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Categories: Mathematics: Modeling, Offbeat: Paleontology and Archeology

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While the Diprotodon -- the extinct megafauna species that is distantly related to wombats but was the size of a small car -- is commonly (but incorrectly) thought of as Australia's 'giant wombat', researchers have shed light on a large species that does belong in the modern-day wombat family. The complete skull of this true fossil giant wombat, found in a Rockhampton cave in Queensland, Australia and estimated to be around 80,000 years old, has been described for the first time.

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Mathematical analysis identifies a vortex structure that is impervious to decay.

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The reliability of data storage and writing speed in advanced magnetic devices depend on drastic, complex changes in microscopic magnetic domain structures. However, it is extremely challenging to quantify these changes, limiting our understanding of magnetic phenomena. To tackle this, researchers developed, using machine learning and topology, an analysis method that quantifies the complexity of the magnetic domain structures, revealing hidden features of magnetization reversal that are hardly seen by human eyes.

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In a laboratory experiment, researchers have succeeded in realizing an effective spacetime that can be manipulated. In their research on ultracold quantum gases, they were able to simulate an entire family of curved universes to investigate different cosmological scenarios and compare them with the predictions of a quantum field theoretical model.

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Scratches on dinosaur teeth could reveal what they really ate. Dental microwear texture analysis (DMTA) has now been used to infer the feeding habits of large theropods, including Allosaurus and T. rex. By taking 3D images of individual teeth and analyzing the pattern of marks scratched into them, researchers could reason which dinosaurs may have frequently crunched on hard bone and which may have regularly eaten softer foods and prey. This technique opens up a new avenue of research for paleontology, helping us to better understand not only dinosaurs themselves but also the environment and communities in which they lived.

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With the theory that for every action, even those seemingly complex and random, there is a math problem that describes it, a researcher is publishing a new formula that helps find that equation quickly. Yes, he's speeding up science.

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Researchers have tested the biting efficiency of Smilodon, an extinct species of carnivore close to the extant felines. Using high-precision 3D scans and simulation methods, the team has just revealed how these animals managed to bite despite the impressive length of their teeth.

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Two-million-year-old DNA has been identified -- opening a 'game-changing' new chapter in the history of evolution. Microscopic fragments of environmental DNA were found in Ice Age sediment in northern Greenland. Using cutting-edge technology, researchers discovered the fragments are one million years older than the previous record for DNA sampled from a Siberian mammoth bone. The ancient DNA has been used to map a two-million-year-old ecosystem which weathered extreme climate change.

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Researchers used a unique coupled computer modeling approach to accurately recreate the coastal flooding that occurred during Hurricane Florence, demonstrating that it is more accurate than traditional modeling approaches.

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Dinosaurs dominated the world right up until a deadly asteroid hit the earth, leading to their mass extinction, some 66 million years ago, a landmark study reveals. Fresh insights into dinosaurs' ecosystems -- the habitats and food types that supported their lives -- suggests that their environments were robust and thriving, right up until that fateful day, at the end of the Cretaceous period.

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Even as detailed images of distant galaxies from the James Webb Space Telescope show us more of the greater universe, scientists still disagree about how life began here on Earth. One hypothesis is that meteorites delivered amino acids -- life's building blocks -- to our planet. Now, researchers have experimentally shown that amino acids could have formed in these early meteorites from reactions driven by gamma rays produced inside the space rocks.

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Scientists have solved a decades-long mystery as to why ancient tetrapods -- amphibian-like creatures that lived over 300 million years ago -- preserved in one of Ireland's most important fossil sites seemingly had their bones cooked after they died.

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Scientists have found new evidence for how armored dinosaurs used their iconic tail clubs. The exceptional fossil of the ankylosaur Zuul crurivastator has spikes along its flanks that were broken and re-healed while the dinosaur was alive -- injuries that the scientists think were caused from a strike by another Zuul's massive tail club. This suggests ankylosaurs had complex behavior, possibly battling for social and territorial dominance or even engaging in a 'rutting' season for mates.

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New research, based on two decades' worth of data, shows that in the ten years after its onset in 2000, the Southwestern North American (SWNA) megadrought caused a 30% change in gravity wave activity in Earth's upper atmosphere.

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A specimen retrieved from a cupboard of the Natural History Museum in London has shown that modern lizards originated in the Late Triassic and not the Middle Jurassic as previously thought.

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New evidence, helping to form a 15th-century reconstruction of part of Westminster Abbey, demonstrates how a section of the building was once the focus for the royal family's devotion to the cult of a disemboweled saint and likely contained gruesome images of his martyrdom.

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Fossilized fragments of a skeleton, hidden within a rock the size of a grapefruit, have helped upend one of the longest-standing assumptions about the origins of modern birds.

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Paleontologists say environmental DNA is not always helpful in identifying when animals like mammoths went extinct because genetic material found in sediment could have come from animals that died thousands of years earlier.

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New research demonstrates a 20x improvement in resetting a quantum bit to its '0' state, using a modern version of the 'Maxwell's demon'.

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Microscopic image data is key to developing low-power, high-speed electronic devices. However, the complex interactions in nanoscale magnetic materials are difficult to understand. A research group has now realized a new functional design theory called 'extended Landau free energy model' that combines topology and AI with free energy to automate the interpretation of the microscopic image. This model illustrates the physical mechanism and critical location of magnetization reversal and proposes a device structure with low energy consumption.