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'Hogwarts' Dragon Unveiled By Larry O'Hanlon, Animal Planet News May 24 — A dragon-like dinosaur named after Harry Potter's alma mater has performed a bit of black magic on its own family tree, say paleontologists who unveiled the "Dragon King of Hogwarts" on Monday in Albuquerque. The newly described horny-headed dinosaur Dracorex hogwartsia lived about 66 million years ago in South Dakota, just a million years short of the extinction of all dinosaurs. But its flat, almost storybook-style dragon head has overturned everything paleontologists thought they knew about the dome-head dinos called pachycephalosaurs. "What you knew about pachycephalosaurs — you...

The U.S. Department of Interior has designated Nebraska's Ashfall Fossil Beds as a national natural landmark, the first such landmark to be designated in almost two decades. The site, near the town of Neligh (see Nebraska map), is home to hundreds of skeletons of extinct rhinos, camels, three-toed horses, and other vertebrates that were killed and buried by ash from a huge volcanic eruption some 12 million years ago. It is the only place on Earth where large numbers of fossil mammals have been found as whole, three-dimensionally preserved skeletons. "Ashfall has tremendous value for science and education and great...

Please join me for breakfast. It's time to fuel up again. On the table in my small Berkeley apartment this morning is a healthy-looking little meal -- a bowl of imported McCann's Irish oatmeal topped with Cascadian Farms organic frozen raspberries, and a cup of Peet's Fair Trade Blend coffee. Like most of us, I prepare my breakfast at home, and the ingredients for this one probably cost me about $1.25. (If I went to a cafe in downtown Berkeley, I'd probably have to add $6 more, plus tip, for the same.) My breakfast fuels me up with about 400...

Cyberspace to Ted: The 18-to-34 year-olds aren't disinterested in news, they're disinterested in you -- or Brian Williams or, for God's sake, Bob Schieffer -- telling them what the news is. They're getting plenty of news, all they can handle, actually. They're just getting it on another screen, one which allows them to determine for themselves what is "important".......

New study shows methane on Saturn's moon Titan not biological NASA scientists are about to publish conclusive studies showing abundant methane of a non-biologic nature is found on Saturn's giant moon Titan, a finding that validates a new book's contention that oil is not a fossil fuel. "We have determined that Titan's methane is not of biologic origin," reports Hasso Niemann of the Goddard Space Flight Center, a principal NASA investigator responsible for the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer aboard the Cassini-Huygens probe that landed on Titan Jan. 14. Niemann concludes the methane "must be replenished by geologic processes on Titan,...

Spider Blood Found In 20 Million Year Old Fossil A scientist from the University of Manchester has discovered the first identified droplets of spider blood in a piece of amber up to 20 million years old. Two droplets of blood, technically known as haemolymph, have been preserved in the amber which also contains the spider -- Filistatidae -- a family commonly found in South America and the Caribbean. The droplets are the first identified examples of spider blood ever found in an amber fossil. It is possible the blood could be used to extract DNA. The fossil, which is 4cm...

Compared with fields like genetics and neuroscience and cosmology, botany comes up a bit short in the charisma department. But when scientists announced last week that they had figured out how plants grow, one had to take note, not only because of the cleverness required to crack a puzzle that dates to 1885, but because of what it says about controversy and certainty in science -- and about the evolution debate. In 1885, scientists discovered a plant-growth hormone and called it auxin. Ever since, its mechanism of action had been a black box, with scientists divided into warring camps about...

A strange 525 million-year-old fossil creature is baffling scientists because it does not fit neatly into any existing animal groups.The animal, from the early Cambrian Period, might have belonged to a now extinct mollusc-like phylum, academics from America and China say. Other researchers have suggested the creature could represent an early annelid or arthropod. Details are published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The 5-10cm-long (2-4 inch) fossil, from Anning in China, had a flattened body and horizontal fins which, researchers think, could have been used to support it as it moved along the sea floor. It also had...

A small, fossilized mammal had what appears to be poisonous fangs that allowed it to bite like a snake – the first such find in an extinct mammal, Canadian researchers say. Vertebrate paleontologist Richard Fox of the University of Alberta in Edmonton found the specimen in 1991. Now Fox and his research team say the extinct, mouse-sized creature was built to deliver venom. The fossil specimen, Bisonalveus browni, is shown in this recent handout photo. (CP photo) The world is home to few living mammals with venom delivery systems: the duck-billed platypus, the Caribbean solenodon, and a few rat-like shrews....

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Scientists on Wednesday unveiled 11 skeletons of prehistoric crocodiles and said their discovery suggests that an ancient land bridge once linked South America to Indo-Pakistan. ADVERTISEMENT The fossilized skeletons of the Baurusuchus salgadoensis appear to be closely related to another ancient crocodile species, the Pabwehshi pakistanesis discovered in Pakistan, scientists from Rio de Janeiro's Federal University said. "This discovery really proves that South America was at one time linked to the India-Pakistan bloc and this link could have only been through Antarctica or Australia," said Rudolph Trouw, regional editor of the scientific magazine Gondwana Research....

Ice Age armadillos the size of cars, fossil shows Builders have found the fossil of a giant armadillo, which lived up to 2 million years ago and would have been the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, in southern Peru. "They were carrying out work inside a private home and stumbled upon this surprise during the digging," Pedro Luna, an archaeologist from the National Institute of Culture, said. The armadillo order first evolved around 50 million years ago in South America. The type found in Cusco was a glyptodon, one of the biggest ancient armadillos from the Ice Ages. "It was...

Reproductive Riddle Unscrambled A pair of fossilized eggs found inside pelvis of dinosaur supports a link with birds Friday, April 15, 2005 Updated at 8:30 AM EST From Friday's Globe and Mail Calgary — Scientists have for the first time discovered fossilized eggs inside the body of a dinosaur, which provides concrete clues about ancient reproduction and supports the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs, according to research published today. The pair of hard-shelled eggs about the size of large, long yams were found inside the pelvis of a female oviraptorid, a meat-eating bipedal dinosaur that lived about 80 million...

Sen. Robert Byrd said Wednesday he’s "inclined to run" next year for the Senate seat he’s held since 1959. "I’m inclined to run, but I’m not making any announcement today," said Byrd, who has spent 52 years in Congress, longer than anyone currently serving. "I’m studying about it, thinking about it, talking about it with my friends and people in West Virginia." Byrd, 87, long has been considered virtually unbeatable in West Virginia, a state to which he has directed billions of dollars in federal money. The eight-term senator has been Senate majority leader and the chairman of the check-writing...

Oldest Fossils Aren’t   03/11/2005 A new analysis of the world’s oldest claimed fossil rock, a banded deposit off the coast of Greenland said to be 3.8 billion years old, probably contains no signature of life, reports Stephen Moorbath (Oxford) in Nature.1  He has visited the Akilia site twice where rocks were purported to contain graphite of biological origin.  He couldn’t find it.  This persuasive discovery seems an almost inevitable, yet highly problematic, consequence to the increasing scientific doubts about the original claim.  We may well ask what exactly was the material originally analysed and reported?  What was the apatite...

Ethiopia Archaeologists Make Important Fossil Find Sat Mar 5, 2005 12:03 PM GMT ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Archaeologists studying human origins in eastern Ethiopia have discovered 12 fossils that appear to be older than the famous fossil "Lucy," the team leader said on Saturday. "The discovery of 12 early hominid fossÿil specimens estimated to be between 3.8 to 4 million years old will be important in terms of understanding the early phases of human evolution before Lucy," Ethiopian archeologist Yohannes Haile Selassie told a news conference. "It is hoped that the new discoveries will allow scientists to connect the dots,...

Scientists find fossil proof of Egypt's ancient climate 'At a snail's pace' By Tony Fitzpatrick Feb. 2, 2005 — Earth and planetary scientists at Washington University in St. Louis are studying snail fossils to understand the climate of northern Africa 130,000 years ago. While that might sound a bit like relying on wooly bear caterpillars to predict the severity of winter, the snails actually reveal clues about the climate and environment of western Egypt, lo those many years ago. They also could shed light on the possible role weather and climate played in the dispersal of humans "out of Africa"...

Prehistoric badger had dinosaurs for breakfast Michael Hopkin Fossil of a surprisingly large, carnivorous mammal is discovered in China. This artist's impression shows how the metre-long mammals might have looked. © Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Archaeologists have dug up a new species of mammal that roamed China during the reign of the dinosaurs. The creature was large enough to feast on young dinosaurs, exploding the myth that all of the mammals living back then were relatively tiny. Repenomamus giganticus, as the creature has been christened, was more than a metre long, about the size...

LONDON (Reuters) - Cutting down on fossil fuel pollution could accelerate global warming and help turn parts of Europe into desert by 2100, according to research to be aired on British television on Thursday. "Global Dimming," a BBC Horizon documentary, will describe research suggesting fossil fuel by-products like sulfur dioxide particles reflect the sun's rays, "dimming" temperatures and almost canceling out the greenhouse effect. The researchers say cutting down on the burning of coal and oil, one of the main goals of international environmental agreements, will drastically heat rather than cool climate. "When the cooling affect goes away -- and...

President Bush says the nation needs advanced nuclear-power plants, calling them a clean, "renewable" energy source for the future... New Mexico Republican Pete V. Domenici... said he welcomed Mr. Bush's remarks. "Without any question," he said, the long-term electricity-generating alternative to the nation's dwindling supplies of natural gas "will have to be nuclear power. If America is afraid of it, the world will use" advanced nuclear technology. Sen. Domenici is expected to offer an energy bill that will include financial incentives for the first new nuclear-power plants. Nuclear power now supplies 20% of the nation's electricity, according to the U.S....