HS-LS4-5

Evaluate the evidence supporting claims that changes in environmental conditions may result in: (1) increases in the number of individuals of some species, (2) the emergence of new species over time, and (3) the extinction of other species.

  1. Animals

    As the tropics warm, some birds are shrinking

    Migratory birds are getting smaller as temperatures climb, studies had showed. New evidence shows dozens of tropical, nonmigratory species are, too.

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  2. Animals

    Scientists Say: Adaptation

    This word refers to a feature of a living thing that helps it better survive in its environment — or the process of that feature evolving in a population.

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  3. Animals

    ‘Penis worms’ could have been the original hermits

    These soft-bodied critters lived in abandoned shells about 500 million years ago, a new study suggests.

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  4. Animals

    Explainer: The age of dinosaurs

    Take a trip back to the Mesozoic Era to explore how geologic events, ecosystems and evolution were connected during the so-called age of dinosaurs.

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  5. Animals

    Cloning boosts endangered black-footed ferrets

    A cloned ferret named Elizabeth Ann brings genetic diversity to a species that nearly went extinct in the 1980s.

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  6. Animals

    Dinosaur families appear to have lived in the Arctic year-round

    Fossils of baby dinosaurs in northern Alaska challenge the idea that northern dinosaurs only spent their summers in the high Arctic.

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  7. Animals

    Let’s learn about whales and dolphins

    Whales, dolphins and porpoises are all cetaceans — mammals that live in water and have a streamlined body similar to a fish.

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  8. Fossils

    Dinosaur-killing asteroid radically changed Earth’s tropical forests

    The asteroid collision initially reduced the diversity in what had been sunny tropical rainforests. In time, the forests would become permanently darker.

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  9. Fossils

    An ancient hippo-sized reptile may have been a speedy beast

    An Anteosaurus was a hefty reptile with a large snout. Its fossil skull hints that it may have moved fast for its time.

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  10. Health & Medicine

    Bringing COVID-19 vaccines to much of world is hard

    The price of not vaccinating nearly everyone across the world could be a longer pandemic and more troubling variants of the new coronavirus.

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  11. Animals

    A new chameleon species may be the world’s tiniest reptile

    The newly described reptiles live in the northern forests of Madagascar. Deforestation there may also leave them on the brink of extinction.

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  12. Animals

    How do you build a centaur?

    A centaur has the torso of a human and the body of a horse. It may sound cool, but it wouldn’t work very well.

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