When Dinosaurs Went Bad

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

In 1842, English anatomist Richard Owen proposed the term dinosauria for the strange animal fossils he and colleagues had begun to study. Owen drew from ancient Greek to create the word: deinos, meaning “terrible” in the awesome-to-behold sense, and sauros, “reptile” or “lizard.” The truth is, those early paleontologists — and generations of their successors — got those terrible lizards, well, terribly wrong: T. rex as a tail-dragging lunk, tank-li ...read more

Where's the Lab-Grown Beef?

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

While Mark Post, physiology chair at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, shares Mironov’s optimism about in vitro meat’s potential, he says the future isn’t in at-home devices.“Quite frankly, I don’t see that as a very pragmatic solution,” says Post, whose name has become synonymous with the movement. He debuted his lab-produced meat (cost: $325,000 per burger) in a highly publicized taste test in London in 2013.Instead, the focus now is on ramping up ef ...read more