When it comes to the three-horned dinosaur called the Triceratops, science is showing the ancient creatures might have been a little more complex than we thought.In fact, their teeth were far more intricate than any reptile or mammal living today. Biological Science Professor Gregory Erickson and a multiuniversity team composed of engineers and paleontologists content […]
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Earthquake was felt from Space
June 8th, 2015
Riffin For the first time, a natural source of infrasonic waves of Earth has been measured directly from space–450 kilometers above the planet’s surface. The source was the massive 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake in Japan, and its signature was detected at this orbital altitude only eight minutes after the arrival of seismic and infrasonic waves, according to […]
Clues to Earth’s ancient core
June 5th, 2015
Riffin Old rocks hold on to their secrets. Now, a geophysicist at Michigan Technological University has unlocked clues trapped in the magnetic signatures of mineral grains in those rocks. These clues will help clear up the murky history of Earth’s early core. The journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters published a paper on the subject earlier […]
Britain’s oldest sauropod
June 3rd, 2015
Riffin Experts from the University of Manchester have identified Britain’s oldest sauropod dinosaur from a fossil bone discovered on the Yorkshire coast. The vertebra (backbone) originates from a group of dinosaurs that includes the largest land animals to have ever walked on Earth. This new sauropod dinosaur, from the Middle Jurassic Period at about 176 million […]
Ancient birds evolved specialist diving adaptations
June 1st, 2015
Riffin A new study of some primitive birds from the Cretaceous shows how several separate lineages evolved adaptations for diving. Living at the same time as the dinosaurs, Hesperornithiform bird fossils have been found in North America, Europe and Asia in rocks 65-95 million years old. Dr Alyssa Bell and Professor Luis Chiappe of the Dinosaur […]
Dinosaurs were likely warm-blooded
May 30th, 2015
Riffin Dinosaurs grew as fast as your average living mammal, according to a research paper published by Stony Brook University paleontologist Michael D’Emic, PhD. The paper, to published in Science on May 29, is a re-analysis of a widely publicized 2014 Science paper on dinosaur metabolism and growth that concluded dinosaurs were neither ectothermic nor endothermic […]
Laser-beam scanning illuminates new details in dinosaur fossils
May 28th, 2015
Riffin A team of scientists based largely at the University of Kansas and the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Washington has developed methods of using commercial-grade laser equipment to find and analyze fossils of dinosaurs. Their techniques are introduced via a paper in the journal PLOS ONE today. The new laser method causes […]
What did the first snakes look like?
May 26th, 2015
Riffin The original snake ancestor was a nocturnal, stealth-hunting predator that had tiny hindlimbs with ankles and toes, according to research published in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. The study, led by Yale University, USA, analyzed fossils, genes, and anatomy from 73 snake and lizard species, and suggests that snakes first evolved on land, […]
Probing iron chemistry in the deep mantle
May 24th, 2015
Riffin Carbonates are a group of minerals that contain the carbonate ion (CO32-) and a metal, such as iron or magnesium. Carbonates are important constituents of marine sediments and are heavily involved in the planet’s deep carbon cycle, primarily due to oceanic crust sinking into the mantle, a process called subduction. During subduction, carbonates interact with […]
Digital dinosaurs: Restore dinosaur fossil
May 20th, 2015
Riffin Fossils are usually deformed or incompletely preserved when they are found, after sometimes millions of years of fossilization processes. Consequently, fossils have to be studied very carefully to avoid damage, and are sometimes they are difficult to access, as they might be located in remote museum collections. An international team of scientists, led by Dr. […]



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