Isaac Schultz
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An ‘RNA World’ Could Have Kickstarted Life on Earth
Researchers seeking to understand how life may have emerged from Earth’s primordial soup have found an interesting behavior of ribonucleic acid (RNA), which they suggest could have given way to RNA-based life. The team’s research, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes a ribozyme that could create an environment…
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Orcas Don’t Need Buddies to Kill and Eat Great White Sharks
Researchers studying orcas off the coast of South Africa recently observed one of the whales consuming a great white shark alone, in just two minutes. Since 2017, two orcas in particular have been wreaking havoc on the great whites off South Africa’s Mossel Bay. Dubbed Port and Starboard (cute!), the apex predators have developed a…
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Underwater Mountains Twice the Height of the Burj Khalifa Discovered Off the Chilean Coast
The crew of the Falkor (too) research vessel is at it again: In January, the team discovered four underwater mountains off the coast of Chile. The vessel has now identified 29 seamounts, hills, and trenches since 2012. The seamounts range in height from 5,220 feet (1,591 meters) to a staggering 8,796 feet (2,681 meters). For…
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The 15 Most Fun Evolutionary Adaptations
Billions of years of evolution has given rise to us, the millions of species that persist on planet Earth today. Some of us are small, some of us are big, and some of us have huge ears, flat tails, compound eyes, or infrared vision. Each of these adaptations has its merits, but only a handful…