A UC Berkeley paleontologist discovered a “cat” fossil in a museum that is actually from an early diverging lineage of saber-toothed cat. The cat’s relatively small upper canines compared to later species of sabertooths reinforces the theory that growing long canines was an evolutionary rachet that led to the demise of sabertooths. The famed Smilodon exemplifies this trend. It had some of the largest fangs of any saber-toothed cat before going extinct 10,000 years ago.

Arabian Sea humpback whales have, at some point during their evolutionary history, adapted to living hyper-locally within the confines of the Arabian Sea. Now, researchers monitored their dives using satellite tags which allowed them to track their movement across the Arabian Sea. The results showed most whales are homebodies – moving within a narrow latitudinal band spanning just a few hundred kilometers. Just one whale broke the pattern and travelled across the Arabian Sea. This is the first direct evidence of a long-distance journey made by an Arabian Sea humpback whale. The team said better understanding of these whales’ movement could provide important insights for the endangered species’ conservation.

Alexandre Antonelli, currently Executive Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London, is to take up the Crown Princess Victoria Professorship in Biodiversity at the University of Gothenburg. The newly established chair marks the start of a major research initiative on biodiversity at the university.

A systematic assessment of 102,847 plant specimens across nine subtropical mountains in Jiangxi, China, identifies four interconnected collection biases and proposes evidence-based strategies to improve sampling equity and conservation effectiveness.