Pure Science

Cosmos

Shark loss can have major effects on their ecosystems say researchers studying great white sharks in  South Africa and reefs in northern Australia. “The removal of a top predator leads to cascading effects on the marine food web” says...

Cosmos

Seabed mining companies want to harvest polymetallic nodules from the deep ocean floor to access critical metals like copper, cobalt and nickel for the green revolution. But how will mined sites recover? Researchers lead by the U.K.’s...

Cosmos

Bare-nosed wombat joey with its mother. Credit: © pittafisher CC BY Australians were outraged this month when an Instagram “influencer” named Sam Jones picked up a wild wombat joey and separated it from its mother. A video of the action...

Cosmos

You might know South Australia’s iconic Coorong from the famous Australian children’s book, Storm Boy, set around this coastal lagoon. This internationally important wetland is sacred to the Ngarrindjeri people and a haven for migratory...

Cosmos

Stem rust gets its name for creating what looks like rusty patches on infected plants. Credit: Brande Wulff Plant diseases are a major threat to global food security, causing about 20-30% losses in crop production each year. Climate change...

Cosmos

In an event mirroring Hollywood, palaeontologists have uncovered a kind of parasitic wasp preserved in amber which lived almost 100 million years ago. Sirenobethylus charybdis. Credit: Qiong Wu. Its unique parasitic behaviour is more...

Cosmos

Lepidopterist Michael Braby is sitting in his lab, peering at a photo of a butterfly specimen on his computer screen – just as he’s done countless times before. He has no inkling that he’s about to discover Australia’s greatest taxonomic...

Cosmos

An immersive Antarctic experience with Scenic Eclipse By Ian Connellan There are a few birdlife guarantees in life. Seagulls at Bondi Beach. Pigeons in New York (or London, or Melbourne, or Venice). Blue-footed boobies in the Galápagos...

Cosmos

New Zealand rig, also known as the spotted estuary smooth-hound, (Mustelus lenticulatus). Credit: © Rick Field (CC BY) More than 1,000 species of bony fishes make sounds to communicate with each other, but scientists thought sharks were...

Cosmos

Newly hatched White-necked Jacobin chick. Notice its dorsal fluffy down feathers. Credit: Michael Castaño-Díaz A baby hummingbird that looks like a dangerous caterpillar has been found in the rainforests of Panama. Credit: Michael...

Cosmos

The beaches of Aotearoa New Zealand were once jam-packed with southern elephant seals, according to new research that reveals how the species has moved over thousands of years. “At the time of human arrival in New Zealand, you would...

Cosmos

New analysis linking dinosaurs and Sonic the Hedgehog might explain how “proto-feathers” became the complex appendages, bird feathers. It’s widely accepted that birds are dinosaurs. Modern feathered friends are the evolutionary descendants...

Cosmos

Relatively good rainfall in Australia last year enabled the nation’s beleaguered fauna and flora to experience a short-term recovery, according to the latest state of the environment report. “Australia’s Environment 2024” (AER) scored a...

Cosmos

Modern humans may have descended from at least two ancestral populations, which diverged 1.5 million years ago and then reconnected 300,000 years ago. Up until now, evidence has suggested that Homo sapiens descended from a single lineage,...

Cosmos

Trailblazers: Dr Michelle Wille is a world expert on avian influenza. She is a Senior Scientist at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza, and recipient of the Victorian 2024 Young Tall Poppy Science Award and...

Cosmos

Seabird chicks that ingest even small amounts of plastic are suffering from hidden but severe health issues, including cell damage, organ failure, and cognitive decline, new research from the University of Tasmania has found. The study,...

Cosmos

Northern Territory crocodile populations have grown from 1000 to 100,000 in the fifty-four years since commercial hunting was banned — a slow-motion population explosion of teeth, powerful jaws and tails. Crocodile densities have...

Cosmos

Original fossil (ATE7-1) alongside the mirrored right side by means of virtual 3D imaging techniques. Credit: Maria D. Guillén / IPHES-CERCA / Elena Santos / CENIEH. A fossil found in Spain and dating to 1.4 to 1.1 million years ago is the...

Cosmos

Feral cats have been implicated in the deaths of reintroduced native mammals at two conservation sites in South Australia. Such predation can often mean failure for translocation programmes, say lead author, Dr Ned Ryan-Schofield of the...

Cosmos

The Australian Government has added 21 new species of fauna and flora to the threatened species list, with six more being uplisted to higher threat categories. This decision underscores Australia’s worsening extinction crisis as the nation...

Cosmos

There’s more to sex than reproduction — new research lead by the UK’s Durham University suggests that using sex to manage social tension is a trait our distant ancestors shared with all their hominoid descendants — humans,...

Cosmos

Despite being the largest land carnivore and a top Arctic predator that can weigh over 600 kg, polar bears start off surprisingly small. Blind, almost hairless, and weighing just 600g at birth, cubs are born in maternity dens under the...

Cosmos

Superb lyrebird (Menura novaehollandiae). Credit: tracielouise via Getty Images The superb lyrebird is arguably Australia’s most iconic native songbird, known for its ornate tail and incredible mimicry. The species can imitate natural and...

Cosmos

Palaeontologists may have finally filled a gap in the story of human evolution – and it may upend previously-held beliefs about how we got our big brains. The key is in ancient tooth enamel. Millions of years ago, early hominins relied on...

Cosmos

Koala (Phascolarctos cinereus). Credit: (c) Rolf Lawrenz, some rights reserved (CC BY) Sydney’s Koalas are facing a unique existential dilemma. New research from the University of Sydney reveals an isolated, chlamydia-free population, but...

Cosmos

The silica skeleton of a Venus’ flower basket sea sponge (Euplectella aspergillum). Credit: RMIT University A sea sponge skeleton made of glass has engineers wondering how it might improve building materials. The sponge in question lives...

Cosmos

Whale songs are rhythmic, structured and haunting, echoing through vast oceanic distances, but what do they really mean?  These songs are often tied to reproductive behaviour, migration timing, culture, abundance and distribution. Now...

Cosmos

Pandas have long confounded biologists because they have a digestive system which resembles that of carnivores, yet the bear species relies mostly on bamboo – a grass – for food. Bucking evolutionary trends, giant pandas (Ailuropoda...

Cosmos

Cuttlefish are known for their extraordinary cognitive abilities and their intricate and unique camouflage techniques. The sheltered waters of South Australia’s Upper Spencer Gulf Marine Park are home to the Giant Australian Cuttlefish...

Cosmos

Dolphins, playful, elegant and approachable, are loved worldwide but despite these interactions with humans – as attractive as it is – it puts them at risk. The South Australian government declared an area of a busy port and waterway...

Cosmos

Left to right: Christine Dudgeon, Nesha Ichida and Laura Simmons (Sea Life Sydney) put a leopard shark into tonic immobility. Credit: ReShark Australian marine scientists are using an ingenious, if peculiar method to extract semen from...

Cosmos

Fish cognitive abilities have been underrated for years, even the butt of jokes. But slowly researchers are coming to understand how they think and feel. A new observational study has revealed that Siamese fighting fish are often kept in...

Cosmos

Is the evolution of intelligence partly driven by love? A new study involving tiny fish swimming in mazes suggests that smarter fish have a better chance of mating and reproducing. “Evolution of animal intelligence has long been thought to...

Cosmos

Across south-west Australia, Aboriginal peoples have long built lizard traps by propping up rocks on granite outcrops. Now, it’s been found that these traps are not just culturally important but ecologically important too, providing...

Cosmos

Climate change is forcing sea turtles to nest earlier. Researchers monitoring nesting green and loggerhead turtles on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus have discovered that they are returning to their regular nesting spots earlier each...

Cosmos

Research into the shape of Neanderthal inner ears challenges the theory that the extinct human species originated out of an evolutionary event that led to a loss of part of their genetic diversity. The findings, published in Nature...

Cosmos

Dinosaur fossils found in southeastern Australia reveal a unique ecosystem unlike any other in the world. The research, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, describes a hierarchy of predators in Cretaceous Australia which...

Cosmos

The Committe. Credit: Wendy Binks, Stunned Emu Designs Emus have a reputation for being “bird-brained”. In her art, Wendy Binks of Stunned Emu Designs captures that quirky, if vacant, look in their eyes. But, despite widespread...

Cosmos

Marine scientists worried that key fish species, and “near threatened” dolphin and shellfish around South Australia’s coastline are under pressure are calling for stepped up conservation efforts to protect the ecosystems. Challenges of the...

Cosmos

Study author, Maëlan Tomasek, with a “volunteer” in the experiment conducted in the Mediterranean Sea. Credit: Maëlan Tomasek European researchers have made the startling claim that fish can recognise individual divers. In a peer reviewed...

Cosmos

The extinction of the largest dinosaurs might have aided the evolution of the small, fruit-eating ancestors of primates, according to new research. Early primates – ancestors of humans – would not have been able to flourish alongside...

Cosmos

Palaeontologists working in the Egyptian desert have uncovered a nearly complete skull of a leopard-sized predator that would have been at the top of the food chain 30 million years ago. The skull represents a new discovery from the...

Cosmos

Nature is ripe with interactions, everywhere you look. Think of the fungal-algal partnership, we call lichen, or clownfish and sea anemones (where’s Nemo?) swapping shelter and nutrients, or coral polyps and algae forming the Great Barrier...

Cosmos

New research has identified the extent to which human colonisation and hunting contributed to the extinction of New Zealand’s giant flightless birds, the moa. The research paper titled: “Was extinction of New Zealand’s avian megafauna an...

Cosmos

In an important advance in palaeontology, researchers have uncovered a 149-million-year-old fossil in southeast China which could be the earliest “true bird”. It is well understood that dinosaurs evolved into birds. Today, birds are the...

Cosmos

Bee-reaking news: Belgian scientists have developed a simple method to cryopreserve the semen of drones, the male equivalent of honey bees (Apis mellifera). As part of the FreezeBEE project at the University of Liège, the researchers...

Cosmos

Andrea the crocodile. Credit: Australia Zoo Crocodiles in northern Australia are altering their behaviour to try to keep cool as they experience increasingly stressful temperature extremes driven by climate change. New research has...

Cosmos

It is common for engineers to be inspired by nature. Now, researchers say we might be in for a revolution in palaeo-biomimetics – using the designs of ancient creatures to inform how we can design and build structures today. It’s not...

Cosmos

In a welcome spot of good news, researchers at Arid Recovery in South Australia have discovered that their small population of endangered kowaris has almost quadrupled in size. This is a promising sign for kowari conservation, and it gives...

Cosmos

Scientists have been able to use satellite imagery to find the warrens of wombats and rabbits in the remote Australian desert. A juvenile southern hairy-nosed wombat emerging from its burrow. Credit: Jason Edwards / The Image Bank...