From birds and bats to horses and great apes, Bill Schutt's seriously fun history of teeth, Bite, explains their role in both shaping evolution and our understanding of it

Cyanobacteria exposed to shorter days are better at surviving cold conditions, showing that even simple organisms can prepare for the arrival or summer and winter

The largest pterosaurs, ancient reptiles that were the first vertebrates to master flight, may have mostly soared while smaller ones flapped their wings, a pattern that persists in today's birds

From migrating sauropods and semi-aquatic predators to doting parents, palaeontologists are finally uncovering the mysteries of the lifestyles of dinosaurs

Echolocating bats can more easily find and pollinate long-stemmed flowers that stand out from the surrounding foliage, which may be why this floral trait evolved

We are finally untangling the ancient history of the cactus family, revealing some surprising forces that shaped these plants – ­­­­­­and prompting concern for their future

Northern sea robins are formidable marine hunters, and they owe their success to modified fin rays that let them find prey buried in the seabed

A group of frogs from Madagascar have mating calls that sound like Star Trek sound effects – now their species names honour captains from the series

The natural motors that power tail-like appendages in bacteria seem to have a single evolutionary origin, allowing parts from different species to be combined to create a tiny new engine

Experiments where vampire bats were made to run on a treadmill have revealed how they extract energy from protein in their latest blood meal

When it comes to the survival of animals living in the wild, the characteristics of the group can matter as much as the traits of the individual, according to a study in marmots

Never underestimate what a single gopher can achieve in a day: one of the burrowing mammals helped boost soil fungi in an area blanketed by ash from the explosive eruption of Mount St Helens in Washington state

Are points of infinite curvature, where general relativity breaks down, always hidden inside black holes? An audacious attempt to find out is shedding light on the mystery of quantum gravity

One hundred years ago, we discovered there were other galaxies beyond our own. Now, we might be on the verge of another discovery: that there are other universes

It may soon be possible to vaccinate ourselves against the diseases of old age, keeping our body and brain healthier for longer

Recent fossil finds suggest that big brains weren't an evolutionary asset to our ancestors but evolved by accident – and are likely to shrink again in the near future

The slow-running movement, in which people meet for unhurried jogs, is booming – but don't be fooled into thinking that if there's no pain, there's no gain

Fossils found 50 and 100 years ago seemed to pinpoint the moment humanity emerged – but defining a human has turned out to be far trickier than we thought

What anxiety actually is has puzzled scientists for decades. Now we are starting to figure out how it may arise from miscommunication between the body and the brain

Forget atomic clocks. Nuclear clocks, which only drop a second every 300 billion years, can test whether nature's fundamental constants are constant after all

From migrating sauropods and semi-aquatic predators to doting parents, palaeontologists are finally uncovering the mysteries of the lifestyles of dinosaurs

A new diet based on research into the body's ageing process suggests you can increase your life expectancy by up to 20 years by changing what, when and how much you eat

Male pattern baldness could soon be a thing of the past, with new hair loss treatments beginning to show tantalising results

Understanding the “effort paradox” can help you reshape your relationship to exertion so that you commit to those hard but truly meaningful activities

Discoveries from the genomes of the last Neanderthals are rewriting the story of how our own species came to replace them

Could the universe's missing matter be hiding in a "dark" extra dimension? We now have simple ways to test this outlandish idea - and the existence of extra dimensions more generally

What life is and how the mind works fall within the compass of one bold concept. But critics say that by attempting to explain everything, it may end up explaining nothing

An outlandish experiment searching for a brain network that tunes up and down the feeling of immersion is hoping to unlock the therapeutic effects of psychedelics

Extreme weather and a growing population is driving a food security crisis. What can we do to break the vicious cycle of carbon emissions, climate change and soaring food costs – or is it already too late?

The physicist Peter Higgs quietly revolutionised quantum field theory, then lived long enough to see the discovery of the Higgs boson he theorised. Despite receiving a Nobel prize, he remained in some ways as elusive as the particle that shares his name

To capture the clearest and most direct images of a “Wigner crystal”, a structure made entirely of electrons, researchers used a special kind of microscope and two pieces of graphene unusually free of imperfections

The very weak forces of attraction caused by the Casimir effect can now be used to manipulate microscopic gold flakes and turn them into a light-trapping tool

A solar energy absorber that uses quartz to trap heat reached 1050°C in tests and could offer a way to decarbonise the production of steel and cement

The Linac Coherent Light Source in California fired an X-ray pulse that lasted only a few hundred billionths of a billionth of a second but carried nearly a terawatt of power

Quantum light is key to futuristic quantum technologies, but researchers have been creating it in the same way for 60 years – now liquid crystals offer an easier way to produce it

Are points of infinite curvature, where general relativity breaks down, always hidden inside black holes? An audacious attempt to find out is shedding light on the mystery of quantum gravity

One hundred years ago, we discovered there were other galaxies beyond our own. Now, we might be on the verge of another discovery: that there are other universes

A set of mathematical equations can help turn apparently random observations into a clock – and then measure its accuracy

The gamma ray burst known as GRB221009A is the biggest explosion astronomers have ever glimpsed and we might finally know what caused the blast

Commercially available quantum technology could let stock traders coordinate decisions to buy or sell nearly instantaneously using a technique called “quantum telepathy”

Forget atomic clocks. Nuclear clocks, which only drop a second every 300 billion years, can test whether nature's fundamental constants are constant after all

If gravity is a truly quantum entity, something as simple as measuring the strength of an object’s gravitational field should change its quantum state

A mathematical proof shows that some quantum states can resist nature’s tendency to disorder – but only under very specific conditions

A new technique uses glowing molecules, laser light and microscopes to measure distances as minuscule as 0.1 nanometres – the width of a typical atom

Could the universe's missing matter be hiding in a "dark" extra dimension? We now have simple ways to test this outlandish idea - and the existence of extra dimensions more generally

A surprising reversal of our usual understanding of the second law of thermodynamics shows that it may be possible for heat to move in the “wrong” direction, flowing from a cold area to a warm one

Shapes created by vortices in water often fall apart, but an odd quantum fluid made from ultracold atoms could support vortex knots that never lose their knottiness

Droplets of fluid have been known to hover above a hot surface, but a new experiment suggests the same can happen to tiny jets of liquid too

Tiny pieces of stone found in a rock formation in Western Australia may be the oldest evidence of a meteorite impact on Earth, dating back nearly 3.5 billion years

The second series of this show about Earth 66 million years ago is a joy to watch - but it inspires more than it informs. A little more science would have been nice