Horses that are bred to race seem to perform better on the course if they had a diverse gut microbiome as foals

Lab-reared German cockroaches are susceptible to consumer insecticide sprays, allowing manufacturers to pass US regulatory tests, but insects taken from real-world infestations are able to shrug off the products

It's time to expect the unexpected, says Natalie Cabrol, one of the world's top astrobiologists and author of an authoritative book on the hunt for life's origins – and ET

The Maugean skate (Zearaja maugeana) is only found in one habitat in Australia, which is under threat from human activity. Now the species has been saved from extinction by hatching in captivity

From birds and bats to horses and great apes, Bill Schutt's seriously fun history of teeth, Bite, explains their role in both shaping evolution and our understanding of it

The Origins and Habitability Lab at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a testbed exploring how geological conditions could impact life in environments such as early Earth, Mars or the icy moons of Jupiter

These photos showcase some of the intricately created birds' nests found in the Natural History Museum in Tring, UK, home to one of the world's largest ornithological collections

We are finally untangling the ancient history of the cactus family, revealing some surprising forces that shaped these plants – ­­­­­­and prompting concern for their future

In most vertebrates, a pattern of chemical marks on the genome is a reliable indicator of age, but in axolotls this clock seems to stop after the first four years of life

Ancient volcanic rock from South Africa has been found to harbour primitive bacteria, which may shed light on some of the earliest forms of life on Earth

Evolutionary molecular biologist Beth Shapiro on the hunt for ancient DNA and her groundbreaking de-extinction and environmental mission  

Colossal, a US firm that is aiming to revive lost species such as the woolly mammoth, says it now has a near-complete genome of the extinct thylacine

For nervous newbie gardeners, starting out with a single plant in a small pot is pitched as an easy win by the horticultural industry. James Wong explains why it isn't

A fossil of a tadpole from Argentina is 161 million years old - and isn't that different from some modern species

When it comes to the survival of animals living in the wild, the characteristics of the group can matter as much as the traits of the individual, according to a study in marmots

The same genetic tools being used to resurrect the woolly mammoth and dodo could help many other vulnerable species that have yet to die out

Tribalism can be toxic, yet we need more of it if we are to meet today’s global challenges, argues one anthropologist. His research reveals how to create a “teratribe”

Climate change means extreme heat will become the norm for millions across the world. We joined an experiment in the Saudi Arabian desert designed to find out what that means for our brains and bodies

Our arm of the Milky Way is filled with older, metal-rich stars. New research suggests these might provide the best conditions for life to form on their planets

See the circle of galaxy clusters and voids that surround us in this map of the nearby cosmos, extending 200 million light years in each direction

People don't realise just how bad our antibiotic resistance problem is, says Jeanne Marrazzo, the top infectious disease specialist in the US

Research has found the universe is remarkably similar in structure to the human brain. But does this mean the cosmos has a consciousness of its own?

Whether space and time are part of the universe or they emerge from quantum entanglement is one of the biggest questions in physics. And we are getting close to the truth

Remote sensing, including lidar, reveals that the Amazon was once home to millions of people. The emerging picture of how they lived challenges ideas of human cultural evolution

Your body is home to trillions of beneficial viruses crucial for a healthy microbiome. We may one day be able to tweak this "virome" to treat obesity and anxiety

Fossils found 50 and 100 years ago seemed to pinpoint the moment humanity emerged – but defining a human has turned out to be far trickier than we thought

There are secrets aplenty in a pot of honey – from information about bees' "micro-bee-ota" to DNA from the environment – that can help us fight food fraud and even monitor shifts in climate

The International Space Station will burn up and splash down into the Pacific sometime around 2030. What could possibly go wrong? And will we ever see anything like the ISS again?

From artificial retinas to ageing mice, here are five of the most promising results from research performed on the ISS – and what they might mean for humans on Earth and in space

We instinctively know that relaxing feels good, but we are now figuring out what it does to the brain and uncovering the best ways to unwind to maximise its benefits

Promising new vaccines are designed to be given to patients at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. If they perform well in clinical trials, they have the potential to one day rid society of dementia

Advances in generative AI mean fake images, videos, audio and bots are now everywhere. But studies have revealed the best ways to tell if something is real

Neuroscientists have been surprised to discover that the human brain is teeming with microbes, and we are beginning to suspect they could play a role in neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's

Could the universe's missing matter be hiding in a "dark" extra dimension? We now have simple ways to test this outlandish idea - and the existence of extra dimensions more generally

Friends who blow hot and cold put more strain on your physical and mental health than enemies. Here's how to spot them and handle them

Netflix’s Ancient Apocalypse peddles the idea that we have overlooked an extraordinary ancient civilisation. Flint Dibble explains why that is wrong, and why real archaeology is more exciting

New research into the moments between wakefulness and sleep could bring hope for insomniacs and even make us more creative problem-solvers

Recent research shows that anti-inflammatory diets are not as faddish as they might sound, with the power to reduce the risk of heart attacks and some cancers

Our metabolism's response to food is highly idiosyncratic and there are hints that tailoring our diet to these personal differences can deliver health benefits

Claudia de Rham thinks that gravitons, hypothetical particles thought to carry gravity, have mass. If she’s right, we can expect to see “rainbows” in ripples in space-time

Two important barriers to a stable, powerful fusion reaction have been leapt by an experiment in a small tokamak reactor, but we don’t yet know if the technique will work in larger devices

Information contained within quantum objects gets scrambled when they interact. Physicists have now derived a speed limit for this process, challenging the idea that black holes are the fastest data scramblers

Concern over the risks of enabling nuclear weapons development is usually focused on nuclear fission reactors, but the potential harm from more advanced fusion reactors has been underappreciated

The true nature of time has eluded physicists for centuries, but a new theoretical model suggests it may only exist due to entanglement between quantum objects

Quantum light is key to futuristic quantum technologies, but researchers have been creating it in the same way for 60 years – now liquid crystals offer an easier way to produce it

Two types of fusion reactor called tokamaks and stellarators both have drawbacks – but a new design combining parts from both could offer the best of both worlds

It should be possible to combine several quantum states, each with almost no energy, to create a single quantum state containing unexpectedly energy-rich regions

ITER, a €20 billion nuclear fusion reactor under construction in France, will now not switch on until 2035 - a delay of 10 years. With smaller commercial fusion efforts on the rise, is it worth continuing with this gargantuan project?

Research has found the universe is remarkably similar in structure to the human brain. But does this mean the cosmos has a consciousness of its own?

Whether space and time are part of the universe or they emerge from quantum entanglement is one of the biggest questions in physics. And we are getting close to the truth