The discovery of an ancient ring-like structure in southern Alberta suggests the area was struck by a meteorite large enough to leave an eight-kilometre-wide crater, producing an explosion strong enough to destroy present-day Calgary, say researchers from the Alberta Geological Survey and University of Alberta. Map showing the structure and contour of the Bow City crater. Color variation shows meters...
Changes in tree-ring density in the Arctic may be evidence of changes in light intensity during the trees' growth, according to a new study by San Francisco State University researcher Alexander Stine. Changes in tree-ring density in the Arctic may be evidence of changes in light intensity during the trees' growth, according to a new study by San Francisco State University researcher Alexander...
The Red Sea has turned out to be an ideal study object for marine geologists. There they can observe the formation of an ocean in its early phase. However, the Red Sea seemed to go through a different birthing process than the other oceans. Now, scientists at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and the King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah have been able to show that salt glaciers have...
The rapid melting of Greenland glaciers is captured in the documentary "Chasing Ice." The retreat of the ice edge from one year to the next sends more water into the sea. Greenland ice canyon filled with melt water in summer 2010 [Credit: Ian Joughin, UW APL Polar Science Center]Now University of Washington atmospheric scientists have estimated that up to half of the recent warming in Greenland and...
An international team led by glaciologists from the University of Colorado Boulder and Trent University in Ontario, Canada has completed the first mapping of virtually all of the world's glaciers -- including their locations and sizes -- allowing for calculations of their volumes and ongoing contributions to global sea rise as the world warms. The Zhadang glacier south of lake Nam Tso on the nortern...
A University of Utah-led team discovered a "hypervelocity star" that is the closest, second-brightest and among the largest of 20 found so far. Speeding at more than 1 million mph, the star may provide clues about the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way and the halo of mysterious "dark matter" surrounding the galaxy, astronomers say. An astrophysicist-artist's conception of a hypervelocity...
Move over, Matrix -- astronomers have done you one better. They have created the first realistic virtual universe using a computer simulation called "Illustris." Illustris can recreate 13 billion years of cosmic evolution in a cube 350 million light-years on a side with unprecedented resolution. This composite image from the Illustris simulation is centered on the most massive galaxy cluster existing...
An international team of astrophysicists has released an unprecedented map of the entire sky that charts the magnetic field shaping the Milky Way galaxy and helps in our understanding of the birth of the universe. The magnetic field of our Milky Way Galaxy as seen by ESA’s Planck satellite [Credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration]The team -- which includes researchers from the University of British...
Portions of rock powder collected by the hammering drill on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover from a slab of Martian sandstone will be delivered to the rover's internal instruments. This May 5, 2014, image from the Navigation Camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows two holes at top center drilled into a sandstone target called "Windjana." The farther hole was created by the rover's drill...
A new study suggests that people who survived the medieval mass-killing plague known as the Black Death lived significantly longer and were healthier than people who lived before the epidemic struck in 1347. These findings have important implications for understanding emerging diseases and how they impact the health of individuals and populations of people. ...
The SETI project scientists are known for tracking possible extraterrestrial signals, but now they are also considering sending messages from Earth telling of our position. A researcher from the University of Cádiz (Spain) questions this idea in view of the results from a survey taken by students, revealing the general level of ignorance about the cosmos and the influence of religion when tackling...
More than 170 sharks were caught during a controversial cull policy in Western Australia following a spate of fatal attacks, figures showed Wednesday, with 50 of the biggest ones destroyed. A the Sea Shepherd Australia/ Animal Amnesty photo shows a tiger shark being caught off Moses Rock in Western Australia [Credit: AFP]The policy, in place around popular west coast beaches, was given the green...
Ashen earth strewn with the limbs of after-mighty trees is all that is left of the fearsome forest in central Myanmar that Wa Tote remembers from her youth. A worker carries a saw where teak trees once grew in the Bago Region of Myanmar after the land was scorched ahead of replanting [Credit: AFP/Ye Aung Thu]"We would only dare enter in a big group. The forest was deep and had several wild animals....
The fact that the eight-legged creepy spider in some ways resembles humans is one of the surprising conclusions after researchers at Aarhus University and the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) succeeded in sequencing its genome. The velvet spider's genome has now been mapped [Credit: WikiCommons] However, it is more a discovery on an awesome scale. The sequencing has far greater significance for...
Billions lie dead on the sea floor. Among the carcasses are dozens of species of small shelled marine organisms called brachiopods, their tight-lipped expressions frozen in time. The Kallmeyer Collection of the Ohio University Invertebrate Paleontology Collections includes invasive species that dominated the ancient landscape of Cincinnati, Ohio. The invaders include brachiopods, gastropods,...
Dolphins are the most diverse family of living marine mammals and include species such as the bottlenose dolphin and the killer whale. However, their early evolution and fossil record has been steeped in mystery due to lack of good specimens. A new paper published in latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology re-describes the oldest species of dolphin with a new name: Eodelphis kabatensis....
Scientists have used state-of-the-art imaging techniques to examine the cracks, fractures and breaks in the bones of a 150 million-year-old predatory dinosaur. Preserved dinosaur skeletons show signs of injury that the the scientists were able to detect using state-of-the-art imaging techniques [Credit: Phil Manning]The University of Manchester researchers say their groundbreaking work – using synchrotron-imaging...
Theropod dinosaurs, a group which includes such famous species as Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor, are often regarded as carnivorous and predatory animals, using their sharp teeth and claws to capture and dispatch prey. However, a detailed look at the claws on their forelimbs revealed that the form and shape of theropod claws are highly variable and might also have been used for other tasks. Fossil...
Although most dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, one dinosaur lineage survived and lives on today as a major evolutionary success story -- the birds. Tyrannosaurus rex weighed 7 tonnes and was the largest land predator of all time [Credit: Royal Ontario Museum]A study that has 'weighed' hundreds of dinosaurs suggests that shrinking their bodies may have helped the group that became...
Scientists have discovered a new species of long-snouted tyrannosaur, nicknamed Pinocchio rex, which stalked the Earth more than 66 million years ago. The skull of Qianzhousaurus (upper jaw in left lateral view and lower jaw in reversed right lateral view) [Credit: Junchang Lu]Researchers say the animal, which belonged to the same dinosaur family as Tyrannosaurus rex, was a fearsome carnivore that...