I’m Scientific American assistant news editor Sarah Lewin Frasier. And here’s a short piece from the December 2020 issue of the magazine, in the section called Advances: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Science, Technology and Medicine.

The article is titled “Quick Hits,” and it’s a rundown of some noncoronavirus stories from around the globe.

U.S.:
Western Joshua trees will get a year of temporary endangered species status in California while the state considers permanently listing the distinctive succulents as the first-ever plant species protected because of climate change–related threat.

Panama:
A tropical forest ground survey revealed that one lightning strike often damages more than 20 trees, a quarter of which can die within a year. Researchers combined this finding with satellite data to estimate that lightning kills 200 million tropical trees worldwide every year—a significant cause of their demise.

Greenland:
Climate researchers discovered records of an automatic weather station that measured −93.3 degrees Fahrenheit one day in December 1991—a temperature colder than the average on Mars and the coldest ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere.

Italy:
Scientists have examined a shark found south of Sardinia that somehow survived to three years old without skin or teeth. They concluded it was a genetic mutation and plan to check nearby sediment for potential pollutant causes.

China:
Newly discovered and pristinely preserved fossils suggest two sleeping dinosaurs were buried alive in an underground burrow 125 million years ago. The burrow may have collapsed under volcanic debris.

Australia:
A new study shows how Australian grasslands’ strange barren patches—called fairy circles—are landscaped by the grasses themselves. Baking heat creates a hard clay crust over a patch of ground; water runs off of it, forming a more welcoming zone at its edges that grasses bolster as they grow and cool the soil.

That was “Quick Hits.” I’m Sarah Lewin Frasier.

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]