Old Weblog - August 2004
Scientists studying the submerged peak of the mid-Atlantic ridge believe they have found several new species of fish and squid.
Flight was built into the brain as well as the body of Archaeopteryx. The oldest known bird shares many skeletal features with its dinosaur ancestors, such as teeth and a long bony tail. Yet a CAT scan reveals that Archaeopteryx had the large brain and optic lobes of modern birds, not the brain of a dinosaur, says Angela Milner of the Natural History Museum in London, UK.
See also: Bird brain reveals flight secrets (BBC)
Global warming does not spell imminent doom for the world’s coral reefs. Corals may be able to survive the higher temperatures by forming new symbiotic relationships with algae that can take the heat, suggests new research.
Towering Tyrannosaurus rex reached its colossal proportions due to a monster growth spurt in its teenage years, reveals a new study… Gregory Erickson, a palaeontologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee, US, has collected a large number of small, discarded T. rex bones sitting in museum drawers, and found the bones contain a treasure trove of well preserved growth rings inside. These cast-offs have allowed Erickson and his colleagues to chart out the first growth curve for T. rex.
Dolphin groups, or "pods" rely on socialites to keep them together, scientists have claimed. Without these individuals, the cohesion of the dolphin group falls apart, researchers have discovered. The finding may mean that capturing wild dolphins or killer whales for marine parks could have a serious impact on their companions left behind.
See also: Well-connected dolphins keep pods together (New Scientist: 12-Aug-04)
The evolution of whales from four-legged land dwellers into streamlined swimmers has been traced in fossilised ears, the journal Nature reports. The ancestors of cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) slowly lost their ability to move around on land to become efficient swimmers. This shift is recorded in whale ears, as they evolve a sound transmission better able to hear underwater.
A giant colony of ants stretching 100km (62 miles) has been discovered in the Australian city of Melbourne, threatening local insect species. The ants, which were imported from Argentina, are ranked among the world's 100 worst animal invaders.
This is a fascinating story. In their native land, rival ant colonies go to war and keep each other in check. Because there is only one colony in Melbourne, it has just grown and grown to become a super-colony.
An international expedition has found a bird species new to science on a remote island in the northern Philippines. The team of Filipino and UK researchers discovered the bird, a rail, living by a stream in the forests of Calayan. They think the birds number only about 200 pairs at most, and since they are found nowhere else they might soon be at risk from development pressures. They say the Calayan rail is flightless "or nearly so": it belongs to a global family including coots and moorhens… [T]he birds were new to science, though not to the island's people, who call them "piding".
It's some achievement to 'discover' a new species of bird, but wouldn't it have been nice of them to make 'piding' its official name?
Language may shape human thought, suggests a counting study in a Brazilian tribe whose language does not define numbers above two. Hunter-gatherers from the Pirahã tribe, whose language only contains words for the numbers one and two, were unable to reliably tell the difference between four objects placed in a row and five in the same configuration, revealed the study. Experts agree that the startling result provides the strongest support yet for the controversial hypothesis that the language available to humans defines our thoughts. So-called "linguistic determinism" was first proposed in 1950 but has been hotly debated ever since.
He wanted to play God, so he cracked the human genome. Now he wants to play Darwin and collect the DNA of everything on the planet.