Category: 7. Science

With its two radar instruments — an S-band system provided by ISRO and an L-band system provided by NASA — NISAR will use a technique known as synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to scan nearly all the planet’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days. Each system’s signal is sensitive to different sizes of features on Earth’s surface, and each specializes in measuring different attributes, such as moisture content, surface roughness, and motion.

These capabilities will help scientists better understand processes involved in natural hazards and catastrophic events, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, land subsidence, and landslides.

Additionally, NISAR’s cloud penetrating ability will aid urgent responses to communities during weather disasters such as hurricanes, storm surge, and flooding. The detailed maps the mission creates also will provide information on both gradual and sudden changes occurring on Earth’s land and ice surfaces.

Managed by Caltech for NASA, JPL leads the U.S. component of the NISAR project and provided the L-band SAR. NASA JPL also provided the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the Near Space Network, which will receive NISAR’s L-band data.

Multiple ISRO centers have contributed to NISAR. The Space Applications Centre is providing the mission’s S-band SAR. The U R Rao Satellite Centre provided the spacecraft bus. The rocket is from Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, launch services are through Satish Dhawan Space Centre, and satellite mission operations are by the ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network. The National Remote Sensing Centre is responsible for S-band data reception, operational products generation, and dissemination.

To learn more about NISAR, visit:

https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov/

Astronomers in Japan have spotted a distant object orbiting the Sun far beyond Neptune, pointing to an extraordinary event that took place during the earliest years of the solar system.

Astronomers used the Subaru Telescope, perched atop a dormant volcano in Hawaii, to make the discovery. They observed a small object orbiting at a farthest distance of 252 AU from the Sun, in which one astronomical unit equals the average distance between the Sun and Earth. Scientists gave it the formal designation 2023 KQ14 and nicknamed it Ammonite, after an extinct group of marine animals—a nod to its status as an extreme relic of the early solar system.

For reference, Pluto’s average distance from the Sun is about 40 AU, so 2023 KQ14 is quite distant. At 23.4 billion miles (37.7 billion kilometers) away, light reflecting off Ammonite takes approximately 34 hours to reach Earth.

The discovery, published in Nature Astronomy on Tuesday, marks the fourth detection of a “Sednoid.” This group of distant, trans-Neptunian objects have extremely elongated orbits that stretch past the Kuiper Belt. Unlike other objects that orbit the Sun past Neptune, Sednoids are detached from the giant planet, meaning they are not influenced by its gravitational field. Astronomers discovered the first Sednoid, named Sedna, in 2003.

Astronomers first discovered Ammonite in 2023 through Subaru’s survey project, FOSSIL (Formation of the Outer Solar System: An Icy Legacy). Follow-up observations in July 2024 using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope confirmed the discovery, revealing the object’s orbit. It was also spotted in archive images taken in 2021 and 2014, allowing astronomers to simulate its orbit with greater accuracy.

Using computer simulations, the researchers behind the discovery suggest that Ammonite has maintained a stable orbit for at least 4.5 billion years. At its closest approach to the Sun, it comes within 66 AUs from the star. Unlike its Sednoid counterparts, Ammonite currently follows a different orbit. The simulations, however, indicated that the orbits of all four known Sednoids were once very similar around 4.2 billion years ago. This puts into question the existence of the theorized Planet Nine.

Sednoids are one of the key pieces of evidence behind the long-held theory that a massive ninth planet orbits the Sun beyond Neptune. The group of small objects follows an oddly aligned, elongated orbit that can’t be explained based on the gravitational influence of the known planets of the solar system, suggesting that a ninth, undiscovered planet may be tugging at the Sednoids.

“The fact that Ammonite’s current orbit does not align with those of the other three sednoids lowers the likelihood of the Planet Nine hypothesis,” Yukun Huang, a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan who carried out the simulations of Ammonite’s orbit, said in a statement. “It is possible that a planet once existed in the Solar System but was later ejected, causing the unusual orbits we see today.”

Ammonite is estimated to be between 136 and 236 miles wide (220 and 380 kilometers). Although tiny, its presence is indicative of something much larger at play. “Ammonite was found in a region far away where Neptune’s gravity has little influence. The presence of objects with elongated orbits and large perihelion distances in this area implies that something extraordinary occurred during the ancient era when Ammonite formed,” Fumi Yoshida, a planetary scientist and co-author of the new study, said in a statement. “Understanding the orbital evolution and physical properties of these unique, distant objects is crucial for comprehending the full history of the solar system.”

You feel like you’re doing everything right when it comes to your hydrangea bush—and then the dreaded yellow leaves start to appear right next to your beautiful blooms. It can take a little sleuthing to figure out what exactly is causing your hydrangea’s leaves to turn yellow, but determining the culprit is key to finding the solution.

To help you solve the case, here’s how plant experts suggest troubleshooting yellowing hydrangea leaves—and what you can do, depending on the cause.

What’s Causing Your Hydrangea Leaves to Turn Yellow

As you’re investigating your hydrangea issues, you’ll want to pay attention to where—and how—the yellowing is happening.

Yellowing at the base of the plant

If they’re yellowing just at the base of the plant, it could be leaves that have reached the end of their life cycle and are being shed, Schreiber says. “A few yellowing leaves near the base of the plant can be normal as the plant pulls nutrients from older leaves just before they drop. These older leaves are replaced by new growth higher up on the plant stems.” You’ll see more of the leaves turn yellow during autumn, as the plant goes dormant for the winter.

Yellow leaves at the top of the hydrangea

If they’re at the top of the plant, it’s more likely to be the result of another issue that requires some correction. “Yellow and spotty leaves that are closer to the center and base of the plant tend to be a sign of fungal or bacterial leaf spot, as they prefer to hide in the more humid parts of the plant where conditions are warm and wet,” Schreiber says. In leaf spot, you’ll find the yellow occurs in small spots with green in between or leaves that have a distinct black or red circle on them.

Yellow leaves on hydrangea new growth

Too much water is one of the most common reasons hydrangea leaves yellow—and overwatering or a lack of nutrients may be the most likely culprit if new growth leaves or leaves throughout the plant are impacted. “Hydrangeas prefer consistent moisture but well-draining soil,” Schreiber says. “If standing water builds up in the hydrangea root zone, it can cause the roots to be less efficient and even to rot. This leads to some leaf yellowing and drop as the plant is focusing on trying to repair the roots.”

Yellow or tan splotches on leaves

If the leaves have yellow, tan, or white blotches concentrated on parts of the hydrangea that get a lot of light, the sun could be scorching the leaves. “That means your plant is struggling to manage the intense sun,” Schreiber says.

What to Do About It

Again, this all depends on what the issue is. If it’s simply that the leaves are old or it’s autumn and the leaves are falling off, all you have to do is gather up the old leaves as they fall.

Correct watering issues

If it’s overwatering, you’ll want to hold off on watering your plant until a few inches of the soil near the roots is dry, then water deeply. But you may need to make more drastic changes in a few instances. “If your area has a lot of rain or a high water table, your hydrangea may need to be put in raised beds or mounds to keep their roots out of the saturated soil,” Schreiber says.

Feed your hydrangea

For a lack of nutrients, you may want to get your soil tested. “Knowing your soil type or getting a soil test done can help you understand what kind of nutrients are lacking in your area and how well the soil holds moisture,” Schreiber says. “Nutrient deficiencies can be corrected by amending the soil.”

Generally, nutrient deficiencies tend to happen in more alkaline soils. “In areas with highly alkaline soils, hydrangeas can struggle to take up iron and other nutrients,” Schreiber says.

Offer more shade, if needed

For scorched leaves, you can either provide more shade for your plant, either with a sun shade or a tree or other plant that will offer it more cover, or you can relocate the plant to a shadier spot.

Keep the plant itself drier

Leaf spot generally will only cause cosmetic damage to your hydrangea, but you’ll want to take corrective action to help keep the plant’s leaves drier. “Watering plants from the base using drip irrigation or a hose on a slow trickle at the base of the plant helps to keep the leaves dry,” Schreiber says. “Avoid watering the plants with overhead spray or using sprinklers that can splash the leaves.”

If your hydrangea bush is thick, it could create pockets in the plant where moisture and leaf spot can thrive. Schreiber recommends keeping the area clean of debris and fallen leaves, and increasing airflow by pruning the canopy as needed to help prevent the growth of bacteria and fungi—though a copper fungicide can also be applied if needed.

Astronomers using the Gemini North telescope at NSF’s International Gemini Observatory have captured 3I/ATLAS as it makes its temporary passage through our cosmic neighborhood.

Interstellar objects are objects that originate outside of, and are observed passing through, our Solar System.

Ranging from tens of meters to a few kilometers in size, these objects are pieces of cosmic debris leftover from the formation of their host star’s planetary systems.

As these remnants orbit their star, the gravity of nearby larger planets and passing nearby stars can launch them out of their home systems and into interstellar space, where they can cross paths with other solar systems.

Interstellar visitors are valuable objects to study since they offer a tangible connection to other star systems.

They carry information about the chemical elements that were present when and where they formed, which gives scientists insight into how planetary systems form at distant stars throughout our Milky Way Galaxy’s history — including stars that have since died out.

3I/ATLAS is only the third interstellar object ever discovered after 1I/ʻOumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019.

While astronomers think many interstellar objects exist, and likely pass through our Solar System on a regular basis, they are exceptionally difficult to capture since they are only visible when they’re close enough to see and when our telescopes are pointing in the right place at the right time.

Multiple teams around the globe are using a wide variety of telescopes to observe 3I/ATLAS during its temporary visit to our Solar System, allowing them to collectively determine some of the comet’s key characteristics.

Although much remains unknown, it is already clear that 3I/ATLAS is unique compared to 1I/ʻOumuamua and 2I/Borisov.

Observations so far suggest that 3I/ATLAS has an approximate diameter of at most 20 km (12 miles), compared to ‘Oumuamua’s diameter of 200 m and Borisov’s of less than one km.

The new comet also has an exceptionally eccentric orbit, where eccentricity describes how much an object’s orbital pathway is ‘stretched out.’

An eccentricity of 0 is a perfectly circular orbit, while an eccentricity of 0.999 is a very stretched-out ellipse.

An object with an eccentricity above 1 is on a path that does not loop back around the Sun, implying it comes from — and will return to — interstellar space.

3I/ATLAS has an eccentricity of 6.2, which is highly hyperbolic and ensures its classification as an interstellar object.

In comparison, ‘Oumuamua had an eccentricity of about 1.2, and Borisov about 3.6.

Right now, 3I/ATLAS is within Jupiter’s orbit at a distance of about 465 million km (290 million miles) from Earth and 600 million km (370 million miles) from the Sun.

The closest the comet will come to Earth is approximately 270 million km (170 million miles) on December 19, 2025, though it will pose no threat to the planet.

It will reach its closest approach to the Sun around October 30, 2025, at a distance of 210 million km (130 million miles) — just inside the orbit of Mars.

During this close approach, it will be traveling almost 25,000 km (15,500 miles) per hour.

The new image of 3I/ATLAS was captured by the Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS-N) at the Gemini North telescope.

“The sensitivity and scheduling agility of the International Gemini Observatory has provided critical early characterization of this interstellar wanderer,” said Martin Still, NSF program director for the International Gemini Observatory.

“We look forward to a bounty of new data and insights as this object warms itself on sunlight before continuing its cold, dark journey between the stars.”

Key Facts

What States Could See The Aurora?

Much of the upper Midwest and Great Plains could see the aurora Tuesday, including Montana, North Dakota, northern Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, as well as most of Alaska. The aurora could also be visible in the northernmost part of Idaho and northwestern corner of Washington, according to forecasters.

What Time Will The Aurora Be Visible?

The northern lights are most clearly visible between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., according to NOAA. The aurora may appear earlier or later than this, but it is typically less active and not as “visually appealing,” according to the agency. For best viewing conditions, observers should travel closer to the magnetic pole and away from cities or other sources of light pollution.

What To Watch For

This week’s aurora borealis could coincide with one of the year’s most anticipated stargazing events. The Perseids meteor shower will begin Thursday in the Northern Hemisphere. The meteor shower’s peak night this year is between Aug. 12-13, when hundreds of meteors could be visible in the night sky. However, a recent full moon will make viewing these meteors much more difficult in a brighter night sky. Instead, stargazers could look for meteor falling at much lower rates, but less obstruction from moonlight, between July 17-July 30.

Further Reading

ForbesTwo Meteor Showers Begin This Week — How To See Summer’s ‘Shooting Stars’By Jamie Carter

The largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth was sold for just over $5m at an auction of rare geological and archaeological objects in New York on Wednesday, while a juvenile dinosaur skeleton went for more than $30m.

The 54-pound (25kg) rock named NWA 16788 was discovered in the Sahara desert in Niger by a meteorite hunter in November 2023, after having been blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike and traveling 140m miles (225m km) to Earth, according to Sotheby’s. The estimated sale price before the auction was $2m to $4m.

The identity of the buyer was not immediately disclosed. The final bid was $4.3m. Adding various fees and costs, the official bid price was about $5.3m.

Two advance bids of $1.9m and $2m were submitted. The live bidding went slower than for many other objects that were sold, with the auctioneer trying to coax more offers and decreasing the $200,000 to $300,000 bid intervals to $100,000 after the proposals hit $4m.

The red, brown and gray meteorite is about 70% larger than the next largest piece of Mars found on Earth and represents nearly 7% of all the Martian material currently on this planet, Sotheby’s says. It measures nearly 15in by 11in by 6in (375mm by 279mm by 152mm).

It was also a rare find. There are only 400 Martian meteorites out of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites found on Earth, the auction house says.

“This Martian meteorite is the largest piece of Mars we have ever found by a long shot,” Cassandra Hatton, vice-chairman for science and natural history at Sotheby’s, said in an interview before the auction. “So it’s more than double the size of what we previously thought was the largest piece of Mars.”

It is not clear exactly when the meteorite was blasted off the surface of Mars, but testing showed it probably happened in recent years, Sotheby’s says.

Hatton said a specialized lab examined a small piece of the red planet remnant and confirmed it was from Mars. It was compared with the distinct chemical composition of Martian meteorites discovered during the Viking spacecraft that landed on Mars in 1976, she said.

The examination found that it was an “olivine-microgabbroic shergottite”, a type of Martian rock formed from the slow cooling of Martian magma. It has a coarse-grained texture and contains the minerals pyroxene and olivine, Sotheby’s says.

It also has a glassy surface, probably due to the high heat that burned it when it fell through Earth’s atmosphere, Hatton said. “So that was their first clue that this wasn’t just some big rock on the ground,” she said.

The meteorite previously was on display at the Italian Space Agency in Rome. Sotheby’s did not disclose the owner.

Bidding for the juvenile Ceratosaurus nasicornis dinosaur skeleton started with a high advance bid of $6m, then escalated with offers $500,000 higher than the last and later $1m higher than the last before ending at $26m. The official sale price was $30.5m with fees and costs. The original estimate was $4m to $6m.

Parts of the skeleton were found in 1996 near Laramie, Wyoming, at Bone Cabin Quarry, a goldmine for dinosaur bones. It is more than 6ft (2 meters) tall and nearly 11ft long.

Specialists assembled nearly 140 fossil bones with some sculpted materials to recreate the skeleton and mounted it so it is ready to exhibit, Sotheby’s says.

The skeleton is believed to be from the late Jurassic period, about 150m years ago, Sotheby’s says.

Ceratosaurus dinosaurs were bipeds with short arms that appear similar to the Tyrannosaurus rex, but smaller. Ceratosaurus dinosaurs could grow up to 25ft long, while the Tyrannosaurs rex could be 40ft long.

The skeleton was acquired last year by Fossilogic, a Utah-based fossil preparation and mounting company.

Wednesday’s auction was part of Sotheby’s Geek Week 2025 and featured 122 items, including other meteorites, fossils and gem-quality minerals.

Some jumping spiders look so much like wasps that scientists named them for the predatory insects.

But University of Cincinnati biologists wondered: Do these mimics really look like insect faces or is it just our own perceptual bias? After all, we see faces everywhere: tree trunks, rock outcrops, clouds.

So when travel restrictions from COVID-19 shut down field research, UC biologists decided to turn to an objective third party, a computer.

They presented digital portraits of jumping spiders, praying mantises and wasps to see if a computer algorithm could identify them correctly from shapes and patterns each contained. And surprisingly even the computer was fooled about 20% of the time.

The study was published in the journal Behavioral Ecology .

“The original idea was inspired by one species, a peacock jumping spider called Maratus vespa, which is Latin for wasp,” UC student and study lead author Olivia Harris said.

This jumping spider lifts its abdomen during an elaborate courtship display to reveal a colorful wasp-shaped back. The illusion is made all the more realistic by raising flaps on its sides that give the spider the familiar guitar-pick shape of a wasp’s face.

Researcher Jurgen Otto discovered, described and photographed the species in Western Australia in 2015 with co-author David Knowles.

“That got us thinking,” Harris said. “Why would a spider want to look like a wasp, which is a predator of spiders, especially as a primary element of its courtship display?”

It turns out that when spiders see distant insect predators, they tend to freeze in place and give their undivided attention to the potential threat. And that attention could give male jumping spiders the opportunity they need to begin courting the female

Researchers used computer vision techniques and machine learning and neural network algorithms to see if artificial intelligence properly classifies images properly as spiders,wasps, praying mantises or flies. The AI got it wrong across all 62 species nearly 12% of the time. And it correctly identified 13 species every time.

But the AI misidentified Maratus vespa and several other spiders more than 20% of the time and typically as wasps. Researchers said the next step would be to test their hypotheses with behavioral experiments with live female jumping spiders.

Deception is not unheard of in animal courtship. Some male moths simulate the sounds of echolocating bats to discourage potential mates from taking flight. And antelopes called topi have been documented warning does of phantom predators to discourage them from fleeing their territories.

“But this is the only case we’ve found of males mimicking a predator visually,” she said.

UC Associate Professor Nathan Morehouse, a study co-author, said the spiders appear to be using sensory exploitation to their advantage.

Morehouse said they found that the predator illusion works best at greater distances or in the female spider’s periphery, where she relies on eyes that see only in monochrome green. But once the male gets closer, the female’s front-facing, color-discerning eyes take over.

“Females will not be fooled forever. If they were, they would be robbed of the ability to make mate choices, which would put the species at a long-term disadvantage,” Morehouse said. “It’s beneficial for the males to break the illusion.”

In 1825 Michael Faraday isolated a sweet-smelling chemical that he dubbed bi-carburet of hydrogen. That molecule, better known as benzene, is perhaps the most famous molecular ring in chemistry.

Back in 2019, for example, a team led by Simon Aldridge at the University of Oxford made an aluminum complex that inserts itself into benzene, priming it for a reaction with a tin reagent that breaks open the ring. In addition, certain enzymes can pry open the benzene ring in catechol.

The team behind the new study instead drew inspiration from the kinds of metal complexes that can break the strong bonds in dinitrogen or carbon monoxide. First they made a scandium complex containing a pincer-like ligand that stabilizes a range of metal oxidation states. Then they mixed the complex with potassium graphite (KC₈), which is a strong reducing agent, and benzene at room temperature. This formed an inverted sandwich complex in which each of benzene’s faces binds to a scandium complex. In this arrangement, the benzene carries four extra electrons in its antibonding orbitals.

While exploring the chemistry of this sandwich complex, the team found that it reacted with metal carbonyls, such as chromium hexacarbonyl, also at room temperature. Theoretical studies led by team member Xiaotai Wang of Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University suggest that this involves a series of carbonyl-insertion reactions that ultimately help to lengthen and then break one of benzene’s carbon-carbon bonds.

The product is a complex containing both scandium and chromium and with a linear hexadiene unit at its heart. “We discovered this reaction by chance,” Chu says. “But after we got the crystal structure of the product, we found that it’s very beautiful.” Adding carbon monoxide gas helps the reaction along, offering yields of up to 88%, and the process works just as well with toluene.

“Scandium is always good for a surprise because it’s one of the smallest, highest-charged metal cations,” says Sjoerd Harder of FriedrichAlexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, an organometallic chemist who uses main-group metal complexes to activate strong bonds. Harder was not involved in the new work. “It can do stuff that other metals can’t do.”

Although many different metals have previously been used to create inverted sandwich complexes of benzene, Harder doesn’t think that anyone has tried reacting them with metal carbonyls before. “It could be that the other complexes react like that, but we just don’t know it,” he says.

Chu’s team is now trying to free the organic component of the product from its metal partners and—given the relatively high cost of scandium—investigating whether other metals could act as catalysts to achieve the same ring-breaking feat. “If he’s able to do this catalytically, then we’re talking,” says Harder.

Across Earth’s long timeline, extinction often seems like a silent erasure. Yet behind many disappearances lies a chain of ecological tension. Researchers at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil explored predator-prey dynamics.

The results of two new studies suggest predator-prey relationships shaped extinction patterns in ancient species. Supported by FAPESP, the work focuses on predators like saber-toothed cats and their herbivore prey in North America.

The scientists used fossil records, body size data, and climate history from the last 20 million years.

Predators left without their prey

Saber-toothed tigers, known for long canines, likely hunted large animals. A popular theory links their extinction to the loss of megafauna during the late Pleistocene, caused by climate change and human actions.

“One of the hypotheses that’s received the most attention in the literature was that the end of saber-toothed tigers,” said study author and UNICAMP researcher João Nascimento.

“It could be linked to the extinction of megafauna at the end of the Pleistocene, which occurred between 50,000 and 11,000 years ago.”

“These large animals became extinct due to climate change and human actions, and as a result, the predators were left without their main prey.”

Extinction started before humans

Nascimento noted that the research offers a new timeline. “We found that the process began millions of years earlier,” he said.

Saber-toothed cats went through repeated extinctions over time, often during periods of reduced prey diversity. This long-term view changes how we understand their fate.

The second study, published in the journal Evolution, takes a reverse approach. It looks at how predator expansion drove herbivore decline. Antilocaprids, once a diverse group in North America, now have just one species left: the American antelope.

This group includes two extinct subfamilies. Merycodontinae vanished about six million years ago, likely outcompeted by proboscideans, ancestors of modern elephants. These massive animals dominated forest habitats, squeezing out smaller herbivores.

Predators vanished after prey

The Antilocaprinae subfamily started fading when felids grew more diverse. The American cheetah (Miracinonyx), built for speed, emerged during this time. It likely drove antelopes to become faster.

Predator-driven speed might be why the American antelope is so fast today. The study gives new weight to that idea. More predators meant more evolutionary pressure on prey species. Fewer herbivores meant fewer niches to support diverse predators.

In a previous study, the researchers had suggested that large herbivores in the Iberian Peninsula caused predator decline 15 million years ago. These new papers expand that perspective to much broader regions.

“The great contribution of this set of studies is precisely to present the idea that the interaction between predators and prey can have an effect on large evolutionary patterns,” said Professor Mathias Pires, who supervised the work.

“This had been debated for decades, but there was no really robust set of results to support this hypothesis.”

Fossils reveal extinction clues

These discoveries rest on detailed fossil records. The team analyzed size, diet, and coexistence patterns of animals across millions of years.

For example, saber-toothed cats appeared around 14 million years ago in Eurasia and 12 million years ago in North America. Eight species once coexisted, but numbers shrank over time.

Six million years ago, the saber-toothed cat population began a steady decline. This drop happened during a shift toward a more arid climate. Grasslands expanded while forests shrank, affecting food chains.

Leaf-eating prey lost their food sources, reducing available prey for predators.

“Our study did not find a direct relationship between this event and the reduction in saber-toothed cats, but these changes in the environment had an indirect impact on the extinctions of different saber-toothed species by reducing the availability of prey,” Pires said.

Predators and prey need balance

Forest-dependent Merycodontinae went extinct as their habitats disappeared. Grass-eating Antilocaprinae lasted longer but declined with increasing predator pressure. This chain reaction mirrors how nature balances itself.

“We’re showing how an increase in predators can reduce the availability of prey, which in turn reduces the abundance of predators, and how this can manifest on an evolutionary scale,” Pires said.

“It’s a warning about how we may be altering the future with the extinctions we’re causing now.”

The studies not only map the past but also warn how predator loss and extinction trends today may echo through millennia, reshaping life far beyond our own time.

The study is published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology.

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