Wolf

Expanded excavations at White Sands National Park in New Mexico have provided researchers an opportunity to refine the age of the oldest human footprints in North America and establish a deeper understanding of the landscape and environmental conditions at the time humans were present there.

For centuries, dogs have helped people travel across the Arctic, hauling supplies, equipment and other goods through snowy landscapes where other domesticated animals struggled to venture. Now, a new study publishing Oct. 14 in the journal iScience finds that sled dogs might have evolved shorter legs that helped them pull loads more efficiently.

One of the hardest challenges in wildlife conservation arises when the habitat of a species in need of protection overlaps with land used by humans. Wolves and bears can kill livestock, elephants can damage homes and other property and wild boar can damage crops.

You might be among the 46 million people who've seen a video showing how wolves changed Yellowstone, or you may have heard another version of the story. Yellowstone, which covers nearly 3,500 square miles (9,100 square kilometers) of the western United States, was the world's first national park. Its pioneering reintroduction of wolves, which began in 1995, set a worldwide precedent for conservation.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers has created an open-source website for learning what different organisms eat and what eats them. The site—called Who Eats Whom—draws on data from a worldwide citizen science platform and serves as both a valuable resource for ecological research and an educational tool to advance public understanding of the global food web.