A wary red-footed tortoise in Casanare, Colombia, June 26, 2024. Long dismissed as unintelligent, reptiles are emerging as cognitively and emotionally complex animals — a new study involving tortoises suggests that they also possess mood states. (Federico Rios/The New York Times) By BRANDON KEIM Should you meet a turtle basking on a log in the sun, you might reasonably conclude that the turtle is in a good mood. Granted, there has been little scientific evidence that reptiles

In an undated image provided by Ibiricu et al, Nature Communications 2025, Joaquinraptor, one of the most complete megaraptor specimens ever found. A fossil of the 23-foot-tall predator could help unlock secrets of an order of dinosaurs that remain poorly understood. (Ibiricu et al, Nature Communications 2025 via The New York Times) By ASHER ELBEIN In 2019, a team of researchers uncovered a 70-million-year-old dinosaur in a Patagonian province of Argentina. The dinosaur, a hu

In an undated image provided by Gabriel Diaz Yanten, a life reconstruction of Kostensuchus, a large, land-dwelling crocodile that was large enough to fight with predatory dinosaurs over prey. A fossil found in Argentina shows that up to the very end of the age of dinosaurs, they faced serious competition from other reptile species. (Gabriel Diaz Yanten via The New York Times) By ASHER ELBEIN An apex predator prowled the forests of Patagonia a few million years before the age

A photo provided by Bryan O’Malley shows a collage of foraminifera, a kind of single-celled organism, found in a potential mining zone and arranged by O’Malley, a lead researcher. An ocean-mining company has funded some of the most comprehensive scientific studies to date, and peer-reviewed results have begun to emerge. (Bryan O’Malley via The New York Times) By Sachi Kitajima Mulkey Industrial mining of the seabed could reduce the abundance and diversity of tiny animals livi

In an undated image provided by Chris Gunn/NASA, inspecting the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s Wide Field Instrument upon delivery to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. In 2026, there will be journeys to the moon and Mars, new visions of the cosmos and a solar eclipse that might be worth traveling for. (Chris Gunn/NASA via The New York Times) By KATRINA MILLER and MICHAEL ROSTON The thing about space is that you have to be patient. The universe does not

The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., August 2016. Russell Vought, the White House budget director, called the laboratory a source of “climate alarmism” that will be taken apart. (Caine Delacy/The New York Times) By LISA FRIEDMAN, BRAD PLUMER and JACK HEALY The Trump administration said it will be dismantling the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, one of the world’s leading Earth science research institutions. The center, founded i

In an undated image provided by Denis Finnin/AMNH, Mark Norell. Norell, a globe-trotting paleontologist whose research focused on the evolutionary links between dinosaurs and birds, and whose expeditions yielded rare discoveries like the nearly intact embryo of a birdlike oviraptor, died on Sept. 9, 2025, in Manhattan. He was 68. (Denis Finnin/AMNH via The New York Times) By RICHARD SANDOMIR Mark Norell, a globe-trotting paleontologist whose research focused on the evolutiona

An undated photo provided by Craig Williams/The Trustees of the British Museum shows an artist’s conception of a fire in Barnham, southeast England, 400,000 years ago. (Craig Williams/The Trustees of the British Museum via The New York Times) By CARL ZIMMER Some 400,000 years ago, in what is now eastern England, a group of Neanderthals used flint and pyrite to make fires by a watering hole — not just once, but time after time, over several generations. That is the conclusion