When a new male gelada monkey takes control of a reproductive group, he will typically kill off the babies of his predecessor. Now, new research shows that pregnant females have an adaptive strategy to minimize their losses: They spontaneously miscarry.
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An ancient global warming event shrunk the earliest horses down to the size of scrawny housecats, according to new research that could have implications for what mammals might look like in a future warming world.
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Remind anyone of a favorite arcade game? The new moon passes over the sun in this Feb. 21 image taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. The partial eclipse was visible only from space. [See more amazing science photos]
The sky is falling… sort of. Over the last 10 years, the height of clouds has been shrinking, according to new research.
The average height of clouds has dropped by about 1 percent in the last decade. [Read full story]
Our Milky Way galaxy may be teeming with rogue planets that ramble through space instead of being locked in orbit around a star, a new study suggests.
These "nomad planets" could be surprisingly common in our bustling galaxy, according to researchers at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), a joint institute of Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. [Read full story]
A stick figure man with a giant phallus dubbed "the little horny man" by its discoverers is the oldest rock carving found yet in the Americas, researchers say.
These findings might shed new light on when the New World was first settled, scientists added. [Read full story]
The tendrils of a sea anemone bring to mind the petals of a flower — but these petals bite. Sea anemones are predatory animals. Their tentacles are studded with venomous cells called nematocysts, which release toxins into prey such as fish and crustaceans, paralyzing the victims for easy digestion. The image was published this week in our Image of the Day album.
Newly discovered legless amphibians live out their lives in underground burrows, tending their slimy pink young, which emerge from their eggs as miniature adults. [Read full story]
The amphibians hatch within two to three months, appearing as mini adults from the get-go. [See more images of the little legless amphibians]
An intensely bright X-ray beacon shining in the Andromeda galaxy is actually a signpost for a hungry black hole that is gobbling up matter at a furious pace, new studies reveal.
Shown here, an image of the Andromeda Galaxy, a composite of an infrared photo from ESA's Herschel space telescope and the XMM-Newton’s X-ray telescope. The infrared frame shows rings of dust that trace gaseous reservoirs where new stars are forming and the X-ray image shows stars approaching the ends of their lives. [Read full story]
A Hubble Space Telescope optical image of our nearest neighbor galaxy, Andromeda (M31), with an inset X-ray image of the active center made with the XMM-Newton observatory. The newly discovered ultraluminous X-ray source is highlighted.
