ANZA BORREGO, Calif. — A cactus in bloom is pure poetry — particularly that famous line by Walt Whitman: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself.” In the desert here, the thick, spine-studded paddles of a beavertail cactus look as surly as always, ready to smack you into next week if you get within striking distance. Yet now, in a superbloom spring that many judge the best in
An illustration of an extinct rat kangaroo, published in 1825. Researchers recently analyzed the costs and benefits of re-establishing and maintaining 16 species in Australia and New Zealand that went extinct in the last millennium.Credit...Florilegius, via Getty Images With enough determination, money and smarts, scientists just might revive the woolly mammoth, or some version of it, by splicing
CHARLES DARWIN RESEARCH STATION, Galápagos — Of all the giant tortoises on these islands, where the theory of evolution was born, only a few have received names that stuck. There was Popeye, adopted by sailors at an Ecuadorean naval base. There was Lonesome George, last of his line, who spent years shunning the females with whom he shared a pen. And there is Diego, an ancient male who is quite the
How Did Aboriginal Australians Arrive on the Continent? DNA Helps Solve a Mystery A study found that all living Aboriginal Australians descend from a single founding population that arrived about 50,000 years ago.Credit...P.C. Poulsen/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images Human skeletons and archaeological remains in Australia can be traced back nearly 50,000 years before the trail disappears. Before t
NORTH SEYMOUR ISLAND, Galápagos — The birds move with comic grace, like Fred Astaire and Judy Garland as hobo swells in oversize shoes. The male faces the female and slowly, slowly lifts up one foot, sets it down and lifts the other. Check out my feet! They’re blue. Really, really blue. The female mirrors his ponderous moves. Mine are blue, too. Is this ground sticky, or what? He leans over, sprea
Hunched Over a Microscope, He Sketched the Secrets of How the Brain Works Illustrations by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the Spanish neuroscientist, from the book “The Beautiful Brain.” From left: A diagram suggesting how the eyes might transmit a unified picture of the world to the brain; a purkinje neuron from the human cerebellum; and a diagram showing the flow of information through the hippocampus
An artist’s rendering of Siamogale melilutra, an extinct otter the size of a wolf.Credit...Mauricio Antón Cute, cuddly and covered in soft brown fur, otters look like teddy bears that can swim. But travel back six million years to the wetlands of southwestern China, and there roamed an ancient relative to these creatures that was more fearsome than adorable. Known as Siamogale melilutra, this newl
They said it was their family curse: a rare congenital deformity called syndactyly, in which the thumb and index finger are fused together on one or both hands. Ten members of the extended clan were affected, and with each new birth, they told Stefan Mundlos of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, the first question was always: “How are the baby’s hands? Are they normal?” Afflicted rel
Vera Rubin in the 1970s, when she mapped the distribution of mass in spiral galaxies by measuring how fast they rotated.Credit...Carnegie Institution of Washington, via Associated Press Vera Rubin, who transformed modern physics and astronomy with her observations showing that galaxies and stars are immersed in the gravitational grip of vast clouds of dark matter, died on Sunday in Princeton, N.J.
A still image taken from some 60 hours of time-lapse video shot in the Waitomo caves in February.Credit...Jordan Poste/Stoked for Saturday In the Waitomo caves in New Zealand, thousands of blue lights dangle from the ceilings, twinkling like stars in a night sky. Tourists flock to the caves, awe-struck by the starry night illusions all around them. But the truth about this natural wonder may be ha
リリース、障害情報などのサービスのお知らせ
最新の人気エントリーの配信
処理を実行中です
j次のブックマーク
k前のブックマーク
lあとで読む
eコメント一覧を開く
oページを開く