Kate Wong

Just in time for #FossilFriday, meet Rhynchaeites mcfaddeni, a little fossil ibis from the Green River Formation. The holotype looks delightfully like a hieroglyph!

Published today in Journal of Paleontology
shorturl.at/qTUVi

What's This Bird LIVE! February 13, 2026 YouTube video by American Birding Association

Join me and @n8swick.bsky.social Nate Swick for some tricky IDs, bird banter and more, at @aba.org ABA's WTB LIVE, today at NOON central!

www.youtube.com/live/wMAkOk1...

Go bird-watching this weekend and support a global community science project Avian enthusiasts around the world will identify and count birds from February 13 through February 16 as part of a massive community science project

The Great Backyard Bird Count is here! I'm filling my feeders and figuring out where else I want to go birding this weekend. Here's how to join the fun and help scientists get a global view of bird populations before they undertake seasonal migration. #GBBC🪶🧪

A collection of six ominous bird valentines set against a background of pink hearts. In the first one, a Canada Goose looks angry and hisses and the text says "Baby, I'll make you fall head over heels if you approach within 10m of my nest." In the second, an American white pelican opens its mouth to eat the reader and the text says "There are plenty of fish in the sea, but I want this one." In the third valentine, a Black Vulture looks suspiciously at the reader and the text says "I will love you until you die. And after that, I'll love you even more." A Southern Cassowary stands proudly against the heart-covered background. The text says "My wattles are red. My head is blue. My deadly reputation has been somewhat overblown, but I'd kill for you." In the fifth valentine, a Northern Giant-Petrel stands open-billed next to a large brown furry object, and the text says "Let's seal the deal by sharing a 3000 kg elephant seal carcass." In panel 6, a happy-looking Bearded Vulture holds a bone in its beak, and the text says "I love every part of you, especially your bones."

Ominous bird valentines.

This ancient South American kingdom ran on bird poop Maize farmers in Peru’s Chincha Valley were fertilizing their crops with seabird poop as early as the year 1250

I deeply appreciate scientists doing work that caters to my particular venn diagrams of personal interests, such as bird poop + ancient civilizations: 🧪 🏺 www.scientificamerican.com/article/this...

Why curling rocks come from just two spots on Earth The rocks used in the Olympic sport of curling come from one island in Scotland and one quarry in Wales. What makes them so special?

Had a blast speaking to curler and geologist Derek Leung about the geology of curling rocks. 🥌 🧪

VOLUNTEER ON A DINOSAUR DIG: We run one of the only free dinosaur digs in the USA. We work public land and the fossils go in our public museum, forever. It's hard work, but we find some cool things. If this sounds like you, we're taking applications. Link in comms. #dinosaurs

Living dinosaurs appear on empty mug

Fossilized dinosaurs appear when mug is filled with hot beverage

Post snow shoveling reward: ibuprofen and a trial run of my nerdy new mug (T. rex and Deinonychus become fossils with the addition of a hot beverage.)🦖 🦕

The scientific quest to explore the hidden complexity of ice Ice has many forms beyond the mundane stuff produced in a standard freezer

pleased to share some 🧊ice🧊 counter-programming, courtesy of @meghanbartels.bsky.social, featuring a graphical guide to 21 different forms of ice (!!) by me 🧪https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-create-exotic-new-forms-of-ice-never-before-seen-on-earth/

My feature is on the cover of @sciam.bsky.social !!

This is one of the more fascinating, maddening, mind-boggling stories I've reported in a long time. Please come on this journey with me.

Meet Veronika, the first cow known to engage in flexible, multipurpose tool use A pet cow named Veronika uses tools in a surprisingly sophisticated way—possibly because she has been allowed to live her best life

Delightful news alert: An Austrian cow named Veronika has perfected the art of using a broom to scratch her itches—a finding that challenges the conventional wisdom about the intelligence of farm animals. #CowTools are real! 🐮 🧹 🧪

Humans Made Poisoned Arrowheads Thousands of Years Earlier Than Previously Thought The use of poison on arrows marked a revolution in human hunting technology—new evidence suggests it happened tens of thousands of years earlier than previously known

This is such a cool finding--the oldest direct evidence of poisoned arrows. Poisoned hunting weapons were a game-changing innovation for our ancestors. Absolutely incredible that researchers found traces of plant toxins on these tiny arrowheads from 60,000 ago 🤯🏹 🧪

Small green, white and red bird perched on a branch

Meet the Puerto Rican Tody, my most wanted bird on a recent trip to Puerto Rico. It’s about 3 inches tall and has more Christmas energy per gram than any other bird I know. Happy merry, all 🎄

GOOSEFISH

This picture has been making the rounds again, and is being misidentified again.

This is a GOOSEFISH.

This is NOT a tasselled wobbegong shark.

It’s a great pic. I get why people are very excited about it. But it’s as easy to give it the right name as the wrong one.

fullfact.org/online/tasse...

These Birds Learned to Tweet Like R2-D2. Listen to the Uncanny Results The lovable Star Wars droid is helping to shed light on why some bird species are better at mimicking sounds than others

Please do yourselves a favor and listen to these birds mimic R2-D2. (And learn something about how some species are able to do it better than others!)

(by Kate Graham-Shaw for @sciam.bsky.social)

Man With Tick-Borne Meat Allergy Dies after Eating Burger Lone star tick bites are the most common cause of alpha-gal syndrome, which causes severe allergic reactions to red meat

True nightmare fuel: Scientists just confirmed the first known death from a severe meat allergy caused by a tick bite.

The man, who died in 2024 after eating a burger, had alpha-gal syndrome, a bizarre disease triggered by tick bites.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/man-...

🧪

ARFID Is More Than Picky Eating—And the Condition Is on the Rise Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, or ARFID, can cause malnutrition and weight loss in children and adults even when body image is not a factor

Clinicians are noticing a steady climb in diagnoses of ARFID, a type of eating disorder that presents as a food avoidance so persistent and pervasive it can cause severe malnutrition in kids and adults. More @sciam.bsky.social: www.scientificamerican.com/article/what...

Some Scientists See UFOs in Old Telescope Data. Others See a Teachable Moment New peer-reviewed research reporting strange lights in the pre-space-age sky is sparking curiosity and controversy

Now on @sciam.bsky.social: Did astronomers photograph UFOs orbiting Earth in the 1950s, years before human activity there? New peer-reviewed studies suggest the answer is “yes,” but skeptics say these conclusions are premature. By @astrojonny.bsky.social.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/did-...

These were the dinosaurs that faced the asteroid.

Some of the last survivors. They lived in New Mexico, 66 million years ago. Among them was Alamosaurus, the size of a jetplane.

We unveiled them, and their true age, today in a new paper in
@science.org !

Tiny bird with yellow and black markings perched on a branch and holding a small black and yellow insect in its beak

Please enjoy this female Golden-crowned Kinglet eating a hover fly(?). I saw her in Cape May, New Jersey, the other day. Kinglets are usually pretty frenetic. This one was so focused on holding onto her meal that she slowed down enough for a photo. Look at her cute orange feet! 🪶

Image: Kate Wong

These Enigmatic ‘Fossils’ Could Rewrite the History of Life on Earth Controversial evidence hints that complex life might have emerged hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously thought—and possibly more than once

When did big multicellular organisms evolve — and how many times did it happen? In my first big print feature for @sciam.bsky.social, I wrote about *extremely* controversial 2.1 billion year old specimens from the Francevillain, and the question of how to recognize life on a basically alien planet

Bird Migration Is One of Nature’s Greatest Spectacles. Paleontologists Just Found Clues to Its Origin Tiny fossils hint at when birds began making their mind-blowing journey to the Arctic to breed

Proud to share a new piece in Scientific American co-authored with the brilliant @lnwilson.bsky.social , edited by @katewong.bsky.social, and featuring this spectacular depiction of the endless daylight of the Cretaceous summer in Alaska by Chase Stone!

www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-...

The official website of the Nobel Prize - NobelPrize.org The Nobel Prize rewards science, humanism and peace efforts. This is one of the central concepts in the will of Alfred Nobel, and it also permeates the outreach activities that have been developed for...

Six of the nine Nobel Prize winners this year work in the U.S.
Three of the six were born outside the U.S., which is the pattern most years. No country has benefited more from welcoming immigrants from around the world.
www.nobelprize.org

Wow—thank you @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social for investigating this video. When I saw it a few weeks ago I wondered whether it was legit. It’s absolutely incredible!

I love this whole wonderfully evocative thread about Ötzi the Iceman and his final journey so much 😍😭🧪

Chimpanzee Consumption of Boozy Fruit May Illuminate Roots of Humanity’s Love of Alcohol Wild chimps ingest the equivalent of multiple alcoholic beverages a day

Chimpanzees get a surprising amount of alcohol from the fruit they eat. This discovery might bolster the "drunken monkey hypothesis" for humanity's love of liquor 🧪🍸

Meet the Oldest Dome-Headed Dinosaur Ever Found A newly discovered dinosaur species has been identified from a fossil unearthed in Mongolia that represents the most complete pachycephalosaur specimen yet found

New dome-headed dino just dropped. 🧪

(Very fun story by @jack-tamisiea.bsky.social)

Bird Migration Is One of Nature’s Greatest Spectacles. Paleontologists Just Found Clues to Its Origin Tiny fossils hint at when birds began making their mind-blowing journey to the Arctic to breed

Right now, millions of birds are migrating south before the onset of the boreal winter. @ksepkalab.bsky.social and I explore the evolutionary origins of this amazing behavior in our article for @sciam.bsky.social!

www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-...

I loved talking with Marty Martin and Art Woods about how our understanding of human origins has evolved since 1845 for their excellent podcast, Big Biology 🧪