Nature News

February 14, 2026

Top Headlines

Yellowstone Wolves May Not Have Transformed the National Park After All

Feb. 12, 2026 A new scientific review challenges the headline-grabbing claim that Yellowstone’s returning wolves triggered one of the strongest trophic cascades on Earth. Researchers found that the reported 1,500% surge in willow growth was based on circular ...

The Worst Coral Bleaching Event Ever Recorded Damaged over 50% of Reefs

Feb. 12, 2026 Coral reefs, worth an estimated $9.8 trillion a year to humanity, are in far worse shape than previously realized. A massive international study found that during the 2014–2017 global marine heatwave, more than half of the world’s reefs suffered ...

Scientists Find Genes That Existed Before All Life on Earth

Feb. 10, 2026 Life’s story may stretch further back than scientists once thought. Some genes found in nearly every organism today were already duplicated before all life shared a common ancestor. By tracking these rare genes, researchers can investigate how ...

Forests Are Changing Fast and Scientists Are Deeply Concerned

Feb. 9, 2026 Forests around the world are quietly transforming, and not for the better. A massive global analysis of more than 31,000 tree species reveals that forests are becoming more uniform, increasingly dominated by fast-growing “sprinter” trees, while ...

Gut Bacteria Can Sense Their Environment and It’s Key to Your Health

Feb. 8, 2026 Your gut is home to trillions of bacteria that constantly “sense” their surroundings to survive and thrive. New research shows that beneficial gut microbes, especially common Clostridia bacteria, can detect a surprisingly wide range of chemical ...

Scientists Warn Climate Models Are Missing a Key Ocean Player

Feb. 8, 2026 Tiny marine plankton that build calcium carbonate shells play an outsized role in regulating Earth’s climate, quietly pulling carbon from the atmosphere and helping lock it away in the deep ocean. New research shows these microscopic engineers are ...

Pumas Are Back in Patagonia and Penguins Are Paying the Price

Feb. 8, 2026 Pumas returning to Patagonia have begun hunting mainland penguins that evolved without land predators. Scientists estimate that more than 7,000 adult penguins were killed in just four years, many of them left uneaten. While the losses are dramatic, ...

This Unexpected Plant Discovery Could Change How Drugs Are Made

Feb. 3, 2026 Plants make chemical weapons to protect themselves, and many of these compounds have become vital to human medicine. Researchers found that one powerful plant chemical is produced using a gene that looks surprisingly bacterial. This suggests plants ...

Even Remote Pacific Fish Are Full of Microplastics

Feb. 3, 2026 Even in some of the most isolated corners of the Pacific, plastic pollution has quietly worked its way into the food web. A large analysis of fish caught around Fiji, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu found that roughly one in three contained ...

Hundreds of New Species Found in a Hidden World Beneath the Pacific

Feb. 2, 2026 As demand for critical metals grows, scientists have taken a rare, close look at life on the deep Pacific seabed where mining may soon begin. Over five years and 160 days at sea, researchers documented nearly 800 species, many previously unknown. ...

One of Earth’s Most Abundant Lifeforms Has a Fatal Flaw

Feb. 2, 2026 SAR11 bacteria dominate the world’s oceans by being incredibly efficient, shedding genes to survive in nutrient-poor waters. But that extreme streamlining appears to backfire when conditions change. Under stress, many cells keep copying their DNA ...

This AI App Can Tell Which Dinosaur Made a Footprint

Feb. 1, 2026 Dinosaur footprints have always been mysterious, but a new AI app is cracking their secrets. DinoTracker analyzes photos of fossil tracks and predicts which dinosaur made them, with accuracy rivaling human experts. Along the way, it uncovered ...

Latest Headlines

updated 2:23am EST

H5N1 Bird Flu Kills More Than 50 Skuas in First Antarctica Wildlife Die Off

Feb. 12, 2026 For the first time, deadly H5N1 bird flu has been confirmed as the cause of a wildlife die-off in Antarctica, killing more than 50 skuas during the 2023–2024 summers. Researchers on an Antarctic ...

Almost Every Forest Bird in Hawaiʻi Is Spreading Avian Malaria

Feb. 11, 2026 Avian malaria is spreading across Hawaiʻi in a way scientists didn’t fully grasp until now: nearly every forest bird species can help keep the disease alive. Researchers found the parasite at 63 ...

This Ancient Animal Was One of the First to Eat Plants on Land

Feb. 11, 2026 Hundreds of millions of years ago, the first animals to crawl onto land were strict meat-eaters, even as plants had already taken over the landscape. Now scientists have uncovered a ...

This Weird Deep-Sea Creature Was Named by Thousands of People Online

Feb. 7, 2026 A newly discovered deep-sea creature has become an unlikely Internet star. After appearing in a popular YouTube video, a rare chiton found nearly three miles beneath the ocean surface sparked a ...

These 773,000-Year-Old Fossils May Reveal Our Shared Human Ancestor

Feb. 7, 2026 Fossils from a Moroccan cave have been dated with remarkable accuracy to about 773,000 years ago, thanks to a magnetic signature locked into the surrounding sediments. The hominin remains show a ...

This Strange Little Dinosaur Is Forcing a Rethink of Evolution

Feb. 3, 2026 A newly identified tiny dinosaur, Foskeia pelendonum, is shaking up long-held ideas about how plant-eating dinosaurs evolved. Though fully grown adults were remarkably small and lightweight, their ...

Baby Dinosaurs Were the Backbone of the Jurassic Food Chain

Feb. 1, 2026 Despite growing into the largest animals ever to walk on land, sauropods began life small, exposed, and alone. Fossil evidence suggests their babies were frequently eaten by multiple predators, ...

How Gene Loss and Monogamy Built Termite Mega Societies

Jan. 31, 2026 Termites did not evolve complex societies by adding new genetic features. Instead, scientists found that they became more social by shedding genes tied to competition and independence. A shift to ...

Gray Wolves Are Hunting Sea Otters and No One Knows How

Jan. 30, 2026 On a remote Alaskan island, gray wolves are rewriting the rulebook by hunting sea otters — a behavior few scientists ever expected to see. Researchers are now uncovering how these coastal wolves ...

Tiny Mammals Are Sending Warning Signs Scientists Can Finally Read

Jan. 29, 2026 Small mammals are early warning systems for environmental damage, but many species look almost identical, making them hard to track. Scientists have developed a new footprint-based method that can ...

Forty Years of Forest Data Reveal a Changing Amazon

Jan. 25, 2026 After analyzing 40 years of tree records across the Andes and Amazon, researchers found that climate change is reshaping tropical forests in uneven ways. Some regions are steadily losing tree ...

Europa’s Ice May Be Feeding a Hidden Ocean That Could Support Life

Jan. 23, 2026 Europa’s subsurface ocean might be getting fed after all. Scientists found that salty, nutrient-rich surface ice can become heavy enough to break free and sink through Europa’s icy shell, ...

How the Frog Meat Trade Helped Spread a Deadly Fungus Worldwide

Jan. 19, 2026 A deadly fungus that has wiped out hundreds of amphibian species worldwide may have started its global journey in Brazil. Genetic evidence and trade data suggest the fungus hitchhiked across the ...

This Small Soil Upgrade Cut Locust Damage and Doubled Yields

Jan. 24, 2026 Locust swarms can wipe out crops across entire regions, threatening food supplies and livelihoods. Now, scientists working with farmers in Senegal have shown that improving soil health can ...

Forest Loss Is Driving Mosquitoes’ Thirst for Human Blood

Jan. 15, 2026 In the rapidly disappearing Atlantic Forest, mosquitoes are adapting to a human-dominated landscape. Scientists found that many species now prefer feeding on people rather than the forest’s diverse ...

Scientists Found the Soil Secret That Doubles Forest Regrowth

Jan. 15, 2026 New research shows tropical forests can recover twice as fast after deforestation when their soils contain enough nitrogen. Scientists followed forest regrowth across Central America for decades and ...

“Marine Darkwaves”: Hidden Ocean Blackouts Are Putting Sealife at Risk

Jan. 14, 2026 Scientists have identified a newly recognized threat lurking beneath the ocean’s surface: sudden episodes of underwater darkness that can last days or even months. Caused by storms, sediment ...

Extreme Heat Is Breaking Honey Bees’ Natural Cooling System

Jan. 13, 2026 Honey bees can normally keep their hives perfectly climate-controlled, but extreme heat can overwhelm their defenses. During a scorching Arizona summer, researchers found that high temperatures ...

When the Oceans Died and Life Changed Forever

Jan. 11, 2026 A rapid climate collapse during the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction devastated ocean life and reshuffled Earth’s ecosystems. In the aftermath, jawed vertebrates gained an unexpected edge by ...

Scientists Finally Explain Earth’s Strangest Fossils

Jan. 27, 2026 The Ediacara Biota are some of the strangest fossils ever found—soft-bodied organisms preserved in remarkable detail where preservation shouldn’t be possible. Scientists now think their survival ...

A New Study Casts Doubt on Life Beneath Europa’s Ice

Jan. 7, 2026 Europa’s buried ocean has made it one of the most exciting places to search for life beyond Earth. However, new calculations suggest its seafloor may be calm, cold, and largely inactive, with ...

Breakthrough Lets Scientists Watch Plants Breathe in Real Time

Jan. 7, 2026 Scientists have created a new way to watch plants breathe—live and in high definition—while tracking exactly how much carbon and water they exchange with the air. The breakthrough could help ...

Coral Reefs Could Feed Millions If We Let Them Rebuild

Jan. 4, 2026 Overfished coral reefs are producing far less food than they could. Researchers found that letting reef fish populations recover could boost sustainable fish yields by nearly 50%, creating millions ...

Coral Reefs Have a Hidden Daily Rhythm Scientists Just Discovered

Jan. 9, 2026 Coral reefs appear to run a daily timetable for microscopic life in nearby waters. Scientists found that microbial populations above reefs rise and fall over the course of a single day, shaped by ...

Scientists “resurrect” Ancient Cannabis Enzymes With Medical Promise

Jan. 15, 2026 Scientists have uncovered how cannabis evolved the ability to make its most famous compounds—THC, CBD, and CBC—by recreating ancient enzymes that existed millions of years ago. These early ...

A Hidden Chemical War Is Unfolding Inside Spruce Trees

Jan. 1, 2026 Spruce bark beetles don’t just tolerate their host tree’s chemical defenses—they actively reshape them into stronger antifungal protections. These stolen defenses help shield the beetles from ...

We Are Living in a Golden Age of Species Discovery

Dec. 24, 2025 The search for life on Earth is speeding up, not slowing down. Scientists are now identifying more than 16,000 new species each year, revealing far more biodiversity than expected across animals, ...

Why Evolution Rewarded Ants That Sacrificed Protection

Dec. 22, 2025 Some ants thrive by choosing numbers over strength. Instead of heavily protecting each worker, they invest fewer resources in individual armor and produce far more ants. Larger colonies then ...

Scientists Replayed Evolution and Found a Surprise

Dec. 30, 2025 Environmental change doesn’t affect evolution in a single, predictable way. In large-scale computer simulations, scientists discovered that some fluctuating conditions help populations evolve ...

From Biting Flies to Feathered Dinosaurs, Scientists Reveal 70 New Species

Dec. 19, 2025 Researchers announced over 70 new species in a single year, including bizarre insects, ancient dinosaurs, rare mammals, and deep-river fish. Many were found not in the wild, but in museum ...