Living beings, especially microorganisms, have a surprising ability to adapt to the most extreme environments on our planet, but there are still places where they cannot live. European researchers have confirmed the absence of microbial life in hot, saline, hyperacid ponds in the Dallol geothermal field in Ethiopia.

Dinosaur footprints found in several European countries, very similar to others in Morocco, suggest that they could have been dispersed between the two continents by land masses separated by a shallow sea more than 145 million years ago.

When Biruté Galdikas arrived to settle in the jungles of Indonesia almost 50 years ago, there was hardly any information about Borneo, let alone about its loneliest inhabitants: the orangutans. Today she is the world's foremost expert on orangutan behaviour and, at 73, still continues with the on-site study and defence of the conservation of this endangered species.

Global warming will cause the Iberian Peninsula to suffer more and more water shortages, with serious economic losses. Less snow, less rain and less flow will endanger the continuation of the transfers from one basin to another. A new study on these effects on the transfer between the Tagus-Segura Rivers foresees that by 2070 it will not be possible to transfer water, if the climatic projections prove accurate.

Marine litter is a growing problem in the Mediterranean Sea, but few studies have focused on its composition, spatial distribution and temporal evolution. Now, a new study reveals that, in Spanish waters, plastics are the main component and that density is higher in the Alboran Sea than in the Levantine region or Catalonia, where accumulation has remained stable.

Plesiosaurs, erroneously viewed as dinosaurs, inhabited all the seas between 200 million and 65 million years ago. In the Peninsula, only scarce remains of these long-necked reptiles had been found. Now a group of palaeontologists has found the most abundant collection of fossils in Morella, Castellón. Among them, there is one vertebra that belonged to a type of plesiosaur never before discovered in the country, the leptocleidus.

A team of Spanish researchers has analyzed the character of these mammals of the dolphin family, whose name and fame does not do them justice. According to the conclusions of the study, carried out on 24 specimens in captivity, these cetaceans tend to act with responsibility, kindness, extroversion, care and dominance.

Widely distributed throughout Eurasia and North America, the weasel –the smallest species among mustelids– shows no apparent problems. But a study conducted in the last two decades reveals that this small carnivore is becoming less frequent in the northeast of our country due to the change in land use and climate change.

When the Rhizostoma luteum jellyfish was discovered at the beginning of the 19^th century in the waters of the Strait of Gibraltar, only nine specimens were identified. For years, it was so inconspicuous that later, in the 20^th century, it failed to turn up for six decades. A team of scientists, with the help of a citizen initiative, has now confirmed that it is not really as difficult to find as previously believed.