In 1842, Anna Atkins, a 43-year-old amateur botanist from Kent, England, began experimenting with a brand-new photographic process called cyanotype or blue-print. Atkins arranged algae specimens collected from around the British Isles on a sheet of g
Yeast selected to settle more quickly through a test tube evolved into multicellular, snowflake-like clusters in just 2 weeks, or about 100 generations. The clusters evolved to be larger, produce multicellular progeny, and even show differentiation o
In July 1587, a British colonist named John White accompanied 117 people to settle a small island sheltered within the barrier islands of what would become North Carolina’s Outer Banks. When conditions proved harsher than anticipated, White agreed to
In February 2009, a bottlenose dolphin named Nari swam up to the Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort on Moreton Island off Australia’s Queensland. Dozens of wild dolphins, including Nari, routinely entered an adjacent bay every night for dinner—hand fed f
Cut off a newt’s tail or a leg, or remove a lens from its eye, and it grows back. However, whether newts can continue to do this throughout their lives, or lose the ability as they get older, has remained a mystery. Now, in an experiment spanning 16
Genomicist Mark Stoeckle and three high school students have taken do-it-yourself science to a new level. Research headquarters are Stoeckle’s Upper West Side apartment, where he’s laid out pipettes, a thermocycler, and a gel reader in the spots usua
This is not an ancient one-eyed species, but an animal suffering from a rare congenital condition known as cyclopia, which has been documented in a variety of species, including humans. Measuring in at 56 centimeters (22 inches) in length, the organi