The 10-year-old gene-editing tool known as CRISPR is indispensable for engineering plants, tailoring lab animals, and probing basic biology. But there’s a caveat when it is used to tweak human genes: Unlike lab mice, which are usually inbred and genetically identical, people’s genomes differ individually and by ancestry. These ancestry differences mean CRISPR doesn’t always...

With its hands and feet bound, a spider monkey went to its grave around 300 C.E., buried alive among sumptuous grave goods in the great city of Teotihuacan in central Mexico. A recent study of its bones suggests the animal may have been a diplomatic gift from the Maya, who lived far to the east, offering a peek at geopolitics in Mesoamerica a century before the two great powers clashed....

In a decision conservation groups called historic, an intergovernmental organization has taken a significant step toward regulating the trade of nearly 100 species of sharks and rays , most of which are imperiled from overfishing. A committee of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) last week voted to oversee exports of...