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An artist’s impression of Thalassodraco etchesi. Image credit: Megan Jacobs.

New Ichthyosaur Species Uncovered in England

Dec 10, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new genus and species of ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaur that swam in the Late Jurassic seas has been identified from an exceptionally well-preserved specimen...

Beta-caryophyllene and caryophyllene oxide-induced horse manure rolling behavior of Ginny, the giant panda at Beijing Zoo. Image credit: Zhou et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2004640117.

Wild Giant Pandas Roll in Horse Manure to Increase Cold Tolerance

Dec 9, 2020 by News Staff

Wild giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) not only frequently sniff and wallow in fresh horse manure at low ambient temperatures, but also actively rub...

An artist’s impression of what the Milky Way might look like seen from above. The colored rings show the rough extent of the Heracles galaxy. The yellow dot shows the position of the Sun. Image credit: Danny Horta-Darrington, Liverpool John Moores University / NASA / JPL-Caltech / SDSS.

Astronomers Find ‘Fossil Galaxy’ Hidden in Depths of Milky Way

Dec 8, 2020 by News Staff

A small satellite galaxy, named Heracles, collided with our Milky Way Galaxy about 10 billion years ago and its remnants account for about one third of...

Life reconstruction of Agudotherium gassenae. Image credit: Márcio L. Castro.

Fossils of New Cynodont Species Found in Brazil

Dec 7, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new genus and species of probainognathian cynodont that roamed our planet during the Triassic period has been identified from two fossilized specimens...

This image of a sunspot was taken on January 28, 2020 by NSF’s Inouye Solar Telescope’s Wave Front Correction context viewer. The image reveals striking details of the sunspot’s structure as seen at the Sun’s surface. The sunspot is sculpted by a convergence of intense magnetic fields and hot gas boiling up from below. This image uses a warm palette of red and orange, but the context viewer took this sunspot image at the wavelength of 530 nm -- in the greenish-yellow part of the visible spectrum. Image credit: NSO / AURA / NSF.

Inouye Solar Telescope Captures Its First Image of Sunspot

Dec 7, 2020 by News Staff

An image of a sunspot captured by NSF’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope clearly shows the potential of the telescope and its set of state-of-the-art...

An artist’s reconstruction of ‘Anomalocaris’ briggsi. Image credit: Katrina Kenny.

Cambrian Deep-Sea Arthropods Had Complex Compound Eyes

Dec 4, 2020 by News Staff

A team of paleontologists from Australia and the United Kingdom has found that ancient deep-sea creatures called radiodonts developed sophisticated eyes...

Giant sloth drawing. Image credit: Morcote-Ríos et al., doi: 10.1016/j.quaint.2020.04.026.

12,000-Year-Old Rock Drawings of Ice Age Megafauna Discovered in Colombian Amazon

Dec 3, 2020 by News Staff

Archaeologists on the ERC project LASTJOURNEY have discovered spectacular rock pictographs in three separate rock shelters in the Guaviare Department of...

Data from more than 1.8 billion stars have been used to create this map of the entire sky. It shows the total brightness and color of stars observed by ESA’s Gaia satellite and released as part of Gaia’s Early Data Release 3. Brighter regions represent denser concentrations of bright stars, while darker regions correspond to patches of the sky where fewer and fainter stars are observed. The color of the image is obtained by combining the total amount of light with the amount of blue and red light recorded by Gaia in each patch of the sky. The bright horizontal structure that dominates the image is the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. It is actually a flattened disk seen edge-on that contains most of the Galaxy’s stars. In the middle of the image, the Galactic center appears bright, and thronged with stars. Darker regions across the Galactic plane correspond to foreground clouds of interstellar gas and dust, which absorb the light of more distant stars. Many of these clouds conceal stellar nurseries where new generations of stars are currently being born. Dotted across the image are also many globular and open clusters, as well as entire galaxies beyond our own. The two bright objects in the lower right of the image are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. Image credit: ESA / Gaia / DPAC / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO / A. Moitinho.

ESA’s Gaia Mission Releases Data on More Than 1.8 Billion Stars

Dec 3, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers from the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium released today the most detailed ever catalogue of Milky Way stars. The new data set,...

ASKAP conducted its first survey of the entire southern sky in record speed and detail, creating a new atlas of the Universe. Image credit: CSIRO.

ASKAP Radio Telescope Maps Nearly Three Million Galaxies

Dec 2, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using CSIRO’s Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) have mapped approximately 3,000,000 galaxies in the observable Universe. ASKAP...

Life reconstruction of the titanosaur from the Upper Cretaceous Adamantina Formation in São Paulo backcountry, southeastern Brazil. The animal was reconstructed based on associated saltasaurid specimens in the area. Image credit: Hugo Cafasso.

Cretaceous Titanosaur Suffered from Blood Parasites and Severe Bone Inflammation

Dec 1, 2020 by Sergio Prostak

A giant sauropod dinosaur that lived 85.2 million years ago (Cretaceous period) in what is now Brazil had an aggressive case of osteomyelitis in its leg...

Life reconstruction of Bagualia alba. Image credit: Jorge González.

Newly-Discovered Long-Necked Dinosaur Survived Early Jurassic Global Warming

Nov 30, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists in Argentina have identified a new species of eusauropod (true sauropod) dinosaur that lived 179 million years ago, just after the mysterious...

Falcatakely forsterae amidst non-avian dinosaurs and other animals from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar. Image credit: Mark Witton.

Cretaceous-Period Bird from Madagascar Had Sickle-Shaped Beak

Nov 27, 2020 by News Staff

Paleontologists in Madagascar have identified a new genus and species of enantiornithine bird that had a long and deep beak, a morphology that was previously...

Xu et al. present the first anatomical and histological evidence of tail repair with regrowth in an archosaur, the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis); the regrown alligator tails constituted approximately 6-18% of the total body length and were morphologically distinct from original tail segments. Image credit: Norbert Nagel / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Young American Alligators Can Regrow Their Tails, Study Shows

Nov 24, 2020 by News Staff

Young American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) have the ability to regrow their tails up to 18% of their total body length, according to a study...

This image from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper shows a superbolt-producing lightning flash over the southeastern United States on February 19, 2019. The lightning flash spanned several hundred kilometers and lasted nearly 7 seconds. Image credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Lightning ‘Superbolts’ Are Real, Two New Studies Confirm

Nov 24, 2020 by News Staff

‘Superbolts’ are distinct from typical lightning flashes and can be more than 1,000 times brighter, according to two new papers published in the Journal...

This artist’s impression shows how Mars may have looked about 4 billion years ago. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.

Curiosity Finds Deposits from Megafloods in Martian Crater

Nov 23, 2020 by News Staff

NASA’s Curiosity rover has found a series of symmetrical, 10-m- (33-foot-) high gravel ridges — sedimentologic evidence of ancient giant floods...

An artist’s impression of Rajasaurus narmadensis, a cousin of the newly-discovered abelisaurid dinosaur Niebla antiqua. Image credit: Bogdanov / CC BY-SA 3.0.

New Carnivorous Dinosaur Unearthed in Patagonia

Nov 23, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new genus and species of medium-sized abelisaurid dinosaur has been unearthed in northern Patagonia, Argentina. An artist’s impression of Rajasaurus...

Ferromirum oukherbouchi reconstructed in association with invertebrates (orthocerid cephalopods and thylacocephalans) from the Devonian of Maider region, Morocco. Image credit: Frey et al., doi: 10.1038/s42003-020-01394-2.

Devonian-Period Shark Had Large Eyes and Unique Jaws

Nov 20, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists in Morocco have found fossil fragments from a previously undescribed genus and species of symmoriiform shark that lived during the Late...

The Blue Ring Nebula is located 6,197 light-years away in the constellation of Hercules. The nebula is 13 light years wide and is composed of hydrogen gas (blue) expanding from a central star, which is the remnant core of a stellar merger; red filaments are shockwave filaments from the merging event. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / M. Seibert, Carnegie Institution for Science / K. Hoadley, Caltech / GALEX Team.

Stellar Merger Produced Blue Ring Nebula Several Thousand Years Ago

Nov 19, 2020 by News Staff

In 2004, astronomers using NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer discovered an unusual, ring-shaped ‘blue’ nebula and the star at its center, TYC 2597-735-1....

The extinct Kiritimati sandpiper (Prosobonia cancellata), a close cousin of the newly-discovered Henderson sandpiper (Prosobonia sauli). Illustration by George Edward Lodge, 1907.

Researchers Discover Now Extinct Species of Polynesian Sandpiper

Nov 18, 2020 by News Staff

A new species of sandpiper has been identified from multiple Holocene fossil bones collected several decades ago on Henderson Island, an uninhabited island...