New Scientist

Ancient fragments of fossilised skin may help us understand how skin evolved as vertebrate animals moved from the seas onto dry land

A dinosaur known only from a partial skull has been dubbed Tyrannosaurus mcraensis, adding a new twist to long-running debates about putative relatives of Tyrannosaurus rex

The success of a 15-year project to help frogs in California’s Sierra Nevada suggests some amphibian species could be rescued from a devastating fungal disease by evolution – and a little human help

Nearly three-quarters of hammer coral colonies annually alternate between male and female. They are the only animal species known to undergo this change on such a regular schedule

Søren Solkær's new collection of photographs shows starlings swooping as one in dramatic, cloud-like flocks

The mysterious giant ape Gigantopithecus blacki died out up to 295,000 years ago, after failing to adapt to a changing climate and the food variability that went with it

Manatees or sea cows usually inhabit coastal waters, but rumour has it that some are hiding out in Upper Guinea. A scientific expedition goes in search of them

Fire ants link together to form rafts when their nests are flooded, and unlike most materials the rafts don’t become thinner when they are stretched

A moray eel, a robber fly and an ice-topped slime mould appear in winning images from the Close-Up Photographer of the Year competition

The populations of species including bateleurs and secretary birds have fallen precipitously within the past 50 years, putting these birds at risk of extinction

The subject of a new David Attenborough documentary, a stunning pliosaur fossil unearthed in the UK is teaching us more about these deadly predators

Fossilised bacteria from Australia contain the earliest evidence of photosynthetic structures called thylakoids, which may have driven the accumulation of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere

A non-lethal method of catching great white sharks and releasing them 500 metres further out to sea can make the predators steer clear of beaches where people swim

Palaeontologists can’t agree on whether fossils from several small dinosaurs represent juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex or smaller adults of a separate species that lived alongside them

Long-tailed macaques on the island of Koh Ped appear to have learned a new way to forage when the pandemic put a stop to feeding by tourists

Fossil hunters have uncovered what is thought to be the most complete Jurassic pliosaur skull ever found, the subject of a new David Attenborough documentary

New fossil discoveries show predatory marine reptiles from 200 million years ago may have been bigger than today’s blue whales – and that they evolved astonishingly rapidly