GAINESVILLE, Fla. — In an exciting leap forward for science, a revolutionary project is transforming how we see the natural history of vertebrates — animals with backbones like fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals. This ambitious initiative, called openVertebrate (oVert), united 18 institutions over six years and digitally captured more than 13,000 specimens in stunning 3D detail. Those otherworldly images are ...

To better understand the ocean’s overall health, researchers hope to harness some of evolution’s simplest creatures as tools to assess aquatic ecosystems. All they need is $20 worth of materials, a 3D-printer, and some jellyfish hats.  Jellyfish first began bobbing through Earth’s ancient oceans at least half a billion years ago, making them some of the planet’s oldest creatures. In ...

Researchers using an AI photo-scanning tool similar to facial recognition have learned that there’s been a 20% decline in North Pacific Ocean humpback whale populations over the past decade. The researchers pointed to a climate change related heat wave as a possible culprit. The findings, published this week in Royal Society Open Science, used the artificial intelligence-powered image detection model ...

Last year, as pandemic lockdown restrictions hit the US, new bird enthusiasts flocked to the free Merlin Bird ID app. The app, which comes from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, previously offered ways for users to identify a mystery bird near them through descriptions or a photo. Earlier this summer, it received an even cooler feature: the ability to recognize ...