Science

ROLAND, Ark.—First came the gasps.  As the final sliver of sunlight disappeared behind the persistent moon, eclipse viewers at the Pinnacle Mountain State Park visitors’ center outside Little Rock were left in awe.  Nancy Carr had driven six hours from McCalla, Alabama, just outside Birmingham, to view the spectacle. As the sun’s corona began its […]

Acidifying oceans are leading to sensory loss in fish. Scientists fear people might be next.

CHONGWE, Zambia—Benson Chipungu sits in a leather armchair and reaches for the remote to switch off the news. Pieces of fabric hang over the windows, darkening the room against the heat. A gas-powered hand-plough is parked in the corner. On the floors behind his chair, dozens of ears of corn are spread out, a display […]

An unprecedented federal effort to rescue and rehabilitate endangered smalltooth sawfish is getting underway this week in the Florida Keys, where unusual and concerning behavior has been documented including spinning and whirling, signs the fish are in distress. Some 32 of the sawfish have been reported dead, although the number is believed to be higher, […]

Africa’s great apes—from gorillas to chimpanzees and bonobos—are under far greater threat than scientists previously realized, a new study suggests.  While primatologists and conservationists have long tracked great ape populations and the human activities that negatively impact them—from poaching to expanding agriculture and oil drilling—there has historically been a dearth of information on the location […]

If global warming continues at its current pace, a new study warns, tropical species could take over parts of Mediterranean marine ecosystems by the end of the century. The research analyzed a detailed fossil record showing how tropical mollusks replaced then-existing Mediterranean populations starting about 135,000 years ago, signaling a dramatic climate-driven and systemic reorganization […]

This article was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans—and engages with them—about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. STARR COUNTY—In 2009, on a plot of shrub-covered cattle land about 45 miles northwest of McAllen, Shell buried and abandoned a well it drilled to look for gas. […]

This project was originally published in Science magazine. The story was supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Pendleton Mazer Family Fund. MANAUS, Brazil—Jochen Schöngart darts back and forth along an escarpment just above the Amazon River, a short water taxi ride from downtown Manaus, Brazil. It’s still early this October morning in 2023, but […]

MOODY, Ala.—When Danielle Cusimano brought her newborn baby, Saylor, home from the hospital in December 2022, it was hard to keep the smoke out. The Cusimano family lived a few miles from the site of the Moody landfill just northeast of Birmingham where a month earlier, in November 2022, a fire had sparked to the […]

Aerial monitoring finds they emit methane at levels at least 40 percent higher than previously reported to the EPA.