If you want a glimpse of the future of Antarctica, look at King George Island. It sits at the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. This finger of land, which reaches toward South America, is the warmest part of the continent.



Thick ice blankets most of this island. But a rare oasis sits on its western edge. During summer, melting snow reveals rocky ground covered by a mushy green carpet. Its mostly moss and lichens, with a few other plants sprinkled in.



As our climate warms, this islands ice will shrink, expanding the green oasis. This will allow alien species from other parts of the world to take root. Human visitors are already unintentionally bringing in non-native species. These invaders could steamroll native plants and animals, transforming the landscape.



This thick ice sheet on King George island is in danger of melting away.Cyril Gosselin/Moment/Getty Images Plus



Within 200 or 300 years, scientists worry, the northern Antarctic Peninsula will likely look a lot different.



The biggest threat is that well get something that will look like South American [grassland], says Stef Bokhorst. A terrestrial ecologist, he works at Vrije University Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He envisions an open scrubland of miniature trees, like whats found in Patagonia, at the bottom tip of South America.



Since 1850, Earth has warmed by around 1.44 degrees Celsius (2.60 degrees Fahrenheit), on average. But the Antarctic Peninsula is currently warming nearly twice as quickly. Summer snows are slowly turning to rains, says Steven Chown. A biologist, he studies the conservation of polar species at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.



Most of Signy Island, near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, is covered in thick ice or barren rocks. But vegetation does cover some of the low-lying spots, as seen here.A.P. Taylor & S. Adlard, British Antarctic Survey (CC BY 4.0)



And Antarcticas warmer, wetter climate might not be good for its natives.



Vegetation at the south end of the world is very unique, notes Bokhorst.



Plants and animals found in the extreme north the Arctic resemble those elsewhere. The warmest parts of Greenland, Iceland and Svalbard Island (to their east) bustle with grasses, flowers, butterflies and bees. Rodents and foxes creep about.



Why Antarctica and the Arctic are polar opposites



Antarctica, in contrast, has been far more isolated, for 30 million years. It plunged into a far deeper cold than the Arctic. And its simple ecosystems look very different from those in the Arctic.



Across all of Antarctica and its islands, only two species of insects naturally exist. Both are flies, though one of them a midge lacks wings.



Antarctica hosts greenery only in a few places. Most of it is moss and lichens that creep over rocks. Across the whole Antarctic continent, youll find only two native species of vascular plants (those with roots, stems and leaves). One is a wispy hair grass. The other, a pearlwort, resembles a puffy green pincushion with tiny yellow flowers.



Antarctic hair grass and pearlwort (forming a green cushion above the grass) are the only two vascular plants native to Antarctica. These were found growing on Livingston Island, near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.Gerald Corsi/iStock/Getty Images Plus



You will not find [this sparse ecosystem] anywhere else on the planet, says Bokhorst. And its now threatened by climate change and invasive species. Within two or three centuries, alien species could replace many of the natives. Parts of the Antarctic Peninsula may look lush and green during summer.



Polar biologists dont welcome this.




As this map shows (exploded from globe at lower right), the Antarctic Peninsula and its islands are not far from the southern tip of South America. Many species are poised to hitchhike south on planes and ships as a warming climate melts what had been the Antarctics deep, permanent ice cover. See the full, expandable and navigable map here: South Shetland Islands and the Northern Antarctic Peninsula.Tom Patterson/U.S. Library of Congress (https://lccn.loc.gov/2024586062)




Vanished forests



Today, its hard to imagine parts of Antarctica turning green. After all, ice up to four kilometers (2.5 miles) thick now blankets 98 percent of the continent. Most of the rest is bare gravel and rock a frigid polar desert. Seals, penguins and seabirds (such as skuas and petrels) inhabit only the outer coastal fringes.



But it wasnt always that way.



Forty million years ago, Antarctica was much warmer than today. The Antarctic Peninsula was inhabited by frogs, ponds and forests of southern beech trees. Fossils of extinct frogs, mammals, birds, trees and plants are still found there today.S.P. Barrette & J.G. de Puerto Montt/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0), and Mats Wedin/Swedish Museum of Nat. Hist.



Forty million years ago, forests of southern beech trees covered much of Antarctica perhaps even the South Pole. Furry marsupials, similar to modern-day possums and badgers, prowled the undergrowth.



It was a warmer, more pleasant climate, says Byron Adams. A polar biologist, he works at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. That ancient climate, he says, was more like South Americas modern-day Patagonia.



Until 35 million years ago, Antarctica was linked to South America. Then the two continents started drifting apart.



South America still hosts southern beech trees and marsupials. But Antarctica, isolated at the bottom of the world, plunged into permanent cold. Thousands of its species died off, including trees and mammals.



Antarctic rocks hold fossils of beech trees, water lilies, frogs, mammals and other creatures. Only a few types of land animals all quite small have survived.



Turn over a rock and you may find insect-like critters called springtails. Each is no larger than a comma on a page. Some soils harbor microscopic tardigrades, mites and worms. Mosses and lichens sparsely dot rocky sites that get water and direct sunlight in summer. But oases that are lush with native grass, pearlwort and flies exist only on the northern Antarctic Peninsula.



Some moss clumps have grown there for thousands of years. Scientists have studied their layers, like tree rings and discovered something alarming.



Bumpy moss and lichen covers the rocky ground on Ardley Island (next to King George Island), at the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. This is the warmest area of Antarctica, where vegetation can grow for two to three months each year, once snow and ice cover has melted.Dan Charman/University of Exeter



An ominous growth spurt



For a long while, the mosses had grown at a slow, even rate. But as the Peninsula started warming around 1950, their growth started to spurt. By 2010, they were growing two to four times faster than before.



We were surprised, says Thomas Roland of these findings. This speedup, he notes, is unprecedented in the last 4,000 years. A paleoecologist, Roland works at the University of Exeter in England.



A more recent study found something similar on Signy Island. It lies 650 kilometers (400 miles) northeast of King George Island. Nicoletta Cannone is a botanist at Insubria University in Italy. Shes studied the expansion of Antarcticas native grass and pearlwort. And between 1960 and 2018, the area covered by these two plants roughly tripled. Her team reported the finding in 2022.



Hair grass (panels A and C-G) and pearlwort (panels B and H-M) are the only vascular plants native to Antarctica. They only grow on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula or on islands off its coast. Here, theyre seen on King George Island.L. Cavieres, Univ. de Concepcin, Chile



Most recently, Roland and Oliver Bartlett studied satellite images. They used color to analyze extent of vegetation over a wide swath of the Antarctic Peninsula. Bartlett is a remote sensing scientist at the University of Hertfordshire in England. The pairs analysis suggested that green areas on the Peninsula expanded rapidly from 1986 to 2021.



Such data suggest Antarcticas sparse greenery is already responding to a climate-related fever of just 1 to 2 degrees C (1.8 to 3.6 degrees F). By 2100, total warming on the Antarctic Peninsula will likely reach 2.3 to 6.1 degrees C (4.1 to 11 degrees F). Thats according to new projections published February 20 in Frontiers in Environmental Science. Even if warming happens more slowly, its possible that by 2300, the Peninsula could warm by 4 to 8 degrees C (7.2 to 14.4 degrees F). It will depend on how much more greenhouse gases humans produce.



Warmer seas trigger skyrocketing ice loss in 3 Antarctic glaciers



That much warming could have huge effects. Right now, the average summer temperature on King George Island is around 1.5 C (34.7 F). But by 2300, its average summer temperature could hit 5 to 9 C (41 to 48 F). Thats similar to some cities in northern Siberia, in Russia, where trees line the streets.



Warm summers are already causing hundreds of Antarctic glaciers to melt and retreat. One study estimates that within 75 years, ice-free sections of the northern Peninsula could nearly triple to 19,000 square kilometers (7,300 square miles). Thats an area larger than the state of Connecticut.



Even then, ice will still cover most of the Antarctic Peninsula. But retreating glaciers will leave thousands of ice-free patches along coastlines. Green landscapes could take root in these.



Ecology Glacier on King George Island has already retreated 800 meters (half a mile) since 1985. The newly exposed ground is strewn with rocks and sand. Soil will have to form before most plants and animals can easily take hold.



But that can happen in just decades, says Adams at Brigham Young.




Ice-free future

















Even in the relatively warm Antarctic Peninsula, glaciers (seen here in the vicinity of Barilari Bay) still cover most land. Within 75 years, however, the area of ice-free land could nearly triple to about the size of Connecticut. This would provide new areas where plants and animals can take hold, including invasive species.











All: D. Fox






Stinky fish and penguin poo



Adams has studied the return of life in other places where glaciers have retreated.



At first, single-celled microbes chew on rocks. They release nutrients, such as phosphorus, iron and calcium. That allows lichens and moss to move in, followed by Antarctic grass or pearlwort.



Plants accelerate soil-forming, Adams says. Theyre actually physically cracking rocks open with their roots.



Seabirds, penguins or seals may form new summer colonies. This could further speed the arrival of plants, says Juliana Souza-Kasprzyk. She works at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. A biologist, shes spent several summers studying these colonies on King George Island.



The future of Antarctic mainland could one day resemble this grassy meadow full of king penguins on the subantarctic South Georgia Island.Cindy Kassab/The Image Bank/Getty Images Plus



In these areas, Souza-Kasprzyk says, you have more vegetation. And that makes sense. Birds and seals hunt fish and krill in the ocean, then poop on land. Their wastes ferry tons of fertilizing nutrients from ocean to land each year. They are enriching the soils, she explains.



In 200 years, the Antarctic Peninsula will be significantly greener, Peter Convey predicts. A polar ecologist, he works for the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England.



Invading species may contribute to that greening.



Already, thousands of scientists and tourists visit Antarctica every year. Stray seeds, insects and other critters hitchhike along on their ships and planes.



Lets learn about Antarctica



There are already quite a lot of [species] that could survive [here] year-round, says Convey. At least 18 non-native species now live in Antarctica. Three are spreading quite quickly on the Peninsula.



An invasive grass, Poa annua, is growing on King George Island, Signy Island and a dozen other places. In experiments, it outcompetes the native grass and pearlwort. On King George, it is already taking hold in the bare rocky spaces that emerge as Ecology Glacier retreats.



Poa annua is hardly some special, rugged pioneer. This annual bluegrass is the same turf sometimes used on golf courses, notes Chown. You find it in the cracks of the pavement in cities across Europe and North America.



The winter crane fly, shown here, is native to Europe. Now its spreading on King George Island, off the Antarctic Peninsula.O. Volonterio/Sec. Zoologa de Invertebrados/Univ. de la Repblica, Uruguay



Boom town growth



Two species of fast-growing invasive flies are also spreading on King George Island: the winter crane fly and the moth fly. Both took hold in the sewage systems at research stations on the island. The flies are now spreading, gorging on stinky seal carcasses, penguin poo and rotting plants.



These invaders exhibit a fast-growing, boom town lifestyle. And that makes them a threat to Antarctic natives.



At first glance, Antarcticas native plants and creepy-crawlies seem tough. You can send them to space, you can put them in liquid nitrogen at -196 C (-320 F), and they survive, says Claudia Colesie. Shes a polar plant ecologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. In some cases, retreating glaciers have revealed mosses buried under ice for 600 years that can revive and grow.



But Antarctic species are also surprisingly vulnerable. Many of these mosses, springtails, worms and other critters spend most of their time dried out, in suspended animation. They only wake to grow when conditions are good. But the growth rates of the local species are very, very slow, explains Colesie. That allows them to survive in soils with few nutrients.



Coming warmer, wetter summers might favor the invaders. Species that live and grow faster, says Colesie, can outcompete some of the local species.



Worst of all, those invaders could change the environment in ways that give them an even greater advantage.



Invasive species could enrich the nutrient-poor soils. For instance, an invasive midge has been spreading on Signy Island. Its larval maggots live in soil. They have strong mouthparts and can eat tough, dead plant matter that native critters cannot. As they poop out digested material, the nutrients in it will fertilize plant growth.



Antarctica and its neighboring islands have only two native species of insects but are increasingly hosting invaders. One is a wingless fly, called a midge (left), seen on Signy Island. Its young maggots (right) are fertilizing the soils with nitrogen, which could pave the way for more invasive species to arrive.British Antarctic Survey (CC BY 4.0)



On Signy Island, Convey and Jesamine Bartlett have found that soils with this invasive midge have three to five times more nitrogen (a fertilizer) than normal. Bartlett is a polar biologist at the Equinor Research Center in Trondheim, Norway.



Bokhorst at Vrije University has done experiments showing that one species of wood louse (often called a roly-poly, or pill bug) would have similar effects if it took hold in Antarctica. (So far it has not.) But the invasive moth fly on King George Island might enrich soils there. If it does, these invasive insects could pave the way for fast-growing invasive plants to take over.



Invaders on a sugar high



My biggest concern, says Bokhorst, is that a new insect and plant invade as a team. As the insect enriches the soil, the invading plant will grow taller and faster. These traits would let them start enhancing each other, he says. In short order, he worries, their changes could spiral out of control.



Enriched soils would allow even more invasive plants to take hold. Bokhorst believes this could occur more easily than most people realize.



Several years ago, Bokhorst ran some lab experiments. These looked at how 26 non-native plant species would do if their seeds landed on a typical Antarctic soil.



After six months of simulated winter at -5 C (23 F), he warmed them to a summer temperature of 2 C (36 F). Eighteen species sprouted and grew. After a second winter and summer, 15 were still growing. Concludes Bokhorst, Antarcticas current climate conditions are already suitable for a lot of plants from other places.





Return of rodents … and trees?



A few islands north of King George Island show how this might play out. These subantarctic islands are cold, rocky, treeless and weather-beaten. They have penguin colonies. Some host glaciers. All are warmer than the Antarctic Peninsula but colder than Patagonia.



People have visited them since the 1800s, initially to hunt seals and whales. Dozens of non-native species now inhabit these islands. On South Georgia and Kerguelen islands, entire hillsides shimmer in summer with dandelions yellow blooms. Its the same weed that pops up in U.S. lawns and playgrounds. Bokhorst found that this flower can already grow and survive winters in Antarctic soils.




Make a wish?



Ashley Cooper/Corbis/Getty Images Plus
Dandelions growing on South Georgia, a subantarctic island. The non-native weed has spread rapidly and begun outcompeting native species. Dandelions arrived when Norwegian whalers insisted on putting soil from Norway atop the grave of a shipmate who had died on the island.





Anything that is already established in the subantarctic, we could plausibly regard as a risk [for invading the Antarctic Peninsula], says the British Antarctic Surveys Convey.



This is why Chown at Monash University worries about mice. A lot.



While working on subantarctic Marion Island, he saw evidence of house mice. After arriving from Europe in the 1800s, these rodents devoured native insects. By the 1980s, when Chown was there, they were preying on local seabirds called wandering albatross. They killed chicks and chewed on the heads of adult birds.



These wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans) stand near their nest South Georgia Island. This bird naturally inhabits several of the subantarctic islands. It is threatened on at least one of them (Marion Island) by invasive mice, which kill chicks and injure the adult birds.Paul Souders/Stone/Getty Images Plus



Says Chown, that would just be a nightmare on the Antarctic Peninsula. Rodents could attack local seabirds, including penguins.



At least one dead rat has been found on King George Island. It probably hitchhiked there in a shipment of lumber. The little buck-toothed fellow didnt survive the cold. But by the 2080s, parts of the Peninsula might be warm enough for mice or rats. And thats not far off, Chown notes.



Some invading species on the Peninsula might be returnees. Fossil wood, leaves and pollen from southern beech trees have been found across Antarctica. Beeches may have grown on King George Island as recently as 20 million years ago. Forests of them still live close by, in Patagonia.




The past could be the future













This fossil (above, left) shows the leaf of a southern beech tree that grew on the Antarctic Peninsula 20 million years ago. Closely related trees (right) still live at the tip of South America, which was once connected to Antarctica. These trees grow in cold, mountainous areas of South America (below).



Top left: M. Leppe, H. Mansilla, C. Trevisan/Antarctic and Patagonia Paleobiology Laboratory/Chilean Antarctic Institute-INACH/Punta Arenas, Chile (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0); Top right: Goddard Photography/iStock/Getty Images Plus; Bottom: emicristea/iStock/Getty Images Plus




On the Antarctic Peninsula, there are probably some sweet spots where they will already be able to grow, says Bokhorst. He imagines a rare north-facing cove with summer sunlight and water melting off a nearby glacier. The trees would be small and stunted, like bushes. And at first, they wouldnt easily spread beyond these isolated spots.



But if rapid warming continues for centuries, says Convey, all bets are off.



A return of southern beech forests to the Antarctic Peninsula would not restore the continent to its distant, lush past. These trees would lack the other species that filled those ancient ecosystems. They would mingle instead with many of the weeds and pests inhabiting cities and farms across the globe. Moth flies and mice might flit around penguin colonies. Dandelions and bluegrass could sprout from rocky meadows.



That mishmash of weeds and wildlife would replace current landscapes. And that would be a real shame, says Bokhorst. The unique ecosystem that took 30 million years to evolve could vanish in a few short centuries.

A basketball players smooth, nothing-but-net shot. A softball pitchers wicked curveball. A football quarterbacks beautiful spiral toss. These arent just athletic spectacles. Theyre feats of physics.



Making a ball take a specific path through the air is difficult, no matter the sport. Thats because the tiny details of a balls shape and spin can have a big impact on how it interacts with the air and therefore its motion.



See all the entries from our Lets Learn About series



Some physicists study these nit-picky details to give athletes an edge in their game. For example, scientists are trying to use physics to help football players improve their spirals. Engineers, meanwhile, have gone different routes. Some have redesigned balls. While others have applied some of this knowledge to design better vehicles.



For instance, a ball or other object flying through the air experiences a type of friction called drag. This force acts against an objects motion, slowing it down. But adding dimples to the surface of an object like those found on a golf ball allows air to flow around the ball more smoothly and reduces drag. Engineers recently borrowed this concept to design dimpled surfaces that could help vehicles cut through air and water more easily.



A balls path through the air also depends on how it spins. Thats because a balls spin causes air to flow differently around different sides of it. Softball and baseball players harness those effects to pitch balls that curve in various directions. These airflow affects also impact how other balls, including basketballs, arc through the air. Such effects could be used to improve the spinning cylinders that help power cargo ships.





Want to know more? Weve got some stories to get you started:



Precise tee placement can improve golf driving, teen finds This middle-school engineer built a golf-ball-hitting machine out of a clay-pigeon launcher. (2/10/2026) Readability: 6.0



How to make a pitched ball curve to your will Pitchers have many tricks up their sleeves. Physics explains how they work. (9/18/2025) Readability: 6.1



Holey basketballs! 3-D printing could be a game-changer An airless design makes Wilsons new basketball quieter and puncture-proof. (7/1/2024) Readability: 7.2





This video shows how a physical phenomenon known as the Magnus effect impacts spinning balls and could be used for better boat design.



Explore more



Scientists Say: Force



Explainer: What is friction?



Pickleballs inspire a new way to reduce drag on vehicles



Aerodynamics involved in shooting hoops can make vehicles greener



Due to global warming, major league hitters are slugging more home runs



Researchers reveal the secret to the perfect football throw



These young researchers take aim at sports



Activities



Word find



Want an excuse to play around at the gym or outside while you do science? Check out our experiment from Science Buddies investigating where a basketballs energy goes as it loses its bounce.  

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Every year, Muslims around the world observe Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar. It is the holiest month in Islam. During this month, archangel Jibril revealed the first five verses of the Quran Islams holy text to Prophet Muhammad. Ramadan begins with the sighting of the new crescent moon. This year, it is expected to start at sundown on or around February 17, 2026.

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Columbus, Ohio Preserving threatened coral reefs is no longer enough. Now, we must help build new ones, say Ja Young Kim, 17, and Jiho Kong, 19. Theyve just designed one new option: robotic nurseries to attract and nurture baby corals.



These modular units start as floating, hexagon-shaped cells. Once deployed in the water, they can link together to make large ocean habitats. These apartment-like structures even monitor for potential dangers. Before turbulent weather might turn young colonies belly-up, robots can propel the coral apartment buildings to safety.



Ja Young Kim and Jiho Kong stand on a beach in Saipan one of the islands making up the Mariana Archipelago.J.Y. Kim and J. Kong



Jiho and Ja Young live in Saipan. Its the largest of the 14 Northern Mariana Islands, a volcanic archipelago north of Australia. The world’s deepest ocean site the Mariana Trench lies just east of this island chain.



Saipan is “a beautiful place that is surrounded by the ocean,” notes Jiho. “I’m a diver.” Just off the white sand beaches here, “there used to be a beautiful coral reef.” A few years ago, the coral here appeared “every different color,” Jiho recalls. No longer. The reef is now bleached white and dead.



Dying coral is “not just a story that we can hear from newsletters or books,” Ja Young says. For her, the problem can’t be ignored. So she and Jiho teamed up to build a fleet of robotic apartment complexes for baby coral. It would provide them homes. And being mobile, they can move when storms threaten.



Their work earned these juniors at Saipan International School a place here, last month, as finalists at the 75th annual Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, or ISEF. Society for Science which also publishes this magazine created ISEF and still runs it. This years 1,657 finalists came from 62 nations or territories. Together, they took home nearly $9 million in prizes.



Singing apartment blocks



Each cell is about the size of a small microwave oven. Individual cells can link up with others, forming platforms that roll with the waves.



For this project, “We created everything, says Ja Young. We 3-D printed everything.” They chose materials that will break down in the ocean over time. That way, they won’t pollute the environment if individual units separate and get lost.



The duo tested their cells’ ability to link up in a borrowed swimming pool in Korea, says Ja Young. “And then we borrowed this wave-creating machine in order to make sure [their habitat wont] just float away.”



Their system consists of two types of cells. The first offers a safe harbor for coral larvae. They can attach to these coral cells and grow. The second are power cells. These similarly shaped units can drive the coral-housing units. Each power cell has a propeller,” Ja Young points out, and runs on solar energy. So power cells can motor coral cells to the perfect nursery location. Once they arrive, these cells can link together. A tether connects them to the ocean floor. This ensures they won’t drift away.



To advertise the housing units have arrived, the cells sing a song.



This “special soundscape,” Ja Young explains, “can attract the coral larvae onto the structure. Its melody the sound of healthy corals sounds like soft bubbles and gently sloshing water, she says. When larvae hear it, theyll flock to it as they would to a healthy reef.



When deployed underwater, a coral cell (left unit) provides a safe haven for larvae to establish new colonies. A power cell (right unit) can link with that undersea houseboat and propel it to safety when dangerous storms may threaten these accommodations.J.Y. Kim and J. Kong



These can be mobile homes



Once they arrive, the tiny larvae begin setting up a new artificial reef. However, this apartment complex can do something natural reefs cant. It can flee danger.



This could counter a problem seen with other coral-restoration systems. Jiho and Ja Young learned that many werent very successful. Take the type known as coral trees. Once installed on the ocean floor, many of these vanish.



For every 10 coral trees installed, “eight will be missing by the end of the year,” Ja Young says. No one knows what happens to them. “We wanted to fix that,” she says.




Watch this video of the designers of the new coral sanctuary describing what motivated them to create the new tech and how it would work.




Their solution was to build an escape plan into their housing units. For example, Ja Young says, “There could be a typhoon coming.” The undersea waves kicked up by such a storm could destroy the cells. “We cannot make the house not blow away,” she says. But “we can make it run away.”



Their coral-housing units not only can move, but also decide when its time to move.



Jiho spearheaded this part of the project. “I wanted to link my knowledge about robotics and computer science to this project,” he says.



He linked the cells to the internet so they can receive ocean data. These include temperature readings and other weather updates from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They use open-source data, which are freely available for all to use.



Their systems motorized cells use these data to make decisions. If a dangerous storm looms, these cells will know. They can turn on their propellers and head for safer waters. An “algorithm and the website itself can also designate a destination,” says Ja Young.



Even if people do nothing, these cells can execute an escape. Thanks to clever programming, the cells can pick their own destination. They also can calculate the best route. This escape feature sets their technology apart from other coral-transplant systems, says Jiho. Few such technologies can flee danger. And those that do need a lot of human help. Human labor makes them “less efficient in both cost and time,” Jiho says.



Each cell costs about $120 to make, says Ja Young. Thats far less than similar technologies. Most, he says, cost about “a thousand times more.”



The coral apartments must still undergo ocean tests. Simulations show a lot of promise. However, unseen problems could occur.



Ja Young recalls the kaleidoscopic colors of local reefs from snorkeling trips with her dad. “‘It’s pink! Blue! It’s colorful inside,” she remembers. She was in middle school then. Today, waves sweep bleached coral fragments onto the sand. Ja Young hopes their new invention will do more than try to preserve the past. She hopes it will rebuild a more colorful future.

Cori "Coco" Gauff stunned the tennis world on June 7, 2025, by defeating world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka at the French Open. With this win, she became the first American woman to claim the title since Serena Williams in 2015. At 21, Gauff is also the youngest American winner since Williams, who was 20 when she first won the tournament in 2002. The victory marks Gauffs second Grand Slam singles title, following her US Open win in 2023.

Columbus, Ohio Todays menu special: giant water bugs (Lethocerus indicus). Some may balk at eating insects. But these meaty big boys one of the biggest members of the family of true bugs add a prized aroma to food, notes Kasidet Srisuk, 16. He likens its scent to green apple mixed with banana. Unfortunately, populations of these insects are falling. Thats why he and two classmates launched a crusade to save these not-so-creepy crawlies.



In Thailand, “we make Nam Prik Mang Da, explains Thunvarat Jaturon, 17. Giant water bugs are the key ingredient in this chili paste. Indeed, theyre “very special in Thailand,” she says. But not just here. From India through Southeast Asia, many people enjoy snacking on this prized, if pricey, protein-rich street food or dining on curries and sauces flavored with mashed water bugs.



Kasidet Srisuk, Thunvarat Jaturon and Pruttachart Khongsawat (left to right) developed new tools for farming giant water bugs. K.G. Carpenter/Science News Explores



The insects can reach 5 to 8 centimeters (2 to 3 inches) long. In the wild, they dine on tadpoles, small fish and large insects. There used to be lots of giant water bugs to harvest, Thunvarat says. But that’s no longer true.



Pesticides running off the land have been killing giant water bugs. Habitat loss and climate change have hurt them, too, she notes, by reducing their prey.



Insect farmers have stepped in, trying to raise these bugs. However, that hasnt proven easy.



But she, Kasidet and Pruttachart Khongsawat,16, may have found a way to sustainably rear these mini livestock. All three high-school students attend Demonstration School of Khon Kaen University in Muang Khonkaen, Thailand. For a science fair project, they developed a new recipe for bug feed. It greatly boosts the bugs growth.



And thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), the team overcame another big challenge: visually identifying males (the tastier and more valued bugs) from females. That will allow farmers to save those females as brood stock for raising more offspring.





Watch a woman sample a deep-fried giant water bug for the first time. Shes pleasantly surprised. Her conclusion: One might think of them as natural Doritos.



Winner, winner, fish gut dinner



The trio of Thai teens tackled two problems faced by water bug farmers. We tried to solve them one by one, says Thunvarat. The first issue: the insects picky diet.



Some people envision bugs as dirty scavengers. In fact, these predatory bugs like fresh prey, such as tiny shrimp or tadpoles. They get squeamish about dining on something thats already dead. But rearing big populations of fresh prey would complicate the bug-farming process and up its cost.



Live prey has a special [scent], Kasidet says, which hungry giant bugs seek out. The teens found a workaround. They cooked up a new recipe, Kasidet notes, with a similar smell to the live prey. The winning formula: fish guts and gelatin.




K, Srisuk, P. Khongsawat and T. Jaturon
New feed that the teens developed for raising giant water bugs consists of fish byproducts and gelatin. To appeal to the predatory insects, the team shaped their faux prey (see here) to look like the baby catfish that they naturally dine on in the wild.





The protein-rich first ingredient is a byproduct of the fishing industry that would normally be thrown away. The students blended it with a gelatin that could be molded to look like baby catfish.



The carnivorous bugs happily chow down on the new food. Even better, this diet improves their survival rate by 60 percent compared to bugs fed a natural diet.



Overcoming an identity crisis



Giant water bug farming works best with equal numbers of males and females. But diners are willing to pay substantially more for the fruit-scented males. So it helps if a farmer can track the share of male and female bugs.



Thats proven tricky because at first glance, they all look pretty much alike, notes Pruttachart. But three clues helped the teens overcome bug-sex confusion.




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Do you have a science question? We can help!



Submit your question here, and we might answer it an upcoming issue of Science News Explores




“The female is a lot bigger,” Pruttachart notes. That’s the first clue. Females also have distinctive markings on their abdomens. “It looks like the letter U,” he says. Finally, the ladies are a bit darker than the guys.



Using water bug photos, the students trained an AI program on these clues. In no time, it could count male and female bugs quickly. That’s key, as insect farming involves a lot of bugs.



No one else is doing this type of sex determination of the bugs, says Pruttachart. His team created the first AI app to do this, he says.




Watch the trio of Thai high school students describe why they chose giant water bug farming as theme of their science fair project and what they learned along the way.




Giant water bugs undergo five developmental stages as they grow. The AI can determine sex by their fourth stage, when theyre about a month old. Its not foolproof. But so far, its about 80 percent accurate, Pruttachart says.



Another benefit to that quick ID of a bugs sex: figuring out which ones to send to market. Being fruit-scented, the males sell for twice as much as females, says Thunvarat. That scent explains why many chefs prize males in their cooking.



These innovations could lead to sustainable water bug farming, the teens say. The nutritious, high-protein food also offers to help preserve an Asian cultural heritage of water bug dining. Without help, this culinary tradition might be lost.



For their work, the trio became $1,200 award winners in animal science here in May as part of the 75th annual Regeneron International Science & Engineering Fair, or ISEF. Society for Science (which also publishes this magazine) created ISEF and still runs it. This years 1,657 finalists came from 62 nations or territories. Together, they took home nearly $9 million in prizes.

Hi guys! I know it’s summer and it’s burning hot, so why not eat something cold? You can buy ice cream, popsicles, and a lot more! But will you always want to buy one every day, right? So why not make one yourself and save your money! This post will teach you how to make […]

Have you ever watched a dinosaur movie? If not, movies like Jurassic Park, Jurassic World, The Land Before Time, or The Good Dinosaur are such classics to watch! There’s a new dinosaur movie coming out (as well) called “Jurassic World Rebirth, which will be released to theaters on July 2, 2025. So if you’re a […]

Hello, My Puggy Army! I remember we had a Kidznet election, but it kinda just abruptly stopped. Anyways, I think we should have another and Im running! I would have @itrules0ut343 as my VP, but hes left KN, so Im asking @random_person_! If you vote for me, I will stop GIF spanning and never think […]

Have you ever heard of a giant rat becoming a hero? It might sound like something from a Disney movie, but it’s true!  Meet Carolina, an African giant pouched rat known for her special skill: sniffing out tuberculosis (TB), one of the deadliest diseases. Pretty cool, right? Carolina can check 100 sputum samples (thats phlegm) […]

In the past, I looked forward to getting older because I thought it would mean more freedom to travel to beautiful places. The idea of being able to go wherever I wanted was really exciting. How about you? What are you looking forward to most about getting older? At the same time, having some fears […]

KidzSearchathon is the Olympics of KidzSearch. Here’sthe link for the event:KidzSearchathon Info and Rules Use #kidzsearchathon for anything related to this event ————- I need 4 users to help manage this year’s KidzSearchathon!  Host 1: Manages the first portion of the event and helps analyze the results Host 2: Manages the second portion of […]

Hello Kidznet! This is my first-ever post, and I wanted to do a hair reveal bc why not? Share yours in any comments, but remember to cover your face. Thank you! So excited to join Kidznet!    

Hey guys! Its DancerGirl887. I know I said I left, but I have had some free time, and I decided to come here. From the title, you can see a word that isnt very common. Candlemas is the mark of 40 days after Christmas or the Nativity of the Lord. Since it can only be […]

My favorite is pineapple. And dont just start hating me if you dont like pineapple or any fruits, okay?

Every year on the last Monday of May,thousands of people from around the world gather at Cooper's Hill inGloucestershire, England, for theCheese Rolling competition.This unusual contest requires participants to run, or as is usually the case,tumble,down the steep hill to try tocatch an 8-pound (3.6-kg) rolling wheel of cheese.

Virtual reality (VR) headsets arent without their risks. Users can bump into walls, furniture or even other people. Niall Williams is looking to fix that. This computer scientist makes programs that keep people safer while using VR. He works at the University of Maryland in College Park. 



Williams works with redirected walking. This technique nudges users along a path in the real world by subtly changing their virtual display. Developers can tweak how VR programs represent traveling distance, says Williams. For example, algorithms can make two feet of walking in the real world cover more virtual ground. This lets users walk naturally while exploring large digital spaces.



Fast or large adjustments can leave users disoriented and queasy, though. Redirected walking also works best in areas with fewer obstacles. To help, Williams designed a program that calculates a safer path for users. It avoids both physical and virtual obstacles. We kind of play tricks on people to get them to walk around safely, says Williams. 



His algorithms stopped more collisions than other redirected walking programs. By using slower changes, they also lower the odds of motion sickness. Williams is exploring other ways to use natural walking in virtual spaces, he says. In this interview, Williams shares his experiences and advice with Science News Explores. (This interview has been edited for content and readability.)



What inspired you to pursue your career? 



I wanted to study biology, but I wasnt good at chemistry. I liked programming and got some experience in high school. So I decided to do a computer science degree. After a few years, I learned about computer graphics. It’s a combination of all of my interests. I also really enjoy video games, animations and art.  



I’m doing this research because working on new problems is fun for me. I like learning about how the human visual system works, and why images evoke certain responses from people. When you see a cartoon person, it’s clearly not a realistic image. But you can still tell that it’s a person in some way, even though the proportions are totally incorrect.  



How did you get to where you are today? 



There are a lot of PhD students in my lab that work on different things. In our lab meetings, the students studying robotics would discuss problems they were working on. I saw this interesting intersection between robotic navigation and VR locomotion. Robot navigation is getting from one point in the environment to another point without getting stuck. Sort of like how your Roomba knows where to go in the room to figure out where it needs to clean. That has a lot of similarities with locomotion in virtual reality. 



A big problem in VR locomotion is that you’re seeing a virtual environment through the headset, but you’re physically located in a different environment. If you want to reach some destination in the virtual world, your path to that destination is likely blocked by some physical objects.  



I realized that I could probably sort of combine the two fields after talking with my lab mates. I could apply techniques for robot navigation to this VR locomotion problem. This might help people avoid objects when they’re in VR. It worked out, so I continued on that path. 



What would you say is your biggest success? 



Probably my first published paper that goes toward my dissertation. I had the idea of applying motion-planning techniques from robot navigation to this VR navigation problem. But nobody had done it before, and it was [during] the pandemic. I was stuck in my house and had to figure it out, largely on my own. During the first two months of that summer, it wasn’t working out. I met with my PhD advisors to discuss the technical details and then took a step back.  



I came up with some algorithms that led to better performance in certain situations. I implemented the research idea, and it worked. We then turned that into a paper that got published. The paper was very well received in my community of scientists. 



Niall Williams tested his algorithm in different physical and virtual scenarios. In one test, the virtual environment was larger than the physical space available. The program guided the user along a curved route in the physical world to compensate (left). In another test, the program had to navigate a straight virtual path while avoiding real-life objects placed in front of the user (right). N. Williams



What was one of your biggest challenges and how did you get past that? 



I did an internship at the company Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram). It was more focused on researching human perception in virtual reality, which I don’t have formal training in. Instead of working with computer scientists, I had to learn how to work with people who study human perception, such as psychologists. Figuring out how to bridge that gap and learn how to do science in the way they do was a challenge for sure.  



How do you get your best ideas? 



My best ideas come from talking to other people and reading papers from different scientific disciplines. This world of extended reality is a very interdisciplinary field. Computer science is one component of it. We develop these systems and devices that you can interface with to explore a virtual world. But it comes with a lot of other questions, especially about human perception.  



Bridging the gap between two communities can also be where the best ideas come from. I believe that a lot of interesting research comes from learning about other kinds of science and seeing how those might be applied to your discipline. As a computer scientist, I may try looking at my problems from the perspective of a different type of scientist, like a human vision scientist. If youre facing challenges, youre probably on the right track.  





What piece of advice do you wish you’d been given when you were younger? 



I wish someone told me earlier on that a PhD can be fun. Becoming a scientist should be fun, and it often is. Sure, it’ll be difficult and you’ll have to work hard, but you get paid to study whatever you think is interesting. Your only real responsibility is to think deeply about that problem or topic and try to contribute some new piece of knowledge. It’s a unique experience that is not the same as just doing more school. It’s very independent. You get to think for yourself and maybe get to know yourself better.  



I also wish someone told me early on that being a scientist is a real career path. Scientists are not just fictional characters in movies. Were real. 

NASA's X-59 aircraft, unveiled in January 2024,hopes to change the way we travel.The innovativeplane is designed to flyat supersonic speeds without producing the characteristicsonicboom. The prototype ispart of the USSpace Agency's Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST) mission.

In a move to protect pristine lands, the Biden administration placed limits on future oil and gas drilling projects across 13 million acres of land in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A). Furthermore, on April 19th, the Department of the Interior blocked the proposed construction of the Ambler Road project a 211-mile road needed to access a planned zinc and copper mine in the Gates of the National Arctic Park and Preserve. These initiatives are part of Bidens goal to protect the last untouched ecosystems and wildlife in Alaska, as well as safeguard indigenous populations. The...

Did you know that Mexico City one of the largest cities in the world is experiencing a historic water crisis? Many residents are dealing with water unfit for consumption, or have no running water at all! Droughts coupled with aging infrastructure are causing major issues. In fact, more than 75% of Mexico is dealing with some form of drought. Many are expecting Day Zero, when water levels are completely depleted, to happen as soon as June 26th. So how are citizens of Mexico City dealing with the shortage, and what is being done to alleviate strain? Lets find out! What Caused The...

This ancient predator had two spiny appendages sticking out of its face. This creature Anomalocaris canadensis may have been the freakiest thing to ever haunt the sea. For decades, scientists thought it used those strange limbs to snatch trilobites off the seafloor. The beast could then crush and eat these crunchy snacks. But a new study hints that A. canadensis instead used its spiny limbs to swiftly hunt soft prey. 



Researchers shared their new findings on July 12. The work appeared in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.





A. canadensis means the abnormal shrimp from Canada. It prowled the seas roughly 500 million years ago. Only about as long as a housecat, it still was one of the biggest animals of the Cambrian Period. (The Cambrian ran from about 540 million to 485 million years ago.) That makes A. canadensis one of the earliest top predators.





These sea monsters were like the orcas or great white sharks of their time, says Jakob Vinther. He did not take part in the new study. But he is a paleontologist at the University of Bristol in England. 



Some researchers thought A. canadensis hunted another iconic Cambrian critter the trilobite. Thats because people have unearthed lots of fossils of injured trilobites. This hinted that something had attacked them. A. canadensis became a prime suspect.



But Russell Bicknell wasnt so sure. After all, trilobites have hard, thick exoskeletons. And no one had shown that A. canadensis could crack that armor.



Bicknell is a paleobiologist. He works at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. He was part of a team that set out to learn if A. canadensis really could have crushed and chowed down on trilobites.



This is a closeup of an A. canadensis fossil. It was found in the Burgess Shale of Canada. The fossil shows the creatures head and curled front appendages.Allison Daley


Pinning softies with its spikes



The researchers compared the ancient creatures bendy appendages to those of modern arthropods. These animals include todays insects, spiders and crustaceans. Bicknells team also built computer models of the limbs on A. canadensis. Using those models, the team tested the limbs toughness, range of motion and best swimming position.



The ancient spiky limbs would have been good at grabbing prey. In that way, A. canadensis may have hunted much like todays whip spiders. But the limbs of A. canadensis probably were too fragile to attack armored prey. Those would have included trilobites.





Plus, A. canadensis would have moved most efficiently when its appendages were stretched out front. (Think of how Superman holds his arms while in flight.)



Together, these results suggest that A. canadensis was best suited for chasing soft creatures swimming through the water. It would have snagged prey in its spiky clutches, Bicknell says. It was going to absolutely pincushion something soft and squishy.

Pulsar (noun, PUHL-sahr)



Pulsars are dense, quickly spinning cores of dead stars that blast radio waves into space.



When a star thats a few times as big as the sun dies, it shoots most of its mass off into space in a huge explosion. That explosion is called a supernova. But the core of the star collapses in on itself and forms an ultra-dense neutron star. All that mass clumps together under the force of gravity. That causes the dead star to spin faster, just like an ice skater pulling in their arms during a turn. Neutron stars can spin faster than the tires on a race car at top speed anywhere from once every few seconds to hundreds of times per second. Thats millions of times faster than the Sun spins.





A pulsar is a special kind of neutron star that blasts out two beams of radio waves in opposite directions. As the dead star spins, those beams sweep through space like the lights on a lighthouse. If Earth is in the path of one of those beams, we see a flash of radio waves every time it sweeps past us. That makes the pulsar appear to pulse at very regular intervals.



This animation shows a pulsars radio beams (purple) sweeping through space. When one of the beams passes over Earth, the pulsar appears to flash.



Astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell first discovered pulsars in 1967. At first, some scientists thought the radio beams she saw might be coming from aliens. That was because the pulses were so regular. But then Bell Burnell found radio pulses coming from a different part of space, far from the first signal. It was unlikely that two groups of aliens were signaling us at the same time from so far apart, so scientists looked for a different explanation. They eventually learned the radio waves were coming from pulsars scattered throughout space.



Scientists today use pulsars to make maps of space and keep time in the cosmos. Pulsars can also be used study the fundamental laws of physics that rule the universe.



In a sentence



Scientists time the radio flashes from pulsars to look for gravitational waves.



Check out the full list of Scientists Say.

Butterflies and bees do it. Frogs and even salmon do it. What is it? Its metamorphosis.



The term describes a series of dramatic physical changes that an organism undergoes as it matures. The term comes from the Greek word for change of form.



Lets learn about amphibians



Lots of young animals look different from their parents. But metamorphosis is distinct from just growing up. Some animals emerge from metamorphosis with brand-new organs, such as wings or lungs. Others switch what types of food they eat or may wind up not eating at all! These differences may benefit animals by minimizing competition for resources between adults and babies of the same species.Insects, amphibians and certain fish are among the more well-known animals that metamorphose. But theyre not the only ones. Jellyfish, mollusks and sea stars have all been observed undergoing this real-life shapeshifting. Crabs, lobsters and other crustaceans have, too.





Body remodel



Many animals that metamorphose have babies that look entirely different from their adult forms. Think of a frog. Frogs have powerful back legs and lungs. But many frog species start life underwater as tadpoles. Unlike frogs, tadpoles rely on gills and long tails to maneuver underwater.



Jellyfish, meanwhile, start out as free-swimming young called larvae. These larvae attach to hard surfaces and transform into anemone-like polyps. These polyps spend much of their early lives using their tentacles to catch passing prey. Eventually, the tentacles begin to bud into free-floating jellies. They then detach from their home surface and hit the high seas.



Like jellyfish, sea urchins also start their lives as larvae swimming in the ocean. These larvae use long arms to snag phytoplankton to eat. During metamorphosis, a sea urchin grows adult limbs and organs from a cluster of cells inside its body called a rudiment. The urchins absorb their larval arms and mouths into their bodies. Then they drop to the seafloor as newly formed adults.



These spiky purple sea urchins started out life as free-swimming larvae before they underwent metamorphosis into their current forms.Brent Durand/Getty Images


Insect transformations



Metamorphosis is especially common in insects. But some insect transformations are more dramatic than others.



Take butterflies. A crawling, leaf-munching caterpillar can transition into a flying, nectar-sipping butterfly within a few weeks. This is an example of complete metamorphosis. During this type of metamorphosis, insects go through four life stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult. At each stage, the insect will look completely different.



Explainer: Insects, arachnids and other arthropods



The process begins with an egg laid by an adult. A small, soft-bodied larva, such as a caterpillar, hatches from this egg. Larvae do not have many of the organs found in adults. And they have one goal: eat as much as they can.A caterpillar doesn’t have wings, doesn’t have any reproductive organs, says Jens Rolff. It’s just like a big bag of tissues moving on a plant and feeding. Constantly feeding. Rolff is an evolutionary biologist who studies insects. He works at Freie Universitt in Berlin, Germany.Healthy appetites help a larva pack on fat. And that will fuel the development of its organs once the larva becomes a pupa. At the pupa stage, the larva stops eating and develops a protective covering. Caterpillars develop a hard, outer layer called a chrysalis.







When the larva pupates, the job is to generate a new animal, says Rolff. Inside the pupa, proteins called enzymes begin to break down the larvas tissues. These dissolved tissues are used to rebuild muscles and organs such as the brain and gut. Special groups of cells called imaginal discs become activated and help create wings, new mouthparts and reproductive organs. Once these changes are complete, an adult insect emerges.



That adult often moves and eats in totally different ways than it did as a pupa.



About eight in every 10 insect species undergo complete metamorphosis. Beetles, flies, bees, ants and fleas are just a few examples. Together, this group makes up about 60 percent of all animals on Earth. Complete metamorphosis has been around for a while, too. Fossils suggest that insects were doing it at least 250 million years ago, Rolff says.





Check out one of the worlds largest beetles going through metamorphosis in this video from Nat Geo WILD.



Not all insects go through this full process, though. Grasshoppers, cockroaches, cicadas and dragonflies go through a three-stage version known as incomplete metamorphosis.



Here, insects emerge from eggs as nymphs, which look much like miniature adults. They are just missing developed wings and sex organs. Nymph forms of these species gradually get larger by shedding their hard outer shell, or exoskeleton, through a process called molting. Wings and reproductive organs continue to develop with each molt. All insects grow by molting. But insects that undergo complete metamorphosis only do so while plumping themselves up as larvae. Nymphs will go through multiple molts until they reach adulthood.

As the U.K. prepares for the coronation of King Charles, we look at another side of him. Earlier this year, the King released a book called Climate Change: A Ladybird Book. In the book, King Charles writes about climate change in simple terms that a middle schooler can understand. According to the BBC, biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history. One of the main reasons? Humans. According to a study by the United Nations, the need to support the growing human population leads to the overexploitation of animals, plants, and other organisms. This contributes to the Earth...

Think back to the last time you went to a store. Did you ever wonder how many of the items would be unsold, collecting dust on the shelves? Many corporations claim to donate and recycle some of those unsold products to reduce waste. Stores like CVS have publicly announced their wish to help the environment by reusing and recycling 50% of unsold merchandise. To find out the truth about this waste, Anna Sacks, a dumpster diver on TikTok (@thetrashwalker), decided to go through trash near large stores. She was shocked to find makeup, accessories, food, and clothes thrown away in perfect...

On March 27, 2022, Troy Kotsur becamethe first Deaf male actor to win an Oscar.The 53-year-old, who won Best Supporting Actorfor his portrayal ofFrank Rossi in "CODA," isonly the second Deaf actor to attain the prestigious award. In 1987,Marlee Matlin took home the Best Actress awardfor her role as Sarah in the movie "Children of a Lesser God."

Dr. Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright, the firstfemale US Secretary of State, passed away on March 23, 2022. A statementreleased by her family revealed that the 84-year-oldhad been suffering from cancer.Thehighest-ranking woman in the history of the Americangovernment at the time of her appointment,Dr.Albrightplayed a crucial role in shaping USforeign policy in the 1990s.

A massive plume ofdust and sandfrom the Sahara Desert engulfed parts of Europe in mid-March. Storm Celia blew into Spainon March 14, 2022, turningthe skiesinto aneerie rusty orangeand covering the ground and vehicleswith finesand particles. The thick dust layerlingered for several days,causingofficials to issue extremely poor air quality ratings in the capital city of Madrid and acrosslarge parts of Spain'ssoutheast coast.

E. Toby Kiers rarely wore shoes as a kid. She loved the feeling of soil between her toes. I always felt like something was under there, something secret and hidden, she says.



Now, as an adult, shes revealing that hidden world. Its a tangled network of fungus and plant roots. They all trade resources and even messages. People walk over this network all the time without even realizing its there. Yet understanding its mysteries could help us better cope with Earths changing climate.



Its pretty much the last frontier in understanding how our planet works, says Kiers. She studies fungal networks as an evolutionary biologist at Free University Amsterdam. Its in the Netherlands.



These are the mushrooms of the honey fungus. Its underground mycelia can grow to massive sizes. One individual that lives in Michigan is around 2,500 years old and has mycelia as heavy as three blue whales!Dan Molter (shroomydan) at Mushroom Observer/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)



When you think of fungus, mushrooms may come to mind. But the mushrooms that pop up above ground are temporary. The main body of a typical forest fungus remains underground. It is a vast, branching network of very thin, thread-like structures called mycelia (My-SEE-lee-uh). In just one teaspoon of soil there may be enough of these threads to span 10 kilometers (6.2 miles), writes Merlin Sheldrake in his 2020 book, Entangled Life.



All fungi need carbon to grow. Fungi that form networks may feed on the carbon in decaying wood or dead plant matter. Or they may form relationships with living plants. Some fungal networks grow around root tips, like tiny socks. These are known as EM, short for ectomycorrhizae (EK-toh-my-koh-RYE-zee). Others grow into the cells of plant roots. Known as AM, they have an even longer name: arbuscular mycorrhizae (Ar-BUS-kew-lur MY-koh-RYE-zee).





Plants get carbon from photosynthesis. But to grow, they also need nitrogen and phosphorus. Mycelia can range farther than roots to find these nutrients. So fungi and plants regularly trade with each other to get what they need. Almost all the plants in the world share resources through a network of mycelia. Mostly, plants give carbon and receive nitrogen and phosphorus. But mycelia also distribute carbon among plants and carry messages between them. Its almost like the internet or a highway system.



Suzanne Simard is a forest ecologist in Canada at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. She was the first to show that trees could exchange carbon through fungal networks in a natural setting. A 1997 news report about that work called this the wood wide web. (Its a play on the world wide web, an early name for the internet.) This isnt a perfect metaphor, however, because a fungal system is alive and has its own agenda. But her work opened peoples eyes to the fact that a forest is a highly interconnected ecosystem.



How do networks of mycelia grow and explore? How do they connect with plants? And can their carbon-trading skills help us cope with climate change? Researchers are just starting to find answers.



This stunningly beautiful animation reveals how fungal networks grow underground. E. Toby Kiers team created the video using data captured as a real network grew in the lab.C. Biost/L. Galvez/S. Spacal



Memory without a brain



A fungus is not a plant. It also is not an animal. It belongs to its own taxonomic kingdom. Though mushrooms remain in one place like plants, mycelia can sense and explore their world. Sheldrake writes, Mycelium is a living, growing investigation. Imagine if you could divide your body in two, each side walking through a different door at the same time, then eventually rejoin with yourself. Mycelia do this. They grow in many directions in search of food. Unsuccessful ventures die off while successful ones thicken and branch further. Mycelia have no brain. Yet they fight with other fungi and with critters that graze on them. They even seem to have a basic form of memory, according to new research by Yu Fukasawa and Lynne Boddy.



At Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, Boddy studies fungi that break down things like wood and dead plants. In the 1980s, she showed how a fungal network searches for food and then re-forms itself after it finds something yummy. Last year, Fukasawa and Boddy tested the memory of a typical fungus that likes to feast on wood. They placed blocks of wood containing this fungus onto trays of soil. Then they let the fungus explore until it found a nearby block of fungus-free wood.



Next, the researchers lifted out the original block and carefully shaved off every bit of mycelia growing from it. They placed it into a new tray, with no new block of wood to discover. As the mycelia in the block began to grow again, they sent out extra threads from the side that had faced food in the past. We did this on lots of different trays and with lots of different sizes of wooden blocks, says Boddy. Almost always, you get much more growth on the side where the new food resource had been.



The fungus had somehow remembered which part of itself had faced toward food in the past. So it sent out more growth in that direction. Boddy thinks that the more researchers look, the more examples of fungal memory they will find.



This is not a mushroom. Monotropa uniflora, often called a ghost pipe, is a plant that cannot make its own food from photosynthesis. It mooches off underground mycelia for all the carbon it needs. The mycelia get that carbon from other plants in the forest.egschiller/iStock/Getty Images Plus



Hoarding and trading



A fungus that networks with living plants doesnt feast on them to get the carbon it needs. It trades. Kierss team in Amsterdam has studied how this works in AM networks. Theyre the ones that grow inside plant root cells. These mycelia regularly move nutrients through the soil. And they seem to do so with the shrewdness of a bartering salesperson.



It isnt easy to watch trading inside those microscopic threads below the ground. So the researchers developed a way to put a chemical tag on phosphorus. They added tiny dots that glow when ultraviolet light strikes them. They can make these dots glow in different colors. This lets them watch how phosphorus moves through a network.



In one 2019 study, Kierss team grew mycelia and carrot roots in small dishes. Some regions in each dish were rich in the nutrient phosphorus. Other areas had little of this fertilizer. The fungus moved phosphorus from the rich area to the poor area. Kiers thinks this happens because plants growing in a nutrient-poor area cant get phosphorus on their own through their roots. So compared to plants growing in a nutrient-rich area, those at a nutrient-poor site will trade more carbon to the mycelia for phosphorus.



In 2020, Kiers showed that mycelia will also hoard nutrients when they are plentiful. This makes those nutrients temporarily unavailable to plant roots. Then, plants have to pay [the mycelia] more carbon to get at it, says Kiers.





It seems like aliens, says E. Toby Kiers. In fact, this video shows nutrients moving through an underground network of thread-like fungus. Similar networks link plants and support ecosystems all around the world.



Invisible messages



Mycelia dont just trade with plants. They also carry their messages. Plants may seem like they sit there doing nothing. In fact, they constantly chat among themselves using chemicals. Anything that makes plants smell nice or have a flavor, thats stuff plants are making, says Kathryn Morris. And theyre most likely making it to kill other things, such as insects or disease-causing microbes, she says. Or they could make it as a signal. Morris is a biologist at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio.



Plants can broadcast scent messages through the air. But they also send some through the soil. Consider when aphids attack a broad bean plant. The besieged plant blasts out chemicals that attract wasps to eat the aphids. A 2013 study showed that a broad bean plant that isnt under attack but that taps into the same fungal network as one that is will also send out these warnings. This happens even when researchers separate the plants with plastic barriers so they cant detect signals floating through the air. This suggests the plants must be sending messages underground.



It may seem like the plant in trouble is helping its neighbor. But maybe not. The plant that hasnt been attacked yet may be eavesdropping to detect when it needs to take action and protect itself. Or perhaps the fungal network carries these messages because this helps the survival of all the plants on which it depends for carbon.



Morriss research with AM networks has shown that plants chemical signals reach much farther through the soil if mycelia are there than when they arent. What she wants to know now is how this happens. How do the mycelia broadcast messages? We really dont know, says Morris. Her team is working on a method that will detect where chemicals are and how they move through fungal networks.





Yummy carbon



For a fungus, the whole point of networking with plants is to get the carbon it needs to grow. Plants get their carbon from the atmosphere. They take up carbon-dioxide gas during photosynthesis. Then they turn it into carbon-based sugars that they use to grow. Along the way, those plants will trade some of their sugars with fungi.



The globe is warming, in part, because of all the greenhouse gases that human activities spew into the air as we power our cars, electricity-generating plants, electronics and other machines. Carbon dioxide is the most common greenhouse gas. As you may already know, planting trees and boosting the health of forests can help suck extra carbon dioxide out of the air.



EM fungi form fuzzy socks around plant roots. You can sometimes see them if you look closely at roots (see upper image). Andy Taylor



But not all forests do equal work when it comes to combating climate change. The types of trees and the types of fungi that these trees communicate with can make a big difference in how much carbon a forest absorbs.



The AM fungal networks that Kiers and Morris study are by far the most common type in the world. They are ancient, says Kabir Peay. He is a biologist at Stanford University in California. These networks evolved some 500 million years ago. The mycelia in them tend to network with only one or a few trees or other plants at a time.



EM networks the type that form tiny socks around plant roots are newer. Some EM fungi can decompose dead wood or plants or network with living plants. EM networks tend to be larger and more interconnected than the AM types. Trees also find them more expensive, says Peay. By that he means they charge trees higher prices for nutrients. To make those payments, trees that trade with EM mycelia tend to absorb more carbon from the air, says Peay.



New lab research looked at how much carbon European beech trees take in when connected to an EM network. Bruna Imai is a PhD student in microbiology at the University of Vienna in Austria. After venturing into a nearby forest to collect tree seedlings, she set up pairs of baby trees in her lab. She let an EM network grow to connect some pairs. She kept other pairs from linking up.



To measure the amount of carbon the trees absorbed during the experiment, she exposed them to a special form of carbon that isnt common in nature. She found that plants that were connected to a fungal network took in nearly twice as much carbon dioxide as did plants not connected to any network. This would suggest those fungal networks can play a role in slowing climate change.



A world map of fungi



Fungal networks could be an important ally in the fight against climate change. Thats the goal, says Kiers. But first, researchers need to learn more about the complex sharing of resources and messages underfoot. Trillions of tiny worms, amoebas and microbes live in soil. Hundreds of thousands of fungal species live there, too. All of these species interact with plants and move carbon around. And they do this in ways we dont fully understand right now, says Peay at Stanford.



Explainer: What is a computer model?



Researchers also need to map fungal networks. In 2019, Peay and his team decided to start on this. Another group had already done a global tree survey. It had counted 3 trillion trees. Those data came from hundreds of researchers who went out into forests to identify individual trees and estimate their total across the planet.



Peays team wrote a computer program that looked at the mix of tree species tallied and the climate in each forest. Then it determined what type of fungal network would most likely thrive there. The result was the first world map showing where EM and AM fungal networks likely dominate. AM networks tend to prefer warm, tropical areas. EM networks prefer colder forests.



A pine forest (left) hosts mainly EM fungal networks while a tropical forest (right) hosts mostly AM networks. EM fungal networks can store higher amounts of carbon. But both types of forest store more carbon than soil in a city, farm or pasture.Kabir Peay



As Earths climate warms, forests filled with AM fungi could take over areas that are currently filled with EM fungi. Then those forests would trap even less carbon dioxide than they do now. Peay says that many EM forests are already on the edge of this sort of transformation. Plus, most land used for farming and grazing ends up with poor soil that lacks healthy fungal networks. It end up releasing carbon rather than trapping it.



Peays study didnt directly confirm the presence of particular types of fungal networks under the soil across the globe. In 2021, Kiers launched a new organization called SPUN (The Society for the Protection of Underground Networks) to take that next step. She calls it an underground climate movement.



Its goal is to protect fungal networks and use them to help heal ecosystems. It also runs a youth group called SPUN Youth (@spun.youth on Instagram and TikTok). Eventually, teens will be able to get involved. Theyll be asked to help identify fungal networks in the natural areas near their homes.



When the protection of nature only focuses on plants and animals above the ground, says Kiers, were missing half of the picture. There are ecosystems not being saved because we cant see them, she says.



She hopes that as people learn more about the living world beneath our feet, they will care more about protecting the fungal species that help trees, plants and even people thrive.

Hunting for aliens might sound like science fiction. But it’s a serious science. Alien-seeking researchers don’t chase down UFOs, though. Some use telescopes to listen for messages broadcast by alien civilizations. Others peer at distant words for evidence of life.



No aliens have been found yet. But it’s a big universe. Astronomers have found thousands of planets orbiting other stars. And there may be billions more worlds still to be discovered. Some may even have moons that can support life. That’s a lot of potential alien real estate. Over the last 60 years, astronomers have scoured only a tiny bit of it for interstellar messages. The area searched so far is like a hot tub’s worth of water out of all the world’s oceans.



See all the entries from our Lets Learn About series



Some people think we’d have a better chance of meeting aliens if we introduce ourselves. That is, beam our own messages into space. These messages could be written in mathematical patterns. (Math is thought to be a universal language.) One such message was sent from the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico in 1974. But other scientists say this is a bad idea. We might not want to advertise our existence to unfriendly aliens.





There may also be aliens that aren’t able to send or read messages. Some planets may be home to simple, even microscopic life forms. To find those worlds, astronomers look for new worlds in the so-called habitable zone. This is the area around a star where a planet would be just warm enough to have liquid water. That’s important because water is essential for all known life. One such planet may orbit the nearest star to our sun.



A planet may not have to look just like Earth, though, to be a good home for aliens. Some hardy creatures on our own planet thrive in seemingly unlivable conditions. Microbes at the seafloor bask in scalding water. Meanwhile, microbes nestled in Antarctic ice withstand freezing cold. Other critters slurp up toxic chemicals or bathe in acid. Learning about these “extremophiles” broadens our view of what places in the cosmos might be livable.





Microbial aliens might also be found closer to home. Saturn’s moon Enceladus is a good place to look. So is Jupiter’s moon Europa. Both have oceans of liquid water encased in their icy crusts. Mars could even host life in a lake near its south pole. A recent survey suggested that most Americans would welcome finding alien microbes.



The question of whether we are alone in the universe has captured peoples imaginations for millennia. And the answer has two equally mind-blowing possibilities.  In all the vast expanse of outer space, either we are completely alone or we are not.



Want to know more? Weve got some stories to get you started:



Worlds deepest zoo harbors clues to extraterrestrial life Scientists have found a wide range of life deep below Earths surface. Those discoveries could inform the search for life on other planets. (6/15/2017) Readability: 6.6



Only a small fraction of space has been searched for aliens How little? A volume equivalent to a hot tubs worth of the Earths oceans. (10/24/2018) Readability: 8.2



Should we call out to space aliens? To speed up the search for extraterrestrials, some scientists recommend sending signals to space. Others disagree. (3/21/2017) Readability: 8.0





Heres how astronomers can tease out what gases exist in an exoplanets atmosphere and find clues about whether that world might be habitable.



Explore more



Scientists Say: Exomoon



Explainer: What is a planet?



Lets learn about exoplanets



Profile: Looking for life beyond the solar system



Keeping space missions from infecting Earth and other worlds



Finding living Martians just got a bit more believable



Most Americans would welcome a microbial E.T.



Will we know alien life when we see it?



A trail of cosmic dust may lead to alien life



Planets with hydrogen skies could harbor life



Cool Jobs: Reaching out to E.T. is a numbers game



Activities



Word find



The message to alien civilizations sent out by the Arecibo Radio Telescope in 1974 was a picture. It included a basic sketch of a person, the solar system and other information. But in order to beam that picture into space, scientists had to translate it into binary code. Thats a series of 1s and 0s. Learn how to read and create your own binary code messages with this activity from the Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium in Montreal, Canada.

Avalanche (noun, “AV-uh-lanch”)



An avalanche is any large mass of material that is tumbling downhill. But the word usually refers to snow cascading down a mountainside. A snow avalanche is triggered when snow high on a mountain is disturbed. Falling rocks and earthquakes can destabilize snow. People can also set off avalanches by walking or skiing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes people will use explosives to cause an avalanche before someone can accidentally set one off and get hurt.



As snow slides downhill, it picks up speed, snow and other debris. Smaller spills of powdery snow are called sluffs. More dangerous avalanches occur when huge slabs of snow break loose from a mountainside. The snow in an avalanche can plunge downward at hundreds of kilometers (miles) per hour. And if someone is buried, it can be nearly impossible to dig out without help. An average of 27 people in the United States alone die in avalanches each year.



In a sentence



The most dangerous avalanches, called dry slab avalanches, occur when a very cold and dry snowpack is disturbed.



Check out the full list of Scientists Say.

Nuclear clocks could be the GOAT: Greatest of all timepieces. If physicists can build them, nuclear clocks would be a brand-new type. These clocks would keep time based on the physics of atoms hearts.



Some scientists believe the first of these could debut in a few years.



At the center of each atom is a nucleus. Thats where protons and neutrons are found. Clocks based on atomic nuclei could be 10 times as precise as todays most exact clocks.



Better clocks could improve technologies such as GPS navigation. But its not just about timekeeping, physicist Peter Thirolf said June 3. Nuclear clocks could allow new tests of fundamental ideas in physics. Thirolf works at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt Mnchen in Germany. He spoke at an online meeting of the American Physical Society.





Currently, the most precise clocks are atomic clocks. They arent based on the nucleus. They tally time using the energy jumps of electrons. Electrons in atoms can carry only certain amounts of energy, in specific energy levels. To bump electrons in an atom from one energy level to another, the clocks atoms must be hit with a laser. And the lasers light must be just right.



Explainer: How lasers make optical molasses



Light is made up of electromagnetic waves. Frequency is the rate at which those waves pass by. Only light of a certain frequency will make the electrons jump. That frequency serves as a highly precise timekeeper. Imagine using the rate at which waves wash up on a beach to keep track of time. But in this case, theyre light waves.



Protons and neutrons within an atoms nucleus also occupy energy levels. Nuclear clocks would rely on jumps of those particles instead of electrons.



Adriana Plffy is a theoretical physicist. She works at Friedrich-Alexander-Universitt Erlangen-Nrnberg in Germany. An atoms nucleus isnt as affected by stray electric or magnetic fields as the atoms electrons are. She says that suggests nuclear clocks would be more stable and more accurate.



But theres a problem. Typical lasers cant access nuclear-energy levels. For most nuclei, that would require higher energy light than normal lasers can achieve.





How excited



Luckily, theres one lone exception. A freak-of-nature thing, Marianna Safronova said in a June 2 talk at the meeting. She is a theoretical physicist at the University of Delaware in Newark.



The exception is thorium. Thorium is a metallic chemical element. There is a variety of the element known as thorium-229. It has a pair of nuclear energy levels that are close together. The energy levels are so close, in fact, that a laser might be able to set off the jump.



Scientists recently pinpointed how much energy a thorium-229 nucleus needs to make the jump. This is a crucial step toward building a thorium nuclear clock.



Thirolf and his colleagues estimated the energy by measuring electrons that the nucleus emitted when it jumped between levels. The team described its findings in Nature two years ago.Another team took a different approach. It measured the energy of other jumps the thorium nucleus can make and subtracted them. Those researchers reported their findings in Physical Review Letters last year.



Both teams agree that thorium-229s nucleus takes about 8 electron volts to jump energy levels. This energy corresponds to the edge of lasers power. That suggests lasers might be able to prompt a jump.



Detectors (shown in this false-color image made by a scanning electron microscope) measured the light emitted when thorium-229 atoms jumped between energy levels. Those measurements allowed physicists to estimate the energy of the jump needed to make a nuclear clock.Matthus Krantz



Making the jump



Physicists now are aiming to trigger that jump with lasers.



Chuankun Zhang is a physicist at JILA, a research institute in Boulder, Colo. At the meeting, Zhang reported efforts to use a frequency comb. A frequency comb is a laser with an array of light frequencies. The comb will hopefully let Zhangs team spur the nucleus to jump. It also could let the team better measure the energy needed to make the jump. If its a success, Zhang said, we can directly build a nuclear-based optical clock from that.



Thirolfs team also is working with frequency combs. His team aims to create a working nuclear clock within the next five years.



Meanwhile, Plffy is looking into using whats called an electronic bridge. Rather than using a laser to hit an atoms nucleus directly, the laser would first excite the atoms electrons. Those excited electrons would then transfer energy to the nucleus. Plffy presented this idea at the meeting.



Test of time



Nuclear clocks could let researchers devise new tests of fundamental constants of nature. A fundamental constant is a number that never changes. At least we think it doesnt ever change. Tests with nuclear clocks would help scientists figure out if the numbers are in fact constant, or if they vary over time.



Nuclear clocks could also test a foundation of Einsteins gravity theory the equivalence principle. It states that two different objects in a vacuum should fall at the same rate.



This new type of clock might even aid in the search for dark matter. Dark matter is invisible. Its made of particles that scientists have yet to detect. Physicists think these particles account for most of the universes matter. If dark matter were to interact with a nuclear clock, the interaction could tweak the clocks ticking.

Massive numbers of sharks died abruptly 19 million years ago, new data show. Fossils from sediments in the Pacific Ocean reveal that 90 percent of them vanished. And so far, scientists dont know why.



Its a great mystery, says Elizabeth Sibert. She led the new study. A paleobiologist and oceanographer, she works at Yale University. Thats in New Haven, Conn. Sharks have been around for 400 million years. And yet this event wiped out [up to] 90 percent of them.



Explainer: How a fossil forms



Sharks have suffered losses in the past. It started 250 million years ago during the Great Dying. This event marked the end of most large ocean species. Much later, about 66 million years ago, a huge asteroid fell to Earth. It killed off most dinosaurs and 30 to 40 percent of shark species. After that, sharks enjoyed about 45 million years as the oceans top predator. They even survived large climate disruptions, such as an episode about 56 million years ago when global levels of carbon dioxide spiked and temperatures soared.





The newly discovered fossils are a surprising twist in the sharks story.



Sifting sediment



Sibert sifted through fish teeth and shark scales in the sediment. She worked with Leah Rubin, a student at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine. Scientists had collected that sediment during various expeditions to the North and South Pacific oceans. The project came out of a desire to better understand the natural background variability of these fossils, Sibert explains.



Sharks bodies are mostly cartilage. Unlike bone, cartilage is difficult to preserve as fossils. But sharks skin is covered in tiny scales. Each scale is about the width of a human hair follicle. These scales make for an excellent record of past shark abundance. They contain the same hard mineral as sharks teeth. Both can turn to fossils in sediments. And we will find several hundred more [scales] compared to a tooth, Sibert explains.



Fossil shark scales provided clues to the change in biodiversity after a mysterious shark die-off. Researchers sorted the scales into two main types: those with lined grooves (left) and those with geometric shapes (right). The geometric shapes all but disappeared from ocean sediments following the extinction event.E.C. Sibert and L.D. Rubin/Science 2021



What her team discovered was a surprise. From 66 million to about 19 million years ago, the ratio of fish teeth to shark scales held steady at about 5 to 1. Then the ratio took a dramatic turn: 100 fish teeth appeared for each shark scale. The team estimates this change was abrupt within 100,000 years or so.



That sudden disappearance of shark scales came at the same time as a change in the scales shapes. This provides clues about shark diversity.



Most modern sharks have lined grooves on their scales, ones that may help them swim faster. Other sharks scales have geometric shapes. The researchers looked at the change in the abundance of various scale shapes before 19 million years ago and then again afterward. This revealed a huge loss in shark diversity. It appears some seven in every 10 shark species went extinct.



And this extinction event was quite selective, notes Rubin. After the event, the geometric scales were almost gone. And that previous diversity in sharks, she adds, was never seen again. She and Sibert describe their findings June 4 in Science.





A cautionary tale



An explanation for the massive shark die-off isnt obvious, Sibert says. Nineteen million years ago is not known as a formative time in Earths history. Solving the mystery is one question she hopes to answer. She wants to understand how the varied scale shapes might relate to shark lineages. Shed also like to learn what impact the sudden loss of so many big predators might have had on other ocean dwellers.



Answers to those questions could be helpful today. Overfishing and ocean warming in the last 50 years have decreased shark populations by more than 70 percent. This loss of sharks no doubt impacts the oceans ecology.



Catherine Macdonald is a marine conservation biologist at the University of Miami in Florida. She sees the study as a cautionary tale. Our power to act to protect what remains does not include an ability to fully reverse or undo the effects of the massive environmental changes we have already made, she notes.



What happens to communities of the oceans top predators can be critical signs of those changes. Unraveling how the ocean ecosystem responded to shark losses in the past could help researchers predict what may await us now, Sibert says. The sharks are trying to tell us something, she explains, and I cant wait to find out what it is.

Ancient peoples fashioned many tools from bones. These included awls, needles and fish hooks. Two turkey leg bones with sharpened ends point to a more colorful use. Native Americans used them to make tattoos some 3,620 to 5,520 years ago. Thats the conclusion of a new study.



The sharpened turkey bones turned up at a dig site in Tennessee called Fernvale. Excavations in 1985 uncovered the bones in a mans burial pit.



These pigment-stained bones are the worlds oldest known tattooing tools, says Aaron Deter-Wolf. Hes an archaeologist with the Tennessee Division of Archaeology in Nashville. The find suggests that Native American tattoo traditions in eastern North America extend back at least 1,000 years earlier than previously thought.



The oldest known tattoos belong to tzi the Iceman. He lived around 5,250 years ago in Europe. But researchers have yet to find any of the tools used to make his tattoos.





Deter-Wolf was part of a team that studied the bones under a microscope. Tools used to create skin designs are tough to find and recognize, he says. But two turkey-leg bones showed distinctive damage on and near their tips. The pattern looks like the wear previously seen on experimental bone tattooing tools, Deter-Wolfs team says.



In that research, Christian Gates St-Pierre made tattooing tools out of deer bones. An anthropologist, he works at the University of Montreal in Quebec, Canada. Gates St-Pierre used his bone tools to tattoo lines in fresh slabs of pig skin. First, he coated the tips in a homemade ink of soot, water and wax. Then he made a series of punctures in the skin. Experimental tattooing left ink remnants several millimeters from the tools tips. The Fernvale tools showed the same pattern, only theirs are red and black pigment residues.



Other artifacts found in the same Fernvale grave suggest they may have been part of a tattoo kit. Two turkey wing bones display microscopic wear and pigment residues. Those likely resulted from applying pigment during tattooing, the scientists say. The grave also contained pigment-stained seashells. These may have held liquids into which tattooers dipped their tools.



Deter-Wolfs team described its new research in the June Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.