Discoveries

Join some of our planet’s most promising scientists and explorers as they discover new species, reveal new relationships, and inform new conservation priorities.

Exposed microbialite reefs create beautiful patterns at the surface of Utah's Great Salt Lake. Photograph by Kayla Smith, Utah Geological Survey High and Dry 08.20.2023 Article - Utah’s immense Great Salt Lake has receded in recent years, revealing the microbial reefs crucial to its ecosystem.
Linda Broome holds a captured mountain pygmy possum atop Mt Blue Cow, in Australia’s Kosciuszko National Park. Every spring, she returns to the park with a team of volunteers to monitor possum populations. Of Moths and Marsupials 04.26.2023 Article - The ancient relationship between the mountain pygmy possum and the bogong moth reveals the complexity of global climate change—and the lengths people may have to go to save some species from extinction.
Rogues of the Rainforest 03.22.2023 Article - Tropical vines are wandering, as they always have, but recent environmental changes are giving them an edge over other rainforest plants—a shift that could have enduring impacts on climates around the globe.
Two spotted owls perched on a tree in a Northern California forest. Photograph by Danny Hofstadter What Conservation Sounds Like 02.17.2023 Article - New bioacoustic tools are revolutionizing scientific research and enabling much quicker conservation efforts around the globe.
Like other salmon, sockeye die after spawning, providing important nutrients to surrounding ecosystems. Trouble at Sea 01.11.2023 Article - For salmon in the North Pacific, has the ocean reached its limit?
A chambered nautilus and fuzzy nautilus swim side-by-side. Photograph by Peter Ward Downward Spiral 06.04.2022 Article - The nautilus’s lineage made it through all five of Earth’s previous mass extinctions. But can it survive the Anthropocene?
Header image for Bringing out the Dead - Deep sea octopus Benthoctopus johnstoniana Bringing out the Dead 10.28.2021 Article - By sinking a wide array of carcasses into the deep ocean and studying what turns up when they fall, scientists are learning about some of the world’s most exotic scavengers and the roles they play in the darkness.
A Cicada calls from a plant with the Cincinnati, Ohio skyline in the background on June 12, 2021. Signs of the Times 07.08.2021 Article - Despite their perceived abundance, the periodical cicadas that emerged across the eastern United States this summer point to a growing set of threats facing both the insects themselves and the ecosystems they help support.
This Antarctic glacier is one of the remains of the once huge Larsen B ice shelf, which infamously collapsed in 2002 over the course of a single month. Such a large area of ice collapsing so quickly was an unprecedented event in scientific history. Photograph by Armin Rose / Shutterstock Antarctica’s Upside Down World 05.12.2021 Article - Clinging to the underside of ice hundreds of meters thick, strange communities of sea life eke out a living in perpetual darkness. Now, researchers are racing to find and study these creatures before they—and their ice sheets—disappear.
Scales of Reference - sockeye salmon Scales of Reference 03.11.2021 Article - Collected at the tail end of British Columbia's "silver fever," hundred-year-old salmon scales are now helping conservation scientists reconstruct and better manage the populations of one of Canada's most important fish.
Large kauri tree framed by green foliage, Waipoua Forest, Northland. Photograph by Arno Gasteiger. Swamp Sentinels 02.18.2021 Article - Buried in mud for millennia, some of New Zealand's ancient kauri trees are revealing surprising clues about Earth's climate—past, present, and future.
A male Hainan black-crested gibbon hangs from a branch in the Bawangling National Nature Reserve in Changjiang, South China's Hainan Province. Photograph by Xinhua News Agency The Gibbon’s Tail 10.14.2020 Article - For the world’s rarest ape, survival may depend on stories passed down for centuries among the people of its Chinese island home.
Biologist Bart Shepherd in An Audacious Plan in the Twilight An Audacious Plan in the Twilight 04.26.2016 Article - A team of deep-reef explorers attempts to document the unknown biodiversity of Vanuatu’s twilight zone.

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