These beautiful photos capture how a remote island community safely shepherds its rare seabirds to the ocean.

The Azores hosts three-quarters of the global population of Cory’s shearwaters, which nest in burrows and clifftops around the Atlantic archipelago. Chicks stay in their nests all spring and summer until they have grown big enough to attempt their first flight, seen in the image above.

Once ready, the young birds take flight by night to avoid predators, using the moon and stars to navigate to the ocean. But it isn’t just predators these birds should be wary of, photographer Andrea Zanenga discovered when he visited Corvo. The tiny Portuguese island has just 430 human inhabitants, but is home to the world’s largest colony of Cory’s shearwaters.

During their fledging window in late October and early November, the young shearwaters are easily confused by artificial lights. The seabirds can’t take off from ground level, so if they crash, they remain stuck on the ground, vulnerable to attack or starvation.

“These are young birds, 3 months old, and most of them are doing their first flight,” says Tânia Pipa, a marine biologist at the Portuguese Society for the Study of Birds.

“They get lost. If you have a point with light pollution, they see it as guidance and go to that place, and get disorientated.” On the worst nights, Corvo residents might find dozens of stranded birds on the streets of the island’s only settlement, Vila do Corvo.

An Azores-wide campaign known as SOS Cagarro was launched in 1995 to rescue fallen shearwaters. Volunteers join night walks to spot stranded birds and place them in artificial nests (above).

The birds are released the following day from nearby clifftops.

But the residents of Corvo have gone one better. For five nights during the peak fledging season, all public lighting in Vila do Corvo is switched off from 9pm until midnight to help the birds navigate safely out to the ocean.

Corvo is the only island in the Azores to operate such a self-imposed blackout, leaving it free of light pollution. “When you see this sky with a lot of stars, you feel a little bit smaller,” says Zanenga.

The hall hummed with joyous curiosity at this year’s New ������ý Live at Excel London, which ran from 10 to 12 October and attracted thousands of visitors of all ages.

With topics including the search for extraterrestrial life, what AI is teaching us about consciousness and the maths behind Pokémon, there was a delightful range to explore. Highlights included physicist Jim Al-Khalili diving into the deepest mysteries of time and psychologist Kimberley Wilson on how to build lifelong brain health. Other packed talks ranged from how we evolved, from anthropologist Alice Roberts, to a myth-busting take on supplements by doctors Chris and Xand van Tulleken.

Fans lined up to meet speakers, including naturalist Chris Packham, who shared moving thoughts on why science is crucial to tackling the climate crisis. Younger fans flocked for selfies with mathematician and YouTuber Tom Crawford, who fought a fierce maths battle with maths teacher and TV presenter Bobby Seagull.

On the show floor, people could journey through a giant inflatable gut, 3D-print organs and get hands-on with large insects. They also lined up to board a Chinook helicopter, or step into a hospital of the future. Plus, in virtual reality, they could swim through coral reefs and explore the body in 3D.

Visitors also saw New ������ý staff, including editor Catherine de Lange, predict the biggest scientific breakthroughs in the next 70 years. Plus, podcast editor Rowan Hooper hosted an emergency briefing on the climate crisis, joined by leading climate and biodiversity scientists.

The talks were all recorded and will be available to stream online for 12 months. See for details of how to get access.

A remarkable fossil found in China raises the possibility that some of the earliest bird species never took wing or abandoned flight almost immediately after they had evolved the ability.

at the Chinese Academy of Sciences says the discovery of the new flightless species, Yuezhuornis yangyuanensis, could mean that powered flight didn’t drive the evolution of birds’ unique anatomy at all.

“This new fossil changes our assumption about what a Jurassic bird looked like,” says Wang.

Recent discoveries are disrupting the view that the evolution of birds and flight proceeded in a straight line, including another recently announced bird-like dinosaur, also found in China, that had evolved to fly but emerged from a completely different lineage.

The almost-complete new fossil, which is about 148 million to 150 million years old, was discovered in August 2024 near Yangyuang village, Fujian Province, and has been named by Wang and his colleagues after Yuezhuo, a mythological Chinese bird.

When alive, Y. yangyuanensis was around half a metre tall, weighing just over 800 grams – probably as big as a large crow, Wang says. He suspects the creature most likely lived in a swampy environment and was probably a good runner.

After comparing the ancient bird’s anatomy with nearly 400 living birds, the researchers concluded Y. yangyuanensis is most like modern ground-dwelling pheasants. These modern birds have forelimbs shorter than their hindlimbs, and Y. yangyuanensis did, too. While pheasants can fly in short bursts, they are effectively ground-dwellers.

The aerial abilities of some other early birds, including Archaeopteryx, are sometimes questioned, but they have forelimbs longer than their hindlimbs, and than Y. yangyuanensis.

Y. yangyuanensis also had a distinctive sickle-shaped claw on its second toe that was “highly functional”, says Wang, and probably used in prey capture. It was very similar in appearance to the claws of its distant relatives, including Velociraptor. Modern birds have lost these claws.

Unlike modern birds, Y. yangyuanensis had a long tail, similar to Archaeopteryx. It also had closely packed, serrated teeth like those typically present in deinonychosaur dinosaurs.

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But in other anatomical features, Y. yangyuanensis resembles other birds. Its hip bones and fibula – one of the lower leg bones – closely mirror those of later Cretaceous birds, says Wang.

The mix of dinosaur and bird features present in Y. yangyuanensis demonstrates that the bird body plan wasn’t a steady progression towards flight optimisation, say the researchers – particularly given that their analysis suggests Archaeopteryx, a stronger flier, was actually more primitive than Y. yangyuanensis.

Rather, they say, bird evolution was a more complex and rapid process than previously thought. It saw early species almost immediately explore different niches and specialisations, including lifestyles that didn’t involve flying. This challenges the notion that the early evolution of the avian body plan was driven almost exclusively by the selective pressures of flight, Wang says.

“[Y. yangyuanensis] exhibits a striking ‘mosaic’ of primitive and derived features – blending classic avian traits with distinct characteristics inherited from non-[avian] dinosaurs,” he says.

An association between certain sounds and spiky or round shapes, which is common to humans from cultures all over the world, appears to be shared by dogs.

Since 2001, many studies have reported that people are much more likely to give the made-up name “bouba” to a curved shape and “kiki” to a spiky shape. The effect has recently been shown in chicks and possibly , too.

at the University of Parma, Italy, and her colleagues decided to test whether pet dogs have the same tendency.

In the first experiment, 51 owners sat with their adult dogs, holding them during the experiment. They were shown a rounded shape on a panel on one side of the room and a spiky shape on the other. When they heard the word “bouba” 56 per cent of the dogs lingered on the round shape. When they heard “kiki”, 63 per cent concentrated their gaze on the spiky shape.

To make sure the dogs weren’t influenced by their owners, the team repeated the experiment with the owners wearing headphones playing music so they couldn’t hear the words. The outcome was the same, with a slightly stronger bias towards round shapes for the word “bouba”.

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���� animals without human-like language also spontaneously associate sounds with shapes, this suggests that at least some of the mechanisms underlying sound symbolism may not be specific to language,” says Biffi. “Instead, they may reflect more general principles of how the brain integrates information from different senses.”

However, it is unclear to what extent the effect depends on dogs having experience of listening to human speech, or the fact that dogs have co-evolved with humans for thousands of years. To investigate this, Biffi says the team is now collecting data on puppies and wild canids, including foxes, and also wants to see if the effect exists in cats.

���� cats also show the bouba–kiki effect, this would provide further evidence that sound symbolism may reflect general perceptual mechanisms, rather than adaptations specifically related to dogs’ long history of cooperation and communication with humans,” says Biffi.

at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary says the study suggests the matching of speech sounds to shapes relies on general mechanisms rather than complex linguistic representations. “An exciting next question is to what extent [these links] in dogs arise through statistical learning or more hardwired expectations,” he says.

Meet Invictibellatrix amberina, the unconquered female warrior – a new species of predatory dinosaur related to Tyrannosaurus rex that hails from the Isle of Wight in southern England.

The fossil used to identify it – a partial braincase – has been lying in the archives of the Natural History Museum in London since it was acquired from a Reverend Reginald Hooley in 1924. “It was sitting unstudied in the museum for about 100 years, which is very surreal,” says , now at the University of Leeds, UK.

Morrison and his colleagues used CT scans to create a 3D scan of the fossil and compared it with features of other dinosaurs.

The closest match was the Argentinian megaraptoran from about 80 million years ago. So, the researchers suggest that the skull, originally found in 120-million-year-old rocks from the Lower Cretaceous Wessex Formation on the south-west coast of the Isle of Wight, is from a new species belonging to the Megaraptora group of carnivorous dinosaurs. If so, it is the first time a megaraptoran has been discovered in Europe.

A similar-looking dinosaur is known from a few million years earlier in the Wessex Formation: the 5-metre-long . However, the parts we have hint that it belonged to the sister group of tyrannosaurs and none of the fossilised remains of the two individuals directly overlap, so it is hard to compare them.

The genus name Morrison and his colleagues have given to the newly described fossil, Invictibellatrix, means female unconquered warrior. They estimate that it was an agile, two-legged carnivore that was about 3 to 4 metres long, some 1.5 metres tall and weighing between 200 and 300 kilograms. It is likely to have had feathers and claws 10 to 20 centimetres long for attacking small dinosaurs, lizards and mammals, says Morrison.

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Had we been around then, “humans would have been perfect-sized prey, about a third of their body weight,” he says.

At the time, the Isle of Wight was still firmly attached to both mainland Britain and the rest of Europe, and the environment would have been subtropical, says Morrison.

Megaraptoran fossils have been found in Asia, Australia and South America, and finding one in Europe would begin to tie their story together.

Morrison suggests that Invictibellatrix evolved from Asian megaraptorans that dispersed into Europe some 130 million years ago. Then megaraptorans spread from Europe to Africa, then to South America and Australia before the continents completely separated.

at Monash University in Melbourne says it is a shame more detailed comparisons couldn’t be made with Eotyrannus, which has previously been considered a relative of megaraptorans.

���� Invictibellatrix is indeed a megaraptoran, it expands the palaeobiogeographic range of the group and plugs a significant gap in our knowledge, linking those from South-East Asia to Australia and South America via Europe and Africa,” he says. “However, more fossils are required to support or reject this hypothesis.”

Giant waterlilies are not exactly inconspicuous plants. But in the past few years, we have discovered no fewer than three new species, taking the total to five. The latest species to be described was identified with the help of social media, satellite photos and a mad jungle dash in the dark.

“I think it’s incredible that we find something so new, which is so large, in this world where we think everything is already known,” says at the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland, who has helped describe two of the new species.

Giant waterlilies are famed for their massive leaves, which grow up to 3 metres wide. For many decades, just two species were known: Victoria amazonica and Victoria cruziana. Then in 2016, Carlos Magdalena at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London, noticed that giant waterlilies grown from seeds from Bolivia were a bit different, with even larger leaves. In 2022, Magdalena and his colleagues published a paper showing that this was a new species, Victoria boliviana.

Magdalena hasn’t stopped there. In 2021, Jeremiah Harris, who runs a carnivorous plant business in the US, posted that he took while swimming near the Inírida river in Colombia next to what he assumed was V. amazonica.

Magdalena was struck by the photos because scientists had thought there were no giant waterlilies in this region. “This river is geographically completely separated from the Amazon, and has been for millions of years, and that is why this is such an interesting find,” says Christenhusz.

Magdalena, Christenhusz and their team examined satellite photos and found telltale green dots confirming there really were giant waterlilies growing there. They then organised an expedition to the region. The team found two plants but neither was flowering – and analysing the flowers is a crucial step in establishing whether a waterlily really is a new species.

At 11pm on the last night of the expedition, with the plane due to leave at 9am, the researchers seemed to have failed. Then one of the guides, Gustavo Melo from the Indigenous Tucano community, said he knew where some more giant waterlilies were growing. The team set off by boat in the dark, and found five plants in a small lake just before sunrise, including some that were flowering.

Magdalena, Christenhusz and their colleagues have now published a paper describing the new species, which they have named Victoria colombiana. It differs from V. amazonica in the orientation of the spines beneath the leaves, and in the shape of its flowers and fruits. The spines are a defence against manatees and plant-eating fish, Christenhusz says, so they vary between species depending on which herbivores are most prevalent.

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As far as the team is aware, V. colombiana is found in only one small area. A single event, such as a pollution spill, could wipe out the entire species, says Christenhusz. But the team is planning to try to collect seeds to help ensure the species survives.

Meanwhile, Magdalena also realised that the giant waterlilies growing in the Pantanal region of South America, hundreds of kilometres to the south-east of Colombia, must have been isolated from other populations for a very long time. Sure enough, genetic studies revealed that they are another distinct species, despite looking very similar to V. cruziana. Magdalena, Christenhusz and their colleagues will publish a paper soon to describe this fifth species, which they have decided to name Victoria mattogrossensis.

The world’s oldest known land animal – Jonathan the giant tortoise – has had his genome probed for the first time. This has revealed that parts of his genome to do with mitochondrial function are as efficient as those of a 5-year-old member of his species. Efficient mitochondria may give his DNA repair systems more energy to fight off the effects of ageing, enabling him to live to an estimated age of 194.

What’s more, some of his genetic changes seem similar to those of supercentenarians. “This study adds to the body of evidence that the mechanisms of ageing may be conserved across species,” says at the Kallel Foundation, a non-profit organisation focused on interventions to extend human healthspan, in Nashville, Tennessee.

Jonathan, an Aldabra giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea), and Napoleon Bonaparte are the two most famous residents of St Helena island in the South Atlantic. Napoleon arrived at the remote British territory after he was exiled in 1815, while Jonathan is thought to have been shipped there, possibly from Aldabra Atoll, in 1882. Jonathan arrived as a fully grown adult that was thought to already have half a century under his belt, putting him at around 194 years old today.

The researchers calculated that Aldabra tortoises have an average lifespan of around 80 years, but they can live much longer. To understand the mechanisms behind Jonathan’s extraordinary longevity, Clark and his colleagues have studied his genome.

“I firmly believe we can learn about the global mechanisms of ageing by looking at the exceptions,” says at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute in Barcelona, Spain, who led a study into a 117-year-old woman, once officially the world’s oldest person.

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Esteller and his team found that the woman had exceptionally efficient mitochondrial function, which led Clark and his colleagues to suspect Jonathan similarly had “very efficient and very young” mitochondria, says Clark.

They had to study his genome via saliva samples and cheek swabs. This was because St Helena authorities refused their requests to draw Jonathan’s blood, given his fame and the risk of infection.

This was a major limitation, because it meant the researchers were unable to isolate large pieces of DNA, which are more stable in blood. Instead, they had to assemble fragments from Jonathan’s saliva, where DNA is more prone to bacterial contamination, and fill in the gaps using DNA from another Aldabra tortoise.

Once they had made the best possible composite of his genome, they compared it to the DNA of four other Aldabra tortoises. “We found 287 genes that had changes in them that were unique to him,” says Clark.

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Of these genes, 41 are though to be functionally significant, meaning they actively contribute to an organism’s biology, survival and regulation. A dozen of them were also found in ageing databases of the genes of other long-lived animal species.

Parts of Jonathan’s genome to do with mitochondrial function were as young as a 5-year-old Aldabra, says Clark. “This, in turn, has helped him manage the effects of ageing by giving the DNA repair systems more energy from the mitochondria to fight off the effects of ageing.”

at the University of Osaka, Japan, says the work is “fascinating”, but notes that Jonathan’s genome was compared against that of only a few other tortoises, which may have unique genetic changes themselves.

A semi-aquatic forebear of living mammals that lived alongside the dinosaurs was also the first known animal capable of suckling.

“The mammalian ways of swallowing and suckling are unique,” says at the University of Chicago. “It is one of several biological adaptations of mammals that stand out from all other vertebrates.”

Luo and his colleagues have discovered a new genus of mammaliform, a creature that lived before the last common ancestor of the living mammalian groups – monotremes, marsupials and placentals – that would have been able to chew and suck.

It is also the earliest known example of a mammal that evolved for a semi-aquatic lifestyle. The animal has been dubbed Megacauda sungei, referencing its broad tail and palaeontologist Sun Ge.

The fossil, which is dated to between 163 million and 168 million years ago, was found by local farmers in the Daohugou area of Inner Mongolia, China.

“It is a chimera,” says Luo. “The back half of Megacauda is more similar to the platypus, of all mammals. But the skull and teeth are analogous to river otters.”

With an estimated weight of 1 kilogram, the creature is the largest known mammaliform from the Middle-Late Jurassic, when the planet was dominated by dinosaurs.

The pelvis is preserved in 3D, as are its hyoids, or throat bones. The bone structures under the skull that form the roof of the mouth and throat passage are also visible.

This meant that, for the first time in any mammaliform, scientists were able to reconstruct the animal’s entire throat anatomy.

Mammals’ throats can form “a suction vacuum for milk and squeeze the chewed food balls and liquid down their throats”, says Luo. All the features that enable this are present in Megacauda.

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“We used to know very little about the evolutionary pattern of pharyngeal and hyoid structure. Now we know their evolutionary origins went back to before the rise of the modern mammals,” he says.

The researchers found tiny limb fragments in the fossil’s stomach area that resembled the bones of salamanders, which would have lived in the same environment and may have been the creature’s last meal.

at Macquarie University in Sydney says this fossil sits at a key point in mammalian evolution. “It tells us that some key mammalian traits like sucking, which is required for behaviours like drinking milk from mothers, predate the origin of mammals today.

“It also is cool to see that this sister lineage to today’s mammals had evolved an aquatic lifestyle, which is something we have seen multiple times across the mammalian family tree, including in the platypus,” says Griffith.