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The elusive striped "cat-fox" familiar mostly to Corsican shepherds and as a source of intrigue to scientists, is indeed its own species specific to the French Mediterranean island, the French office for Biodiversity (OFB) announced Thursday. New genetic analysis has "revealed a unique genetic strain to the wild cats" found in the remote forest undergrowth of northern Corsica, it confirmed. Genetic sampling clearly distinguishes the ring-tailed Corsican cat-foxes from mainland forest felines and domestic cats, said the OFB in a statement. While resembling house cats in some ways, the cat-fox earned its name from its length—measuring 90 centimeters (35 inches)...

Mexico’s president posted a photo on his social media accounts Saturday showing what he said appeared to be a mythological woodland spirit similar to an elf. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador did not seem to be joking when he posted the photo of an “Aluxe,” a mischievous woodland spirit in Mayan folklore. López Obrador wrote the photo “was taken three days ago by an engineer, it appears to be an aluxe,” adding “everything is mystical.”

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador did not seem to be joking when he posted the photo of an “Aluxe,” a mischievous woodland spirit in Mayan folklore. López Obrador wrote the photo “was taken three days ago by an engineer, it appears to be an aluxe,” adding “everything is mystical.” The nighttime photo shows a tree with a branch forming what looks like a halo of hair, and what may be stars forming the figure’s eyes. López Obrador has long expressed reverence for indigenous cultures and beliefs. Engineers and workers are in the Yucatan peninsula, constructing a tourist train that is...

To look at the Tully monster, it’s reasonable to say that it’s reminiscent of a slug. At its mid-body, what are believed to be eyes protrude outward on two stalks, like those of a slug. However, in the place where one might assume the mouth would be located is a long, thin appendage with a claw at its end. This claw appears to have teeth. In 2016, a group of scientists conducted a study and said the Tully monster had finally been classified. Their evidence suggested that it was, in fact, a vertebrate. The study focused on prominent features in...

The Sandhills of North Carolina is said to be the only place in the world where bees produce purple honey, an iridescent concoction that looks more like alien goo than the sweet nectar we know and love. It sounds like the stuff of legends, something to lure honey and beekeeping aficionados from around the world, but this extremely rare liquid is quite real. Purple honey is said to be sweeter than the amber kind and apparently has some subtle fruit notes as well. Purple honey is a rare treat that usually commands a higher price than the amber kind, but...

An example of a Brooksella 'fossil'. (Nolan et al., PeerJ, 2023) An ancient three-dimensional star-shaped 'thing' still baffles scientists more than a century after its discovery. The undetermined whatchamacallits were found in 500-million-year-old bedrock in the southwestern United States in 1896. To the untrained eye, they look sort of like bundt cakes: circular with radial lobes spreading outwards like a starfish or the spokes of a bike. At the time, archaeologists assumed these were the remnants of ancient, tentacled jellyfish, a lineage of animal that stretches back at least 890 million years. They named it Brooksella alternata, which became a...

A remarkable video out of Utah shows what appears to be a sizeable creature crossing the peak of a snow-covered mountain with ease and some suspect that the peculiar traveler could be Bigfoot. The wild footage was reportedly captured last Wednesday by a witness who was observing the Wasatch Mountain range from the nearby community of Farmington. To his surprise, he noticed and something moving across the mountain's Francis Peak at an elevation of around 9,500 feet, where the terrain was covered with a thick layer of snow, and proceeded to film the strange scene with his cell phone. While...

In the 1960s, one pocket of uranium hidden within the mountains was transformed into a productive mine, and the massive element used as fuel for nuclear fission was extracted to the tune of more than 1,000 tonnes per year. But by 1990, the Königstein mine‘s production had fallen off, and much of the mine was flooded... Then strange life forms started to move in, prompting the mine’s keepers to call in scientists... In the damp, dark, acidic, uranium-filled environment, biofilms composed of microbes had taken over. Orange acidic “streamers” looking like long, thin worms lazily swayed in the liquid drainage...

RESEARCHERS have uncovered a bizarre new species of fish that resembles a unicorn with a prominent horn protruding from the front of its head. The fish, which is blind and also lacks scales or any pigmentation, was found in pitch-black cave water within China's mountainous Guizhou province in the country's southwest. Researchers have uncovered a bizarre fish species resembling a unicornCredit: Xu et el. 2023 The fish was found in a black-water Chinese caveCredit: Xu et el. 2023 The researchers dubbed the fish, which measures between 4.1 to 5.7 inches long, Sinocyclocheilus longicornus. Details of the findings were published on...

Millions of fish are harvested across the world each year, but nearly half are killed due to diseases. However, studies have found that by inserting alligator genes into catfish, their survival chances increase by fivefold. The gene, dubbed cathelicidin, contains properties that protect reptiles from infections when wounded. Typically, farmers treat sick fish with antibiotics, but this contributes to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But now scientists at Auburn University in Alabama are fusing the DNA of the two species. Scientists used CRISPR to insert the alligator gene that codes for cathelicidin into catfish. It found the survival rate of...

Amidst seemingly constant news that more and more species are going extinct, it’s always exciting when experts discover new species, or rediscover an animal or plant from a species that hasn’t been spotted in decades (or even centuries). It can also be a thrill when someone spots an animal or plant from an incredibly rare species that humans have only seen a few times in the past. There are sure to be a number of new species in 2022, so every time one is spotted this year, we’ll keep updating this article. The small longhead darter fish In early January...

Ever since M. King Hubbert in the 1950s convinced a lot of people with his "peak oil" theory that production would collapse and we'd eventually exhaust our crude supplies, the clock has been running. And running. And it will continue to run for some time, as technology and new discoveries show that there's still an ocean of oil under our feet.Engineering and Technology Magazine reported this week that BP — the company that once wanted to be known as "Beyond Petroleum" rather than "British Petroleum" — is saying "the world is no longer at risk of running out of resources.""Thanks...

THE Moon destroyed a forest on Earth just by wobbling, according to a new study. The theory solves a mystery from 2015 which involved tens of millions of mangrove trees dying in Australia.... ...The researchers used 30 years of national satellite data to conduct their research and correlate the Moon's behavior with the mass tree death. This helped them spot a pattern of trees dying every 18 to 19 years, which is in keeping with the Moon wobble timeline....

Kap København Formation Two Million Years Ago Reconstruction of Kap København formation two million years ago in a time when the temperature was SIGNIFICANTLY WARMER than northernmost Greenland today. Credit: Beth Zaikenjpg ******************************************************************************** A ‘game-changing’ new chapter in the history of evolution has been opened after two-million-year-old DNA has been identified for the first time. Researchers discovered microscopic fragments of environmental DNA in Ice Age sediment in northern Greenland. Using cutting-edge technology, they found that the fragments are one million years older than the previous record for DNA, which was sampled from a Siberian mammoth bone. “For the first time...

Scientists discovered the oldest known DNA and used it to reveal what life was like 2 million years ago in the northern tip of Greenland...With animal fossils hard to come by, the researchers extracted environmental DNA, also known as eDNA, from soil samples..."I wouldn't have, in a million years, expected to find mastodons in northern Greenland," said Love Dalen, a researcher in evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University...

Last year, a test of cephalopod smarts reinforced how important it is for us humans to not underestimate animal intelligence. Cuttlefish were given a new version of the marshmallow test, and the results appeared to demonstrate that there's more going on in their strange little brains than we knew. Their ability to learn and adapt, the researchers said, could have evolved to give cuttlefish an edge in the cutthroat eat-or-be-eaten marine world they live in. The marshmallow test, or Stanford marshmallow experiment, is pretty straightforward. A child is placed in a room with a marshmallow. They are told if they...

For almost 50,000 years, viruses have been waiting, frozen in layers of permafrost that have thawed with the warming of Earth. A recent study of a section of Siberian permafrost by scientists from the French National Centre for Scientific Research found 13 viruses that have survived 48,500 years, according to Canada’s Global News. That’s older than the previous oldest virus found, which was 30,000 years old. One of the new finds has been dubbed a “zombie virus” by the New York Post. “One quarter of the Northern hemisphere is underlain by permanently frozen ground, referred to as permafrost. Due to...

C. cooki, measuring about 10 millimeters (0.4 inches) long. (Jeff Goddard) **************************************************************** A species of clam known only by the 28,000-year-old fossils it left behind has turned up alive and well on an American shoreline. The small, translucent bivalve, known as Cymatioa cooki, was recently discovered hiding in the rocky intertidal zone of southern California – a place carefully combed over by scientists for many, many years. "It's not all that common to find alive a species first known from the fossil record, especially in a region as well-studied as Southern California," says marine ecologist Jeff Goddard from the...

Scientists have discovered several elusive species of microorganisms. Scientists have discovered new microscopic species. Researchers have found a number of very rare species of microorganisms, some of which have never been observed before and others which have eluded the attention of researchers for more than a century. Professor Genoveva Esteban of Bournemouth University and James Weiss, an independent researcher working in his own lab in Warsaw, Poland, with his two cats, made the discovery of these elusive species and published their findings in the scientific journal Protist. Their approach to research and the discovery of these new and rare...

This creature was found by Russian soldiers on Sakhalin shoreline. Sakhalin area is situated near to Japan, it’s the most eastern part of Russia, almost 5000 miles to East from Moscow (Russia is huge). People don’t know who is it. According to the bones and teeth - it is not a fish. According to its skeleton - it’s not a crocodile or alligator. It has a skin with hair or fur. It has been said that it was taken by Russian special services for in-depth studies, and we are lucky that people who encountered it first made those photos before...