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China’s domestically developed AG600, the world’s largest amphibious aircraft, performed its maiden flight on Sunday from an airport on the shores of the South China Sea, the latest step in a military modernisation programme. China has stepped up research on advanced military equipment as it adopts a more muscular approach to territorial disputes in places such as the disputed South China Sea, rattling nerves in the Asia-Pacific region and the United States. State television showed live images of the AG600 lifting off from Zhuhai airport in the southern province of Guangdong, which sits on the South China Sea coast. It...

Beelzebufo ampinga was a beach-ball sized frog with a bite comparable to that of a lion.In the past, ancient frogs might have snacked on dinosaurs. Popular Science reports that there was once a “giant frog” that walked the earth called Beelzebufo ampinga. Named after an ancient deity referred to as “Lord of the Flies,” the massive amphibian is thought to have lived in Madagascar around 70 million years ago. The “beach ball-sized” frog has jaws that are “powerful enough to obliterate small dinosaurs.” Scientists first discovered the frog in 2008 and speculated that it might have used its powerful mouth...

Two hundred and seventy-eight million years ago, the world was a different place. Not only were the landmasses merged into the supercontinent of Pangaea, but the land was home to ancient animals unlike anything alive today. But until now, very little information was available about what animals were present in the southern tropics. In a study published in Nature Communications, scientists from The Field Museum and colleagues from around the world describe several new amphibian species and a reptile from northeastern Brazil that help fill this key geographic gap and reveal how animals moved among regions in the supercontinent. "Almost...

This Is The World’s Largest High-Speed Wheeled Amphibious Vehicle The amphibious vehicle company Gibbs Technologies is back at it, unveiling a monstrous V8-powered truck/boat called the Phibian, aimed at law enforcement and military agencies. It could just be the ultimate offroader. The specs on this thing are insane. Thanks to carbon fiber construction, it weighs over a thousand pounds less than a new Suburban, and it comes with a twin-turbo V8 diesel engine quoted at 500 horsepower. That means that this thing can cruise at highway speeds (in very open-topped comfort) and also hit 30 MPH on the water. Gibbs...

A new amphibian species can survive on land with no nostrils, lungs, or legs, say researchers who discovered the bizarre beast. The creature, found in Guyana, is part of the wormlike group of amphibians known as caecilians. Only one other caecilian species is known to live without lungs.

  In a move that will cheer up lovers of vehicles that can travel on both water and (very flat) land, students at a German engineering university have built a one-person hovercraft that uses an air thrust system to move and steer.Folks over at the Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences use a pneumatic propeller that pushes air through two channels. Each of the channels has a pair of flaps that behave like the thrust-reversing system of a turbo-drive to help a user easily maneuver left or right, go in reverse, and brake.The way the project is set up hints that...

Link post: use the link to go to the thread with the pictures in the Chat section, where any discussion and comments should be posted: Geology Pictures of the Week, November 14-20, 2004: Student Fossil Find & Eiger View

Linked article is about this. Here's the interesting excerpt: "Paleontologists are hailing the discovery by a first-year geology student of a new species of amphibian, a salamander-like creature that lived 300 million years ago. -- Adam Striegel picked up a rock the size of a baseball along a road near Pittsburgh International Airport. He decided to show it to one of his lecturers, Charles Jones. Jones spotted some teeth and the outline of a skull. -- "It was immediately clear that this was rare," said Jones." And one of my favorite mountains (not a volcano: click for full-size version):

Papers have been flapping with new headlines about the latest in a long line of alleged dinosaur ancestors of birds. This one is claimed to be a sensational dinosaur with feathers on its hind legs, thus four ‘wings’.1 This was named Microraptor gui—the name is derived from words meaning ‘little plunderer of Gu’ after the paleontologist Gu Zhiwei. Like so many of the alleged feathered dinosaurs, it comes from Liaoning province of northeastern China. It was about 3 feet (1 meter) long from its head to the tip of its long tail, but its body was only about the size...