were the ones making it.
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Daddy Longlegs Are Eating Frogs Whole

A daddy longlegs with no venom and no web just pinned down a live frog bigger than itself. Scientists say this might be happening all over South American tropical forests.
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Springtime Brings a Rumble to the Hudson River

A mysterious low rumble shakes New York's Hudson River each spring. What's causing it? A fish older than dinosaurs, doing what it's always done.
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Moss Has a Fungal Partner

Mosses were supposed to be the only land plants without fungal partners. Scientists just found fungi living inside their tissue.
#Nature
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Single-Celled Cannibal Eats Its Own Clones

One microbe. One cell. Same DNA as every relative it's about to eat.
#Nature
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