jorolat's blog
"A curious teenager in Argentina has discovered the fossil skull of the biggest bird ever found - a swift, flightless predator 10 feet tall ('gulp') that pursued its prey across the steppes of Patagonia 15 million years ago"
The Norwegian curriculum requires that all 14-year-olds learn about homosexuality. Assisting with this education, the Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo has just opened an exhibition of gay animals. [Links provided]
Scientists have identified the oldest known bee (Melittosphex burmensis), a 100 million-year-old specimen preserved in amber.
...The ancient insect, trapped in tree sap, is at least 35-45 million years older than any other known bee fossil.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - One of the world's most famous fossils - the 3.2 million-year-old Lucy skeleton unearthed in Ethiopia in 1974 - will go on display for the first time in the United States next year, and is likely to make a stop at the Smithsonian.
Even the Ethiopian public has seen Lucy only twice. [Updated]
A new theory on just what causes Earth's worst mass extinctions may help settle the endless scientific dust-up on the matter. Whether you favor meteor impacts, volcanic eruptions, cosmic rays, epidemics, or some other cause for the worst mass extinction events in Earth's history, no single cause has ever satisfied all scientists all the time for any extinction event. That may be because big extinctions aren't simple events.
The new Press/Pulse theory gets around the controversy by rejecting the all-or-nothing approach to mass extinction, calling instead on a combination of deadly sudden catastrophes - 'pulses' - with longer, steadier pressures on species - 'presses.'
University of Colorado at Boulder researchers have discovered what appears to be the first evidence of parasites in the gut contents of a dinosaur, indicating even the giants that roamed Earth 75 million years ago were beset by stomach worms.
Open access online edition (with illustrations) of Professor Stephen William Hawking's "A Brief History Of Time".
Link No Longer Available (25th Jan. '07)
From BBC News UK: Charles Darwin's works go online - The complete works of one of history's greatest scientists, Charles Darwin, are being published online.
The project run by Cambridge University has digitised some 50,000 pages of text and 40,000 images of original publications - all of it searchable.
Surfers with MP3 players can even access downloadable audio files.
Richard Dawkins on Comedy Central's 'The Colbert Report' (October 17th, 2006) discussing God, The God Delusion, Creationism, and Intelligent Design. ('s very funny too!).
Scientists at the Carnegie Institution and Pennsylvania State University have discovered evidence showing that microbes adapted to living with oxygen 2.72 billion years ago, at least 300 million years before the rise of oxygen in the atmosphere. The finding is the first concrete validation of a long-held hypothesis that oxygen was being produced and consumed by that time and that the transition to an oxygenated atmosphere was long term.
From BBC Health News: The faces we pull when we are happy, sad or angry may be passed from generation to generation, according to researchers.
An Israeli team discovered facial expressions among family members bore striking similarities.
...Organisms besides humans are affected by climate change, regardless of its causes. If average temperatures rise in the Arctic Ocean and the pack ice shrinks, polar bears and some seals lose habitat. If pack ice becomes rare enough, these animals will be at an ecological, and therefore evolutionary, disadvantage. They might even "blink out" altogether...
A study published in the open access journal BMC Biology (link provided) reveals that fewer than 10% of African American mitochondrial DNA sequences analysed can be matched to mitochondrial DNA from one single African ethnic group.
Keeping track of one set of keys is difficult enough, but imagine having to remember the locations of thousands of sets of keys. Do you use landmarks to remember where you put them? Do you have a mental map of their locations?
The remains of what has been described as a huge lost city may force historians and archaeologists to radically reconsider their view of ancient human history.
Marine scientists say archaeological remains discovered 36 metres (120 feet) underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of India could be over 9,000 years old.
The vast city - which is five miles long and two miles wide - is believed to predate the oldest known remains in the subcontinent by more than 5,000 years.
