Tick season seems to be off to a fast start, with an unusually high number of bites already reported across the country. Some U.S. doctors are worried about the potential for a bad year for tick-borne diseases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an early advisory to the public this week to guard against ticks.
Four decades after the nuclear disaster at Ukraine’s Chernobyl power plant, wildlife is thriving again in what became the exclusion zone created by the forced mass evacuations of the population. Wolves, bears and lynx have rebounded in the radioactive landscape, along with a rare breed of horses native to Mongolia. Scientists say it shows nature’s ability to recover when human activity is removed. Hidden cameras have revealed the animal population adapting by using abandoned buildings for shelter. Chernobyl remains too dangerous for people but has become an unexpected refuge — and research site — for resilient ecosystems shaped by disaster and war.
Scientists have discovered fossils in China that reveal a crucial transition from simple to complex life on Earth. These fossils, dating back 539 million years, show complex animals living three-dimensional lives, millions of years earlier than previously thought. This challenges the belief that such complexity only emerged during the Cambrian explosion. Experts say this finding provides a glimpse into how modern animal life developed. The study, published in Science, also helps settle the "rocks versus clocks" debate in paleontology, aligning fossil evidence with genetic data. Researchers are now exploring how and why this rapid evolution occurred.