discoveries

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5 Most Incredible Discoveries of the Week

Including a rodent with superhero senses

(Newser) - An incredibly old turtle and one of the most annoyingly popular songs of the 1990s make the list:
  • 'Punxsutawney Phil on Steroids' Is Unearthed : A beefy rodent with superhero sight and ultra-sensitive hearing? Meet the "humongous" 20-pound Vintana sertichi, a mammal fossil from the dinosaur era recently found
...

King-Protecting 'Witchmarks' Uncovered in Home

Though King James I never made it to the Knole estate in Kent

(Newser) - Most old homes bear normal signs of wear and tear. The strange gouge marks beneath the floorboards of "one of Britain's most important historic houses," however, tell a pretty interesting story, the Independent reports: They were intended to guard King James I from witches and other evil...

Eggs' Shape May Have Helped Birds Outlive Dinosaurs

Study suggests differences played a role

(Newser) - So why did birds survive the mass extinction that wiped out their dinosaur relatives? A new study suggests that the shape of their eggs played a role, reports the BBC . Scientists aren't sure exactly what that role was, but they do know that eggs of survivor birds were shaped...

Amphibious 'Sea Monster' Made the Move to Water

Ancient ichthyosaur reveals missing link to evolutionary record

(Newser) - Scientists have found a real, not-live "sea monster" they say finally fills an evolutionary gap between sea and land dwellers around the time of the dinosaurs. Cartorhynchus lenticarpus—imagine a dolphin with huge flippers and a short snout—made waves in what is now China 248 million years ago,...

'Punxsutawney Phil on Steroids' Is Unearthed

'Vintana sertichi' dwarfed other mammals of its day

(Newser) - Back in the dinosaurs' day, mammals were the size of mice. But towering above them was one beefy rodent that one scientist calls "Punxsutawney Phil on steroids"—with super senses to boot. The 20-pound Vintana sertichi was accidentally found in a giant slab of sandstone in Madagascar, reports...

Male Hummingbirds Stab Each Other in the Throat for the Ladies

Scientists say males use their long, sharp beaks as weapons in mating ritual

(Newser) - Bigger is better if you're a male hummingbird. Scientists have discovered that males grow longer, sharper beaks than females as they age—which they then use to stab each other in the throat during an elaborate mating ritual, according to research carried out by University of Connecticut scientists. The...

Scientists Puzzled by Huge Sunspot

Magnetic burst deemed 'too complicated for us' to grasp

(Newser) - Scientists scratched their heads this week over a massive sunspot, partly because it posed no threat to human civilization. The burst of solar magnetic activity, one of the biggest on record, whipped up powerful flares but didn't spew coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that can bring down Earth's power...

Hiker Stumbles Onto 90M-Year-Old Turtle

Experts then dig it up for museum display

(Newser) - What looked like a pile of weirdly gray rocks was actually something far more significant: a fossil dating back to the dinosaurs, the Las Cruces Sun-News reports. Jeff Dornbusch, a museum volunteer, noticed the gray mound while hiking in New Mexico's brown desert landscape more than ten years ago,...

Scientific Study Determines Catchiest Hit Song Ever

UK study participants recognized Spice Girls' 'Wannabe' in just 2.29 seconds

(Newser) - What makes that earworm an earworm? Musicologists at the University of Amsterdam recently set out to find out, collecting data from 12,000 participants who listened to a random selection from 1,000 hit singles in the UK dating back to the 1940s. The results were unveiled at the Manchester...

Old Stone Circles Baffle Archaeologists

"Big Circles" in Jordan date back at least 2K years

(Newser) - Archaeologists have snapped aerial photos of ancient stone circles as part of an ongoing effort to figure out why the structures exist, LiveScience reports. The images (taken in Jordan and viewable here ) show that 10 of the 11 structures are roughly 1,300 feet in diameter, but their purpose...

Sleeping With 20+ Women Cuts Guys' Cancer Risk

Possibly because of frequent ejaculation

(Newser) - One defense against prostate cancer may be promiscuity. A study of men in Montreal finds that those who'd slept with more than 20 women had a 28% lower risk of prostate cancer than did men who'd had sex with just one woman, CBS News reports. As for virgins,...

70-Year First? Gray Wolf Spotted in Grand Canyon

Conservationists trying to confirm multiple sightings

(Newser) - There's a new visitor roaming the Grand Canyon National Park's North Rim, and it's not exactly the fanny-pack-wearing/Nikon-toting variety: As National Geographic reports, wildlife officials are scrambling to confirm multiple sightings of a "wolf-like animal" that's believed to be a gray wolf—if it is,...

Scientists Spot Elusive Fanged Deer

Kashmir musk deer identified in Afghanistan for first time since 1948

(Newser) - A deer with fangs: It sounds made-up, and scientists hadn't seen one in Afghanistan since 1948. But researchers have found that the musk deer still exists in the country's Nuristan Province. In fact, they've spotted the creatures five times: a male three times, a female and a...

5 Most Incredible Discoveries of the Week

Including a revelation that might predict how you vote on Election Day

(Newser) - A possible piece of Amelia Earhart's plane and a centuries-old virus found in an unsavory place make the list:
  • Is This a Piece of Amelia's Plane? : A team that's been investigating the disappearance of Amelia Earhart says it identified a piece of metal retrieved in 1991 as
...

Dig Reveals Mass Sacrifice of Kids, Llamas

At least 42 children, 76 llamas killed in possible offering to the sea

(Newser) - Physical anthropologist John Verano has seen plenty while working in Peru over the last 30 years. What he came across this summer in the village of Huanchaquito, however, is "not what we've seen before, especially on the coast," he says. Locals noticed bones poking out of a...

Reaction to Gross Pictures Can Predict Political Leaning

It's all about how your brain unconsciously reacts

(Newser) - What can pictures of maggot infestations, mutilated animals, dirty toilets, and rotting corpses tell you about a person's political affiliation? A lot, apparently. Researchers led by Virginia Tech scanned people's brains as the subjects looked at disgusting images, and they found that the strength of the brain responses...

New Frog Species Has Croak Unlike Any Other

Atlantic Coast leopard frog discovered in NY, NJ is a 'cryptic' species, scientists say

(Newser) - A few years ago, researcher Jeremy Feinberg was looking into why the New York City area's southern leopard frog had disappeared when he stumbled onto a strange call between a bunch of frogs on Staten Island. The chuck, chuck, chuck sound his team heard was definitely different from the...

Investigators: We've Got a Piece of Earhart's Plane

And it suggests she never crashed

(Newser) - A team investigating the disappearance of Amelia Earhart is reporting, with "increasing confidence," that it has managed to identify a piece of her plane that was retrieved in 1991. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR, says the part in question is a metal patch that...

700-Year-Old Viruses Found —in Frozen Caribou Poop

It seems the ice is remarkably good at preserving unsavory things

(Newser) - If trekking into the wilds of northern Canada, drilling samples out of the ice core, and analyzing caribou poop to find a pair of really old viruses sounds like your idea of a hot Friday night, well, we present you Eric Delwart. As NPR reports, the viral researcher did just...

Scientists Link 2 Genes to Violent Behavior

Criminals in Finland more likely to have mutated versions

(Newser) - A new study might be inching us closer to the possibility that the worst criminals can blame their behavior on bad genes. In the study of 900 convicts in Finland, researchers found that those with mutated forms of two genes were 13 times more likely to have a history of...

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