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Categories: Paleontology: Dinosaurs, Space: The Solar System

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The star Betelgeuse appears as a brilliant, ruby-red, twinkling spot of light in the upper right shoulder of the winter constellation Orion the Hunter. But when viewed close up, astronomers know it as a seething monster with a 400-day-long heartbeat of regular pulsations. This aging star is classified as a supergiant because it has swelled up to an astonishing diameter of approximately 1 billion miles. If placed at the center of our solar system it would reach out to the orbit of Jupiter. The star's ultimate fate is to explode as a supernova.

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Researchers discover the first definitive proof that the Moon inherited indigenous noble gases from the Earth's mantle. The discovery represents a significant piece of the puzzle towards understanding how the Moon and, potentially, the Earth and other celestial bodies were formed.

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Scientists have cracked an enduring mystery, discovering how sauropod dinosaurs -- like Brontosaurus and Diplodocus -- supported their gigantic bodies on land.

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Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study planet formation have made the first-ever detection of gas in a circumplanetary disk. What's more, the detection also suggests the presence of a very young exoplanet.

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Spinosaurid dinosaurs were able to develop up to three generations of teeth at the same time, a high replacement rate that explains why so many teeth of this type have been found in Cretaceous sites.

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Fossils of small plesiosaurs, long-necked marine reptiles from the age of dinosaurs, have been found in a 100-million year old river system that is now Morocco's Sahara Desert. This discovery suggests some species of plesiosaur, traditionally thought to be sea creatures, may have lived in freshwater.

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A team led by planetary scientists has discovered shady locations within pits on the moon that always hover around a comfortable 63 degrees Fahrenheit. The pits, and caves to which they may lead, would make safer, more thermally stable base camps for lunar exploration and long-term habitation than the rest of the moon's surface, which heats up to 260 degrees during the day and drops to 280 degrees below zero at night.

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A new study refutes a provocative claim made earlier this year that fossils classified as the dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex represent three separate species. The rebuttal finds that the earlier proposal lacks sufficient evidence to split up the iconic species.

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Planetary scientists have an answer to a mystery that's puzzled the Mars research community since NASA's Curiosity rover discovered a mineral called tridymite in Gale Crater in 2016.

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Because it's bigger, Jupiter ought to have larger, more spectacular rings than Saturn has. But new research shows Jupiter's massive moons prevent that vision from lighting up the night sky.

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Using data collected over two decades ago, scientists have compiled the first complete map of hydrogen abundances on the Moon's surface. The map identifies two types of lunar materials containing enhanced hydrogen and corroborates previous ideas about lunar hydrogen and water, including findings that water likely played a role in the Moon's original magma-ocean formation and solidification.

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What do Mars and Iceland have in common? These days, not so much. But more than 4.5 billion years ago, it's possible the Red Planet had a crust comparable to Iceland today. This discovery, hidden in the oldest martian fragments found on Earth, could provide information about our planet that was lost over billions of years of geological movement and could help explain why the Earth developed into a planet that sustains a broad diversity of life and Mars did not.

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Researchers find that, early in its history, the moon was highly porous, which was likely a result of early, massive impacts that shattered much of the crust. They reached their conclusions with simulations and data from NASA's GRAIL mission.

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An international team has discovered a new big, meat-eating dinosaur, dubbed Meraxes gigas, that provides clues about the evolution and anatomy of predatory dinosaurs such as the Carcharodontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex. Meraxes measured around 36 feet from snout to tail tip and weighed approximately 9,000 pounds.

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There is new evidence that ancient high latitudes, to which early dinosaurs were largely relegated, regularly froze over, and that the creatures adapted -- an apparent key to their later dominance.

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A team has used the Hubble Space Telescope to observe Jupiter's moon, Europa, at ultraviolet wavelengths, filling in a 'gap' in the various wavelengths used to observe this icy water world. The team's near-global UV maps show concentrations of sulfur dioxide on Europa's trailing side.

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Scientists combined data from NASA's New Horizons mission with novel laboratory experiments and exospheric modeling to reveal the likely composition of the red cap on Pluto's moon Charon and how it may have formed. This first-ever description of Charon's dynamic methane atmosphere using new experimental data provides a fascinating glimpse into the origins of this moon's red spot as described in two recent articles.

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A new study describes how unique populations of craters on two of Saturn's moons could help indicate the satellites' age and the conditions of their formation. Using data from NASA's Cassini mission, researchers have surveyed elliptical craters on Saturn's moons Tethys and Dione for this study.

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Microbes taken from surface sediment near Lost Hammer Spring, Canada, about 900 km south of the North Pole, could provide a blueprint for the kind of life forms that may once have existed, or may still exist, on Mars.

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A new study of an old meteorite contradicts current thinking about how rocky planets like the Earth and Mars acquire volatile elements such as hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and noble gases as they form.