Stunning natural world images reveal zombie insects, whale necropsies and dinosaur embryos

Each year, a scientific photography contest invites us to look closely at a world in flux — and in 2023, one image above all others asked a quiet but urgent question. A marine biologist cradles a newborn blacktip reef shark in the warm shallows of French Polynesia, a creature born into waters already altered by human hands. Research behind the image suggests that juvenile sharks may carry within them a biological resilience to rising temperatures and oxygen loss that their elders do not — a fragile but genuine signal that life, in some forms, is still reaching toward the future.