Science Daily

• This mysterious mushroom makes people see hundreds of tiny humans

  For nearly a century, people in distant parts of the world have reported a bizarre experience after eating certain wild mushrooms: seeing dozens or even hundreds of tiny, colorful humans moving through the real world. Now, scientists have identified a mushroom species, Lanmaoa asiatica, responsible for these extraordinary hallucinations in China and the Philippines.

• New evidence suggests spinosaurus spent most of its life underwater

  Millions of years after animals first conquered land, some took an extraordinary evolutionary U-turn and returned to the water. Using machine learning and thousands of fossil measurements, Yale scientists have uncovered surprising clues about which prehistoric creatures truly became aquatic. Their findings suggest that Spinosaurus spent most of its life underwater, while some ancient marine reptiles previously thought to be fully aquatic actually spent considerable time on land.

• Scientists propose a way to detect dangerous “mirror life” before it exists

  Scientists have proposed a way to detect “mirror life,” a hypothetical form of life that could pose serious risks to humans, animals, and ecosystems if artificially created. Using special fluorescent molecules and a type of polarized light also used in 3D movie technology, researchers believe they could distinguish ordinary organisms from their mirror-image counterparts.

• These tiny snakes roll four times faster than they slither

  Tiny snakes in Southeast Asia have mastered an extraordinary escape technique: rolling across the ground at speeds up to four times faster than ordinary slithering. Scientists discovered that dwarf reedsnakes accomplish this feat through precisely coordinated body movements that allow their bodies to rotate while their heads remain remarkably stable.

• This 150-million-year-old bird had dinosaur teeth and a strange secret

  A 150-million-year-old fossil discovered in China reveals a bizarre early bird with sharp teeth, a dinosaur-like claw, and a body built for life on the ground rather than flight. Scientists believe it represents the earliest known example of flight loss in birds, overturning assumptions about how these animals evolved.