More from Laura Baisas (Page 22)

Wildfire smoke drifts over western Canada, as seen from a satellite. On August 8, 2023, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of dense plumes of smoke streaming from dozens of large fires in the Northwest Territories. Several of these fires raged around Yellowknife, the province’s capital and largest city. These fires follow major outbreaks of fire in Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Quebec, in May, June, and July.

Canadian territory capital ordered to evacuate due to approaching wildfire

By Laura Baisas

A new snake species named Tachymenoides harrisonfordi was discovered during an expedition in Peru in May 2022. The copper scaled snake is seen here coiled on some brown grass.

Harrison Ford’s latest namesake is an Andean snake species

By Laura Baisas

Three human skulls sitting on a shelf. Cranial modification has been used for millennia to reshape the human skull.

Japan’s Hirota people intentionally reshaped their skulls more than 1,000 years ago

By Laura Baisas

Men pose outside of Michigan State University’s first observatory, circa 1888. The observatory is located behind where Willis House now stands on MSU’s campus, just south of Grand River and north of West Circle Drive in North Neighborhood.

Michigan State students help unearth a 19th-century space observatory on campus

By Laura Baisas

Lead claimant Rikki Held, 22, confers with members of Our Children's Trust legal team before the start of the nation's first youth climate change trial at Montana's First Judicial District Court on June 12, 2023 in Helena, Montana.

Judge sides with youth activists in groundbreaking climate change lawsuit

By Laura Baisas

A gray wolf howling in the woods. The wolves come in many colors including white, tan, black, and brown.

Endangered Species

A new pack of endangered gray wolves is roaming Northern California

By Laura Baisas

Closeup photo of water pipe segments fitted together in situ at Pingliangtai.

Ceramic pipes kept this town from flooding during monsoons 4,000 years ago

By Laura Baisas

Talpa hakkariensis, found in the Hakkari region of southeastern Turkey, was identified as a new species of mole, highly distinctive in terms of both its morphology and DNA. The mole is peeking out of an underground burrow.

These moles may have been hiding for 3 million years

By Laura Baisas

Archaeologists dig in the dirt with a brush and scraper.

Mysterious skull points to a possible new branch on human family tree

By Laura Baisas

The Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone National Park, with steam rising and mountains in the distance. Temperatures at Yellowstone’s famous hot springs can reach 198 degrees Fahrenheit.

Don’t lick the toads and other things to avoid at national parks

By Laura Baisas

A male peacock displaying his signature blue and green plumage.

Miami suburb turns to vasectomies to solve its peacock problem

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s impression of the planet Beta Pictoris b orbiting its star.

Watch 17 years of an exoplanet’s journey in only 10 seconds

By Laura Baisas

Maxar satellite imagery on August 9, 2023 showing total destruction of the Lahaina square and outlets after the Lahaina Wildfire, with one building still actively burning.

Hurricane-powered wildfires sweep across Maui

By Laura Baisas

A man is looking in a glass case of coprolites collected in Nong Yakong village, Chaiyaphum Province, Thailand.

Rare parasites found in 200 million-year-old reptile poop

By Laura Baisas

Maya Tilousi, member of the Hopi Tribe, Havasupai Tribe of Grand Canyon, and the Cheyanne and Arapaho Tribes, shakes hands with President Joe Biden at Red Butte Airfield, 25 miles south of Tusayan, Arizona, on August 8, 2023. Biden announced he is putting the brakes on uranium mining around the Grand Canyon and willl give an area of nearly one million acres national monument status.

Nearly 1 million acres of land near the Grand Canyon is now a national monument

By Laura Baisas

A hair whorl is a patch of hair growing in a circular pattern around a single point that is determined by the orientation of hair follicles.

The swirls and whorls of your hairline come from multiple genes

By Laura Baisas

Two penguins and a seal on the Antarctic Peninsula.

Antarctica is in the climate change crosshairs

By Laura Baisas

Reconstruction of Hupehsuchus about to engulf a shoal of shrimp. The ancient lizard widely opens its skinny snout and large mouth to swallow a large ball of shrimp.

The planet’s first filter feeder could be this extinct marine reptile

By Laura Baisas

A Heliconius butterfly with black, orange, and white on its wings.

Butterflies can remember specific flower foraging routes

By Laura Baisas

A long and skinny silver trumpetfish uses a colorful parrotfish as camouflage.

Trumpetfish use other fish as camouflage

By Laura Baisas

A mother holds a hand of a tiny newborn baby. Postpartum depression is a leading cause of maternal mortality.

FDA approves first postpartum depression pill

By Laura Baisas

JWST/NIRcam composite image of the Ring Nebula. The image clearly shows the main ring, surrounded by a faint halo and with many delicate structures. The interior of the ring is filled with hot gas. The star which ejected all this material is visible at the very center.

Space Telescope

The Ring Nebula is a glowing gas-filled donut in the latest JWST snap

By Laura Baisas

A newborn baby's hand with a hospital bracelet around his or her wrist. RSV sends about 58,000 children under five to the hospital, and kills 100 to 300 infants every year in the United States.

RSV antibody shot will be available for babies in the US this fall

By Laura Baisas

A woodpecker uses a bird feeder. Interest in bird feeding surged in 115 countries during early COVD-19 lockdowns.

People around the world got really into feeding birds during the pandemic

By Laura Baisas

The physical reconstruction of the necklace found in the Neolithic village of Ba’ja in Jordan. It has about 16 strands of beads that meet together in a circle with a gemstone in it and three other strands on top.

Ancient child’s grave holds intricate necklace with more than 2,000 stones

By Laura Baisas

A moth called a tobacco budworm on a green leaf. Moths like the tobacco budworm use pheromone signaling to find mates.

How male tobacco budworm moths found their perfect cologne

By Laura Baisas

Artistic reconstruction of a group of Burgessomedusa phasmiformis swimming in the Cambrian sea.

Jellyfish may have been roaming the seas for at least 500 million years

By Laura Baisas

The general atmosphere at HBO's The HeLa Project Exhibit For the film adaptation of "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" on April 6, 2017 in New York City. Two women stand by a portrait of Lacks wearing a red dress.

Henrietta Lacks’ stolen cells changed medicine—and her family is finally getting compensated

By Laura Baisas

Colorful gemstones nearly arranged. Iron content correlates to the signature purple hue in amethysts and elements including chromium, vanadium, and copper also impact a gem’s color.

Gemstones carry the tale of their geographic origins

By Laura Baisas

A woman holds an alcoholic drink in a bar.

Deaths related to excessive alcohol consumption rise in recent years—especially for women

By Laura Baisas

A bee on a peach rose. Understanding how flowering plants and bees evolved together can help inform conservation efforts for pollinators and how to keep their populations healthy.

The world’s earliest bees may have called Gondwana home

By Laura Baisas

A shower of Perseids meteors lights up the sky in 2009 in this NASA time-lapse image.

Two full moons, colorful meteors, and an asteroid will light up August’s sky

By Laura Baisas

Smoke rises as teams try to extinguish wildfires on Rhodes island, Greece on July 25, 2023. Some 19,000 people have been evacuated from the Greek island of Rhodes as wildfires continued burning for a sixth day, authorities said on Sunday. As many as 266 firefighters and 49 fire engines were on the ground battling the blazes, assisted by five helicopters and 10 airplanes.

July 2023 was likely the hottest month in 120,000 years

By Laura Baisas

A scanning electron picture of a female Panagrolaimus kolymaensis nematode.

Recently awoken 46,000-year-old nematodes already have 100 generations of babies

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s impression of Solnhofia parsonsi’s environment in an Upper Jurassic lagoon 150 million years ago in what is now Lower Bavaria. The turtle swims in a shallow body of water, with fish swimming near it and pterosaurs flying above.

150 million-year-old turtle ‘pancake’ found in Germany

By Laura Baisas

Two Minimocursors stand by a body of water as the sun rises. Minimocursor was an herbivore that was likely widespread across eastern Asia.

New dinosaur species is nicknamed Jurassic’s ‘smallest runner’

By Laura Baisas

A pink river dolphin, or boto, displaying aerial behavior in the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve.

Endangered Species

Eavesdropping on pink river dolphins could help save them

By Laura Baisas

Hospital equipment monitors a patient's vital signs. The Midwestern region of the United States is the only part of the country that did not record more hospitalizations last week than the one before.

COVID-19 hospitalizations and cases rise in possible summer wave

By Laura Baisas

A mountain rises above the buildings of Machu Picchu. The former Inca royal estate stands at the meeting point between the Peruvian Andes and the Amazon Basin and is made up of close to 200 structures.

Machu Picchu was home to ancient people from all over South America

By Laura Baisas

An aerial view of Mont Saint-Michel in northern France. The Paris Basin region is known for prehistoric funerary sites archaeologists use to study early neolithic settlements.

Scientists build intricate Neolithic family tree from 7,000-year-old DNA

By Laura Baisas

Dead elkhorn coral at Sombrero Reef in the Florida Keys. The white areas are bleached coral, the brownish orange patches are "tissue slough", coral tissue that has died before it has a chance to bleach.

Mass coral reef bleaching in Florida as ocean temperatures hit 100 degrees

By Laura Baisas

A flower of a Nasa humboldtiana subspecies called humboldtiana that was rediscovered by a team of botanists and citizen scientists for the first time in 162 years. The flower has four white petals, leading down to a center of pink petals.

These unusual plants had disappeared—until citizen scientists helped hunt them down

By Laura Baisas

A billboard displays a temperature of 118 degrees Fahrenheit during a record heat wave in Phoenix, Arizona on July 18, 2023. Swaths of the United States home to more than 80 million people were under heat warnings or advisories, as relentless, record-breaking temperatures continued to bake western and southern states.

July’s extreme heat waves ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change

By Laura Baisas

A young star named V960 Mon is at the center, with dusty material with the potential to form planets surrounding it. V960 Mon is located over 5000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Monoceros.

Dust clumps around a young star could one day form planets

By Laura Baisas

A baby lionhead rabbit sits in the grass. These domesticated rabbits are named after the lion-like mane around their faces.

Florida suburb is overrun by fluffy rabbits after breeder goes rogue

By Laura Baisas

A kākāpō chick. The birds are are large flightless parrots from New Zealand who are masters of camouflage and known for a booming call.

A flightless parrot is returning to mainland New Zealand after a 40-year absence

By Laura Baisas

A group of colorful spices on a wooden table with a mortar and pestle.

Leftovers of a 2,000-year-old curry discovered on stone cooking tools

By Laura Baisas

American actor Richard Dreyfuss (left) (as marine biologist Hooper) and British author and actor Robert Shaw (as shark fisherman Quint) look off the stern of Quint's fishing boat the 'Orca' at the terrifying approach of the mechanical giant shark dubbed 'Bruce' in a scene from the film 'Jaws' directed by Steven Spielberg, 1975.

Why the creators of ‘Jaws’ regretted making sharks the monsters

By Laura Baisas

This Hubble Space Telescope image of the asteroid Dimorphos was taken on December 19, 2022, about four months after the asteroid was impacted by NASA's DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test). Hubble’s sensitivity reveals a few dozen boulders knocked off the asteroid by the force of the collision. These are among the faintest objects Hubble has ever photographed inside the solar system.

Space Telescope

Smashed asteroid surrounded by a ‘cloud’ of boulders

By Laura Baisas

The sun sets over a large ice berg in Greenland, with a large chunk of fallen ice floating in the ocean. Greenland’s continental glacier covers about 80 percent of the 836,3000-square-mile land mass.

Greenland’s ice sheets aren’t as old—or as resilient—as scientists expected

By Laura Baisas

A saber tooth cat fossil is displayed during a press preview of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History on June 4, 2019.

Paleontologists discover two new sabertooth cat species

By Laura Baisas

High fiber foods, including coconuts, Brussel sprouts, squash, and spinach on a wooden table.

Chronic constipation could be a sign of a worsening health condition

By Laura Baisas

An artistic reconstruction showing how this 300,000 year-old stick would have been thrown on a hunt. Two men stand in a shallow body of water, with one aiming the stick towards three birds.

A javelin-like stick shows early humans may have been keen woodworkers

By Laura Baisas

This image taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) shows the young planetary system PDS 70, located nearly 400 light-years away from Earth. The system features a star at its center, around which the planet PDS 70 b is orbiting. On the same orbit as PDS 70b, astronomers have detected a cloud of debris that could be the building blocks of a new planet or the remnants of one already formed. The ring-like structure that dominates the image is a circumstellar disc of material, out of which planets are forming. There is in fact another planet in this system: PDS 70c, seen to the right of the inner rim of the disc.

New image reveals a Jupiter-like world that may share its orbit with a ‘twin’

By Laura Baisas

Aerial view of Shishaldin Volcano with Isanotski Peaks in the background, taken from a helicopter overflight during geology field work on Unimak Island in the Aleutians. August 15, 2018.

Alaska’s Shishaldin Volcano spews 5.5-mile-high ash cloud

By Laura Baisas

Currency printed by Franklin and his partner David Hall and later by the firm of Hall and William Sellers. Soon after establishing himself as an independent printer, Benjamin Franklin was awarded the “very profitable Jobb” of printing Pennsylvania bills of credit, partly because he had written and published a pamphlet on the need for paper currency in 1729.

Benjamin Franklin used science to protect his money from counterfeiters

By Laura Baisas

Illustration showing Repenomamus robustus as it attacks Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis moments before a volcanic debris flow buries them both about 125 million years ago.

This badger-like mammal may have died while trying to eat a dinosaur

By Laura Baisas

A preterm baby in an incubator in a neonatal intensive care unit. RSV sends about 58,000 children under five to the hospital every year in the United States.

FDA approves long-acting medication to protect babies from RSV

By Laura Baisas

A green sea turtle swims in the ocean.

Hungry green sea turtles have eaten in the same seagrass meadows for about 3,000 years

By Laura Baisas

In this artist’s rendering from 2020, the small white orb represents the white dwarf (a remnant of a long-dead sun-like star), while the purple foreground object is the newly discovered brown dwarf companion, confirmed by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. This faint brown dwarf was previously overlooked until being spotted by citizen scientists working with Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, a NASA-funded citizen science project.

A Jupiter-sized dwarf star burns half as hot as a campfire

By Laura Baisas

A protester stands next to a digital display of an unofficial heat reading at Furnace Creek Visitor Center during a heat wave in Death Valley National Park in Death Valley, California, on July 16, 2023. The signs read “this is the climate emergency,” and “happy death day.”

Extreme heat warning extends to more than 100 million people in the US

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s illustration of Alligator munensis, which is skimming the water with its eye out and surrounded by lush green trees. The large tooth sockets towards the back of its mouth suggest this extinct gator could crush shells and may have snacked on hard-shelled prey like snails.

Extinct snub-nosed gator had big teeth for crushing snails

By Laura Baisas

Multiple boxes of Diet Coke on a store shelf.

WHO categorizes aspartame as a possible carcinogen—but don’t panic

By Laura Baisas

A dire wolf reconstruction on exhibit at the La Brea Tar Pits & Museum.

Mighty saber-toothed cats and dire wolves probably had achy joints

By Laura Baisas

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