Researchers Discover Strange New "Butterfly-Headed" Pterosaur Species Scientists have discovered at least 47 skeletons from a new species of flying reptile in southern Brazil. According to the PLOS ONE study, the species, which has been named Caiuajara dobruskii, represents a new pterosaur. The discovery is exciting not only because of the sheer number of well-preserved specimens unearthed, but also because pterosaurs had never been found in large groups before which offers some insight into how they may have lived. Pterosaurs, which made an appearance in Jurassic Park III, are an extinct group of flying reptiles that have been discovered on every continent. The remarkably well-preserved specimens were unearthed from a rare bone bed containing hundreds of pterosaur bones. C. dobruskii was equipped with a large wingspan of up to 7.7 feet (2.35 meters) and donned an unusual bony expansion from the skull that projected in front of its eyes. [Via National Geographic and PLOS ONE]
Scientists Think They May Have Solved The Siberian Crater Mystery Air samples taken at the bottom of one of the craters that have recently appeared in Siberia seem to support fears that the hole was formed by methane released from melting permafrost. If so this is very bad news for the planet's future, indicating frighteningly high emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas. An expedition from the Scientific Center of Arctic Studies found methane concentrations of 9.6% at the bottom of the crater – 50,000 times the atmospheric average. The possibility that methane released by melting permafrost produced the crater had been a favored hypothesis from its discovery in mid-July. The extraordinary concentration of methane, on the other hand, seems unlikely to be a coincidence, particularly since methane is slightly lighter than air. Expedition leader Andrei Plekhanov told Nature that the high temperatures probably thawed the permafrost to the point where it collapsed, releasing the trapped methane.
Dinosaurs Shrank Continuously for 50 Million Years One of the hardest things to wrap our heads around when it comes to the dinosaur-to-bird transition is how massive, carnivorous ground-dwellers evolved into small, wispy birds fluttering from branch to branch. According to a new study published in Science this week, the dinosaur lineage that evolved into birds continuously shrank in body size over the last 50 million years and across at least 12 consecutive branches. "Birds out-shrank and out-evolved their dinosaurian ancestors, surviving where their larger, less evolvable relatives could not," says Michael Lee from the Australian Museum in Adelaide in a news release. The branch of dinosaurs that led up to modern birds -- called theropods, and included T. rex and Velociraptor -- was also the most evolutionarily innovative. To trace evolving adaptations and changing body size over time, Lee and colleagues analyzed 1,549 anatomical traits from 120 species of theropods and early birds. Photo Gallery
Is The Universe A Hologram? Even with all their local hangouts, impossibly affordable apartments, and a dragon or two (or three), television characters and their whole lives exist on a 2D screen. Are we just as clueless about our seemingly 3D world? Physicists with the Holometer experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory want to know: Is our 3D space an illusion? The information about everything in our universe could actually be encoded in tiny packets that come in two dimensions -- not unlike pixels up close on the TV screen -- with the natural “pixel size” of space being much, much smaller than an atom. “We want to find out whether space-time is a quantum system just like matter is,” Fermilab’s Craig Hogan says in a news release. By measuring the “quantum jitter of space” -- which can be as small as a few billionths of a billionth of a meter -- the holographic interferometer will test the limits of the universe’s ability to store information. [Via Fermilab] Images: Fermilab Photo Gallery
Ozone Layer Showing Signs Of Recovery It’s been a dismal few decades for our troubled ozone layer, but it’s finally on the road to recovery, according to a comprehensive new assessment released on Wednesday. What’s more, it’s thanks to a laudable global effort to phase out the use of ozone-depleting substances, showing us what political determination can achieve. Almost 300 scientists from 36 countries contributed to the detailed report, which was published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The ozone layer is a protective blanket of gas that shields us from harmful UV radiation emitted by the Sun. It started to decline during the 1980s and in 1985 scientists spotted a seasonal hole over Antarctica, prompting governments to start taking action to prevent further decline. The ozone layer continued to decline throughout the early 1990s but has remained relatively unchanged since 2000. [Via UNEP, BBC News and Live Science]
New Pterosaur Flew Right Out of Avatar A newly discovered pterosaur from Early Cretaceous deposits in China looks like a cross between a pelican and a mountain banshee from the movie Avatar. Named Ikrandraco avatar, their skulls suggest that the flying reptiles ate like some modern seabirds, skimming the water for food with the help of throat pouches. The work was published in Scientific Reports this week. Working with 120-million-year-old sediment from the Aptian Jiufotang Formation in northeastern China, an international team led by Xiaolin Wang from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Alexander Kellner from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro identified an usual, never-before-seen pterosaur from two sets of flattened fossils. The two partial skeletons revealed a very low, elongated skull and a well-developed crest on the lower jaw bone with a hook-shaped projection on the backend of the keel. Ikrandraco had 21 small teeth on each side of its upper jaw and 19 pairs in the lower jaw. Photo Gallery
World First: Woman Receives Tissue Graft Made From Induced Stem Cells Hours ago, a Japanese woman in her 70s became the first human to receive a tissue transplant that was grown from induced pluripotent stem cells, RIKEN reported. The woman received a 1.3mm x 3mm sheet of retinal pigment epithelium as a treatment for her age-related macular degeneration, which diminishes the ability to register sharp, focused light. Yasuo Kurimoto led the two-hour-long surgery at the Institute for Biomedical Research and Innovation in Kobe. Kurimoto reported that “there was no serious hemorrhaging or complication” involved with the surgery. Pluripotent stem cells—often called embryonic stem cells—have the potential to become nearly any type of cell that the body may need. These stem cells are readily produced inside the blastocyst, which forms about five days after conception until implantation in the uterus. Umbilical cord blood is packed full of multipotent stem cells, though they are not able to differentiate into quite as many different forms as pluripotent cells.
Soft Robot Keeps Moving, Even After Getting Run Over By A Car Thinking about robots usually conjures up images of metal structures from Terminator or iRobot. Roger Wood’s lab at Harvard University has gone in a slightly different direction and made an X-shaped soft-bodied robot that moves around like a headless toy. The robot can be exposed to fire or get run over by a car, coming out completely unscathed. The pneumatic soft-bodied robot was inspired by organisms that move without rigid structures. “Earlier versions of soft robots were all tethered, which works fine in some applications, but what we wanted to do was challenge people’s concept of what a robot has to look like,” lead author Michael Tolley told the Harvard Gazette. Image credit: Harvard University/Joe Sherman The current design is 0.65 meters (2.1 feet) long and is capable of carrying 3.4 kg (7.4 lbs) of equipment on its back. Ultimately, the material that fit the bill was a composite silicone rubber: strong, flexible, and not too heavy.
Empty Electronics Factories Turned Into High-Tech Indoor Farms Fujitsu is an electronics manufacturer that is one of many Japanese companies not able to compete with factories from South Korea and China, and has been forced into downsizing. Though one chip assembly line in Fukushima Prefecture was closed in 2009, the sterile room is now being used to grow specialized lettuce (don’t let the name Fukushima throw you off; the factory is about 60 miles from the nuclear reactor). There has been such a high demand for this type of produce, Fujitsu’s Akisai Food and Agriculture Cloud has expanded their operations in 2014. The lettuce is not grown in soil, but has a specialized formulation of nutrients and fertilizer that is delivered right to the roots by a carefully-timed computerized drip system. The temperature, light, and air quality are strictly controlled. The room is devoid of bacteria, allowing the sterile lettuce to last up to two months with proper refrigeration. Fujitsu currently produces 3,500 heads of lettuce each day, with plans to grow.