Brandon Moore, PhD

3D renders show the segmented cuticle and tissues representative of the level of detail captured with synchrotron micro-CT imaging. Top) Full habitus of the ant with an animated, more life-like pose and colors inspired by photographs. Bottom-Left) Cuticle cut at the sagittal section revealing internal tissues with muscles in red occupying most of the internal space in an ant’s body. Bottom-Right) Removing the muscles reveals the digestive tract (green) and the nervous system (blue).

The Antscan initiative has successfully digitized 2,193 ant specimens using high-throughput synchrotron X-ray microtomography, offering unprecedented access to ant morphology data! 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This image shows the complex distribution of molecular gas in the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) of the Milky Way. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has mapped our galaxy's Central Molecular Zone (CMZ). This is the largest ALMA image ever obtained and showcases 650 light-years of intricate cold gas filaments near the Milky Way's supermassive black hole! 🧪

arxiv.org/abs/2602.20340

Example of a Mesolithic pottery vessel. Credit: Lara González Carretero

Experimental cooking with modern replica pottery vessels to recreate prehistoric recipes. Credit: Lara González Carretero

Combined imaging and chemical analyses of 85 Mesolithic (6000 BCE) pot shards demonstrate that European fisher‑hunter‑gatherers ate a more diverse diet than previously thought reflecting plant-based food choices that were highly selective! 🧪

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Life reconstruction of the newly discovered fossil in an environment typical of the upper Maastrichtian Frenchman Formation. Credit: Kaitlin Lindblad

A <1 year old, ~90cm pachycephalosaur was recently discovered in Saskatchewan's Maastrichtian Frenchman Formation. Its back legs are proportionally longer than an adult's which suggests that they grew more slowly compared to the rest of its body as it matured! 🧪

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Chimpanzees can distinguish crystals from ordinary stones, showing a preference for transparent surfaces and regular geometric forms. The study authors suggest this demonstrates a shared preference with quartz-collecting hominins of the Pleistocene! 🧪

www.frontiersin.org/journals/psy...

The spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 is an example of a “jellyfish” galaxy because blue tendrils of star formation stream away from it like jellyfish tentacles. Credit : NASA

@uwaterloo.ca astronomers have discovered the most distant jellyfish galaxy (ESO 137-001). Its tentacle-like trail of hot gas and stars suggests that the early universe was more violent than previously thought! 🧪

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

You're right - Thank you for sharing this paper!

Nine examples of Brazilian tektites, or Geraisites. These tektites have shapes similar to others - especially Indochinites, whose strewn field lies in South East Asia. Credit: Alvaro P. Crósta

The first South American tektite strewn field has been discovered and spans 900 km across three Brazilian states (Minas Gerais, Bahi, Piauí). These glassy fragments formed when an asteroid impacted Earth 6.3 million years ago! 🧪

pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/...

Left) Schematic of electrical measurement on the sea urchin spine. When water flows through microchannels, the spines are negatively charged, resulting in a positively charged surrounding fluid. Right) Photos of a living D. setosum, showing a dome-shaped body shell surrounded by spike-like spines approximately 5–8 cm long.

Sea urchin spines demonstrate mechano-electrical transduction, enabling them to sense the water currents moving around them. Their tapered spines have a structural gradient that enhances response potential up to 1,000 times more than vision in the same species! 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Life reconstruction of the head of Triceratops prorsus. Nasal soft tissues inferred in the linked study shown. Soft tissues include the main narial nerves and blood vessels, nasal gland, nasolacrimal duct, and respiratory turbinate. Credit: K. Sakane

Triceratops had unique rostral anatomy with oversized nasal passages that likely helped to regulate body temperature and may have contained heat-exchange structures (respiratory turbinates) similar to those found in modern birds and mammals! 🧪

anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Ancient marine amphibians Erythrobatrachus (foreground) and Aphaneramma (background) swimming along the coast of what is now NW Australia. Credit: Pollyanna von Knorring

Rediscovered fossils reveal two post‑Permian predators: the chunky‑jawed Erythrobatrachus and the needle‑snouted Aphaneramma. These fossils demonstrate that early tetrapods not only survived but likely flourished after this mass extinction event. 🧪

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Mammoth figurine, ivory. Top: Photograph of figurine. Middle: Line drawing of figurine with markings highlighted. Bottom: Data extracted from the figurine markings.

Plaquette with hybrid creature (so-called "Adorant"), ivory. Top: Photograph of plaquette. Middle: Line drawing of plaquette with markings highlighted. Bottom: Data extracted from the plaquette markings.

40,000 year old Aurignacian artifacts carry complex, intentional sign sequences that are comparable in statistical complexity to early proto-cuneiform writing, which wasn't developed for another 35,000 years! 🧪

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Sneakers squeak on the basketball court due to stick-slip oscillations at the interface between shoe and floor. This phenomenon is now well understood, enabling the authors of this study to creatively harness it for music production! 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Temnothorax kinomurai, a workerless, parthenogenetic social parasite. (A) Young, gynomorphic, i.e., originally winged, queen of Temnothorax kinomurai (left) attempting to sting a T. makora worker (right). (B) Nest of T. kinomurai containing young, winged gynomorphic and wingless intermorphic queens of T. kinomurai (light brown) and dark brown T. makora host workers.

Temnothorax kinomurai is a newly identified ant species consisting solely of queens - there are no workers or males. These social parasites take over the nests of other ant species and reproduce without mating! 🧪

www.cell.com/current-biol...

A horse's whinny is produced through the combination of two distinct vocalizations: a low frequency from the vocal folds and a higher whistle with aerodynamic origins! 🧪

www.cell.com/current-biol...

The bouba-kiki effect describes how most people intuitively pair the sound "bouba" with curves and "kiki" with spikes. Newborn chicks exhibit the same bias which suggests a deep‑rooted neural mechanism for this phenomenon that is independent of language! 🧪

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The linked paper says that it is moving very fast (supersonic speeds) as evidenced by the bow shock depicted in Figure 3.

Cleaner wrasse rapidly recognize themselves in mirrors, suggesting a level of self-awareness. These fish also use reflections to track drifting food, a behavior analogous to dolphins playing with mirror‑reflected bubbles. 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

HST/WFC3 UVIS imaging of the runaway black hole (left) and the streak of stars left in its wake (right).

New evidence from the James Webb Space Telescope confirms that a "runaway" black hole escaped from its host galaxy and left a trail of young stars scattered in its wake! 🧪

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

Sheathed bony head crests in extinct and living dinosaurs. S. mirabilis sp. nov., evolved the tallest head crest of any theropod dinosaur, drawing attention to the midline ornamentation that characterizes the cranium and axial skeleton of all spinosaurids. In life, the crest would have been extended to some degree by a keratinous sheath, as in the living helmeted guinea fowl (Numida meleagris). Visual signaling, as is the case in guinea fowl and other crested avians, was likely the function of spinosaurid cranial crests and trunk and tail sails. Scale bar, 20 cm for S. mirabilis and 3 cm for N. meleagris.

The newly discovered Spinosaurus mirabilis possessed a unique scimitar-shaped cranial crest which suggests that this dinosaur was a wading shoreline predator rather than being a fully aquatic hunter! 🧪

www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Photo of a small mare ridge in Northeast Mare Imbrium taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA

1,114 new tectonic ridges have been mapped on the Moon's surface, indicating that the Moon continues to contract as it seismically reshapes itself! 🧪

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

Artist’s reconstruction of a myllokunmingiid with it's four eyes prominently featured. Credit: Xiangtong Lei & Sihang Zhang

Our earliest vertebrate ancestors (Myllokunmingia) may have navigated the ancient world using four eyes instead of two. The remnants of these two extra eyes likely evolved into the melatonin regulating pineal gland of modern animals! 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The date that I reference was pulled from Wikipedia which references the following paper for the "66 million years ago" number:
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Artistic depiction of new life forming after the K/Pg mass extinction. The three hair-covered forms, top left, represent species of plankton found inside the impact crater. The geometric form, on the bottom left, is a species of algae. The bones belong to an extinct marine reptile. Credit: John Maisano

Life swiftly rebounded after the Chicxulub impact (66 million years ago) such that new species emerged within 2,000 years of this mass extinction event! 🧪

pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/...

Ancient Roman mosaic depicting the ransom of Hector. Notably, Hector is being traded for his weight in gold which is inconsistent with the story depicted in Homer's Iliad.

The Ketton mosaic was not inspired by Homer's Iliad but instead by a lesser-known tragedy by Aeschylus. This suggests that Roman Britain was more interconnected with the broader ancient world than previously thought! 🧪

dx.doi.org/10.1017/S006...

Graphical abstract of linked paper. Elephant whisker tops are ovular, dense, and soft. Elephant whisker bases are ovular, porous, and stiff. This contrasts to most other mammals with whiskers that are circular and stiff throughout.

Elephant trunks can both rip down trees and gently pluck peanuts because their trunk whiskers contain a stiffness gradient, allowing them to sense fine contours and adjust their grip strength accordingly! 🧪

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Photos from 2012, 2016, and 2022 showing the gradual dimming of M31‑2014‑DS1 as it collapsed in on itself to form a black hole.

Twelve years ago, the massive star M31‑2014‑DS1 brightened then gradually faded away. This behavior is consistent with a failed supernova where the star's outer layers fall back before collapsing into a black hole! 🧪

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

@ethz.ch researchers built a miniature stingray-bot that swims through liquids using ultrasound and microbubbles. It can be swallowed and travel the digestive tract to release therapeutics internally! 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Artistic reconstruction of Tyrannoroter heberti, eating a fern. Credit: Hannah Fredd

Tyrannoroter heberti is a recently discovered football-sized microsaur from the Late Carboniferous period (~307 million years ago) whose specialized teeth suggest that plant-eating evolved far earlier on land than previously thought! 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The planet Jupiter is smaller and flatter than previously thought. This figure depicts the old and new equitorial and polar radii as measured by NASA's Juno mission. Old equatorial radius measurement: 71,492 km New equatorial radius measurement: 71,488 km Old polar radius measurement: 66,854 km New polar radius measurement: 66,842 km Credit: NASA

NASA's Juno mission reports that Jupiter is slightly smaller and flatter than previously thought! 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/s41...