Much to the joy of small children everywhere, scientists from the University of Chicago have unearthed two new species of dinosaur in the Sahara desert and given them awesome names. To their gift shop pantheons of cool plastic figurines, museums can now add "fierce-eyed dawn shark" (Eocarcharia dinops) and "old hidden face" (Kryptops palaois)—which both sound suspiciously like old kung fu movies.
Paleontologists discover new carnivorous dinosaurs in the Sahara, 7-year-olds rejoice
Comet may have wiped out first Americans in what scientist describes as a 'bad day;' Related: Understatement Award for 2008 goes to scientist
And you thought you were having a crap Friday: 13,000 years ago, a comet may have collided with earth in the Great Lakes region, creating a 1,000-year-long cold spell that wiped out the Clovis culture of humans in North America.
For years, the disappearance of North America's Clovis culture was attributed either to rapid climate change or a sudden uptick in Clovis hunting practices that wiped out the 35 genera of animals they subsisted on. But similar climate changes of the time hadn't resulted in mass extinctions, and the ethnographic record doesn't support such a rapid change in hunting habits among Clovis humans.
Instead, Douglas Kennett and 25 other researchers from the University of Oregon think that a major comet collision triggered the change. The new hypothesis is based on a thin black layer of soil retrieved at over 50 North American sites. This black soil possesses magnetic grains of iridium, thought to have extraterrestrial origins, along with metallic and carbon spherules, as well as melted charcoal, which remained after catastrophic, continent-wide fires swept the land in the comet's wake.
T. Rex had teen pregnancies; gossipy neighbors say she 'got around Pangaea quite a bit'
T. Rex, you brazen hussy, you. Didn't you pay attention to the video in fifth grade? Apparently not: Tyrannosaurus Rex had teen pregnancies early in their life cycle, often before they reached sexual maturity or full size.
Researchers at Ohio University and University of California at Berkeley have found medullary bone — which allows dinosaurs to grow eggshells — in female tyrannosaurs at earlier ages than previously thought possible. This means Tyrannosaurs and other dinosaurs "grew fast, reached sexual maturity early and died young."
That's like Rebel Without A Cause, but with more teeth, scales and sex.
Imagine A 200-Pound Armadillo [podcast]
Today's 60 Second Science Podcast is brought to you by John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace:
Full transcript after the jump...
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For your consideration: One big, bad, marine MONSTER
wait for it, wait for it...
This reptile was as big as a bus and had teeth larger than cucumbers, and if you watch this video, you can watch it attack! In particular, you can gasp as it devours an unsuspecting dinosaur and a more-unsuspecting soccer (excuse me, football) player who inadvertently wandered, with his ball, into the freezing waters of the Svalbard islands in Norway.
This slick little presentation came out of Norway, and it brings to life that new species of the 30-foot-long Pliosaurus that was first uncovered in the Arctic last year. Norwegian researchers announced on Tuesday that, in August, they found the 150-million year old remains of yet another specimen of the same species, but the new guy measures 10 feet longer than last year’s model. (While the remains are pretty well-preserved, I don’t think the skin made it. And don't go looking for its footprints...)
This carnivorous beast was one of the largest marine predators to live when our Earth was a giant Jurassic park.
Incidentally, today must be Giant Monster Day...
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Cryptozoologically yours: Mythical creatures often rooted in real prehistoric animals
As a kid, who didn't want unicorns or dragons to exist? I dedicated large portions of my childhood to finding these mythical creatures in the woods behind my house, but I never had any luck. I still remember all the kids at school laughing at me and telling me that dragons and unicorns aren't real. There's no quicker way to crush an 18-year-old's innocence, I can tell you.
I could've saved a lot of time if I'd only gone to the Field Museum in Chicago's exhibit "Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids," I could've saved a lot of time. The exhibit uses fossils, preserved specimens, recreated models, and ancient artifacts to explain how the mythical imagination grew around the fossil record. Ancient Greeks who unearthed skulls of dwarf elephants (pictured) on Mediterranean islands mistook the cavity in the center for a single eye hole — voila, the myth of the Cyclops is born.
(Click through for more pictures of fossils-turned-myths at the Field Museum).
Dino mummy reveals rare look at skin, muscle and soft tissue; Hollywood 'excited' about horror movie potential
As a youth, I was positive I'd grow up to be a paleontologist and discover unheard-of species and immaculately preserved specimens in the Dakota bedrock. Then I discovered girls, so I did what any self-respecting male does: I got into comic books. Shockingly, it didn't really help with ladies.
If I had stuck with my first passion, I might have become like Tyler Lyson, who discovered perhaps the best-preserved dinosaur yet. The mummified hadrosaur belongs to the duck-billed family and showcases detailed scales, skin, muscle, tendons and other soft tissue. Though it hasn't been peer-reviewed yet, the discovery is expected to yield new insight into size, body mechanics and physical appearance of dinosaurs in general.
What is Evo-Devo?
Episode 3 of our new video podcast, Instant Egghead (subscribe!) tackles the most important development in scientific thinking about evolution since the Modern Synthesis.
As always, the brains behind this operation are writer/director/producer John Pavlus (more posts by him at 60 Second Science here) and cameraman Steven Boling.
Special thanks to PZ Myers, who screened a first draft of the script and made me feel like this just might work...
Subscribe via iTunes, or via RSS.
What gave rise to complex life on earth? Poop! (maybe)
I always knew feces was the key to complex life -- why do you think the best jokes involve poop? Scientists have long sought to explain the evolutionary explosion of life that occurred 500 million years ago during the Cambrian period; this population boom eventually gave rise to the ancestors of complex life. Biogeochemist Graham Logan argues that feces-producing creatures, which actually arrived about 40 million years before the start of the Cambrian, were the key that enabled single-celled organisms to expand.
Before pooping creatures, bacteria consumed most of the available oxygen. Plankton produced oxygen slowly, but bacteria would consume most of it in order to digest dead plankton. The dearth of oxygen didn't allow for much multicellular development.
Then the crappers came to the rescue.
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New find looks "like a dozen headless Michelin men dancing a conga,” says scientist
I don't see it, but according to U. of Leceister Geologist Dr. Mark Purnell, this petrified velvet worm looks like nothing short of a latter-day Lewis Carroll fever dream.
Ancient sea scorpion was 8 feet long
I'm going to let that sink in for a second. Try and process the idea in parts, not all at once. "Ancient sea scorpion" sounds bad enough. Then you combine it with "8 feet long"? Good thing it's winter, because there's no way I'm going near the ocean any time soon. Just look at that guy in the picture. He's freaked right the hell out.
Creation Museum smackdown
Writer John Scalzi visited and wrote about his trip to the Creation Museum, so you don't have to. You'll only really appreciate what a service this is if you've ever been there: Last time I visited, I got thrown out on my ass -- not because I disagreed with them, but because no one there would acknowledge me as the Creator and give me free funnel cakes. Ingrates.
It's a shark-eat-frog-eat-fish world: First food-chain fossil discovered
Like a biologically gruesome version of those Russian nesting dolls, researchers found a fossil of a prehistoric shark that ate an amphibian, which in turn had just eaten a fish. All three were preserved in what's being described as one of the first "food-chain" fossils ever discovered, adding further proof to the fact that all those cutesy drawings of big fish eating little fish eating littler fish you saw in childhood had a cold-blooded real-life analogue.
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Ancient bats, magnetic cocoons, CO2 on the rise, vibrating mice...
The Elderly Always Sleep Worse, and Other Myths of Aging
from the New York Times (Registration Required): As every sleep researcher knows, the surest way to hear complaints about sleep is to ask the elderly. "Older people complain more about their sleep; they just do," said Dr. Michael Vitiello, a sleep researcher who is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington. And for years, sleep scientists thought they knew what was going on: sleep starts to deteriorate in late middle age and steadily erodes from then on. It seemed so obvious that few thought to question the prevailing wisdom. Now, though, new research is leading many to change their minds. To researchers' great surprise, it turns out that sleep does not change much from age 60 on. And poor sleep, it turns out, is not because of aging itself, but mostly because of illnesses or the medications used to treat them.
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