news 2017

More than a century of theory about the evolutionary history of dinosaurs has been turned on its head following the publication of new research from scientists at the University of Cambridge and Natural History Museum in London. Their work suggests that the family groupings need to be rearranged, re-defined and re-named and also that dinosaurs may have originated in the northern hemisphere rather than the southern, as current thinking goes.

Living birds have a more crouched leg posture compared to their dinosaurian ancestors, which generally are thought to have moved with straighter limbs - similar to the postures of humans. A joint study by researchers from the UK and China, including the University of Bristol, sheds light on how birds shifted toward this more crouched posture.

When a meteoroid travels in space, solar radiation leaves distinctive imprints on its outer layer. Together with colleagues, ETH researcher Antoine Roth has developed novel analytical techniques to detect these imprints, allowing the team to reconstruct meteorites' space journeys. The inconspicuous, small stone that was analysed with high-tech equipment is named Jiddat al Harasis 466.

John Kappelman explains how a new discovery in China may help bridge the gap between where humans began and where they are today. Researchers of human evolution awoke to exciting and provocative news from the journal Nature on Wednesday: Scattered remains of stone tools - dating back 2.1 million years - were unearthed in China's Loess Plateau, bringing scientists one step closer to mapping the vast migration of humans from their origins in Africa more than 6 million years ago.

Oxford Martin School research says claims that natural flood management can improve the worst floods are not supported by scientific evidence. Their research in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A concludes that natural measures to manage flooding from rivers can play a valuable role in flood prevention.

Caihong juji is a newly described, bird-like dinosaur with an iridescent, rainbow crest. It lived in China about 161 million years ago, and may have used its impressive feathers to attract mates. Illustration by Velizar Simeonovski, The Field Museum, for UT Austin Jackson School of Geosciences. AUSTIN, Texas - Ancient dinosaurs were adorned in some amazing ways, from the horns of the triceratops to the plates and spikes of the stegosaurus.

Caihong juji is a newly described, bird-like dinosaur with an iridescent, rainbow crest. It lived in China about 161 million years ago, and may have used its impressive feathers to attract mates. Illustration by Velizar Simeonovski, The Field Museum, for UT Austin Jackson School of Geosciences. AUSTIN, Texas - Ancient dinosaurs were adorned in some amazing ways, from the horns of the triceratops to the plates and spikes of the stegosaurus.

Wind turbines and farm fields near Springfield Corners, Wisconsin. Cropland in the Yahara watershed has an overabundance of soil phosphorus, and researchers say that makes clean lakes and rivers possible only with a revolution in land and water management. Courtesy of UW?Madison Water Sustainability and Climate project For decades, phosphorous has accumulated in Wisconsin soils.

Arctic sea ice in recent decades has declined even faster than predicted by most models of climate change. Many scientists have suspected that the trend now underway is a combination of global warming and natural climate variability. A new study finds that a substantial chunk of summer sea ice loss in recent decades was due to natural variability in the atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean.

Hydraulic fracturing often brings up large volumes of water that need to be managed. A study led by The University of Texas at Austin has found that in the Permian Basin, a large oil field in Texas and New Mexico, reusing water at other well sites is a viable way to deal with the water that could also reduce potential instances of induced seismicity.

According to 33 years of remote sensing data, productivity of U.S. grasslands is more sensitive to dryness of the atmosphere than precipitation, important information for understanding how ecosystems will respond to climate change. A new study showing dryness of the atmosphere affects U.S. grassland productivity more than rainfall could have important implications for predicting how plants will respond to warming climate conditions.

Asteroids don't hit our planet at regular intervals, as was previously thought. Earth scientists have reached this conclusion after analysing impact craters formed in the last 500 million years, concentrating on precisely dated events. Do mass extinctions, like the fall of the dinosaurs, and the formation of large impact craters on Earth occur together at regular intervals? 'This question has been under discussion for more than thirty years now,' says Matthias Meier from ETH Zurich's Institute of Geochemistry and Petrology.

Berkeley Lab research, shock experiments show how mineral found in Martian meteorites may provide clues to ancient abundance of water Mars may have been a wetter place than previously thought, according to research on simulated Martian meteorites conducted, in part, at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

Researchers led by mineralogist Chi Ma have identified three new minerals in a tiny sample of the Khatyrka meteorite. The meteorite, recovered in pieces from the Koryak Mountains in eastern Russia in 1979 and 2011, made news in recent years for containing the first three natural quasicrystals ever found.

Scientists at EPFL and SLF describe with precision how snow and sand surfaces erode when exposed to wind. Their description can contribute to better predictions of dust emissions from deserts and snow transport in Antarctica, and can be adapted to other planets. Wind and water transport a multitude of particles with them, leading to erosion or deposits, like dust emissions from the Saharan desert that can reach Europe and snow transport that can..

Remains of microorganisms at least 3,770 million years old have been discovered by an international team led by UCL scientists, providing direct evidence of one of the oldest life forms on Earth. Tiny filaments and tubes formed by bacteria that lived on iron were found encased in quartz layers in the Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt (NSB), Quebec, Canada.

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have discovered a major source of an important greenhouse gas in the Tropical Pacific Ocean for the first time. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, and a major contributor to increasing global temperatures. The largest pool of marine methane on Earth spans from the coast of Central America to Hawaii in the Tropical Pacific Ocean.

Our findings make alternative theories for the origin of the atmosphere and oceans equally plausible, such as icy comets or meteorites bringing water to the Earth. A new study led by The Australian National University (ANU) has found seawater cycles throughout the Earth's interior down to 2,900km, much deeper than previously thought, reopening questions about how the atmosphere and oceans formed.

Bubbles acting like parachutes are deployed by some cosmic dust particles on their entry into Earth's atmosphere, preventing them from burning up. Think of microscopic rice bubbles made of molten rock and you get the picture about what this cosmic dust looks like. Dr Matt Genge Department of Earth Science and Engineering This is the conclusion of a new study carried out by a researcher from Imperial College London.

Seven temperate Earth-sized planets revolve around the star TRAPPIST-1. In addition, at least three of them harbor conditions compatible with the presence of liquid water on their surfaces.