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9+ hour, 59+ min ago (532+ words) We're looking forward to introducing you to Dinos . Check out our conversation below. Hi Dinos , thank you for taking the time to reflect back on your journey with us. I think our readers are in for a real treat. There is so much we can all learn from each other and so thank you again for open We're looking forward to introducing you to Dinos Check out our conversation below Hi Dinos , thank you for taking the time to reflect back on your journey with us I think our readers are in for a real treat There is so much we can all learn from each other and so thank you again for opening up with us Let's get into it: Are you walking a path'or wandering?Probably a little bit of both I think for an individual is almost…...

16+ hour, 21+ min ago (375+ words) The snakes stayed large and thrived even when cooling temperatures and shrinking habitats killed off other giant reptiles millions of years ago. Anacondas have been giant for millions of years, a new study finds. During the Middle and Upper Miocene (12.4 million to 5.3 million years ago), warm temperatures, expansive wetlands and abundant food enabled many animal species to grow much larger than their modern relatives. But few of these giant animals have survived to the present day. "Other species like giant crocodiles and giant turtles have gone extinct since the Miocene, probably due to cooling global temperatures and shrinking habitats," study co-author Andr's Alfonso-Rojas, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement. "But the giant anacondas have survived " they are super-resilient." To estimate how big ancient anacondas might have been, Alfonso-Rojas and his colleagues measured 183 fossilized anaconda…...

16+ hour, 21+ min ago (375+ words) The snakes stayed large and thrived even when cooling temperatures and shrinking habitats killed off other giant reptiles millions of years ago. Anacondas have been giant for millions of years, a new study finds. During the Middle and Upper Miocene (12.4 million to 5.3 million years ago), warm temperatures, expansive wetlands and abundant food enabled many animal species to grow much larger than their modern relatives. But few of these giant animals have survived to the present day. "Other species like giant crocodiles and giant turtles have gone extinct since the Miocene, probably due to cooling global temperatures and shrinking habitats," study co-author Andr's Alfonso-Rojas, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement. "But the giant anacondas have survived " they are super-resilient." To estimate how big ancient anacondas might have been, Alfonso-Rojas and his colleagues measured 183 fossilized anaconda…...

16+ hour, 43+ min ago (559+ words) Anacondas are among the largest living snakes in the world. They are usually 4 to 5 m long and in rare cases can reach 7 m. In new research, paleontologists analyzed giant anaconda fossils from South America to deduce that these tropical snakes reached their maximum size 12.4 million years ago and have remained giants ever since. The green anaconda (Eunectes murinus). Image credit: MKAMPIS / CC BY-SA 4.0. "Living snakes have a wide range of body lengths, with a modal size of 1 m and a range from 10 cm in the smallest leptotyphlopid thread snakes to approximately 7 m in the anaconda genus Eunectes and giant pythonids," said University of Cambridge Ph.D. student Andr's Alfonso-Rojas and colleagues. "Within Eunectes, the green anaconda (Eunectes murinus) is the largest species, with an average body size of 4-5 m in length and verifiable maxima between 6 and 7.2 m." "The evolutionary history of anacondas can…...

17+ hour, 23+ min ago (635+ words) New research suggests that "early human pioneers" in Australia interbred with archaic species of hobbits at least 60,000 years ago "Experts have long debated the date that humans arrived in Australia," said LiveScience. Now a study using DNA from both ancient and modern Aboriginal people across Oceania may have finally "settled the debate". The study, published last week in Science Advances, looked at an "unprecedentedly large" dataset of nearly 2,500 genomes to determine that humans began to settle northern Australia about 60,000 years ago. But "even more interestingly", the study also added to growing evidence that along the way these "early human pioneers likely interbred with archaic humans", including the species known as "the hobbit", Homo floresiensis. Homo floresiensis "might have been slight in stature", at just over a metre tall, but its origins have "attracted lengthy debate", said the Natural History Museum....

19+ hour, 21+ min ago (369+ words) While other species downsized and died out across millennia the anaconda remains an Amazon giant. The Green Anaconda is the heaviest snake on Earth today. For decades, many paleontologists suspected that the snake started out smaller and grew over the years. A new Cambridge study says otherwise. The team of paleontologists has unearthed fossils from the Urumaco and Socorro formations in Venezuela that tell a different story: Anacondas were giants over 12 million year ago. These animals were specialists of their time, growing huge to exploit the rich resources of the Pebas wetland. But as the Andes Mountains continued their slow, grinding uplift, they changed the continent's drainage. The massive wetlands drained, eventually forming the modern Amazon and Orinoco river basins. This transition was catastrophic for the giants. As the Pebas system vanished, so did the mega-caimans and the colossal turtles....

19+ hour, 26+ min ago (638+ words) What appeared to be tentacles washed up on an Aberdeenshire beach are the remains of a deep-sea creature called a seven-arm octopus, say experts. A local member of the public spotted the arms with rows of suckers at Forvie National Nature Reserve at Collieston, near Ellon, on Sunday and alerted reserve staff. Some detective work has led to the animal being identified as one of the world's largest species of octopus. Also known as a septopus, giant gelatinous octopus or blob octopus, they have eight arms like other octopus - but in males one of the arms is also a reproductive organ that they attach to females when mating. Marine biologist Dr Lauren Smith, of East Grampian Coastal Partnership, said seven-arm octopus were a "remarkable and rarely documented" species. They live hundreds of metres below the surface of the sea and…...

21+ hour, 13+ min ago (333+ words) It's an unprecedented look into prehistoric anatomy. We know what fossils look like. For example, typical dinosaur fossils are bones turned to stone and preserved from the passage of time located, if we're particularly lucky, in large collections that can be reassembled to represent the beast they used to prop up in their entirety. Now, not all fossils are like that. Some are just impressions of small creatures or animals left in rocks, but most have something in common'it's just the hard stuff left behind. With the exception of those found in environments particularly adept at preservation, the soft tissues degrade over time and all we're left with is stony bone. But not always. Sometimes we get lucky'like a team did when it located a fossil of a 520-million-year-old worm larva that still had its brain and guts intact. "It's…...

1+ day, 2+ hour ago (387+ words) Lycoming College's Biology 109, "The Natural History of Dinosaurs," is a hands-on course where students study fundamental paleontological and evolutionary principles, while also learning about dinosaur anatomy, behavior, taxonomy, physiology, "and the history of dinosaur paleontology. Download Image: Web Dinosaurs have captivated the imaginations of both children and adults for generations For many Lycoming College students, that wonder and curiosity is reignited when they enroll in Lycoming College's Biology 109, "The Natural History of Dinosaurs." Led by David Broussard, Ph.D., paleontologist, associate professor of biology at Lycoming College, and chair of the department, "The Natural History of Dinosaurs" explores the origin, evolution, and extinction of dinosaurs In this hands-on course, students study fundamental paleontological and evolutionary principles, while also learning about dinosaur anatomy, behavior, taxonomy, physiology, and the history of dinosaur paleontology The class takes fossil-collecting field trips to learn about paleontological…...

1+ day, 3+ hour ago (764+ words) In a major breakthrough, scientists can now extract DNA from sediment instead of relying on bones The last two decades have seen a revolution in scientists" ability to reconstruct the past. This has been made possible through technological advances in the way DNA is extracted from ancient bones and analysed. These advances have revealed that Neanderthals and modern humans interbred " something that wasn"t previously thought to have happened. It has allowed researchers to disentangle the various migrations that shaped modern people. It has also allowed teams to sequence the genomes of extinct animals, such as the mammoth, and extinct agents of disease, such as defunct strains of plague. While much of this work has been carried out by analysing the physical remains of humans or animals, there is another way to obtain ancient DNA from the environment. Researchers can…...