A new Dartmouth study shows octopuses can use mirrors to find food out of sight, demonstrating spatial cognitive abilities. The results are published in Current Biology.

A new study on multiple genomes from the extinct cave lion has discovered that it represented a highly distinct evolutionary lineage, which separated from modern lions more than a million years ago. The results also show that the cave lion had a history of interbreeding with modern lions that was tightly linked to past climatic changes. These findings are published in the journal Cell in a study led by Swedish and British scientists.

Fossils from 520-million-year-old rocks in China provide the first clear evidence that bryozoans were part of the Cambrian explosion. Bryozoans are tiny, filter-feeding colonial animals common in today’s oceans, but their early history has long been unclear because they did not appear in the fossil record until about 50 million years after most major animal groups. These newly discovered fossils fill that gap, showing that bryozoans emerged during the Cambrian explosion alongside other early animal groups.

For generations, scientists believed a queen honeybee was made almost entirely by diet: feed an ordinary larva enough royal jelly and a ruler emerges. But new research suggests queens are created through a more elaborate process.

BUFFALO, NY — June 3, 2026 — A new research paper was published in Volume 18 of Aging-US on May 15, 2026, titled “Extracellular vesicles released by senescent myoblasts affect recipient cells via miRNA-target interactions.”

• Fossil fragments suggest Praearcturus gigas represents the largest scorpion ever discovered, perhaps one metre in length

• Specimens held in the Natural History Museum collection since the 1870s have been reinterpreted using modern techniques

• Giant scorpion lived tens of millions of years before other famous “giant” arthropods, reshaping ideas about how and why early arthropods grew so large

When compared to membrane affinity binding columns and ultracentrifugation, size exclusion chromatography isolation of extracellular vesicles (EVs) from bronchoalveolar lavage fluid yields the lowest contaminating free protein, highest nucleic acid content, and has similar yield of EVs while maintaining EV structure and function for downstream applications.

Structures of the human M-channel reveal a remarkably flexible assembly and the molecular basis for its subthreshold activation, enabling the design of a highly selective activator for precise epilepsy therapy.

Scientists repeatedly sampled microbes from six sites up to 1.5 kilometers deep across four years inside a former goldmine. Microbial ecosystems appear to be structured around shared functions rather than shared species. Each ecosystem was organized around two broad groups of microbes: a stable group and a responsive group. Ecosystems were very different among sites but largely stable through time. Study could have implications for underground engineering projects, including carbon storage.