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CNN, CHARLES DARWIN FOUNDATION By Avni Trivedi, CNN (CNN) — Scientists have announced the discovery of a previously unidentified species of octopus found in the Galápagos Islands — and it’s sure to turn heads. The creature, which sports blue flesh and large eyes, can fit between the bottom of your palm and the first knuckle

By Laura Paddison, CNN The Dead Sea (CNN) — The motorboat cut through the aquamarine water of the Dead Sea, past dazzling-white formations forged from salt crystals. Jake Ben Zaken, the boat captain, pointed to a patch of darker water nearby indicating a sinkhole beneath the seabed. These are both signs of an unfolding ecological

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — Five months into his fourth International Space Station mission, veteran NASA astronaut Mike Fincke was having dinner the day before a routine spacewalk. Suddenly, he found himself unable to speak. The episode in January lasted just 20 minutes and while Fincke felt no pain, he became agitated. “It was

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — Temperature records are being smashed across Europe as parts of the continent swelter in a heat wave that is bringing extreme temperatures alarmingly early in the year. The continent is grappling with a powerful heat dome, a persistent high-pressure system which acts like a lid on a pot, trapping

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — Scientists may have finally solved the riddle of Tyrannosaurus rex’s small arms, which have always stood out as the oddest feature in the mightiest of dinosaurs, prompting jokes and a century-plus debate on their purpose and evolutionary history. At about 3 feet long, the arms of T. rex were

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — New Orleans is locked into a watery future which could see it surrounded by ocean as early as this century, according to a new expert analysis, which says the city must start the relocation process now to avoid chaos. The paper’s conclusions are stark, but it’s no secret that

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — An unusual collection of stars may represent the remnants of a dwarf galaxy that the Milky Way devoured about 10 billion years ago. Astronomers have dubbed the ancient galaxy Loki, after the Norse god of mischief. The finding could change the current understanding of how the Milky Way evolved

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — A NASA spacecraft bound for an unusual metallic asteroid recently made a strategic flyby of Mars — and its cameras captured a rare perspective of the red planet along the way. The Psyche mission, launched in October 2023, is heading for Asteroid 16 Psyche in the outer part of

By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — After a seven-month hiatus, SpaceX is set to launch a new, more powerful version of its Starship megarocket — reigniting a make-or-break testing campaign aimed at hashing out unprecedented rocketry challenges and getting the vehicle ready to carry NASA astronauts to the moon. But experts question whether this vehicle

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — Nereid, Neptune’s third-largest moon, could be the only intact survivor from an ancient set of moons destroyed early in the solar system’s history, according to a new analysis based on data from the James Webb Space Telescope. Neptune, the eighth and most distant planet from the sun, stands out

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — Deep in the ocean is a worm that makes its home inside a “glass castle,” a mysterious “ghost shark” and a carnivorous “death ball” sponge. These are just three of the 1,121 “previously unknown” species discovered in the world’s oceans over the last year, announced Tuesday by the Ocean

By Andrew Freedman, CNN (CNN) — The coming “Super” El Niño is poised to affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people worldwide as it strengthens through the year into the winter season. It may also alter ecosystems for decades to come, judging from the repercussions of past intense El Niños. The last Super

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — An asteroid roughly the size of one to two school buses will fly by Earth Monday, coming as close as 91,593 kilometers (56,913 miles), according to the European Space Agency — equivalent to about one quarter of the distance between Earth and the moon. Astronomers at the Mount Lemmon

By Amarachi Orie, CNN (CNN) — The discovery of some bones at the edge of a pond in Thailand a decade ago has led to the identification of a new type of dinosaur, with a massive size, long neck and tail, and a plant diet. Named “Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis” by researchers in Thailand and London, the

By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — A prehistoric human known as Homo erectus was the first of our forerunners to leave Africa, crossing continents and ultimately roaming the planet for almost 2 million years. But with scarce genetic material available to study, the species remains a major mystery in human origins. Now, scientists have retrieved

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — An unusual tooth found in a cave offers a rare glimpse into a surprising procedure prehistoric humans might have performed to fix a cavity 59,000 years ago. Researchers uncovered the lower molar of an adult Neanderthal in Chagryskaya Cave in what’s now Russia, located in southwestern Siberia’s Altai Mountains,

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — Sub-Saharan Africa could split up in a few million years, and scientists believe they might be witnessing the early stages of this geological process. The split would occur along the Kafue Rift, which is part of a roughly 1,500-mile-long (2,500-kilometer) rift line spanning from Tanzania to Namibia. A rift

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — Cuba is struggling with devastating nationwide blackouts as the United States’ effective oil blockade strangles fuel supplies. But this crisis may also be accelerating a China-backed clean energy revolution that’s been quietly unfolding in the Caribbean nation. Cuba is currently pulling off one of the fastest solar revolutions on

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Researchers have identified the remains of four members of a doomed 19th century expedition in the Arctic by matching DNA to the sailors’ living descendants — and solved a case of mistaken identity along the way. The four sailors were part of Sir John Franklin’s 1845 expedition to find