Toothy tyrannosaurs and enormous titanosaurs may be the most dramatic dinosaurs of the Late Cretaceous, but plant-eating hadrosaurs had the numbers. These widely-distributed animals, often called duck-billed dinosaurs, are among the most commonly found fossils from the period that stretched 66 million-100 million years ago. Yet the hadrosaur origin story remains a bit of a mystery. Today, a magnificent new find from Mongolia fills in some of the gaps.
Paleontologists unearthed m ...read more
During the last centuries of China’s Shang dynasty, which lasted from 1600 B.C. to 1050 B.C., ritual sacrifice was a well-oiled cultural phenomenon, rich and varied in its manifestations. Rulers and elites sacrificed animals and humans to appease spirits or the ancestors. Just as humans met their ends, dogs were often right beside them.
Now a study in Archaeological Research in Asia, published in March, shows that people from the Shang dynasty relied heavily on sacrificial puppies to acco ...read more
Everything has a beginning. That’s true for stories, for people, for the universe and even for chemistry. The Big Bang itself produced just a handful of elements (variations of hydrogen, helium and lithium nuclei), so researchers have a pretty good sense of what the first atoms and molecules might have been. But the very first molecular bond to form, linking together atoms of different elements in a single molecule, has long been missing in action.
Known as a helium hydride ion (HeH+), th ...read more
Volcanoes can be pretty dangerous. Thankfully, we've gotten better over the last half century at getting people out of the way of volcanic hazards! However, many hundreds of millions of people still live close enough to volcanoes to feel the impact of an eruption -- especially when the volcano decides to have a spectacular eruption.
There are a lot of misconceptions out there about what the most dangerous aspects of a volcanic eruption might be. I think many people picture lava flows casc ...read more
Brothers compete. So in 2016, when astronaut Scott Kelly returned to Earth after spending a year in space, it must have really annoyed his identical twin brother — retired astronaut Mark Kelly — that Scott was two inches taller than when he left. However, Scott's temporary increase in height was not the only thing that changed during his trip.
As part of NASA's Twins Study, while Scott was in space, Mark went about his daily life on Earth. Over the course of the year-long mission, r ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine