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Categories: Computer Science: Virtual Reality (VR), Paleontology: General
Published Dinosaur claws used for digging and display


Dinosaur claws had many functions, but now a team has shown some predatory dinosaurs used their claws for digging or even for display.
Published Clues about the Northeast's past and future climate from plant fossils


A team of researchers is working to understand the details of the climate for the eastern portion of the United States from the Miocene, which unfortunately is a blank spot on paleo-climate maps. New findings suggest the future climate will be very close to the warmer, wetter, and more homogeneous climate similar to conditions experienced 5 million years ago.
Published Insect bite marks show first fossil evidence for plants' leaves folding up at night


Plants can move in ways that might surprise you. Some of them even show 'sleep movements,' folding or raising their leaves each night before opening them again the next day. Now, researchers offer convincing evidence for these nightly movements, also known as foliar nyctinasty, in fossil plants that lived more than 250 million years ago.
Published Evolution of dinosaur body size through different developmental mechanisms


The meat-eating dinosaurs known as theropods that roamed the ancient Earth ranged in size from the bus-sized T. rex to the smaller, dog-sized Velociraptor. Scientists puzzling over how such wildly different dinosaur sizes evolved recently found -- to their surprise -- that smaller and larger theropod dinosaurs like these didn't necessarily get that way merely by growing slower or faster.
Published Wireless, soft e-skin for interactive touch communication in the virtual world


Sensing a hug from each other via the internet may be a possibility in the near future. A research team recently developed a wireless, soft e-skin that can both detect and deliver the sense of touch, and form a touch network allowing one-to-multiuser interaction. It offers great potential for enhancing the immersion of distance touch communication.
Published Early Cretaceous shift in the global carbon cycle affected both land and sea


Geologists doing fieldwork in southeastern Utah's Cedar Mountain Formation found carbon isotope evidence that the site, though on land, experienced the same early Cretaceous carbon-cycle change recorded in marine sedimentary rocks in Europe. This ancient carbon-cycle phenomenon, known as the 'Weissert Event' was driven by large, sustained volcanic eruptions in the Southern Hemisphere that greatly increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and produced significant greenhouse climate effects over a prolonged time.
Published Hands-free tech adds realistic sense of touch in extended reality


Researchers have demonstrated a new hands-free approach to convey realistic haptic feedback in virtual reality (VR). Their 'multisensory pseudo-haptics' uses a combination of headset visuals and tactile feedback from a wrist bracelet to convey sensations of touch.
Published How can the metaverse improve public health?


The metaverse is a technological revolution in the field of virtual reality, with potential benefits to public health research. A new article proposes several new ways in which the metaverse can help us design, test, and experience health-promoting environments to minimize the risk of non-communicable diseases.
Published Climate: Lessons from the latest global warming


56 million years ago, the Earth experienced one of the largest and most rapid climate warming events in its history: the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which has similarities to current and future warming. This episode saw global temperatures rise by 5-8°C. It was marked by an increase in the seasonality of rainfalls, which led to the movement of large quantities of clay into the ocean, making it uninhabitable for certain living species. This scenario could be repeated today.
Published Oldest spinosaur brains revealed


Researchers have reconstructed the brains and inner ears of two British spinosaurs, helping uncover how these large predatory dinosaurs interacted with their environment.
Published Researchers solve a 150-year-old mystery: Aetosaur find involves juveniles


Aetosaurs had a small head and a crocodile-like body. The land dwellers were up to six meters long and widely distributed geographically. They died out about 204 million years ago, at the end of the Triassic. In Germany, an assemblage of 24 Aetosaurus ferratus individuals, only between 20 and 82 centimeters long, was discovered in 1877. Since then, scientists have been puzzling over whether they were juveniles or small adults. A team has now solved the mystery: Bone examination of two specimens shows that they are juveniles.
Published Virtual and augmented reality: Researchers pioneer process to stack micro-LEDs


Researchers are using emerging technology to demonstrate a process that will enable more immersive and realistic virtual and augmented reality displays with the world's smallest and thinnest micro-LEDs.
Published Record low sea ice cover in the Antarctic



There is currently less sea ice in the Antarctic than at any time in the forty years since the beginning of satellite observation: in early February 2023, only 2.20 million square kilometers of the Southern Ocean were covered with sea ice.
Published Fossil discovery reveals complex ecosystems existed on Earth much earlier than previously thought



About 250 million years ago, the Permian-Triassic mass extinction killed over 80 per cent of the planet's species. In the aftermath, scientists believe that life on earth was dominated by simple species for up to 10 million years before more complex ecosystems could evolve. Now this longstanding theory is being challenged by a team of international researchers.
Published 2.9-million-year-old butchery site reopens case of who made first stone tools


Along the shores of Africa's Lake Victoria in Kenya roughly 2.9 million years ago, early human ancestors used some of the oldest stone tools ever found to butcher hippos and pound plant material, according to new research. The study presents what are likely to be the oldest examples of a hugely important stone-age innovation known to scientists as the Oldowan toolkit, as well as the oldest evidence of hominins consuming very large animals. Excavations at the site, named Nyayanga and located on the Homa Peninsula in western Kenya, also produced a pair of massive molars belonging to the human species' close evolutionary relative Paranthropus. The teeth are the oldest fossilized Paranthropus remains yet found, and their presence at a site loaded with stone tools raises intriguing questions about which human ancestor made those tools.
Published Scientists develop new index based on functional morphology to understand how ancestors of modern birds used their wings


Scientists have compared the relationship among the strength of flight bones, body mass, and the way modern birds fly to better understand the evolution of flight in birds and extinct animals, such as the Pteranodon.
Published A fossil fruit from California shows ancestors of coffee and potatoes survived cataclysm that killed the dinosaurs



The discovery of an 80-million-year-old fossil plant pushes back the known origins of lamiids to the Cretaceous, extending the record of nearly 40,000 species of flowering plants including modern-day staple crops like coffee, tomatoes, potatoes and mint.
Published Changing climate conditions likely facilitated early human migration to the Americas at key intervals, research suggests



Researchers have pinpointed two intervals when ice and ocean conditions would have been favorable to support early human migration from Asia to North America late in the last ice age, a new paper shows.
Published Mistaken fossil rewrites history of Indian subcontinent for second time


Scientists discovered the first-ever Dickinsonia fossil in India two years ago, changing our understanding of how the continent came to be. Now, new research shows the 'fossil' was just a beehive all along, changing our understanding for a second time, and the original scientists now support the new findings.
Published 319-million-year-old fish preserves the earliest fossilized brain of a backboned animal


The CT-scanned skull of a 319-million-year-old fossilized fish, pulled from a coal mine in England more than a century ago, has revealed the oldest example of a well-preserved vertebrate brain.