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An almost overlooked fossil discovered in a Brazilian museum collection has revealed the oldest ant specimen known to science, according to new research. The prehistoric ant lived among dinosaurs 113 million years ago — several millennia before previously found ants — and had an unusual way to kill its prey. Anderson Lepeco, a researcher at the Museum of Zoology of the University of São Paulo, said he came across the “extraordinary” specimen in September 2024 [...]

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. You have probably seen leaf-cutter ants carrying bits of plants, maybe in a nature documentary, at a science museum or in the “Circle of Life” song at the beginning of the 1994 Disney animated film “The Lion King.” Those ants don’t eat the leaves — instead they bring them back to their nests to feed a [...]

That coffee you slurped this morning? It’s 600,000 years old. Using genes from coffee plants around the world, researchers built a family tree for the world’s most popular type of coffee, known to scientists as Coffea arabica and to coffee lovers simply as “arabica.” The researchers, hoping to learn more about the plants to better protect them from pests and climate change, found that the species emerged around 600,000 years ago through natural crossbreeding of two [...]

Sao Paulo: A team of global researchers has discovered that a lipid -- produced in response to cold by brown adipose tissue in the human body -- helps reduce blood sugar. The discovery with the lipid known as 12-HEPE can pave the way for new treatments for diabetes, said the team from Brazil, the US and Germany. The group also observed that a drug used to treat urinary dysfunction increases the amount of 12-HEPE released into the bloodstream in human patients. White adipose tissue, one of [...]

A previously undiscovered species of electric eel which delivers a shock with more than three times the voltage of a domestic plug socket has been discovered in the Amazon rainforest. The enormous 2.5 metre eel has been named the Electrophorus voltai after Alessandro Volta, the Italian physicist who invented the battery.  The animal, a type of knifefish, can discharge an electric shock reaching as high as 860 volts, the most powerful of any animal known to [...]