World’s most dangerous bird has bizarre, glowing headgear
Structures on cassowaries’ skulls fluoresce under UV light, hinting at a hidden visual signal
Often labeled “the world’s most dangerous birds,” cassowaries just got even more intriguing. The aggressive, flightless birds have structures on top of their heads called casques, the purpose of which has long confused scientists.
To the human eye, casques look fairly plain—but new research published last month in Scientific Reports finds this headgear fluoresces under ultraviolet (UV) light, possibly aiding the birds’ visual displays...
Although ceratopsian dinosaurs were widespread around the northern continents during the Cretaceous, for a long time they appeared to have been completely absent from Europe. A few possible fragments were found – but their identification as ceratopsians was highly disputed, with some paleontologists instead identifying the remains as belonging to ornithopods.
But this year some new fossils have given more support to the ceratopsian interpretation, suggesting that a whole diverse European branch of these dinosaurs was there the whole time. They'd just been misidentified as rhabdodontids due to the convergent anatomy of their teeth, jaws, and limbs.
One of these newly-recognized ceratopsians was Ferenceratops shqiperorum (previously known as Zalmoxes shqiperorum), which lived during the late Cretaceous (~72-66 million years ago) on the subtropical Hațeg Island, in the region of what is now Romania.
It was a small species, about 2m long (6'6"), and seems to have lacked the elaborate frills and horns seen in many other ceratopsians, despite being closely related to both protoceratopsids and stem-ceratopsids.
Its new genus name references Ferenc, the birth name of Baron Franz Nopcsa, the gay Transylvanian paleobiologist-adventurer-spy who originally found some of its fossil remains.
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References:
Ashworth, James. "Europe’s missing ceratopsian dinosaurs have finally been found." Natural History Museum, 07 January 2026. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2026/january/europes-missing-ceratopsian-dinosaurs-have-finally-been-found.html
Csiki-Sava, Zoltan, et al. "Island life in the Cretaceous-faunal composition, biogeography, evolution, and extinction of land-living vertebrates on the Late Cretaceous European archipelago." ZooKeys 469 (2015): 1. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.469.8439
Maidment, Susannah CR, et al. "A hidden diversity of ceratopsian dinosaurs in Late Cretaceous Europe." Nature (2026): 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09897-w
Wikipedia contributors. “Ajkaceratops” Wikipedia, 25 May 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajkaceratops
Wikipedia contributors. “Ferenceratops” Wikipedia, 17 May 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferenceratops
Back in 2017, @leotide posted this incredible piece, which is easily one of my favourite scientific illustrations of all time.
An actual photo of a skinless Geckolepis (here a never-before-posted photo of a G. cf. maculata, not G. megalepis) is below the cut. There is no blood or gore, but I could see how this would make some uncomfortable, so I have hidden it.
I have examined dozens of museum specimens of these geckos, and I haven't found a single one that appeared never to have lost at least some part of its skin or tail and regrown them. So, although it seems extreme, this is something these geckos do readily, and are specially adapted to do. Remarkably, they seem to be able to make a full recovery, even when a huge portion of the skin is lost in this way. They seek shelter in a humid spot, and let the skin regrow—a process that apparently only takes a matter of weeks. And yes, it's the whole dermis, not just the scales. This makes my work as a taxonomist very hard, because counting scales is one of the most reliable ways to tell lizard species apart.
The readiness with which these geckos lose their scales means that a careless capture can quickly result in an animal that looks like the one pictured above. Many museum specimens look like this one—impossible to count scales on. It is for this reason that I have developed special techniques to work with these geckos. It honestly shocks me that they are in the pet trade; you could not ask for a more fragile reptile pet!
Or as I like to call her, the Jellybean. And yes, this crumb of a creature is in fact a wasp— albeit a very tiny one. Oh, and a lady. The males of this genus are winged and have much more typical wasp appearance. Meanwhile, the females use their tininess to go undetected and hitch rides on spiders, waiting for them to lay their eggs so that she can lay her own within them.
(And if you want to see them in motion, I recommend checking out photo 2's source as the photographer has multiple clips of one preening!)
Waukartus muscularis was a small marine arthropod that lived during the early Silurian, about 437 million years ago, in an equatorial inland sea covering what is now Wisconsin, USA.
It was a member of the myriapods, related to modern centipedes and millipedes – but it represents a very early offshoot of this lineage, with its ancestors branching off sometime before the amphibious euthycarcinoids.
Growing up to about 3cm long (~1.2"), Waukartus had a head with four pairs of small appendages and what may be a pair of small stalked eyes, eleven body segments each with one pair of legs, and a telson with a pair of blade-like projections.
It appears to have been fully aquatic, but its unbranched limbs closely resemble those of terrestrial myriapods, suggesting that these arthropods initially evolved their walking legs for use on the seafloor and only later exapted them for land.
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References:
Briggs, Derek EG, et al. "A marine stem-myriapod from the Silurian Waukesha Lagerstätte, Wisconsin, USA: terrestrial traits pre-date the transition to land." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 293.2070 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2026.0131
Wendruff, Andrew J., et al. "Paleobiology and taphonomy of exceptionally preserved organisms from the Waukesha Biota (Silurian), Wisconsin, USA." Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 546 (2020): 109631. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2020.109631
Wikipedia contributors. “Waukartus” Wikipedia, 11 May 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waukartus
Fantastic article!! The guys looking for it were fish researchers who saw it one time, knew instantly it was an undescribed species, and then tried for nearly 20 years to find and document it!
It's a type of ghost pipefish, related to seahorses, and it floats around coral reefs looking like a piece of algae and hunting unsuspecting prey
They are, of course, named after Snuffleufagus from Sesame Street!
Later on it the project, they got citizen science involved, and people across the Pacific started reporting sightings of snuffy fish from all over!
Hooray for science and hooray for S. snuffleufagus !
This deep-sea fish has one of the best strategies for hiding in the deep-sea 🖤✨️
The California slickhead (Alepocephalus sp.) is often found below 1,000 meters (about 3,300 feet). Their name was inspired by the lack of scales on the fish's head. Those large eyes give the slickhead an edge in an environment where food can be scarce. It can glimpse even the faintest flickers of bioluminescence—the “living light” produced by deep-sea animals.
Deep-sea animals have a variety of remarkable adaptations to help them hide in the midnight zone, but this species uses the shade of their skin to hide from predators and prey in this dark expanse. Ultra-black fishes have unique structures in their skin that very efficiently trap and absorb light. Melanin—the same pigment found in human skin—is densely packed into super-thin layers on the outermost surface of their skin. While most light photons are immediately absorbed, the specific shape, size, and configuration of these melanin layers scatter any missed photons into neighboring skin cells, where they are subsequently absorbed. Ultimately, ultra-black skin absorbs 99.5 percent (or more) of the visible light with virtually none reflected.
Nanophoca vitulinoides was a small earless seal that lived during the mid-Miocene (~14-12 million years ago) in what is now Belgium, which at the time was covered by the southern margin of the North Sea.
It was slightly smaller than any modern pinnipeds, no more than 1m long (3'3"), and had more mobile front and back flippers than modern earless seals — indicating it had a different swimming style than its living relatives, and that it may have been more mobile on land.
It also had a very dense skeleton, which would have made it a slower, less maneuverable swimmer. It may have fed on small prey on the seafloor in shallow coastal waters, similar to modern bearded seals.
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References:
Dewaele, Leonard, et al. "Reappraisal of the extinct seal “Phoca” vitulinoides from the Neogene of the North Sea Basin, with bearing on its geological age, phylogenetic affinities, and locomotion." PeerJ 5 (2017): e3316. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3316
Dewaele, Leonard, et al. "Generalized osteosclerotic condition in the skeleton of Nanophoca vitulinoides, a dwarf seal from the Miocene of Belgium." Journal of Mammalian Evolution 26.4 (2019): 517-543. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10914-018-9438-9
Wikipedia contributors. “Nanophoca” Wikipedia, 23 Mar. 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanophoca
So a creche in ecology is a group of animals that take care of their offspring as a group. Grouping together like this can help with protection against predators, finding food, enduring the weather, and gives the parents time to "rest", as sometimes the parents will alternate who's being the primary watchers while others get to hunt by themselves for a bit, like a baby animal daycare.
But ye lions do this once cubs each a certain age. A decent amount of birds do it (for example: flamingos and a lot of penguin, duck, and goose species). Gharials (a type of South Asian crocodilian) form creches with hundreds of babies from multiple nests (they lay under 100 eggs each and sometimes as few as 20). Feral hogs tend to form groups of mothers and young like this, and I saw 3 sows and like 15+ tiny babies the other day and they were so cute
Rattlesnakes will creche!! In some species mature adult females will hang out together (they're friends!) in shared dens and even birth their clutches together. Then one will babysit while the others go get food. Adult females have been seeing caring for their young like shooing young back into the den when a predator approaches.
You can watch LIVE rattlesnake den mothers and all their babies on Project Rattlecam!!!!
