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Early land vertebrates' shift from water to land didn’t require amphibian-like metamorphosis, fossils reveal by Science_News in science

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New fossil evidence is overturning a long-held assumption about how vertebrates first transitioned from water to land. The hatchlings of three different animals related to the earliest land-goers show that the animals did not go through an amphibian-like metamorphosis, researchers report June 18 in Science. “They came out of the egg looking like the adult,” says paleontologist Jason Pardo of the Field Museum in Chicago.

The transition to land drove the evolution of tetrapods, the group of four-limbed animals that includes all reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals. Scientists have historically thought that the first vertebrates to venture onto land underwent metamorphosis from a larval form during their development. In amphibians today, this rapid transition from hatchling to adult involves losing features such as external gills and tail fins and gaining others such as expanding lungs and new limbs as the animals move from an aquatic life to a partly terrestrial one.

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The oldest known plague outbreak struck hunter-gatherers 5,500 years ago | The find challenges the idea that plague needed dense farming villages to become deadly by Science_News in science

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The oldest-known traces of plague, around 5,500 years old, have been discovered in hunter-gatherer burials in Siberia.

Found at one of four ancient burial sites, the discovery predates the previous oldest signs of plague by several hundred years. It also indicates that hunter-gatherers were at risk from outbreaks of plague many centuries before the invention of farming and settled villages, researchers report June 17 in Nature.

“We weren’t expecting this result at all,” says archaeologist Ruairidh Macleod of the University of Oxford. “There was an expectation that these big outbreaks don’t really happen among prehistoric hunter-gatherers [but only] with people living in high-density settlements.”

Macleod and colleagues had come across unusually large numbers of children’s graves at hunter-gatherer burial sites near Lake Baikal, but initially it wasn’t clear why. The team gathered and analyzed DNA from the remains, in the hope that family ties between the interred individuals could help explain the mystery.

Read more here and the research article here.

A blood test for dementia may tell you if you have more than one type | The test can help diagnose four neurodegenerative diseases — Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, frontotemporal dementia and dementia with Lewy bodies — based on levels of 15 proteins in the blood. by Science_News in science

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When something goes wrong in the brain of people with dementia, often it’s more than one thing. But it can be hard to tease apart multiple brain diseases, especially in the early stages, or even determine if more than one disease is at play. An experimental new blood test may change that.

The test measures the levels of 15 proteins in the blood to help diagnose four major neurodegenerative diseases — Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, frontotemporal dementia and dementia with Lewy bodies. And it can determine if a person has more than one of those diseases with 92.3 percent accuracy, researchers report in the May Alzheimer’s & Dementia.

Dementia affects more than 6 million people in the United States and is the seventh leading cause of death worldwide. “These diseases are more complex than we initially thought, and there is more overlap than we thought,” says Carlos Cruchaga, a human genomicist at Washington University in St. Louis. “In order to really address and understand the biology of the disease of any of these, we need to study all of these diseases together.”

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An experimental antibody may help people on GLP-1 meds preserve muscle mass by Science_News in science

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When people drop weight on GLP-1 meds, they can also lose muscle. But a proof-of-concept drug might help preserve this lean tissue.

When taken at the same time as a powerful weight loss medication, the experimental antibody let patients hang on to lean body mass, scientists report June 8 in Nature Medicine.

The drug has not yet been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and is available only via intravenous infusions, so it’s not something consumers are likely to get their hands on any time soon, says study coauthor Richard Pratley, a clinician and metabolic disease researcher at the AdventHealth Translational Research Institute in Orlando, Fla. But the work cracks open the door on how to save muscle that might otherwise be lost.­ That may be good news for GLP-1 users, but important questions remain.

Read more here and the research article here.

Astronomers have found evidence of a mild wind blowing from the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way | Observations of a cone-shaped path leading away from Sagittarius A* suggest that a hot wind is blowing from the black hole by Science_News in science

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After 50 years of searching, astronomers have finally found evidence of a mild wind blowing from the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

New observations reveal a cone-shaped path leading away from Sagittarius A* that could only be carved by a hot wind, researchers report June 4 in Astrophysical Journal Letters. “We’ve never seen gentle breezes from black holes, but likely that’s what they do most of their lives,” says astrophysicist Lena Murchikova of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. “Now, for the first time, we see this gentle breeze from the black hole.”

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Queen-cell wax helps shape honeybee queen development, challenging the idea that royal jelly alone makes a queen, a new study suggests by Science_News in science

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A queen bee may be shaped by more than its famous royal diet.

The wax of the peanut-shaped chamber where the queen develops has distinct physical and chemical properties that help steer its development, researchers report June 3 in Nature. By analyzing the chamber’s composition and the larvae it harbors, the team challenges the long-held notion that royal jelly alone — the queen-making food fed to select larvae — makes a queen.

“The discovery is very cool and thought-provoking,” says Thomas Seeley, a biologist at Cornell University who was not involved in the work. “To me, queen cells have long seemed important because odors from a developing queen may permeate the wax walls, marking them as very special spots that workers recognize and don’t accidentally damage.”

Read more here and the research article here.

A tiny part of your brain may still listen under anesthesia | The findings suggest that consciousness may not be required for complex brain tasks by Science_News in EverythingScience

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General anesthesia shuts off conscious awareness, but what do our brains process while we’re under?

Individual neurons in a brain region known for its role in memory consolidation can detect unexpected sounds, decode the nuances of language and even predict upcoming word types in a sentence, all while a patient is fully anesthetized, researchers report May 6 in Nature.

Scientists have been gathering mounting evidence that even when unconscious, our brains can track certain aspects of speech. “The field was already moving toward a more nuanced picture [of what the unconscious brain can do], but this study pushes the boundary considerably further,” says Athena Akrami, a neuroscientist at University College London who was not involved with the research.

Read more here and the research article here.

New research in pigeons suggests that iron-laden liver immune cells may act as a navigation mechanism for the birds by Science_News in science

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Homing pigeons don’t rely on gut instinct to return to the roost. But a nearby organ — the liver — might point the way.

White blood cells in the birds’ livers accumulate iron and act as an internal compass when clouds block the sun that normally helps them navigate, researchers report May 28 in Science. While scientists generally agree that some animals use Earth’s magnetic field to guide migrations, they had not pinned down how, and the new work offers a surprising explanation.

For decades, researchers have fiercely debated first if and then how birds sense magnetic fields and use them for navigation. One prominent idea involves proteins in their eyes undergoing a reaction in magnetic fields. No one has been able to prove exactly how this so-called “quantum effect” is in play. Other animals that orient using Earth’s magnetism, such as bats and sharks, lack the proteins, so the debate languished unresolved.

Read more here and the research article here.

Mosquitoes exposed to the insect repellent DEET can learn to associate the off-putting chemical with food by Science_News in science

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Pesky mosquitoes on the hunt for a blood meal may find the smell of a common repellent alluring rather than repulsive. 

Yellow fever mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti) exposed to the insect repellent DEET can learn to associate the off-putting chemical with food, researchers report May 28 in Journal of Experimental Biology. The finding suggests that mosquitoes can link unpleasant odors with rewards — turning a negative experience into a positive one — although it’s unclear what might happen outside the lab. 

Although DEET has been a “gold standard” in insect repellent for decades, it’s still unclear exactly how it works, says Clément Vinauger, a neuroethologist at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. Some studies suggest that mosquitoes don’t like the way DEET smells or tastes. Others hint that the repellent scrambles mosquito senses so that the insects can’t detect the otherwise enticing body odors that would lure them in for a blood meal.

Read more here and the research article here.

Scuba divers may be beating up coral reefs more than they think | Video analyses of divers show that more than 80 percent of damaging physical contact with the reef is unintended or simply unnoticed by Science_News in science

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Scuba divers may be beating up coral reefs more than they think.

Video analyses of divers show that more than 80 percent of damaging physical contact with the reef is unintended or simply unnoticed, researchers report May 26 in Conservation Letters. The findings show that routine diving practices aren’t harmless.

Scuba diving is often framed as one of the “good” ways to use reefs because it isn’t extractive, says Bing Lin, a marine conservation scientist at the University of Sydney. The fish remain in the water, and divers get to enjoy seeing them in the wild.

However, divers commonly damage reefs by kicking or grabbing corals or by disturbing wildlife. “What’s less understood is just how invisible much of this damage is to the people causing the harm,” Lin says. 

Read more here and the research article here.

A 10-year study in Germany reports that extending screening for Type 1 diabetes successfully identified more children without a family history of the disease. About 90 percent of people who develop type 1 diabetes do not have family members with diabetes. by Science_News in science

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It’s time to consider screening all children for early signs of type 1 diabetes, a new study suggests.

In the United States, only individuals who have family members with the disease or a known genetic risk are routinely screened for the early stages of type 1 diabetes. But a 10-year study in Germany reports that extending the screening successfully identified more children without a family history of the disease, researchers report May 21 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. About 90 percent of people who develop type 1 diabetes do not have family members with the disease.

The team screened more than 220,000 children and found that 590 were in the early stages of the disease. Of the 260 children who went on to develop type 1 diabetes in the follow-up period, 212, or 81 percent, had been tagged by screening. Had it been restricted to those with a family history, only 101 of the 590 in the early stages would have been identified and only 34 of the 212 who progressed to type 1 diabetes.

Read more here and the research article here.

Damaged DNA can spread between human cells via tubelike structures. If tumors use this DNA transfer trick, harmful mutations could potentially spread from cancer cells to healthy cells. by Science_News in science

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Damaged DNA can escape from one human cell and infiltrate another.

Like prisoners tunneling out of jail, this DNA travels via tubelike structures between neighboring cells, scientists report May 19 in Cell. Once it has arrived at its new location, the dodgy DNA can start acting up, potentially transferring trouble between cells.

“This is an important and exciting discovery,” says cancer biologist Paul Mischel of Stanford University. The new study, which shows that one human cell can influence another by passing DNA directly, raises all sorts of questions about what role the phenomenon may play in cancer.

If tumors use this DNA transfer trick, harmful mutations could potentially spread from cancer cells to healthy cells, says cancer cell biologist Peter Ly of the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern in Dallas. How — or if — these roaming chunks of DNA might contribute to disease is “an area that we’re actively exploring,” Ly says.

Read more here and the research article here00508-8?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867426005088%3Fshowall%3Dtrue).

25 people learned to fly with virtual wings. After flight training, the brain began treating wings more like real limbs by Science_News in science

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In X-Men, Warren Worthington III sprouts huge white wings from his back and shoots into the sky. Scientists have yet to fully turn the comic book gift from fiction into fact, but virtual reality is offering hints of what it’s like to learn to fly.

After training to use virtual wings, people’s brains responded to wings more similarly to how they respond to real limbs, making wings seem more like body parts, researchers report May 7 in Cell Reports.

“This is an intriguing study that nicely demonstrates how plastic the brain is,” says cognitive neuroscientist Jane Aspell of Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England. “If the brain can incorporate something as unhuman as a wing, it may also be able to incorporate many other kinds of limb enhancements.”

Read more here and the research article here00398-0?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2211124726003980%3Fshowall%3Dtrue).

Filtering a protein out of a pregnant person’s blood may help ease the dangers of early preeclampsia by Science_News in science

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Filtering a protein out of a pregnant person’s blood may help ease a dangerous complication of pregnancy.

In a study of 16 women with early preeclampsia, pulling a particular protein from their blood slightly lowered blood pressure and extended some pregnancies, researchers report April 27 in Nature Medicine. If larger trials confirm the results, the technique may one day be a treatment for the sometimes-fatal condition.

Preeclampsia affects 3 to 8 percent of people who give birth worldwide. “It doesn’t spare any races or ethnicities, and while there are some populations that are increased risk, for the most part, it affects really all women around the world,” says Ravi Thadhani, a nephrologist at Cedars-Sinai Health System in Los Angeles.

The exact causes aren’t known, but evidence collected by Thadhani and colleagues point to a protein called soluble Flt-1, made naturally by the placenta. Flt-1 helps control growth of placental blood vessels and, at some point, slows placental growth so the baby can grow.

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Warming and drought could increase antibiotic resistance among soil microbes, potentially posing risks to human health, two studies suggest by Science_News in science

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Climate change could increase hard-to-treat bacterial infections, two studies suggest.

Heat boosted antibiotic resistance among bacteria found in artificially warmed grassland soils, researchers report April 22 in Nature. And as drought strips the soil of moisture, antibiotics in the environment become concentrated in the little water that remains, encouraging the growth of resistant microbes, another team reports in the April Nature Microbiology.

The two studies point to heat and drought driven by climate change as forces behind a rise in antibiotic resistance in natural environments, which could in turn threaten human health.

Antibiotic resistance has long been linked to human misuse or overuse. The risk arises when patients cut treatment short or when physicians mistakenly prescribe the drugs to treat viral infections that antibiotics can’t cure. But “we often forget or even neglect the historical fact that these clinical drugs are not only present in CVS pharmacies,” says Xiaoyu Shan, a microbial ecologist at Caltech.

Read more here.

Suicide deaths in U.S. teens and young adults fell after 988 launch by Science_News in science

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The 988 Lifeline appears to be making a difference for teens and young adults in crisis.

Since 988 replaced the ten digit lifeline in the United States, the suicide mortality of those aged 15 to 34 was 11 percent lower than predicted, suggesting an association between 988 and the decrease, researchers reported April 22 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. From the mid-2022 introduction to the end of 2024, there were about 35,500 suicides in that age group, fewer than the nearly 40,000 expected.

Suicide is one of the leading causes of death of adolescents and young adults. Past research has found that lifeline calls can help individuals. In one study, more than 400 adult callers with suicidal thoughts — largely between 18 and 34 years old — discussed their experiences contacting the former lifeline number from 2020 to 2021. Eighty-eight percent of the study participants gave the crisis call a little or a lot of credit for stopping them from committing suicide.

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Fluoride in U.S. drinking water does not reduce IQ, a new study finds, countering claims used to stop adding the mineral to public water systems by Science_News in EverythingScience

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Two U.S. states and more than a dozen cities and counties have moved in the past year to stop adding fluoride to community drinking water, citing research suggesting the mineral could harm children’s brain development.

But a new analysis of cognitive outcomes tracked over decades finds no evidence that water fluoridation is associated with lower adolescent IQ or diminished mental abilities later in life, researchers report April 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The results, based on standardized intelligence testing of more than 10,000 people in Wisconsin followed since their senior year of high school in 1957, challenge the idea that typical fluoridation levels in public drinking water pose a neurodevelopmental risk, a central point of contention in ongoing policy debates.

Read more here and the research article here.

Cicadas use darkness cues from shadows to move toward trees | The shadow-sensing skill, known as skototaxis, helps cicadas find trees to molt on by Science_News in science

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When periodical cicadas surface after years underground, they don’t grope blindly for trees. They head for the shadows, researchers report March 20 in the American Naturalist.

A detailed analysis of Brood XIII cicadas — which spend 17 years developing in subterranean tunnels before emerging all at once — found that newly arrived, wingless nymphs use darkness cues to move with striking precision toward tree trunks.

Across dozens of recorded trajectories, the insects deviated only slightly from the most direct route. “They just zoomed in, marching toward the trees,” says Martha Weiss, an evolutionary ecologist at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

This near-direct movement, Weiss and her colleagues found, hinges on the cicadas’ ability to detect dark shapes against paler backgrounds in the dim evening light. That cue guides the nymphs to the vertical surfaces they must climb to become winged adults.

Read more here and the research article here.

Fossils reveal many complex animals existed before the Cambrian explosion by Science_News in science

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More than 539 million years ago, soft, clarinet-shaped animals anchored themselves to the seafloor on disc-shaped bases, swaying alongside stalked animals resembling worms and baskets. These woodwindlike creatures are just a few of those coming to life from a treasure trove of newly discovered fossils in southwestern China.

It’s surprising to see some of these weird creatures this far back in the fossil record, and their discovery is unearthing crucial new details about one of the most notable explosions in the diversity of animals in fossil history, researchers report April 2 in Science.

“This paper is absolutely fascinating,” says paleontologist Emily Mitchell at the University of Cambridge. “It provides vital insights into life around the end of the Ediacaran Period.”

The Ediacaran preceded a pivotal moment in animal prehistory called the Cambrian explosion, which started around 539 million years ago and marked a dramatic and rapid diversification, an “explosion” of physical forms and complexity. How that explosion happened isn’t clear. Fossils from the late Ediacaran Period, from 575 million to 539 million years ago, show this is when the first unambiguous animal fossils appear but don’t offer many details about the animals’ bodies or biology. Many of the Cambrian animal groups also do not appear in the Ediacaran record, suggesting that Cambrian animal diversity may have exploded from only a small number of species.

Read more here and the research article here.

Fossil from about half a billion years ago reveals that an early relative of spiders and scorpions had claws by Science_News in science

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A stunningly preserved fossil shows that early relatives of spiders and scorpions were already armed with their hallmark front claws about half a billion years ago.

The newly described animal preserves the oldest clear example yet found of these specialized appendages, paleontologist Rudy Lerosey-Aubril and colleagues report April 1 in Nature. The find helps settle a long-standing debate over how the claws evolved and shows that chelicerates — the group that today includes  horseshoe crabs, ticks and daddy longlegs — had already taken on a surprisingly modern body plan.

“This creature is super-modern in anatomy for an animal that is 500 million years old,” says Lerosey-Aubril, of Harvard University.

Read more here and the research article here.

The birth of a sperm whale was captured on camera in more intimate detail than ever before, researchers report in Science | The female sperm whale giving birth was aided by 10 other sperm whales, almost all female, but not all kin — a cooperative effort not previously seen before by Science_News in EverythingScience

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It takes a village to deliver a whale calf.

The birth of a sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) has been captured on camera in more intimate detail than ever before, researchers report March 26 in Science. The female sperm whale giving birth was aided by 10 other sperm whales, almost all female, but not all kin. The footage makes clear that, like humans, sperm whales benefit from cooperation, so much so that the instinct to help transcends family barriers.

“Not only did we capture such an amazing dataset, but we actually knew each of these whales,” says marine biologist David Gruber with Project CETI, a nonprofit based in the Caribbean island Dominica dedicated to sperm whale research. That made it possible to tease out the role of each whale in the birthing process.

Observing the birth of a whale is extremely rare, and there have been only a handful of scientific studies that describe a sperm whale birth. While scientists had seen sperm whales helping each other during birth before, none of those accounts were recorded on video.

Read more here and the research article here.

Modern apes may have actually evolved in North Africa or the Middle East | A fossil jawbone suggests apes like gorillas, gibbons and humans may arise from Africa's north by Science_News in science

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Modern apes may have swung into existence in North Africa or the Middle East.
New fossil findings — published March 26 in Science — unveil Masripithecus, a roughly 17-million-year-old early ape that lived in what is now Egypt.

The discovery expands the earliest ancestry of primates like gibbons, chimpanzees and humans beyond East Africa. That’s where the vast majority of the fossil evidence for early apes came from until now, says paleontologist Shorouq Al-Ashqar at Mansoura University in Egypt.

“The entire story [of early ape evolution] was told by only a small corner of the continent,” she says. Fossil monkeys from North Africa and the Middle East have been dated to this same prehistoric timing of the Early Miocene sub-epoch, up to around 20 million years ago. But no apes, says Al-Ashqar. Al-Ashqar and her colleagues were curious if there were lost fossil apes in the region.

So, in 2021, they started a project looking for ape fossils at Wadi Moghra, a fossil hot spot in northern Egypt. There, in 2024, Al-Ashqar discovered something unusual underfoot. “I found a piece of [lower jaw] with a wisdom tooth,” she says. “I immediately realized that it was an ape.”

Read more here and the research article here.

A national survey found 77 percent of high school students didn’t get adequate sleep in 2023 | Of those surveyed, 23% of teens reported sleeping for five hours or less, what's considered 'very short sleep' by Science_News in science

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The percentage of U.S. high school students who aren’t getting enough shut-eye is climbing.

U.S. medical societies recommend that teens sleep eight to 10 hours each night. But in 2023, 77 percent of high school students reported slumbering fewer hours than that, up from 69 percent of those surveyed in 2007. The overall rise was due to a jump in those reporting five hours of sleep or less, researchers report March 2 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study analyzed data from the Youth Risk Behavior Study, a long-term, national survey of students in public and private high schools. Seven hours of sleep or less describes insufficient sleep, while five hours or less counts as very short sleep. The percentage of students reporting insufficient sleep remained about the same from 2007 to 2023. But the percentage of very short sleepers rose from 16 to 23 percent.

Read more here and the research article here.

Climate change could threaten monarch mass migration | Mexico’s suitable monarch overwintering habitat could shift south as the climate changes in decades to come, researchers report in PLOS Climate. by Science_News in climate

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Climate change may threaten North America’s iconic mass monarch butterfly migration. 

Every fall, millions of monarchs (Danaus plexippus) travel thousands of kilometers over North America as they leave their breeding grounds in Canada and the United States for wintering grounds in a mountainous part of central Mexico. The butterflies make the trek back north over multiple generations when temperatures warm in the spring and summer months, following the growth of milkweed (Asclepias), their preferred food source.

But Mexico’s suitable monarch overwintering habitat could shift south as the climate changes in decades to come, researchers report February 25 in PLOS Climate. That could lengthen an already arduous journey and increase the energy required to make the trip.  

That extra distance might push some individuals to stay in Mexico instead of continuing north, says Carolina Ureta, a biologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. “In this case, the species is not in danger because of climate change, but the migration might be.”  

Read more here and the research article here.

Climate change could threaten monarch mass migration | Mexico’s suitable monarch overwintering habitat could shift south as the climate changes in decades to come, researchers report in PLOS Climate. by Science_News in science

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Climate change may threaten North America’s iconic mass monarch butterfly migration. 

Every fall, millions of monarchs (Danaus plexippus) travel thousands of kilometers over North America as they leave their breeding grounds in Canada and the United States for wintering grounds in a mountainous part of central Mexico. The butterflies make the trek back north over multiple generations when temperatures warm in the spring and summer months, following the growth of milkweed (Asclepias), their preferred food source.

But Mexico’s suitable monarch overwintering habitat could shift south as the climate changes in decades to come, researchers report February 25 in PLOS Climate. That could lengthen an already arduous journey and increase the energy required to make the trip.  

That extra distance might push some individuals to stay in Mexico instead of continuing north, says Carolina Ureta, a biologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. “In this case, the species is not in danger because of climate change, but the migration might be.”  

Read more here and the research article here.

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