Articles by Cameron Duke, Live Science Contributor

Cameron Duke is a contributing writer for Live Science who mainly covers life sciences. He also writes for New Scientist as well as MinuteEarth and Discovery's Curiosity Daily Podcast. He holds a master's degree in animal behavior from Western Carolina University and is an adjunct instructor at the University of Northern Colorado, teaching biology.

Articles by: Cameron Duke

Here we see an illustration of a brown squirrel-like primate climbing a tree with an aurora in the background.

52 million years ago, strange primates lived in complete darkness in the Arctic

By Cameron Duke published 25 January 23

During the Eocene, the Arctic was a warm, swampy place that these primates called home.

Here we see a heat map of an echidnas, with a hot head and a cool nose.

Prickly echidnas stay cool by blowing snot bubbles

By Cameron Duke published 18 January 23

Echidnas use booger bubbles to stay cool in hot weather Down Under.

Palaeospondylus as reconstructed by synchrotron radiation x-ray computed tomography.

Ancient toothless 'eel' is your earliest known ancestor

By Cameron Duke published 13 June 22

A perplexing mystery fish may have finally been placed on the evolutionary tree of life as an ancestor of all four-limbed animals, also known as tetrapods.

Great white sharks coexisted alongside megalodon before rising to take the bigger shark's place at the top of the ocean food chain.

Great white sharks may have driven megalodon to extinction

By Cameron Duke last updated 1 September 22

For millions of years, megalodon was the top predator in marine ecosystems. Then great whites came along and ruined everything.

Though the ancestor of all dinosaurs was likely warm-blooded, only some lineages of dinosaurs, such as T. rex and other tyrannosaurs, retained that high-energy metabolism.

T. rex and its close relatives were warm-blooded like modern birds

By Cameron Duke published 26 May 22

Dinosaur metabolisms were diverse; some lineages were cold-blooded like their lizard cousins, while others were warm-blooded like their avian relatives alive today.

Researchers spotted the rare dragonfish during a week-long expedition on the RV Western Flyer.

Elusive bronze-scaled ‘dragon’ of the deep caught on video off California coast

By Cameron Duke last updated 6 May 22

Scientists exploring the depths of Monterey Bay unexpectedly encountered a rare and unique species of dragonfish.

What is the largest arachnid to ever live?

By Cameron Duke published 26 April 22

What's the largest arachnid ever on Earth? The answer is not so simple, say scientists.

Newly discovered species of freshwater shrimp called Koonwarrella

100 million-year-old fairy shrimp reproduced without sex, rare fossils reveal

By Cameron Duke published 13 April 22

A newly discovered species of freshwater shrimp called Koonwarrella peterorum may have reproduced asexually via parthenogenesis.

An artist's impression of trilobites on the seafloor

World's oldest known case of cannibalism revealed in trilobite fossils

By Cameron Duke published 6 April 22

Injured trilobite fossils provide the oldest known evidence of cannibalism.

A mysterious sea creature washed ashore in Texas City, Texas, after Hurricane Harvey. It was later identified as likely to be Aplatophis chauliodus, the fangtooth snake-eel or “tusky” eel.

Bloated 'alien' creature that washed ashore in Australia possibly identified

By Cameron Duke published 4 April 22

A weirdly bloated creature, whose head has been defleshed and body looks more like a swollen, discolored beast of myth than anything real, washed up on an Australian beach last week.

This Sentinel-1A satellite image shows the C-38 iceberg on March 17, 2022. The iceberg broke off from the Conger Ice Shelf.

Sudden collapse of Antarctic ice shelf could be sign of things to come

By Cameron Duke published 26 March 22

A massive Antarctic ice shelf that covered an area about the size of New York City or Rome just collapsed into the ocean.

Molecular machinery, like this light-harvesting complex from a bacterium, is often strikingly symmetrical.

'Informational simplicity' may explain why nature favors symmetry

By Cameron Duke last updated 25 March 22

Symmetry is so common in biology because life favors simple structures over complex ones.

King cobras — which may be four distinct species — are the longest venomous snakes in the world.

Surprise! King cobra is actually a royal lineage of 4 species

By Cameron Duke published 22 March 22

The king cobra is not one species, but four independent ones, spread throughout the Asian tropics.

Social spiders in the species Anelosimus eximius live in colonies that may include hundreds of individuals.

Spiders hunt in packs of hundreds to swarm prey

By Cameron Duke published 7 March 22

Pack hunting spiders use web vibrations to coordinate their attacks.

The tick ixodes scapularis, also called black-legged tick or deer tick, can infect people with the potentially fatal Powassan virus.

9 out of 10 ticks in this Pennsylvania park carried a potentially fatal neurological virus

By Cameron Duke published 16 February 22

Pennsylvania officials spotted a worrisome concentration of ticks carrying a severe tick-borne disease in a single park. Is this an anomaly or part of a larger trend?

A Goffin's cockatoo "plays golf" in the Goffin Lab at the Messerli Research Institute in Vienna's University of Veterinary Medicine.

Watch amazing video of cockatoos that learn to play 'golf'

By Cameron Duke published 16 February 22

Goffin's cockatoos play golf in an experiment exploring their ability to combine multiple objects into one tool.

Huablattula hui has larger eyes (left) and fewer antennal sensilla (right, asterisks) compared to modern species of cockroaches. This indicates that they were active in bright and open environments during the daytime

Creepy, big-eyed cockroach discovered trapped in amber from 100 million years ago

By Cameron Duke published 9 February 22

This Cretaceous-era cockroach was active during the day and has eyes to prove it.

Dog vision: How do dogs see the world?

By Natalie Wolchover last updated 22 September 22

Reference Dogs can only distinguish between blue and yellow hues. Here's how red and green tomatoes look to them.

A bomb cyclone dumped snow across the Northeast in January 2018 as well. Here, a man walks through the streets of Boston as snow falls from the massive winter storm on Jan. 4, 2018 in Boston.

'Bomb cyclone' set to bring blizzards and hurricane-force winds to the Northeast on Friday: Here's why.

By Cameron Duke published 28 January 22

A 'bomb cyclone' is expected to bring strong winds and dump inches of snow on the U.S. Northeast on Friday and Saturday.

Watch a python swallow an impala whole in this jaw-dropping video

By Cameron Duke last updated 23 June 22

An incredible video shows an African rock python swallowing an impala.

Researchers in the Weddell Sea were surprised to find 60 million icefish nests, each guarded by an adult and each holding an average of 1,700 eggs.

Largest fish nursery discovered beneath Weddell Sea in Antarctica

By Cameron Duke last updated 13 January 22

Scientists onboard an icebreaker in Antarctica were blown away when they spied a trove of 60 million icefish nests dotting the floor of the Weddell Sea.

A goldfish drives a water-filled, motorized "car."

Wild video shows goldfish 'driving' a water-filled car in weird experiment

By Cameron Duke published 6 January 22

A supremely weird new video shows a goldfish driving a water-filled, motorized "car" to help scientists understand how they navigate on land.

images of bryozoans found deep beneath antarctic ice shelves

Unimaginable diversity of life discovered beneath Antarctic ice shelf

By Cameron Duke published 30 December 21

An artist's illustration of woolly mammoths

Woolly mammoths survived on mainland North America until 5,000 years ago, DNA reveals

By Cameron Duke published 22 December 21

Ancient DNA reveals that woolly mammoths coexisted with humans in North America for 5,000 years longer than previously believed.

Here, a concept image of a futuristic monolith in the desert. This is not an artist's conception of Earth's black box.

Indestructible 'Black Box' will record our planet's demise in minute detail

By Cameron Duke published 18 December 21

The disaster recorder aims to set us on a better path by watching our every move.

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