Massive Species that Resembles a Floppy-Eared Hound Discovered in Burgess Shale

With fossils dating back 500 million years ago, the well-preserved Burgess Shale in British Columbia is home to increasingly unlocked mysteries of the Cambrian Period, the era in which many of Earth’s major groups of animals appeared. From this site, researchers recently identified a new species: Balhuticaris voltae, a bivalved arthropod (“distantly similar to today’s crustaceans,” according to Popular Mechanics) with bean-shaped eyes and a …

Believed Extinct in the Wild, Singing Dogs Found in Indonesia

First studied in 1897, the rare New Guinea “singing dog” exhibits a vocalization pattern like a humpback whale—a long, drawn-out call that’s distinctly different from a dog’s bark or a wolf’s howl. Researchers suspected the singing dog went extinct after going unseen in the wild since the 1970s (there are roughly 200-300 in captivity around the world, however). But new evidence suggests that a pod …