Humans can live up to 100+ years – which is pretty remarkable. But, some animals even outlive us. Here are the top 10 longest-living animals in the world.
Category: Life on Earth
Tyrannosaurus rex (rex meaning “king” in Latin) lived throughout what is now western North America 68 to 66 million years ago, during the Upper Cretaceous period. Back then, there was a big island (an island continent) called “Laramidia” there. But, how many Tyrannosaurus rex walked the Earth? At the same time, and in total?
Ashley Poust, University of California, Berkeley and Daniel Varajão de Latorre, University of California, Berkeley
The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.
The destruction of tropical forests is a major contributor to biodiversity loss and the climate crisis. In response, conservationists and scientists like us are debating how to best catalyze the recovery of these forests. How do you take a patch of earth littered with tree stumps, or even a grassy pasture or palm oil plantation, and turn it back into a thriving forest filled with its original species?
David Burslem, University of Aberdeen; Christopher Philipson, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, and Mark Cutler, University of Dundee
Earth hasn’t always been a blue and green oasis of life in an otherwise inhospitable solar system. During our planet’s first 50 million years, around 4.5 billion years ago, its surface was a hellscape of magma oceans, bubbling and belching with heat from Earth’s interior.
This… is… wonderful. A blue whale drone footage published by the DolphinDroneDom channel with the title of “the best Blue Whale drone footage on YouTube”. The video actually deserves its title. A must-watch. Speakers on!
Categories
20 Amazing Sperm Whale Facts
The sperm whale, also known as the cachalot (Physeter macrocephalus), is the largest toothed whale and one of the most extraordinary animals in the ocean. These deep-sea giants have fascinated humans for centuries, with their impressive size, unique behaviors, and mysterious underwater lives. Here are the 20 amazing sperm whale facts that reveal what makes these incredible creatures so special.
In our continuing search for other life in the universe, one place has always looked promising – Mars. It is a rocky planet like Earth, orbiting the same star, and at a distance where water could have been present on the planet.
Categories
20 Amazing Fox Facts
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals. They belong to the dog family (Canidae, from Latin, canis, “dog”, see notes 1). Here are 20 amazing fox facts.
It took evolution 3 or 4 billion years to produce humans. If the climate had completely failed just once in that time then evolution would have come to a crashing halt and we would not be here now. So to understand how we came to exist on planet Earth, we’ll need to know how Earth managed to stay fit for life for billions of years.
One of the most enduring tropes about crocodiles is to describe them as “living fossils”. They are cold, slow-moving, and scaly, so they look like how one might picture a dinosaur. Like many clichés, there is an element of truth to this comparison. The