Showing 20 articles starting at article 581

< Previous 20 articles        Next 20 articles >

Categories: Offbeat: Earth and Climate, Paleontology: General

Return to the site home page

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

A world-first model of paleoclimate and hydrology in Iran has highlighted favourable routes for Neanderthals and modern human expansions eastwards into Asia. The findings reveal that multiple humid periods in ancient Iran led to the expansions of human populations, opening dispersal route across the region, and the possible interactions of species such as Neanderthals and our own Homo sapiens.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

A big fish story? Maybe so: The greatest sea monster of the Devonian Period (Dunkleosteus terrelli) may be getting downsized. A new article contents that the famous sea monster of the Age of Fishes may not have neared 30-feet in length, as long believed, but topped off at maybe 13 feet. The new assertion brings attention to a famously fierce looking armored fish from 360 million years ago -- and maybe a new debate.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

The honeycomb patterns which are often found in salt deserts in Death Valley, US, and Bolivia, among other places, look like something from another world. Researchers can now explain the origin of the mysterious patterns.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Cartilaginous fish have changed much more in the course of their evolutionary history than previously believed. Evidence for this thesis has been provided by new fossils of a ray-like shark, Protospinax annectans, which demonstrate that sharks were already highly evolved in the Late Jurassic.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Dinosaur claws had many functions, but now a team has shown some predatory dinosaurs used their claws for digging or even for display.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

After more than 30 years, botanists have rediscovered Thismia kobensis, a type of mysterious-looking rare plant commonly referred to as 'fairy lanterns'. Thismia kobensis was presumed extinct and the surprise rediscovery of this Japanese variety has illuminated hidden aspects of fairy lanterns that have puzzled and fascinated botanists for centuries.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

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.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

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.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

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.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

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.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

A recent excavation in Megiddo, Israel, unearthed the earliest example of a particular type of cranial surgery in the Ancient Near East -- and potentially one of the oldest examples of leprosy in the world.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Countless meteorites have struck Earth in the past and shaped the history of our planet. It is assumed, for example, that meteorites brought with them a large part of its water. The extinction of the dinosaurs might also have been triggered by the impact of a very large meteorite. It turns out that the marketing 'gag' of the 'Domaine du Météore' winery is acutally a real impact crater. Meteorite craters which are still visible today are rare because most traces of the celestial bodies have long since disappeared again.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

About 25 woolly sheep who seasonally -- for the past two years -- leave barns to nibble on lawns at various central campus locations, are doing much more than mowing, fertilizing and improving the ecosystem. The sheep also are improving people's mental health.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

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.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Slipping and sliding on snowy or icy roads is dangerous. Salt and sand help melt ice or provide traction, but excessive use is bad for the environment. And sometimes, a surprise storm can blow through before these materials can be applied. Now, researchers ave filled microcapsules with a chloride-free salt mixture that's added into asphalt before roads are paved, providing long-term snow melting capabilities in a real-world test.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Baby kangaroo feces might help provide an unlikely solution to the environmental problem of cow-produced methane. A microbial culture developed from the kangaroo feces inhibited methane production in a cow stomach simulator. After researchers added the baby kangaroo culture and a known methane inhibitor to the simulated stomach, it produced acetic acid instead of methane. Unlike methane, which cattle discard as flatulence, acetic acid has benefits for cows as it aids muscle growth.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

What role could rifted margins play in the transition to a carbon-neutral economy? Researchers summarize the current state of knowledge about the so-called rifting of continents. Rifting is the term researchers use to describe the process by which continental plates break and new oceans are formed.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Researchers have reconstructed the brains and inner ears of two British spinosaurs, helping uncover how these large predatory dinosaurs interacted with their environment.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

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.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

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.