Roughly 40 million years ago, you wouldn’t have found many penguins waddling around Antarctica. Instead, you would’ve encountered creatures that you probably wouldn’t expect to see on the frigid continent: frogs! In 2015, Dr. Thomas Mörs, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Swedish Museum of Natural History led a team of researchers to Seymour Island on the Antarctic Peninsula. Here, the team uncovered fragments of a hip bone and skull from the fossil of a prehistoric frog, proving that frogs had inhabited all seven continents once. An Unusual Discovery Frogs appeared on Earth even before the...

Trees are an important part of our environment. They come in various shapes and sizes, providing shade, oxygen, flowers, and fruits. But, did you know that trees can also absorb noise!? Scientists have recently conducted studies to find the best tree for absorbing noise -- and the winner is larch, a type of conifer. Conifers are trees with needle-shaped evergreen leaves and cones and are better at absorbing noise than broadleaved trees. They typically don’t lose their leaves or change colors with the seasons. However, larch is a deciduous conifer, which means that it sheds its leaves in the...