Jurassic pain: Giant 'flea-like' insects plagued dinosaurs 165 million years ago

It takes a gutsy insect to sneak up on a huge dinosaur while it sleeps, crawl onto its soft underbelly and give it a bite that might have felt like a needle going in – but giant "flea-like" animals, possibly the oldest of their type ever discovered, probably did just that …

Do the Milky Way's companions spell trouble for dark matter?

Astronomers from the University of Bonn in Germany have discovered a vast structure of satellite galaxies and clusters of stars surrounding our Galaxy, stretching out across a million light years. The work challenges the existence of dark matter, part of the standard model for  …

Transfer of Life-Bearing Meteorites from Earth to Other Planets

This article investigates the probability that the meteorites originating on Earth are transferred to other planets in our Solar System and to extra solar planets. The collisional Chicxulub crater event, and material that was ejected is taken as an example of Earth-origin me …

Newly discovered close relative of T. rex is largest known feathered dinosaur

Palaeontologists have known for more than a decade that some small dinosaurs had bird-like feathers, mainly thanks to beautifully preserved fossils from northeastern China. Now three specimens of a new tyrannosauroid from the same region show that at least one much larger dinos …

12-mile-high Martian dust devil caught in act

A Martian dust devil roughly 12 miles high (20 kilometers) was captured whirling its way along the Amazonis Planitia region of Northern Mars on March 14. It was imaged by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Despi …

Lost Long-Fingered Frog Found in Africa

In a handy stroke of luck, scientists have rediscovered a "lost" African species: the Bururi long-fingered frog.Last seen in 1949, the 1.3-inch-long (3.2-centimeter-long) amphibian was found during a December 2011 biodiversity survey in the small central African country of Buru …

Cute Tropical Camels: Prehistoric Species Found in Panama

From the new fossils, Rincon and his team described two new prehistoric camel species: Aguascalietia panamaensis and Aguascalientia minuta, both of which roamed the Central American tropics about 20 million years ago.Both animals had long, crocodile-like snouts, likel …

First Photos of China's 298-Million-Year-Old Buried Forest

These are the first photos of some of the countless treasures found in the extraordinary 298-million-year-old forest discovered under coal mine in Wuda, Inner Mongolia, China.

Babies' colic linked to mothers' migraines

A study of mothers and their young babies by neurologists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has shown that mothers who suffer migraine headaches are more than twice as likely to have babies with colic than mothers without a history of migraines.

Venus Spinning Even Slower Than Thought—Scientists Stumped

Planet lovers take note: Venus is spinning even slower than astronomers thought, according to new data from a European space probe. In the early 1990s scientists with NASA's Magellan mission calculated that a single rotation of Venus takes 243.015 Earth days, based on the spee …

Elephants Took 24 Million Generations to Evolve From Mouse-Size

Some mammals need roughly 24 million generations to go from mouse-size to elephant-size, a new study says. Using both fossil and living specimens, scientists calculated growth rates for 28 different mammalian groups during the past 65 million years—and found that, for ma …

New species of ancient crocodile discovered

A University of Missouri researcher has identified a new species of prehistoric crocodile. The extinct creature, nicknamed "Shieldcroc" due to a thick-skinned shield on its head, is an ancestor of today's crocodiles.

New Island Born—Future Tourism Hot Spot?

A volcano beneath the Red Sea has given Earth a New Year's gift: a new island about 40 miles (60 kilometers) off the coast of Yemen. The currently unnamed landmass first appeared in NASA satellite photos taken on December 23.

Comet Seen Vaporizing in Sun's Atmosphere—A First

For the first time, a death-diving comet has been observed as it vaporized in the sun's atmosphere, thanks to new data from a NASA satellite. More than a thousand known comets are so-called Kreutz sungrazers, a family of icy bodies that pass very near to the sun's surface on t …

Tiny amounts of alcohol dramatically extend a worm's life, but why?

Minuscule amounts of ethanol, the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, can more than double the life span of a tiny worm known as Caenorhabditis elegans, which is used frequently as a model in aging studies, UCLA biochemists report.

Russian Mars Probe to Crash Sunday

After circling Earth for more than two months, the failed Russian Mars probe Phobos-Grunt will make a kamikaze dive into Earth's atmosphere sometime around Sunday, experts say. The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, which has given up hope of recovering the spacecraft, is now co …

Flatworm flouts fundamental rule of biology

A tiny, freshwater flatworm found in ponds and rivers around the world that has long intrigued scientists for its remarkable ability to regenerate has now added a new wrinkle to biology. Reporting in the journal Science today, researchers at the University of California, San F …

Earth's massive extinction: The story gets worse

Scientists have uncovered a lot about the Earth's greatest extinction event that took place 250 million years ago when rapid climate change wiped out nearly all marine species and a majority of those on land.

The Compositions of Kuiper Belt Objects

Objects in the Kuiper belt are small and far away thus difficult to study in detail even with the best telescopes available at earth.

Planetary Rings

Matthew Tiscareno from Cornell University has published an extensive review article on planetary rings. It covers briefly all recent research and is very readable.

New evidence for complex molecules on Pluto's surface

The new and highly sensitive Cosmic Origins Spectrograph aboard the Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a strong ultraviolet-wavelength absorber on Pluto's surface, providing new evidence that points to the possibility of complex hydrocarbon and/or nitrile molecules lying on  …

Dawn soars over asteroid Vesta in 3-D

Glide over the giant asteroid Vesta with NASA's Dawn spacecraft in a new 3-D video. Dawn has been orbiting Vesta since July 15, obtaining high-resolution images of its bumpy, cratered surface and making other scientific measurements.

Ancient Saber-Toothed Squirrel Found

The fossilized skull and teeth of a fanged, shrew-like mammal have been found in Argentina, a new study says. The new species—dubbed Cronopio dentiacutus for its narrow snout and long fangs—was about 8 to 9 inches (20 to 23 centimeters) long and likely used its poi …

Computer scientist cracks mysterious 'Copiale Cipher'

The manuscript seems straight out of fiction: a strange handwritten message in abstract symbols and Roman letters meticulously covering 105 yellowing pages, hidden in the depths of an academic archive. Now, more than three centuries after it was devised, the 75,000-character " …

Einstein On Steroids: Dirac, The Higgs, And Speeding Neutrinos

So what is the deal with this 'cosmic speed limit'? Is it really unthinkable that neutrinos move faster than light?

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Ivan Pavlov

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I am a software developer from Sofia, Bulgaria with some background in mathematics and insane interest in science.

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