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Categories: Mathematics: Statistics, Offbeat: Paleontology and Archeology

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An international multidisciplinary team consisting of solar physicists, geophysicists, and historians from nine countries analysed observations of an extreme solar-terrestrial storm reported in historical records from February 1872. Their findings confirm that a moderate sunspot group triggered one of the largest magnetic storms ever recorded, almost covering the entire night sky with colourful aurorae in both hemispheres. If such an extreme storm occurred today, it would severely disrupt modern technological infrastructure. Their study emphasizes the importance of looking at historical records in light of modern scientific knowledge.

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Ancient animals were walking around on bird-like feet over 210 million years ago, according to a new study.

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Engineers have come up with a new way to teach robots to know when they don't know. The technique involves quantifying the fuzziness of human language and using that measurement to tell robots when to ask for further directions. Telling a robot to pick up a bowl from a table with only one bowl is fairly clear. But telling a robot to pick up a bowl when there are five bowls on the table generates a much higher degree of uncertainty -- and triggers the robot to ask for clarification.

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Researchers have provided new insights into how ancestral elephants developed their dextrous trunks.  A study of the evolution of longirostrine gomphotheres, an ancestor of the modern day elephant, suggests moving into open-land grazing helped develop their coiling and grasping trunks.

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The national park of Koli in eastern Finland is home to a famous, 34-metre-long crevice cave known as Pirunkirkko, or Devil's Church in English. A new study investigates the acoustics of the Devil's Church and explores whether the acoustic properties of the cave could explain the beliefs associated with it, and why it was chosen as a place for activities and rituals involving sound.

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Ten newly discovered species of trilobites, hidden for 490 million years in a little-studied part of Thailand, could be the missing pieces in an intricate puzzle of ancient world geography.

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Using 700 years' worth of wave data from more than a billion waves, scientists have used artificial intelligence to find a formula for how to predict the occurrence of these maritime monsters. Long considered myth, freakishly large rogue waves are very real and can split apart ships and even damage oil rigs.

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Australia's only vulture, and a fearsome extinct eagle, are among the earliest recorded birds of prey from the Pleistocene period more than 50,000 years ago -- and now researchers are bringing them to 'life' again.    Along with new scientific information, a bold new pictorial reconstruction of a newly named eagle and the only known Australian vulture will be unveiled at the World Heritage-listed Naracoorte Caves in South Australia's Limestone Coast this month.  

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The discovery of 27 avian footprints on the southern Australia coast -- dating back to the Early Cretaceous when Australia was still connected to Antarctica -- opens another window onto early avian evolution and possible migratory behavior.

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New research sheds light on the dining habits of ancient carnivorous dinosaurs from Jurassic rocks of the USA. A recent study explores the bite marks left on the ancient bones of the giant long-necked sauropod dinosaurs like Diplodocus and Brontosaurus by carnivorous theropod dinosaurs.

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In the 1800s, some of the strongest earthquakes in recorded U.S. history struck North America's continental interior. Almost two centuries later, the central and eastern United States may still be experiencing aftershocks from those events, a new study finds.

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New genetic data show that humans and sharks share bitter taste receptors, even though their evolutionary pathways separated nearly 500 million years ago.

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A new study casts doubt on claims that Homo naledi, a small-brained hominin dating to between 335-241,000 years ago, deliberately buried their dead and produced rock art in Rising Star Cave, South Africa. Recent articles suggested the recent excavations at the Rising Star Cave system provided evidence of at least three burial features, two in the Dinaledi Chamber and a third in the Hill Antechamber cavity. The group of experts have now called for a deeper dig into the science behind the findings.

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Mosasaurs, those large marine reptiles from the long-gone Cretaceous world, were quite picky in their choice of diet. Researchers came to this conclusion after studying the wear marks on mosasaur teeth.

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A new analysis of lice genetic diversity suggests that lice came to the Americas twice -- once during the first wave of human migration across the Bering Strait, and again during European colonization.

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Over 100 letters sent to French sailors by their fianc es, wives, parents and siblings -- but never delivered -- have been opened and studied for the first time since they were written in 1757-8.

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Researchers have used fossil evidence to engineer a soft robotic replica of pleurocystitids, a marine organism that existed nearly 450 million years ago and is believed to be one of the first echinoderms capable of movement using a muscular stem.

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The hunter-gatherers who settled on the banks of the Haine, a river in southern Belgium, 31,000 years ago were already using spearthrowers to hunt their game. The material found at the archaeological site of Maisières-Canal permits establishing the use of this hunting technique 10,000 years earlier than the oldest currently known preserved spearthrowers. This discovery is prompting archaeologists to reconsider the age of this important technological innovation.

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Single-photon emitters quantum mechanically connect quantum bits (or qubits) between nodes in quantum networks. They are typically made by embedding rare-earth elements in optical fibers at extremely low temperatures. Now, researchers have developed an ytterbium-doped optical fiber at room temperature. By avoiding the need for expensive cooling solutions, the proposed method offers a cost-effective platform for photonic quantum applications.

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The chance discovery of a note written in a 15th century Hebrew prayer book fills an important gap in the historical Italian earthquake record, offering a brief glimpse of a previously unknown earthquake affecting the Marche region in the central Apennines.