World’s only truly wild horse was once extinct in the wild; 40 years ago China began making efforts to bring it back, and now their population tops 900 and are independently reproducing

​2025 monitoring data showed the horses were reproducing without constant human intervention. The Przewalski’s horse, considered the world’s last truly wild horse, has returned to China’s grasslands after once disappearing from the wild in the country. Forty years after China began its Wild Horse Return Program, the population of the species has grown to about…

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MIT scientists turned tree branches into water filters that remove more than 99% of bacteria and viruses |

Tree branches could provide a simple way to filter drinking water. MIT engineers have developed water filters made from sapwood, the living wood found beneath the bark of trees such as pine and ginkgo. The material contains tiny channels called xylem that normally carry water through a tree. Thin membranes between these channels act like…

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66.5 million years ago, a T. rex crossed North America; fossil footprints now show the giant dinosaur walked, not ran

For decades, paleontologists have studied Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex) through bones, teeth and isolated footprints. Those fossils reveal what the animal looked like, how large it was and what it may have eaten, but they rarely show the creature in motion. That changed with the discovery of a short trail in southwestern North Dakota. Four…

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Scientists used centuries-old aurora sightings to reconstruct 8 solar cycles from 1560 to 1640; their method placed solar minima within 2 years with more than 90% reliability

Centuries-old reports of strange lights in the night sky have helped scientists reconstruct a missing chapter in the Sun’s history. A study published in Scientific Reports by Kristof Petrovay, Laura G. Magyar and Hisashi Hayakawa has reconstructed eight solar activity cycles between 1560 and 1640 using historical records of aurorae, offering a way to trace…

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From 1870 to 1988, California stocked mountain lakes with trout for anglers; the fish helped push yellow-legged frogs from 92% of their historic Sierra Nevada range

For more than a century, California’s high mountain lakes were stocked with trout to make remote wilderness more attractive to anglers. Between 1870 and 1988, fish were carried or flown into lakes and streams that had historically been fishless, creating new opportunities for recreation but also changing the balance of life in the Sierra Nevada….

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Scientists played human shouts, wolf and cougar calls near British Columbia crop fields; deer fled 64% of the time from human voices, but quickly learned to ignore the deterrents

What scares a deer away from a crop field, a wolf howl, a cougar call or the sound of a human shouting? A 2025 study by researchers from the University of Alberta and King’s University found that, among the sounds tested, human shouts produced the strongest flight response in both deer and elk. But the…

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A man climbed inside a giant Roman storage jar around 1,600 years ago and never came out; archaeologists think they know what he was hiding from

More than 1,600 years ago, as fire engulfed a Roman settlement in what is now Bulgaria, a young man appears to have made a desperate decision: he climbed inside a huge storage jar and hid. He never came out. Archaeologists uncovered his remains inside the vessel during excavations at the ancient Roman colony of Deultum…

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In the 1850s, pigs brought to Santa Cruz Island became feral; golden eagles drawn by piglets helped drive foxes down 95%, then 5,036 pigs were removed as foxes rebounded to 1,300+

An ambitious conservation project off the coast of California has helped save the endangered Santa Cruz Island fox from near extinction. The rescue effort involved removing 5,036 feral pigs, allowing the native island fox (Urocyon littoralis santacruzae) population to recover from fewer than 100 animals to more than 1,300 across the 96-square-mile island. According to…

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For decades, scientists thought North America had its own cheetah; ancient DNA reveals the extinct cat split from the puma lineage 2.6 million years ago

Representative Image (AI-generated) Its appearance told one story; its DNA tells another. For decades, the extinct Miracinonyx trumani was known as the “American cheetah” because its long legs, slender body and adaptations for speed made it look remarkably similar to Africa’s modern cheetahs. But a new genetic study has overturned that long-held picture. Published in…

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