A large and unique discovery in Spain reveals how sauropods may have dispersed across Asia and Europe before dinosaurs went extinct.The well-preserved bones of the newly named Qunkasaura have improved paleontologists’ knowledge of dinosaurs in Europe during the Late Cretaceous.“Qunkasaura was one of the most outstanding specimens in our quarry,” says Pedro Mocho, a paleontologist at the University of Lisbon in Portugal.How Was Qunkasaura Discovered?(Credit: GBE-UNED)
General view of the ...read more
A rare, nearly complete fossil of an extinct North American porcupine helped me and my colleagues solve a decades-long debate about how the modern North American porcupine evolved from its ancestors.Published in Current Biology, our paper argues that North American porcupine ancestors may well date back 10 million years, but they wouldn’t be recognizable until about 8 million years later.By comparing the bone structure of porcupines across North America and South America, we determined that fo ...read more
It has been over 10 months since the on-again, off-again eruption near Grindavík in Iceland began. Since then, multiple eruptions have tapped a source of magma at the base of the crust under the island nation. That magma made its way to the surface to eruption as spectacular lava fountains and flows that have covered a significant area of real estate near the small fishing village and Blue Lagoon hydrothermal area.Thankfully, there has been only one death from a worker falling into a crack whil ...read more
In a world so thoroughly reshaped by human hands, animals often bump into novel ecological conditions — problems evolution didn’t prepare them for. Plastic items look like food, but they’re indigestible; artificial lights look like stars, but they’re useless in navigation; dead logs look like prime real estate, but they’re often bound for the woodchipper. Natural selection couldn’t foresee all these deadly new surprises, known as “evolutionary traps,” and thus, animals lack the b ...read more
Just like people confronted with a sea of options at the grocery store, bees foraging in meadows encounter many different flowers at once. They must decide which ones to visit for food, but it isn’t always a straightforward choice.Flowers offer two types of food: nectar and pollen, which can vary in important ways. Nectar, for instance, can fluctuate in concentration, volume, refill rate, and accessibility. It also contains secondary metabolites, such as caffeine and nicotine, which can be eit ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine