Patrick Pester

A new commentary blasts claims about Homo naledi featured in Netflix's "Unknown: Cave of Bones."

Researchers found three species of skink in Australia they feared could be extinct, including the Lyon's grassland striped skink.

Scientists have discovered that chimps living in Côte d'Ivoire carry out surveillance on each other to avoid or incite conflict — much like in human military operations.

DNA from a supposed Abominable Snowman actually came from a horse, but that doesn't mean stories of the Yeti passed on by local people aren't important.

Researchers are only beginning to understand the cryptic lives of the earless monitor lizards of Borneo.

Don't expect an alien invasion anytime soon.

Diprotodon dates back to the Pleistocene epoch and is a giant relative of wombats and koalas.

Nature doesn't have strict rules for cross-species coupling.

The earliest pliosaur 'megapredator' helped rule the oceans 170 million years ago during the age of dinosaurs.

Ancient caves mark the beginning of recorded burial rituals, but there's still so much we don't know about the history of human graves.

Orcas have their own dialect, greeting ceremonies and even wore salmon as hats in a weird fad during the 1980s.

Researchers used DNA analysis and traditional knowledge to learn about an orca named Old Tom and his family's remarkable relationship with humans.

Nature must think willies are funny, too.

The "law of increasing functional information" says that complex systems in nature evolve to become more complex.

Killer whales are surprisingly gentle in the wild when interacting with humans — though it's sometimes a different story with orcas in captivity.

The center of Earth lies around 4,000 miles beneath our feet — but what lies beneath the outer crust and the inner core?

Scientists have discovered flowering plants were largely unscathed by the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction event 66 million years ago, allowing them to take advantage of the new, dinosaur-free planet.

Scientists have calculated the average distance between stars, but there's much more to star distribution than meets the eye.

Mayflies are famous for cramming an entire life into a single day, but that's not strictly true.

The 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano eruption may have contributed to this year's heat, but it's not causing climate change.

A visitor attraction in Scotland is enlisting the help of volunteers to search for Nessie, but it's unlikely to yield a monster discovery.

The newfound vampyromorph species was equipped with defensive features not previously seen in the fossil record — and it's related to modern-day vampire squid.

The alleged theft of donated body parts from Harvard Medical School and an Arkansas mortuary is revealing a national network of human remains dealers.