Collecting plant and animal specimens is essential for scientific studies and conservation and does not, as some critics of the practice have suggested, play a significant role in species extinctions. A drawer of eastern tiger swallowtail butterflies at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology. The butterflies were collected at various locations in the eastern United States [Credit:...
Astronomers have found cosmic clumps so dark, dense and dusty that they throw the deepest shadows ever recorded. Infrared observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of these blackest-of-black regions paradoxically light the way to understanding how the brightest stars form. Astronomers have found cosmic clumps so dark, dense and dusty that they throw the deepest shadows ever recorded. The clumps...
An international team, led by researchers from Swinburne University of Technology, has found evidence that the Universe broke its rising ‘fever’ about 11 billion years ago. Still from the animation of the Universe's 'fever' breaking [Credit: Swinburne University of Technology]They measured the temperature of the Universe when it was 3 to 4 billion years old by studying the gas in between galaxies...
A small Iron Age settlement has been found during excavations at the site of a new housing development near Swindon. Further digging at Ridgeway Farm is expected to continue for up to three weeks [Credit: Taylor Wimpey/BBC]A number of "round houses" with hundreds of pits for storage are among the discoveries at Ridgeway Farm, where Taylor Wimpey is building 700 homes. Other items found include...
The Acropolis Museum in Athens has been included on a list of the 20 most amazing museums in the world, compiled by the editors of online architectural magazine Archdaily, as GTP website reports. The list was announced in honor of International Museum Day. The design, by Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi, is itself an allegory of unification: the Acropolis Museum [Credit: GETTY]"We've collected...
An international team is using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) modelling to assess Julius Caesar's account of his war with a Celtic tribe. According to Caesar, more than a quarter of a million Helvetii were settled in the Swiss plateau before they decided to abandon their territory and invade Gaul in 58 BCE [Credit: Thomas Whitley]According to Caesar, more than a quarter of a million...
A Montana State University graduate student and MSU paleontologist David Varricchio are part of a research team that discovered the most productive and diverse dinosaur fossil site known in Idaho. This is a series of hip vertebrae from Oryctodromeus found at the Robison Bonebed [Credit: Paleontology program of the U.S. Forest Service, Department of Agriculture, Curation of Paleontology...
Is it a bird? Is it a dinosaur? Or something in between? The feathered limbs of Archaeopteryx have fascinated palaeontologists ever since Charles Darwin's day. Only 12 of these curious creatures have ever been found. A new 3D X-ray fossil-technique has produced some of the clearest images yet of Archaeopteryx, often described as "the first bird" [Credit: BBC]Now these precious fossils are going...
Scientists, with the help of Gero Moosleitner, an amateur paleontologist, have recently discovered 180-million-year-old fossils of deep sea animals in the coastal areas of Austrian Alps. The discovery sheds light on the deep-sea life history. A close look at a deep-sea brittle star [Credit: Ben Thuy]Some of these old fossils have revealed that deep sea may hold origin to the hereditary of sea creatures...
The Texas Panhandle once was home to a slew of creatures, big and small, ranging from horse-like mammals and saber-toothed cats to the phytosaur — a giant, crocodile-like reptile that slithered in the swamps. The Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon has several fossil exhibits, including this phytosaur, a crocodile-like reptile that lived here millions of years ago [Credit: Amarillo]Panhandle-Plains...
The Idol Wing of the Tamil Nadu CB-CID has sought help from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to ascertain the antecedents of four ancient idols, allegedly stolen from Tamil Nadu, that have been spotted in museums abroad. Local authorities are seeking the ASI’s help to ascertain status of three bronze statues and a stone sculpture [Credit: The Hindu]Of the four idols, three are made of...
Archaeologists working at the Wari archaeological complex in the Vegachayoq Moqo sector have made new discoveries that promise to illuminate the mysterious pre-Inca society. Experts are interested in learning more about this little understood civilization [Credit: Andina]Mario Cueto Cardenas from the Ayacucho Culture Board told Andina that “Archaeologist [José Ochatoma Paravicino of the Universidad...
A statue of a Phoenician priest has been uncovered at an excavation site in the southern city of Sidon, along with other antiquities, the most unique find for Lebanon in decades, the British Museum team announced Monday. An archaeologist shows a Roman-era statuette of Apollo Helios found at the Freres College excavation site in the southern city of Sidon [Credit: Mahmoud Zayat/AFP/Getty...
Archaeologists at the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) have unearthed prehistoric tools at the new site of United States embassy In London. Flint tools discovered in South London could be one of the earliest prehistoric objects found in London [Credit: MOLA]A flint tool dating to the Palaeolithic Period (approximately 700,000 to10,000 BC) was discovered during an excavation at the site located...
It's a rare treat when a treasure can be found within a treasure. That's exactly what happened when archaeologists uncovered a hidden gem, buried deep inside a centuries-old, thousand-hand bodhisattva statue in south west China, at the Dazu Rock Carvings. Archaeologists discovered a chamber in the abdomen of the statue. Within, they found a stone tablet with red engravings on it. The engravings...
Notions of gods arise in all human societies, from all powerful and all-knowing deities to simple forest spirits. A recent method of examining religious thought and behaviour links their ubiquity and the similarity of our beliefs to the ways in which human mental processes were adapted for survival in prehistoric times. Does mankind’s religious instinct date back to prehistoric times? [Credit:...
Newly analyzed tooth samples from the great apes of the Miocene indicate that the same dietary specialization that allowed the apes to move from Africa to Eurasia may have led to their extinction, according to results published May 21, 2014, in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Daniel DeMiguel from the Institut Catalá de Palontologia Miquel Crusafont (Spain) and colleagues. Fossil fragments of Anoiapithecus...
Pantelleria, a little-known island between Sicily and Tunisia, is a volcano with a remarkable past: 45 thousand years ago, the entire island was covered in a searing-hot layer of green glass. Spectacular sea-cliffs of Pantelleria volcano island reveal how volcanoes work [Credit: Credit: Mike Branney/ University of Leicester]Volcanologists Drs Mike Branney, Rebecca Williams and colleagues at the University...
Exotic sea creatures called comb jellies may reshape how scientists view early evolution—as their genes suggest nature created more than one way to make a nervous system. A species of comb jelly called a Beroe after it swallowed another comb jelly, called a Bolinopsis. Leonid Moroz, a University of Florida neurobiologist, is on a quest to decode the genomic blueprints of fragile marine life, including...
Venomous creatures usually conjure up images of hissing snakes or stinging scorpions—but for scientists Bryan Fry, et. al., an overlooked group —centipedes—are all the rage. A tiger centipede [Credit: Matt Reinbold/WikiCommons]Centipedes prey on bugs and other pests by stinging them with venom secreted from and injected from their first pair of pincer-like legs, called forcipules. In a new paper published...