December 4, 2023
Paleontologists on Wednesday unveiled the fossilized bones of one of the strangest whales in history. The 39-million-year-old leviathan, called Perucetus, may have weighed about 200 tons, as much as a blue whale — by far the heaviest animal known, until now. While blue whales are sleek, fast-swimming divers, Perucetus was a very different beast. The
READ MOREAt a time when the mighty woolly mammoth roamed the Earth, some 46,000 years ago, a minuscule pair of roundworms became encased in the Siberian permafrost. Millennia later, the worms, thawed out of the ice, would wriggle again, and demonstrate to scientists that life could be paused — almost indefinitely. The discovery, published this week
READ MOREDoctors are generally held in high regard today, but Romans of the first century were skeptical, even scornful, of medical practitioners, many of whom ministered to ailments they did not understand. Poets especially ridiculed surgeons for being greedy, for taking sexual advantage of patients and, above all, for incompetence. In his “Natural History,” Pliny the
READ MOREA brand new TV spot for Physician Unusual within the Multiverse of Insanity recollects the phrases of Tilda Swinton’s Historical One as she spoke concerning the multiverse in 2016’s Physician Unusual. When Benedict Cumberbatch’s Stephen Unusual was launched in Marvel Studios’ Physician Unusual, he was intitiated into the methods of sorcery and the mystic arts
READ MOREIn “The Handbook of the Indians of California,” revealed in 1925, the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber pronounced the Ohlone individuals “extinct as far as all sensible functions are involved,” noting that solely “just a few scattered people survive.” Though the anthropologist wouldn’t recant his declaration of extinction till the Nineteen Fifties, “the harm was achieved,” stated
READ MORECannibalism is widespread among the many hundreds of thousands of contemporary arthropod species. A praying mantis consumes her mate after copulation, termites suck blood out of wounded friends, and mosquitoes snack on larvae. However how far again does this ugly mode of eating go within the historical past of life feeding on life? Earlier research
READ MOREIt’s a doubtful distinction within the fossil document: For the primary time, a vertebrate has been discovered with fecal pellets the place it’s mind as soon as was. The fossilized animal was Astroscopus countermani, an extinct fish first described as a separate species in 2011 in Maryland. Also called a stargazer as a result of
READ MOREWhenever you take a whiff of one thing, odor molecules sail inside your nostril the place they bind to proteins — referred to as olfactory receptors — on cells that line your nasal cavity. These receptors set off indicators that your mind interprets as one or many smells. A group of scientists has recognized the
READ MOREThere’s no single gene that determines canine measurement, based on Dr. Ostrander, a canine genomics professional on the Nationwide Institutes of Well being. There are about 25. She and different scientists found the first known dog size gene, and one of the most significant, in 2007. It’s referred to as IGF1. The significance of the
READ MOREWhen he retired for the primary time, Duane Pitre was 23. It was the winter of 1997, when cash was beginning to pour into skilled skateboarding. Pitre was poised to develop into one of many sport’s profitable stars because it transitioned from counterculture to business empire. He was an early member of Alien Workshop, the
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