Evolution

Fossil jaws from colossal octopuses place them at the top of a prehistoric marine food chain

Scientists finally understand why birds were the only dinosaurs to pull through the end-Cretaceous mass extinction

Evolutionary studies make sense of the world’s strangest plant

Scientists have discovered a potential path out of devastating genetic bottlenecks that could help these Australian animals, as well as many other vulnerable and endangered species

These caterpillars rely on ants to tend them, and they use a surprisingly complex sense of rhythm to make it happen

A urinalysis shows that these apes ingest significant amounts of alcohol, providing new clues to how alcohol influences the animals’ behavior

Newborn chicks connect sounds with shapes just like humans, suggesting deep evolutionary roots of the “bouba-kiki” effect

The use of poison on arrows marked a revolution in human hunting technology—new evidence suggests it happened tens of thousands of years earlier than previously known

The sharp, elongated bills of green hermit hummingbirds aren’t just fine-tuned for feeding; they also allow males to joust like knights over mates

New research on strange cycad plants offers a glimpse into the prehistoric origins of pollination

Making fire on demand was a milestone in the lives of our early ancestors. But the question of when that skill first arose has been difficult for scientists to pin down

Two new studies dig into the long, curving path that cats took toward domestication