Less than a year ago, United States company Colossal Biosciences announced it had "resurrected" the dire wolf, a megafauna-hunting wolf species that had been extinct for 10,000 years.

In a study published in Nature on January 28, a research team led by Eric H. Xu (Xu Huaqiang) from the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, along with Ma Xiong from Renji Hospital, determined how Ostα/β transports bile acids and why it differs fundamentally from previously characterized carriers through cryo-EM structure determination, molecular dynamics simulations, and electrophysiological analyses.

A new discovery by researchers from Adelaide University, in collaboration with Denmark's Carlsberg Research Laboratory, will allow barley growers to optimize seed dormancy for their crops and improve growing efficiency. The researchers employed a multidisciplinary approach to construct the barley mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) enzyme-substrate complex, which plays a crucial role in seed dormancy. The work is published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

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. Test mining reduced animal abundance and diversity significantly, though the overall impact was smaller than expected. The study offers vital clues for how future mining could reshape one of the planet’s most fragile ecosystems.

University of Queensland research has confirmed Brisbane's only dinosaur fossil is Australia's oldest, dating back to the earliest part of the Late Triassic period 230 million years ago. The 18.5-centimeter footprint was discovered by a teenager at Petrie's Quarry at Albion in 1958 but remained unstudied for more than 60 years.

Twisting upwardly on trees and other plants—along with houses and even lampposts—vines are a wonder of nature. However, their marvels mask their parasitic behavior: in attaching to other life forms, vines block sunlight necessary for growth and strangle their hosts, preventing the flow of water and other nutrients.

A debilitating hoof disease affecting elk herds across the Pacific Northwest appears to be driven not by a single pathogen but by multiple bacterial species working together, according to a study led by researchers in Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine.

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 without dividing, creating abnormal cells that grow large and die. This vulnerability may explain why SAR11 populations drop during phytoplankton blooms and could become more important as oceans grow less stable.

Researchers at the School of Biological Sciences of The University of Hong Kong (HKU) have uncovered how eukaryotic cells can control gene activity even after losing one of their major gene-regulatory systems during evolution. By studying a microscopic soil-living roundworm, the team revealed how an alternative, conserved epigenetic mechanism can take over when a common one is missing.

An international team has described Foskeia pelendonum, a tiny Early Cretaceous ornithopod from Vegagete (Burgos, Spain), measuring barely half a meter long. Led by Paul-Emile Dieudonné (National University of Río Negro, Argentina), the study reveals an unexpectedly derived skull and positions Foskeia near the origin of the European herbivorous lineage Rhabdodontidae. The study is published in Papers in Palaeontology.

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, making them a key part of the Jurassic food chain. This steady supply of easy prey may explain why early predators thrived without needing extreme hunting adaptations. The findings offer a rare glimpse into how dinosaur ecosystems truly worked.

New research from the University of St Andrews has discovered a crucial piece in the puzzle of how all animals with a spine—including all mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians—evolved. In a paper published in BMC Biology, researchers found an intriguing pattern of gene evolution which appears to be significant for the evolutionary origin and diversification of vertebrates.