See the ice-age art that hints at how humans flourished

Hello Nature readers,
Today we learn that scientists are going to fly over dangerous ‘fire clouds’, hear that papers with open peer-review reports are less likely to be retracted and enjoy 40,000-year-old bird carvings that provide clues to how ice age humans flourished.

If you enjoy this newsletter, please consider recommending it to a friend or colleague. Click here to forward it by e-mail. Thank you!

Fire-chasers take to the sky

Firefighters in Oregon and now France are battling wildfires big enough to generate spectacular, dangerous pyrocumulonimbus clouds (pyroCbs) — huge storm clouds that form in the hot updraft of big fires, generate wind and lightning, and exacerbate dangerous conditions. These fire storms also loft smoke into the stratosphere, where it can spread more readily around the globe, eat away at Earth’s protective ozone layer and influence weather and climate. That’s why scientists have just launched an airborne mission to observe these rare storms like never before, using a specially modified jet and a high-altitude NASA plane.

Inside the first Bundibugyo vaccine trial

The first trial to test an experimental vaccine for the Bundibugyo species of Ebola is underway, two months after the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda was declared an international public-health emergency. The trial aims to assess the safety of the vaccine and the immune response it generates before larger trials are rolled out in Uganda later this year. “We actually had in the freezer the right type of genetic sequence to let us make the Bundibugyo virus-specific vaccine really quickly,” immunologist Teresa Lambe, who’s leading the trial, tells Nature. “It looks like we’re going to need as many different tools as we have to combat this outbreak.”

Gene variant helps lizards get a grip

A gene variant in some silver key anoles (Anolis scriptus) that improves the lizards’ grip might have helped them withstand the winds of two hurricanes that swept over their native Turks and Caicos Islands in 2017. Researchers found that lizards with a variant in a gene called hs6st1 had shortened fourth toes on their hind legs. The team investigated this variant’s effect in embryonic brown anoles (Anolis sagrei) — a similar but more lab-friendly species to silver key anoles. In the face of winds from powerful fans, brown anoles with this variant were better able to grip onto their perch than were those without it.

Fewer retractions with open peer-review

Papers with open peer-review reports are less likely to be retracted, says a preprint study. Researchers analysed more than 116,000 papers in Public Library of Science (PLOS) journals and found that among the 40% that opted for publicly available peer-review reports, there were around 100 retractions. There were more than 300 in the closed-review group. It might be that researchers who are confident in their work and who broadly embrace open-science practices are more likely to choose open peer review, says research-integrity specialist and study co-author Matt Spick. In that case, the choice itself could serve as an indicator of article quality.

Ice-age art hints at how humans flourished

The newest finds from the Hohle Fels cave — a site in Germany that archaeologists have been exploring for decades — include a pair of tiny bird figurines carved from mammoth ivory, and fragments of a vulture-bone flute. These and other artworks found in the cave provide a window into the minds of some of Europe’s earliest Homo sapiens. Archaeologist Nicholas Conard, who leads the excavation, argues that the artistic capabilities of these early humans mark a shift in cognitive and cultural sophistication that might have helped them to flourish in ice-age Europe, when other groups vanished.

Cholera is not a solved problem

Worldwide cases of cholera rose around 175% from 2021 to 2025. And the official figures are probably much lower than the true number, because the countries with the highest burden of the disease — those where access to clean water is unreliable — lack the resources to track its spread. These countries are also affected by armed conflicts or climate-driven floods, which further restrict access to clean water. The tools to prevent cholera deaths “are proven and inexpensive”, says epidemiologist Katrin Wallace. “What is missing is the investment to put them where they are needed.”