Lakes, streams and aquifers across North America are crawling with salamanders of all shapes and sizes. For most people, though, finding a 2-foot-long amphibian in the eastern United States might sound like a tall tale. But giant salamanders are more common than you might think. The eastern hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis), which can grow up to 29 inches long, is the largest salamander native to North America, and the fourth largest in the world. And unlike most salamanders, it spends ...read more
When University of Chicago physiologist Nathaniel Kleitman told fellow faculty members he was seeking a locale for a month-long sleep experiment — someplace as isolated from the rhythms of day and night as the Arctic in summer — a colleague in the geology department said he knew just the spot.Between 10 million and 15 million years ago, in what is now south‑central Kentucky, trickles of groundwater began probing the cracks in a fossil seabed. Over the eons, the pockets grew and grew until ...read more
There’s a new pterosaur in town. A museum curator happened upon a winged carnivorous reptile fossil while checking on another specimen in an area available to amateur fossil hunters. Researchers characterize it as a unique species in Scientific Reports.Finding the New Pterosaur FossilsKronosaurus Korner museum curator Kevin Petersen was visiting a western Queensland, Australia site available to the public with a permit from the Richmond, Australia marine fossil museum. He was checking on a fos ...read more
Biologist and bioengineer Donald E. Ingber doesn’t have time to sleep. As the founding director of The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, finding time outside of work hasn’t gotten easier with age. At 67, his morning still starts at 5 a.m., running through a pile of emails that seems to grow larger by the day.By lunch, he’s already revised the budget for a crucial government grant and met with postdoctoral fellows regarding work on various research ...read more
When the first astronauts returned from space in the 1960s, their health assessments revealed something unexpected. Besides significant loss of muscle and bone mass, they were anemic — meaning their blood contained a lower-than-normal amount of red blood cells. This phenomenon, known as “space anemia,” seems to be an unavoidable part of space travel. It happens to everyone who ventures beyond Earth’s atmosphere. But decades later, scientists still don’t fully understand the process.Wha ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine