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Three fossils of Pachycormus fish from the dinosaur era feature smaller members of the same species in their guts. Plus: the surprising idea behind the evolution of feathers.

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Samuel L. A. Cooper (2023)

Cannibalistic fish

Juvenile fish sometimes cannibalised their younger fellows during the dinosaur era, possibly when other food was scarce. The behaviour was revealed by an exquisitely preserved set of fossils, which had been largely forgotten until Samuel Cooper at the State Museum ofNatural History Stuttgart in Germany studied an 1895 catalogue held at London’s Natural History Museum. He found three fossils of a species now called Pachycormus macropterus that had smaller members of the same species in their guts. “It’s definitely cannibalism,” says Stephanie Drumheller at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Read more

Evolution of feathers

Feathers may have evolved on dinosaurs to frighten prey before they were used for flight. Pennaceous feathers - stiff, non-downy feathers with a central quill - are seen in fossils of some dinosaurs such as Caudipteryx, which lived about 124 million years ago, but their wings were not strong enough for take off. To investigate the feathers’ use, Jinseok Park from Seoul National University, South Korea, built a life-size robotic model of Caudipteryx that approached grasshoppers, a probable prey of the dinosaur, before flapping its wings. Without feathers, just under half of the grasshoppers fled, but when the researchers attached feathers to the wings, this increased to more than 90 per cent. Read more

The breathtaking advances in artificial intelligence and a growing urgency to find climate change solutions are set to dominate headlines in 2024. Stay ahead with New Scientist for just $1.50 a week and let us guide you through the coming year. 

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• Pen to paper: Writing something down, rather than typing it out, may help you remember it.

• Agile owls: The birds can probably rotate their heads a full 360 degrees.

• Pancake-like comets: Oddly flattened objects in the solar system may be made by whirling clouds of pebbles.
• Sleep versus sex: Tiny marsupials sacrifice sleep to reproduce during breeding season.
• Black hole jets: Microquasars, small black holes that blast out jets of material from orbiting stars, may produce powerful cosmic rays.
• Puzzling: Silicon Valley’s top AI models are terrible at rebus wordplay brain teasers. 

Halfpoint Images/Getty Images

The discovery that cells from your mother, older siblings and even grandparents live on inside you has surprised many. Cells from a baby travel into their mother, and vice versa, during pregnancy. This legacy can also be seen years after pregnancy loss, either through miscarriage, stillbirth or termination. And we are only now starting to realise the extraordinary impact this has on our health – for better and worse. Some may trigger autoimmune conditions, while other studies show that these cells may help to repair malfunctioning organs and even change the way you think. Read more

Wednesday 21 February 2024 | 7pm EST

Learn all about the cosmic cocktail, including evidence for the existence of dark matter in galaxies. 

Optimism is drying up in the Amazon as president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva drifts from his climate priorities, reports The Guardian’s global environment editor Jonathan Watts.

This week on the podcast, hear about how playing sounds could help fungi grow. Plus, the team digs into the agility of owls, a hugbot and growing chickpeas on the moon.

Available on Spotify, Apple and more.

Alexandra Thompson

Assistant News Editor, New Scientist
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