These Brittle Stars Have Thousands of ‘Pig Snouts’ on Each Arm
The New York Times
Scientists have described a new family of brittle stars from a single specimen from a seamount off New Caledonia.
In theory, Tim O’Hara had come to Paris to map the biodiversity of a faraway seamount. In practice, this meant sifting a plastic barrel of preserved brittle stars floating in 95 percent ethanol. For weeks, he sorted through common, five-armed species of echinoderms that are related to starfish, many of which he’d seen before. “You get humdrum things,” said Dr. O’Hara, a senior curator at Museums Victoria in Australia. One specimen Dr. O’Hara scooped from the bucket looked unlike any brittle star he’d seen before. It had a thorny nest of teeth and, quite peculiarly, eight arms. “Brittle stars always have five, a few have six, and the very odd one has more than 10,” he said. “To suddenly have eight arms? That was special.”
Five years after the novel coronavirus emerged, historians see echoes of other great illnesses, and legacies that are unlike any of them.
In a recent interview, the health secretary also suggested that the measles vaccine had harmed children in West Texas, center of an outbreak.
An ambitious start-up embodies new optimism that artificial intelligence can turbocharge scientific discovery.
There’s a reason this easy 1930s recipe, topped with caramel and coconut, has been around for so long.
Some scientists are confident that organs from genetically modified pigs will one day be routinely transplanted into humans. But substantial ethical questions remain.
People interpret a dog’s emotions based on its situation and have “a big blind spot” for the actual animal, a new study found.
January and February are usually the doldrums for dining, but Americans have been eating out, and spending, with gusto.
The president’s halt of foreign aid upended two U.S. programs that help the International Atomic Energy Agency find clues about Iran’s drive to build atomic bombs.
Organizations funded by the United States helped keep dangerous pathogens in check around the world. Now many safeguards are gone, and Americans may pay the price.
The Athena lander from Intuitive Machines could not charge its batteries after ending up on its side. It largely failed to accomplish science and technology tasks for NASA and other customers.
The first-of-its-kind event at the White House with top crypto executives showcased the president’s embrace of the once-renegade industry.
In her new memoir, “Care and Feeding,” Laurie Woolever looks back on 20 tumultuous, exhilarating years with two of America’s biggest celebrity chefs.
Two more people are reported dead from the disease, and dozens are in isolation, as the outbreak grows.