Posts Tagged ‘WorldFossilSociety’

Mammal forerunner that reproduced like a reptile sheds light on brain evolution

Compared with the rest of the animal kingdom, mammals have the biggest brains and produce some of the smallest litters of offspring. A newly described fossil of an extinct mammal relative — and her 38 babies — is among the best evidence that a key development in the evolution of mammals was trading brood power […]

Rare fossils give researchers insight into evolution of bird-like dinosaur

An international team of researchers discovered a new species of dinosaur, Xiyunykus pengi, during an expedition to Xinjiang, China. The discovery is the latest stemming from a partnership between the George Washington University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The findings were published today in Current Biology along with the description of a second new […]

Research into deadly 2016 Italian earthquakes could improve future seismic forecasts

The timing and size of three deadly earthquakes that struck Italy in 2016 may have been pre-determined, according to new research that could improve future earthquake forecasts. A joint British-Italian team of geologists and seismologists have shown that the clustering of the three quakes might have been caused by the arrangement of a cross-cutting network […]

Study of material surrounding distant stars shows that Earth’s ingredients are pretty normal

The Earth’s building blocks seem to be built from ‘pretty normal’ ingredients, according to researchers working with the world’s most powerful telescopes. Scientists have measured the compositions of 18 different planetary systems from up to 456 light years away and compared them to ours, and found that many elements are present in similar proportions to those found on Earth. This will have implications for finding Earth-like bodies elsewhere.

New Antarctic rift data has implications for volcanic evolution

New data revealing two tectonic plates fused to form a single Antarctic Plate 15 million years later than originally predicted and this extra motion has major implications for understanding of the tectono-volcanic activity surrounding the Pacific Ocean, from the Alpine mountains in New Zealand to the California geological setting, according to research from Ben-Gurion University […]

Meteorite bombardment likely to have created the Earth’s oldest rocks

Scientists have found that 4.02-billion-year-old silica-rich felsic rocks from the Acasta River, Canada — the oldest rock formation known on Earth — probably formed at high temperatures and at a surprisingly shallow depth of the planet’s nascent crust. The high temperatures needed to melt the shallow crust were likely caused by a meteorite bombardment around […]

99-million-year-old beetle trapped in amber served as pollinator to evergreen cycads

Flowering plants are well known for their special relationship to the insects and other animals that serve as their pollinators. But, before the rise of angiosperms, another group of unusual evergreen gymnosperms, known as cycads, may have been the first insect-pollinated plants. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on August 16 have uncovered […]

Scientists solve the mystery behind the origin of skeletons!!!

Scientists have used powerful X-rays to peer inside the skeletons of some of our oldest vertebrate relatives, solving a 160-year-old mystery about the origin of our skeletons.

Sound waves reveal enormous diamond cache deep in Earth’s interior

Sound waves reveal a surprisingly large diamond cache deep in Earth’s interior, researchers report.

Glaciers in East Antarctica also ‘imperiled’ by climate change

Source:University of California – Irvine A team of scientists from the University of California, Irvine has found evidence of significant mass loss in East Antarctica’s Totten and Moscow University glaciers, which, if they fully collapsed, could add 5 meters (16.4 feet) to the global sea level. In a paper published this week in the American […]