Go Entertaiment: Animals & pets

Showing posts with label Animals & pets. Show all posts

Monday, November 7, 2016

First-Ever Dinosaur Brain Tissue Found

What was going on in dinosaurs' noggins as they dwelled in Cretaceous forests, stalking fierce prey or sitting on a nest of giant eggs? Paleontologists may never know the answer to these questions, but they just got one step closer with the first-ever discovery of brain tissue from a dinosaur. Discovering any soft tissue from a dinosaur is rare since that material degrades faster than other types of tissue, and dinosaurs lived more than 66 million years ago.

Mistaken Identity? Debate Over Ancient 4-Legged Snake Heats Up

"Tetrapodophis doesn't show any of those features that you would expect to see in a snake," said Michael Caldwell, a professor and chair of biological sciences at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who is leading the new investigation into the enigmatic fossil. For instance, Tetrapodophis amplectus doesn't have hooked teeth like a snake does, nor does it have a snake-like skull and skeleton, Caldwell said. It's unclear exactly how dolichosaurids are related to snakes, but some evidence suggests they are a sister group to the slithery reptiles, Caldwell said.

Jackpot! Hiker Discovers Ancient Reptile Footprints Near Las Vegas

The ancient environment preserved this creature's footprints in a fossilized trackway that researchers are calling Chelichnus gigas. That's because like many four-legged (or tetrapodal) animals, this ancient critter's back feet would have stepped directly on top of the freshly made footprints of its front feet, meaning that the front footprints are obscured by the back ones, said study lead researcher Stephen Rowland, a professor of geology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "The hind footprints are superimposed on the front footprints, so we don't have well-preserved front footprints," Rowland told Live Science.

An Entire Ecosystem of Creepy-Crawlies May Lurk in Your Home

A new analysis of the insects, spiders and other creepy-crawlies in homes across the United States reveals that the Turkestan cockroach (Shelfordella lateralis), a small introduced species native to Asia, has spread beyond homes in the U.S. South and West and now lives in Northeastern homes, too. The researchers also found a wide diversity of indoor arthropods, a group of animals with exoskeletons that includes insects and spiders. Three factors that were linked with more diversity included living in a rural area, having a basement, or owning a cat or a dog.

Oldest Megamouth Shark on Record Had Chipped Tooth

Based on that tooth, paleontologists have been able to name a previously unknown ancient species of megamouth shark, one that's related to the modern but rarely seen megamouth shark, Megachasma pelagios, the researchers said. The newfound species, called Megachasma alisonae, is the oldest megamouth shark on record, and pushes back the existence of megamouth sharks by 13 million years, said the study's lead researcher Kenshu Shimada, a paleobiologist at DePaul University in Chicago. The distinct shape of the ancient tooth — which looks like a pitchfork with a prominent middle point and two side cusps — indicates that M. alisonae ate small fish, likely "by impaling them on the taller centrally placed crown," said study co-author David Ward, a retired research associate in the Department of Earth Sciences at the Natural History Museum in London, in the United Kingdom.

Fighting Hunger? Plant Protein May Keep You Feeling Full Longer than Meat

Eating plant protein may help keep you feeling full longer — and help you eat less at your next meal — than eating animal protein, a new study suggests. The meals varied in the protein patty and mash that was included: The first included a high-protein meat patty and a potato mash, the second had a high-protein patty that was made from legumes (a plant group that includes beans and lentils) and a split pea mash, and the third had a low-protein legume patty with a combination split pea and potato mash. Even more surprisingly, while the participants rated the high-protein vegetable patty meal as the most filling, they also said that the low-protein vegetable patty meal was just as filling as the high-protein meat patty meal, said Anne Raben, the study's senior author and a professor of obesity research at the University of Copenhagen.

Friday, November 4, 2016

Tadpoles Prefer Vegetarian Meals During Heat Waves

When it's just too darn hot, amphibian young adapt by changing their diet, weathering heat with vegetarian fare. In a new study, tadpoles representing three frog species were exposed to mock "heat waves" in the laboratory to test how amphibians in the wild might respond to warmer-than-average conditions due to climate change. Scientists are particularly interested in how the dietary needs of amphibians and other ectotherms, or "cold-blooded animals" — those that use external sources to regulate body temperature — may be affected by a warming world, the researchers wrote in the study.

Ancient 400-Pound Salmon Fought with Dagger-Like Teeth

Giant, spike-toothed salmon that weighed almost 400 lbs. (180 kilograms) once made their home in the ancient coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean, according to new research. The now-extinct salmon species spawned in California rivers approximately 11 million to 5 million years ago, the scientists said. The salmon's unusual spiky teeth were likely used to fight, helping them to defend their fertilized eggs, according to researchers from California State University, Stanislaus in Turlock, California.

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Eastern Shoshone Tribe in Wyoming marks return of buffalo

WIND RIVER INDIAN RESERVATION, Wyo. (AP) — Members of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe are marking the return of buffalo to their reservation in central Wyoming more than a century after the animals were wiped out. Read More http://ift.tt/2e4EQk6

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

A slow death along the Pilcomayo River

By Daniela Desantis GENERAL DIAZ, BOQUERON, PARAGUAY (Reuters) - In Paraguay, alongside the Pilcomayo River, black vultures flew over a shrinking pond where a group of crocodilian reptiles known as yacare caimans sought refuge. Water from the river, which divides Paraguay and Argentina in the area of the Gran Chaco, was scarce. This is not an uncommon sight in the region of General Diaz, about 700 kilometres (435 miles) northwest of the country's capital Asuncion, where the Pilcomayo’s waters form lakes and streams that give life to capybaras, birds and caimans.

Watch Astronaut Chris Hadfield Read to an Adorable Puppet Dog

Retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield reads his new picture book, "The Darkest Dark" (Little, Brown and Co., 2016), to an eager rock-star dog in an episode of the new Amazon Prime video series "Bookaboo," which was released online Oct. 28. The eight-episode first season came out all at once on Amazon's streaming service, and features celebrities reading to the puppy backstage. "He's sort of got this strange cockney accent and a very delighted but almost aging-rock-star view of the world, which is kind of fun to talk to," Hadfield told Space.com.

Monday, October 31, 2016

Feds release plan to protect Western sagebrush country

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Federal officials on Monday released an ambitious wildfire-fighting and restoration plan to protect a wide swath of sagebrush country in the intermountain West that supports cattle ranching and is home to an imperiled bird. Read More http://ift.tt/2f6krsA

'Ghost Fishing' Kills Long After the Gear Is Lost

Left-behind fishing gear that continues to catch — sometimes called ghost fishing — entraps sea life from the world's largest animal, the blue whale, to the critically endangered small tooth sawfish, according to a new study. "Entanglement is the likely cause of death for many marine organisms, particularly whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions, sharks, turtles and rays," lead author Martin Stelfox told Seeker. Stelfox is the founder and director of the Oliver Ridley Project, which is working to combat derelict nets and other equipment that continue to fish in the Indian Ocean.

Why Kids Feel the Loss of a Pet So Deeply

The new results show that kids "often see themselves as the center of their pet's affections," study author Joshua Russell, an assistant professor of environmental studies at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, said in a statement. In the study, Russell asked 12 children between ages 6 and 13 in Toronto how they felt about the deaths of animals, including the deaths of their own pets. Although some of the children said they were devastated by the deaths of their furry friends for long periods of time, others said they were able to make peace with the deaths.

Halloween Fright: The Unusual Sex Lives of Dark Fishing Spiders

Similar in size, shape and coloration to large wolf spider species, the lesser-known dark fishing spider would no doubt give anybody with arachnophobia a decent scare. Dark fishing spiders (Dolomedes tenebrosus), as you'd expect from their name, are nocturnal and live near water. "They're around, but you have to go look for them at night, with a headlight," said Steven Schwartz, a behavioral ecologist and fishing-spider researcher at Gonzaga University in Washington.

Friday, October 28, 2016

Ancient Battle Left 'Sea Monster' With Tooth Stuck in Its Face

About 75 million years ago, a mosasaur — a dolphin-like, predatory, marine reptile that lived during the dinosaur age — bit another mosasaur so hard that it left its tooth behind, embedded in its foe's face, new research finds. Now, paleontologists are studying the remains of the victim, a creature that sustained not one, but two attacks on its face, likely from different adversaries, said paleontologist Takuya Konishi, an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati. "The specimen represents the first direct, unequivocal evidence of nonlethal biting, and not predation, between mosasaurs," Konishi told Live Science, here at the 76th annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Hairy Liaisons: Ancient Chimps and Bonobos Hooked Up

Chimpanzees and bonobos are two species separated by about 2 million years and one impassible river that divides their range. Chimps and bonobos split off from a common ancestor between 1.5 million and 2 million years ago, and the two species share about 99.6 percent of their DNA, making them close relatives. The finding echoes the recent discoveries that ancient humans sometimes interbred with their close relatives Neanderthals and Denisovans, said study co-author Christina Hvilsom, who studies great-ape genetics and conservation at the Copenhagen Zoo in Denmark.

Ancient Bird Coughed Up 'Fishy' Pellet 120 Million Years Ago

About 120 million years ago, a bird dunked its beak into the water, caught a fish and, after digesting the meal, coughed up a pellet full of fish bones. The bird died moments later, but now its fossils are the oldest evidence of a bird pellet on record, a new study reported. The pellet — the first that is unambiguously from a bird that lived during the Mesozoic, the age of the dinosaurs — indicates that the ancient bird had a two-chambered stomach, much like birds do today, the researchers said.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

World's largest marine park created in Antarctic Ocean

Twenty-four countries on Friday agreed to create the world's largest marine park in the Antarctic Ocean, covering a massive 1.55 mln sq km (600,000 sq miles) of ocean. The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, meeting in Hobart, Australia, said the Ross Sea marine park will be protected from fishing for 35 years. The sanctuary will cover more than 12 percent of the Southern Ocean, which is home to more than 10,000 species including most of the world's penguins, whales, seabirds, colossal squid and Antarctic tooth fish.

A fossil hunter has only gone and found a bit of dinosaur brain

It’s an incredible find.