RHS experts have scoured the planet to produce a list of the world’s 10 ugliest plants. Their choice spans the spectrum from the spiky to the hairy. Given the conditions in which many of these plants live – extreme temperatures and humidity – it’s perhaps understandable that survival skills win over looks. The frightful flora [...]

When the 47million-year-old fossil dubbed ‘Ida’ was revealed to the world, attention soon turned to the anonymous German shale pit where it was first unearthed. The astonishingly well-preserved remains of the primate-like animal could prove to be the so-called ‘missing link’ which would help prove Darwin’s theory of evolution. But Ida is just one of [...]

Got this in an email This guy is from Oahu, but he is gaining International fame. He’s a surfer himself and often gets wiped out just getting the shot. And you can see why! These incredible images of waves were taken by the number one photographer of surf: Clark Little. He has dedicated his life [...]

Sittin on the porch countin squirrels this weekend? Email those numbers to a Chicago scientist and you can take part in a citizen-science project that has implications not just for the furry tree-dwelling varmints, but for animals and ecosystems throughout the world. The Chicago Academy of Sciences just revived a decade-old project that used citizen [...]

The oldest and largest trees within California’s world famous Yosemite National Park are disappearing. Climate change appears to be a major cause of the loss. The revelation comes from an analysis of data collected over 60 years by forest ecologists. They say one worrying aspect of the decline is that it is happening within one [...]

HISTORIC cave paintings in France partially saved from attack by a black fungus face a new threat: bacteria that moved in following four years of spraying with fungicide. The Lascaux cave in south-west France houses invaluable animal paintings that are between 16,000 and 17,000 years old, making them among the oldest examples of cave art [...]

In the 1960s, the Soviet Union undertook a major water diversion project on the arid plains of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. The region’s two major rivers, fed from snowmelt and precipitation in far-away mountains, were used to transform the desert into fields for cotton and other crops. Before the project, the two rivers left the [...]

Few places throw the internet’s rapacious appetite for energy into relief more sharply than a remote 30-acre patch of scrubland in northern Oregon owned by Google. The site, on the fringes of the city of The Dalles on the banks of the Columbia river, is home to one of the world’s largest and most powerful [...]

SALT LAKE CITY – A tiny mammal that can’t handle warm weather could become the first animal in the lower 48 states to get Endangered Species Act protection primarily because of climate change. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, responding to a petition from environmentalists, said Wednesday that it will launch an in-depth review of [...]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Scientists are airlifting dozens of one of the world’s largest frogs off of Montserrat island to save them from a deadly fungus devastating their dwindling habitat. The dense forest of this tiny British Caribbean territory is the last remaining stronghold of the critically endangered mountain chicken frog, a 2-pound (0.9 [...]