During the Eocene Epoch, between 56 and 34 million years ago, West Texas wasn’t the desert it is today. Rather, the ecosystem would have been made up of closed canopied tropical rainforests similar to what we might find in places like Costa Rica today. It was rainy and damp with humidity you could cut with a knife.Many of the fossils found in this part of the world are preserved in the serpentine rivers that meandered through the forests in a landscape dotted with volcanic highlands. It was a ...read more
Walking is perhaps one of the most difficult maneuvers a living creature can perform. And turkeys have highly evolved muscular and skeletal systems that support an efficient mode of locomotion: the trot.Standing still, a turkey is in a state of stable equilibrium. Its center of gravity rests directly over its feet, with its muscles anchored to its skeleton, directing the turkey’s weight down below. While the turkey requires a small amount of energy to remain in balance, this is an efficient, l ...read more
Paleontologists analyzed a 170 million-year-old set of fossils collected from a road project in France and found them to belong to a new, massive underwater predator that stands (or swims) as the oldest-known creature of its kind.A group of local paleontology enthusiasts 40 years ago collected the fossils from a road cutting near Metz in Lorraine, France, and donated them to the Natural History Museum in Luxembourg for safe keeping. The bones remained there until recently, when an international ...read more
The Hittites wrote, and they wrote a lot. In their home turf of Anatolia around 4,000 to 3,000 years ago, Hittite writers recorded state dealings and decrees, myths, rites, and religious rituals. They wrote down the details of their diplomacy, their combat, and their commerce, and they described Hittite celebrations, all on the surface of scratched clay tablets, written in a script called cuneiform. Of course, the thousands of tablets that still survive today are some of the most important recor ...read more
Everyone cooking on Thanksgiving dreads the same thing: a dry turkey. Tough, chewy meat can suck the enjoyment out of a meal, which is why people might consider submerging their holiday bird in a brine overnight.The strategy has kept meats tender for centuries — even ancient Romans had recipes for making a tasty boar ham in seawater. Brining has likely earned its place in cookbooks through time because it’s one of the most effective tactics for ensuring the centerpiece of your meal is actual ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine