Scientists described the first evidence of a possible respiratory illness in a fossil. The common soil fungus Aspergillis can infect birds and reptiles today. The resulting disease, also called aspergillosis, causes the trachea’s soft tissues to attach to nearby bones. This causes odd bone bumps—the subject of discovery in a dino nicknamed Dolly.

Graduate student Shiuan-Tze Wu led a study of some ingenious organization into the odor-sensing cells of fruit flies. He and his collaborators at the La Jolla campus of UC San Diego found that the odor-detector cells in the insects’ antennae talk to one another in a way that saves brainpower.

A group of scientists—including archaeologists from Newcastle University, UK, and geneticists from the University of the Basque Country, University of Vienna, and Harvard University^1,2—unearthed a millennia-old family genealogy.

It seems not a week goes by that zoologists find yet another function of the designed microbiome.

Yet another layer of complexity has been added to the lowly bacterial cell. It has been discovered they can undergo genetic silencing to guard themselves from mutations. A researcher stated this finding is “an extremely important system that had not been appreciated until now."¹