Stories by Jennifer Frazer

Like lichens, these animals mine stone. What they do with it is another question

Unassuming tree has unusual sex life

Be glad human STDs do not include this one

Are they the first animal embryos? 20 years post-discovery, these and other fossils from the 600-million-year-old Doushantuo Formation remain frustratingly enigmatic

Ocean microbes long thought to depend exclusively on eating turn out to have a solid, if sinister, Plan B

Fire chaser beetles' ability to sense heat borders on the spooky

First ever high-speed video of interaction contains big surprises

No other placental mammals have ever shown this ability—perhaps because we haven't looked

Whatever made these structures lived 1.4 billion years before the first animals

What separates a lethal prion from a dementia-associated amyloid plaque? Maybe not much

Mostly dead is slightly alive

Discovery suggests worrying transmission possibilities

Necessity is the mother of invention

Because if you can grow a square watermelon…, why not E. coli?

Seven complete specimens of 100-million-year-old flower found preserved in amber

For that matter, so did most natural recreational drugs

It's hard out there for a shrimp

Is there nothing the raptorial insect won't try to eat?

There’s no honor among thieves

The marine invertebrate Ectopleura larynx is perfectly happy to glue strangers to itself to grow its team

Nothing quite like the branching, fusing and synchronously turning tunnels has ever been seen before

Plant stakeout reveals never-before-seen seed disperser

Scientists turn to fossil poo in an effort to prove a long-standing hypothesis

Hungry shrimp flag down customers by waving antennae; customers encourage reluctant cleaners by changing colors