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ScienceAnimalsScientists Find Billion-Year-Old Fossil Life, ‘Something Which Has Never Been Described Before’
On the shores of a Scottish loch lie geologic deposits dating back a billion years, and within the rocks is evidence of the earliest known non-marine multicellular organism, according to a study published in Current Biology. It’s a fascinating new detail in the story of how animals may have evolved from the soup of early … Continued
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ScienceAnimalsNewborn Megalodons Were Larger Than Adult Humans and Probably Ate Their Siblings
Picture this: It’s about 20 million years ago, and you’re inside the giant womb of an extremely pregnant Otodus megalodon. Everything’s hunky-dory—some baby sharks have already hatched, and others are on the way. But before any more of those egg-bound brethren can emerge, one of the baby sharks wriggles over and gobbles them up. That … Continued
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ScienceAnimalsPterosaurs Could Somehow Fly Right After Hatching, New Fossils Suggest
New analysis of recent fossil finds suggest that pterosaurs could fly very soon after they hatched, unlike today’s birds or bats. The pterosaurs were a group of flying reptiles that lived alongside the dinosaurs and included the famous pterodactyls. Humans have been aware of these creatures through fossils for at least three centuries, but researchers … Continued
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ScienceAnimalsDiscovery of Extinct Burrowing Bat Tells Mysterious Story About New Zealand
All but three land mammal species living on New Zealand today were brought there by modern humans, beginning around 800 years ago—and all three of those native mammal species are bats. But a newly discovered bat fossil suggests that there may be more species hiding in the isle’s ancient rock. Perhaps the mammal-poor islands once … Continued
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Tech News
Please Don’t Eat The Oldest Mushroom Fossil
Sam Heads and his team had just received a donation of fossil insects at the Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. But when they started going through it, Heads realized that one of the fossils wasn’t a bug at all. “It looks like a mushroom,” he said. He showed it to a colleague. … Continued
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Tech News
This Ancient Armored Mud Dragon Could Help Solve an Evolutionary Mystery
It looks like an alien parasite come to invade our brains, but the truly bizarre creature pictured above is a mud dragon—a tiny worm, roughly half the size of a grain of rice, that squirmed about the seafloor 530 million years ago. It’s one of the first fossils of a mud dragon ever discovered, and … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
io9Newly Identified Species Of Penis Worm Still Looks Nothing Like A Penis
Scientists recently identified a new species of penis worm, a marine invertebrate named after its allegedly penislike shape. The gist is as follows: Researchers led by University of Cambridge paleobiologist Martin Smith used electron microscopy to examine and catalogue the teeth of 110 fossilized penis worms. The fossils were originally recovered from the paleontologically prolificWalcott … Continued
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io9
Sexy skeleton models are easily the weirdest thing you’ll see today
Paleobiologist Victoria Herridge stumbled upon this ridiculous photo while conducting a Google image search for an elephant skull. “I am dying,” she later tweeted. “This is both depressing & incredibly funny.” These photos comes via the website for “BJ Winslow Prop Rentals and Fabrication,” a whimsically macabre prop shop in Sun Valley, CA, that hews … Continued
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io9Watch these humpback whales come within feet of gobbling up two divers
These divers had an incredibly close encounter with two humpback whales recently, while exploring the waters of Central California’s Souza Rock. The divers, understandably, lose it. Humpbacks tend to have this effect on people. Though, for as dramatic as this video is, the divers were at little-to-no risk of being swallowed whole. Humpbacks subsist not … Continued
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io9
Early Dinosaur Embryos Found in China
A site in China contains 190-million-year old organic remains from non-avian dinosaurs and dinosaur embryos, and some of the world’s oldest known eggshells, according to a new study. Bones from 20 embryonic sauropods (recreation, above) shed light on the early growth of dinosaurs | Credit: D. Mazierski The study, published in the journal Nature, reveals … Continued
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io9
300 million years ago, your great ancestor had a head like a shark’s
When looking at any living creature, you should ask yourself two things: Does it have a jaw? Does it have a spinal column? If the answer to these questions is yes, then you share a common ancestor with it — a very distant common ancestor, but a shared one, nonetheless. Now, research findings published in … Continued
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io9
Whales have a sensory organ unlike anything we’ve ever seen
It’s possible that whales can sense things that no other living creatures can. Scientists have discovered a grapefruit-sized mass of vessels and nervous tissues located in whales’ chins, and they believe it’s an entirely new kind of sensory organ. It’s possible the organ is what allows these massive creatures to eat using a lightning-fast mouth … Continued
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io9These prehistoric teeth were the sharpest the world has ever known
Two hundred million years ago, the world’s most fearsome fangs came bundled in an appropriately bite-sized package. Measuring just two inches long, eel-like creatures known as conodonts may not have looked like much from a distance — but up close, their mouths were the stuff of nightmares. Conodonts are widely regarded as some of the … Continued
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io9Join io9 in a live webcast today at the American Museum of Natural History!
Don’t miss your chance to participate in a live talk about dinosaurs with members of the American Museum of Natural History’s Paleontology Division, today at 12:30 ET! io9 is teaming up with AMNH to host a live webcast discussion about research on the feathers of Microraptor, a small, four-winged dinosaur that lived about 130-million years … Continued
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io9This four-winged dinosaur is helping rewrite the book on prehistoric plumage
What color were the dinosaurs? It’s a question that people have puzzled over for close to 200 years, and one that many long believed to be unanswerable. But a few years ago, scientists discovered that microscopic structures called melanosomes could be used to reveal prehistoric creatures’ true hues. Now, an international team of researchers studying … Continued
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io9
Scientists discover vast field of footprints from 8-million-year-old elephant herd
One of the largest paleontological finds in history has been discovered in the United Arab Emirates. Researchers working in the country’s deserts have uncovered a massive tract of land riddled with the footprints of four-tusked titans called Stegotetrabelodon syrticus — the earliest known members of the elephant family. It’s one of the best windows we’ve … Continued
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io9
This ancient Arctic plant regenerated after being frozen for 32,000 years
The narrow-leafed campion is not a particularly long-lived flower; and yet, the parents of the campion pictured here blossomed in the presence of mammoths and woolly rhinos. How is that possible? The explanation is simple, but the circumstances are unprecedented. The fruits that gave rise to the flowers you see here first fell to the … Continued
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io9
Tyrannosaurus rex was much, much bigger than we thought
An international team of researchers has used three-dimensional laser scans to determine that Tyrannosaurus rex were likely 30% more massive that we once thought — and a whole lot hungrier. Be honest, now…how many of you woke up this morning thinking you’d hear the words “three-dimensional laser” and “Tyrannosaurus rex” used in the same sentence? … Continued
