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Two fossil claws found on Seymour Island reveal phorusrhacids, or terror birds, lived in Antarctica 50 million years ago. Plus: bilingual exposures may start in the uterus.

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C. Acosta Hospitaleche & W. Jones/Palaeontological Association 2024

Terror birds

A 2-metre-tall flightless bird may have been the top predator in what is now Antarctica 50 million years ago. Two 8-centimetre fossil claws found on Seymour Island, near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, belonged to a large family of similar birds that palaeontologists call terror birds, according to an analysis by Carolina Acosta Hospitaleche at the National University of La Plata in Argentina and Washington Jones at the National Museum of Natural History in Montevideo, Uruguay. Formally called phorusrhacids, terror birds were the apex predators in what is now South America from 53 million years ago to 100,000 years ago, when they went extinct. Read more

Baby talk 

Babies born to bilingual mothers who were exposed to two languages in the uterus exhibit different brain responses to speech-like sounds at just a few days old compared with those born to monolingual mothers, further suggesting the influence of prenatal experiences on language acquisition. Researchers recruited 131 full-term babies aged between 1 and 3 days old, 53 of whom had mothers who spoke only Spanish and 78 of whom had mothers who spoke both Spanish and Catalan. They recorded their brain activity while the babies were played a series of “oa” sounds, finding that the bilingual-exposed infants showed signs of better-quality neural patterns. Read more

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