Weekly Headlines (Excerpts)

1. Ancient poop yields world’s oldest butterfly fossils

Tiny wing scales suggest the proboscis evolved 100 million years before flowers

 2 JUN 2025  BY MARÍA DE LOS ÁNGELES ORFILA

2. Explosive mpox outbreak in Sierra Leone overwhelms health systems

Rapid transmission through sexual networks raises fears of wider spread in the region

 2 JUN 2025  BY KAI KUPFERSCHMIDT

3. 600 years before Europeans arrived, Great Lakes farmers transformed the land

Despite poor conditions, Indigenous growers used innovative techniques to grow large crops of corn, beans, and squash

 5 JUN 2025  BY ANDREW LAWLER

4. Local predictions of climate change are hazy. But cities need answers fast

Scientists are figuring out where “downscaled” climate models struggle—and how they can be improved

 5 JUN 2025  BY PAUL VOOSEN 

5. Race, ethnicity don’t match genetic ancestry, according to a large U.S. study

Data from the All of Us program confirm what many geneticists have long promoted

 5 JUN 2025 BY RODRIGO PÉREZ ORTEGA 

6. Watch a tower of worms wriggle like a single organism

Scientists film nematodes forming a superorganism in the wild for the first time

 5 JUN 2025  BY GENNARO TOMMA 

7. Some Dead Sea Scrolls are older than researchers thought, AI analysis suggests

But overall, machine learning approach closely matches what human scholars had long suspected about ancient documents

 4 JUN 2025  BY KRISTIN ROMEY 

8. This octopus grew a ninth arm—which soon developed a mind of its own

Study highlights just how flexible cephalopod’s bodies are after injury and during recovery

 2 JUN 2025  BY SAHAS MEHRA

9. Cockatoos have learned to operate drinking fountains in Australia

The behavior—never before seen in birds—may be a developing cultural tradition among one population

 3 JUN 2025  BY JACK TAMISIEA

10. DNA captured from the air could track wildlife, invasive species—and humans

Technology could be a boon for science, but raises ethical concerns

 3 JUN 2025  BY WARREN CORNWALL 

11. Long-running physics experiment dashes hope of new particles and forces

Muon is just as magnetic as predicted, requiring no new theory to explain

 3 JUN 2025  BY ADRIAN CHO