Robin Hood's Oak Succumbs to Foot Traffic and Concrete
It survived the Normans, the Black Death, and two world wars. What killed England's most famous tree may be harder to stomach than any of that.
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Latest Stories
Goblin Shark Makes Film Debut
Scientists just filmed a goblin shark alive in the wild for the first time. One showed up 2,300 feet deeper than expected.
A Low Hum Has Haunted People for 50 Years
Scientists studied 28 people who hear a mysterious low-frequency sound. The most likely source is inside the listener's own ear.
Antarctica's Most Active Volcano Has Been Scattering Gold Across the Ice Since 1972
A continuously erupting Antarctic volcano emits crystallized gold particles daily, and has been since 1972. How does frigid air turn a lava lake into a gold mint?
Seafloor Footprints Point to Earliest Evidence of Sight
You can't fossilize a sense. But 231 trails pressed into ancient seafloor mud turn out to be close enough.
Pollution Particles Warm the Atmosphere for 48 Hours Before They Cool It
Climate models had the long-term answer right. They were missing everything that happens in the first 48 hours.
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.
BoorYul-Bah-Bilya Came for the River. It Left with Quokkas.
A water-health program run by Aboriginal Traditional Owners set camera traps along a Perth river and found the mainland's most iconic marsupial hiding in plain sight.
Single-Celled Cannibal Eats Its Own Clones
One microbe. One cell. Same DNA as every relative it's about to eat.
Lucy's Hunter: A Giant Crocodile
A 3-million-year-old crocodile named for Lucy, the most famous hominin in archaeology.
Ghost DNA from Lost Humans Still Fights Infections
Three separate encounters with an extinct human species left thousands of inherited variants still tuning immune systems across the Pacific. What did our ancestors bring back?
Building a Brain Requires DNA Shredding
Newborn neurons break both strands of their own DNA just to reach their destination. The brain typically repairs it, but what if it can't?
Three Tiny Teeth Exposed a Missing Branch of Marsupial Evolution
Fossils from Queensland suggest a lineage of marsupials that spent millions of years doing their own thing, unrelated to anything scientists thought they knew.
Our Ancestors Were Apparently Fine With Freezing
The jungle origin story for primates was wrong. Their actual birthplace was cold, seasonal North America — and the survival strategy may still live in us.
Deep Sea Whale Necropolis Is Five Million Years Old
Nearly 500 whale fossils, a new species named after the trench, and bone-eating worms thriving 7 kilometers down. What else has been accumulating in the dark?
110 Quadrillion Kilometers of Fungal Threads Under Your Feet
Scientists mapped Earth's fungal networks for the first time. What they found underground reframes life above it.
The Ground Beneath Thawing Permafrost Is Consuming CO2
As permafrost thaws, something unexpected kicks in: the rock itself starts pulling CO2 back down. What happens when geology fights biology for control of the carbon cycle?
Plant Hormones Are Circulating in Mammals
Your body may not just absorb plant hormones from food — it might actually make them. What is mammalian physiology doing with a hormone that belongs in a leaf?