Mars Could Have Supported Life, NASA Says

Several billion years ago, Mars may well have been a pleasant place for tiny microbes to live, with plenty of water as well as minerals that could have served as food, NASA scientists said Tuesday at a news conference on the latest findings from their Mars rover. But they have yet to find signs that actual microbes did live in that oasis.

“We have found a habitable environment that is so benign and supportive of life that probably if this water was around and you had been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it,” said John P. Grotzinger, the California Institute of Technology geology professor who is the principal investigator for the NASA mission.

In drilling into its first rock, a fine-grained mudstone, the scientists said, the rover Curiosity — a self-contained science laboratory about the size of a Mini Cooper — sent back to Earth convincing evidence that Mars was once awash in water.

Plus, the Curiosity scientists identified elements in the rocks — sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon — that are some of the key ingredients of life, as well as minerals, like sulfates and sulfides, that primitive microbes could eat for food. Dr. Grotzinger said these minerals are “effectively like batteries” and can provide an energy source for life.

This included the presence of clays, one of the main things that scientists were hoping that Curiosity would find on its two-year, $2.5 billion mission. Clays form in waters that have a neutral pH.

“What we have learned in the last 20 years of modern microbiology is that very primitive organisms, they can derive energy just by feeding on rocks,” Dr. Grotzinger said.

Even so, the Curiosity scientists said they had not yet definitively found the carbon building blocks needed to come together to give rise to living organisms. Two earlier NASA rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, also found strong evidence of liquid water on the Martian surface, but in places on the planet that were highly acidic and salty — far harsher for any hypothetical organisms.

About three billion years ago, the conditions on Mars changed. With just one-tenth the mass of Earth, Mars was unable to hold on to most of its atmosphere. The inside of the planet cooled, and the volcanoes stopped erupting. The water froze or evaporated and escaped into space. Mars became cold and dry.

Curiosity landed in August in a 96-mile crater named Gale, gouged long ago by a meteor, and has been roaming in the area since then. The rover’s ultimate destination is a three-mile-high mountain at the center of the crater that caught the eye of scientists because they detected the presence of clays in observations taken by orbiting spacecraft. Now, long before getting to the mountain, scientists have already found the clays, and these rocks would be prime candidates to look for organics.

The scientists and engineers have been taking a deliberate, careful approach to checking the rover’s systems. The last instrument to be tested was the drill, which ground up its first rock a month ago. A bit of the powder was then scooped up and dropped in a sophisticated chemistry laboratory for analysis.

The surface of Mars today is cold, dry and battered by radiation from space. But planetary scientists think young Mars, more than three billion years ago, was a far more hospitable place, with a thicker atmosphere, warmer weather and water flowing at the surface. Some scientists believe that if life ever took hold there, it might persist even today beneath the surface. …

Mars Could Have Supported Life, NASA Says – NYTimes.com.

I’m fond of the idea that some advanced humans (the “gods”) came from Mars 3 billion years ago.

Chinese bowl found at garage sale fetches over $2.2 million at auction

4 days ago

4 days ago

A 1,000-year-old Chinese bowl that was bought for a few dollars at a garage sale in New York state sold for more than $2.2 million at auction on Tuesday.An unnamed New York family bought the “Ding” bowl, which is from the Northern Song Dynasty, for no more than $3 in 2007 and displayed it on a mantelpiece with no idea as to its real worth, Sotheby’s said.After consulting with experts, the owners consigned the bowl for auction. Sotheby’s estimated it would sell for $200,000 to $300,000. London dealer Giuseppe Eskenazi paid $2,225,000 including commission for the bowl, which measures just over five inches in diameter, at the auction in New York City.Sotheby’s said the only known bowl of the same form, size and almost identical decoration has been in the collection of the British Museum in London for more than 60 years.

via Chinese bowl found at garage sale fetches over $2.2 million at auction | Reuters.

As they say, the more you pay, the more it’s worth.

9-Year-Old Girl Gets Dinosaur Named After Her, Makes All Other Children/Adults Jealous

4-year-old Daisy Morris found some bones while strolling on the beach–a few years later, she now has a pterosaur named after her.A few years ago, while strolling down a beach on the Isle of Wight (a small island in the English Channel), 4-year-old Daisy Morris stumbled on something unusual. She’d always been interested in dinosaurs, and had started hunting for fossils a year earlier with her mother. But this looked a bit different–blackened bones sticking out of the sand that didn’t look quite familiar.

She took them to an archaeologist who discovered that the bones were fossils from the early Cretaceous period, about 100 million years ago, and that they belonged to a previously undiscovered creature. Four years later, the study was published in PLoS One, explaining that the bones came from a small species of pterosaur, a flying dinosaur, which has been named in Daisy’s honor: Vectidraco daisymorrisae.

Pterosaurs have been found before on the Isle of Wight; in fact, the Isle is one of the richest dinosaur sites in all of Europe. You can even see dinosaur footprints at one part of the beach at low tide. So it’s not too surprising that after Daisy’s discovery, researchers dug a bit further and managed to come out with almost a full skeleton of the 12-foot-long flying ‘saur, which will be displayed at the National History Museum.

[via BBC]

Russian researchers find unidentified signs of life in the bottom of an Antarctic lake

An “unclassified” life form has been found in a recent sample taken from the bottom of an Antarctic lake.

The bacteria were found in an ice core taken from the bottom of Lake Vostok, which is covered by an ice sheet more than two miles thick.

Researchers tested the sample, saying that its DNA is different enough from existing records to count as its own species.

According to the Russian news site RIA Novosti, Sergei Bulat, a researcher at the St. Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, said:

“After excluding all known contaminants…we discovered bacterial DNA that does not match any known species listed in global databanks. We call it unidentified and ‘unclassified’ life.”

Full details of the discovery are still vague, though scientists are excited to have found signs of life in one of the coldest places on Earth. A U.S.-funded team has also drilled into a separate ice sheet in Antarctica, and says that they have encountered bacteria as well.

The sample may have been isolated as early as 17 million years ago, and this could be the first time the water has seen sunlight in millennia.

via Russian researchers find unidentified signs of life in the bottom of an Antarctic lake | abc7chicago.com.

Rail dig may have found London’s lost Black Death graves

Archaeologists said on Friday they had discovered a lost burial ground during excavations for a massive new rail project in London which might hold the bodies of some 50,000 people who were killed by the “Black Death” plague more than 650 years ago.

Thirteen skeletons, laid out in two careful rows, were found 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) below the road in the Farringdon area of central London by researchers working on the 16 billion pound ($24 billion) Crossrail project.

Historical records had indicated the area, described as a “no man’s land”, had once housed a hastily established cemetery for victims of the bubonic plague which killed about the third of England’s population following its outbreak in 1348.

“At this early stage, the depth of burials, the pottery found with the skeletons and the way the skeletons have been set out, all point towards this being part of the 14th Century emergency burial ground,” said Jay Carver, Crossrail’s lead archaeologist.

Limited records suggest up to 50,000 victims were buried in less than three years in the Farringdon cemetery as the plague ravaged the capital.

The archaeologists hope that the skeletons, which have been taken away for scientific tests, will shed light on the DNA signature of the plague and confirm the burial dates.

The cemetery find could be the second significant medieval discovery in England recently, after archaeologists confirmed last month they had discovered the remains of King Richard III, who died in battle in 1485, under a car park in central England.

Building works for Crossrail, a new railway link under central London and Europe’s largest infrastructure project, have already uncovered skeletons from more than 300 burials at a cemetery near the site of London’s notorious psychiatric Bedlam Hospital in the heart of the city of London. …

via Rail dig may have found London’s lost Black Death graves | Reuters.

Four Wings? Extra Feathered Limbs May Have Helped Early Birds Fly

It’s now generally accepted that the large leg feathers of the Microraptor were useful in flight, but a nagging question long remained unanswered: Did birds go through a “four-winged” stage, or were dinosaurs like the Microraptor merely an evolutionary side-branch?The new study, which published in the journal Science on Friday, has provided the first “solid evidence” that at least some ancestors of modern birds not only had four wings for a time, but also very large feathers on the hind limbs — a feature that hints strongly at flight.”If an animal has big feathers on its legs and feet, it’s definitely something that’s not good for fast running,” Xing Xu, a paleontologist and one of the authors of the study, told New Scientist.Moreover, Thomas Holtz, a paleontologist at the University of Maryland who was not involved in the study, told NBC News, “the fact that Xu and his team found evidence of leg feathers in a few different species of different sizes [indicates] that leg plumage was fairly common.”"We’re really seeing how widespread this condition was,” he added. “It’s really clarifying that it isn’t a weird side branch.”Still, scientists warn that much remains unknown about the feathered hind limbs: What were the feathers used for? Were they aerodynamic, helping the birds to fly and/or steer, or were they perhaps only for protection and insulation? For example, some modern birds, such as certain species of chickens, still have downy legs — but the extra feathers aren’t used for flight.The two-dimensional nature of the fossils made it difficult for the scientists to “reconstruct the precise location and orientation of the leg feathers,” The New York Times notes. …

via Four-Winged Birds? Extra Feathered Limbs May Have Helped Early Birds In Flight, Study Suggests PHOTO.

Giant Camels Came From the Great White North

… You grew up assuming that camels originated in the Middle East, right? Or maybe Africa or Asia, like the two-humped Bactrian? … that no longer seems to be the case, … You see, evidence has been found that giant, prehistoric camels lived in the Arctic circle and this just might be where our even-toed, arid-dwelling friendscame from.
The facts are straightforward: Fossilized fragments of a leg bone were discovered in Ellesmere Island, in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, and they’re about 3.5 million years old. Guessed to be a “High Arctic” camel, the assumption is that they lived in the forests during a prehistoric period of global warmth.

Now, we already knew that the camel forebears came from North America. About 3 to 4 millions years ago, they hoofed across the now-vanished land bridge (the Bering Isthmus) that linked Russia with Sarah Palin’s backyard in Alaska. Some wandered south first and became llamas and alpacas, while others headed into Asia and African and became the camels that Indiana Jones didn’t want to ride on many years later.

But this new fossil analysis lets us look further back in time, gives paleontologists a wider approximation of the animals’ old stomping grounds, and even reveals more about climate change. It also shows that these ancient camels were big, at least a third higher than the Arabian species. …

The authors of this study published their findings in Nature Communications: ”The results suggest that the evolutionary history of modern camels can be traced back to a lineage of giant camels that was well established in a forested Arctic.”

Vertebrate paleontologist Natalia Rybczynski from the Canadian Museum of Nature also ruminates that “perhaps some specialisations seen in modern camels, such as their wide flat feet, large eyes and humps for fat may be adaptations derived from living in a polar environment.”

Like tauntauns in icy Hoth, now we know that gigantic progenitor camels stalked the unfrozen north a long, long time ago. And though proto-humans didn’t mix with them, we imagine if they did, we’d probably have ridden and abused them. We’re such jerks….

http://www.geekosystem.com/giant-camels-in-great-white-north/

Ancient bones found 100 years ago belong to undiscovered species

Prehistoric bones discovered more than a century ago belong to a previously-undiscovered species of ocean predator, research has revealed.

The partial skeleton, including a jawbone and teeth, has been identified as belonging to a group of ancient crocodiles that were similar to dolphins.

An amateur palaeontologist found the specimen in a clay pit near Peterborough in the early 1900s, and it has since been held by The Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow.

The newly confirmed species, which was examined by a team of experts led by the University of Edinburgh, helps scientists better understand how marine reptiles were evolving about 165 million years ago.

The animal’s pointed, serrated teeth and large gaping jaw meant it would have been suited to feeding on large-bodied prey.

Researchers said it represents a missing link between marine crocodiles that fed on small prey, and others that were similar to modern-day killer whales, which fed on larger prey.

Scientists were able to reach their conclusions by studying the size and shape of the jawbone and teeth, which showed that the animal had a wide gap and shearing bite.

They have named the animal Tyrannoneustes lythrodectikos, meaning “blood-biting tyrant swimmer”.

Dr Mark Young, of the University of Edinburgh’s school of geosciences, who led the study, said: “It is satisfying to be able to classify a specimen that has been unexamined for more than 100 years, and doubly so to find that this discovery improves our understanding of the evolution of marine reptiles.” …

via Ancient bones found 100 years ago belong to undiscovered species | News | Edinburgh | STV.

New feathered dinosaur fossil challenges bird evolution theory

The discovery of a new bird-like dinosaur from the Jurassic period challenges widely accepted theories on the origin of flight.

Co-authored by Dr Gareth Dyke, Senior Lecturer in Vertebrate Palaeontology at the University of Southampton, the paper describes a new feathered dinosaur about 30 cm in length which pre-dates bird-like dinosaurs that birds were long thought to have evolved from.

Over many years, it has become accepted among palaeontologists that birds evolved from a group of dinosaurs called theropods from the Early Cretaceous period of Earth’s history, around 120-130 million years ago. Recent discoveries of feathered dinosaurs from the older Middle-Late Jurassic period have reinforced this theory.

The new ‘bird-dinosaur’ Eosinopteryx described in Nature Communications this week provides additional evidence to this effect.

“This discovery sheds further doubt on the theory that the famous fossil Archaeopteryx – or “first bird” as it is sometimes referred to – was pivotal in the evolution of modern birds,” says Dr Dyke, who is based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.

“Our findings suggest that the origin of flight was much more complex than previously thought.”

The fossilised remains found in north-eastern China indicate that, while feathered, this was a flightless dinosaur, because of its small wingspan and a bone structure that would have restricted its ability to flap its wings.

The dinosaur also had toes suited to walking along the ground and fewer feathers on its tail and lower legs, which would have made it easier to run.

via :: University of Southampton.

Rock solid proof of alien life? Scientists claim fossilized algae inside meteorite

Fossilized algae recently discovered inside a Sri Lankan meteorite could finally prove the existence of extra-terrestrial life, claim the authors of the new paper.

­In a recently published article in the Journal of Cosmology titled “Fossil Diatoms in a New Carbonaceous Meteorite”, scientists from the UK and Sri Lanka claim to have found fossilized algae in a meteorite.

The paper alleges that “microscopic fossilized diatoms were found in the sample,” which fell in Sri Lanka in December last year. The finding, the work suggests is a “strong evidence to support the theory of cometary

panspermia.” The theory argues that life across planets is spread by meteorites and asteroids. Panspermia suggests that life could have existed on another planet and moved to Earth.

The scientists concluded the paper by saying “the presence of structures of this kind in any extra-terrestrial setting could be construed as unequivocal proof of biology.”

Samples from the rock were collected immediately after a large meteorite disintegrated and fell in the village of Araganwila in Sri Lanka on 29 December 2012.

The scientific community, including Prof Francis Thackeray from the Institute of Human Evolution at Wits University welcomed the report as “very exciting” yet “very controversial”, as samples could have been contaminated on earth, Business Day reports. …

The study was conducted by a group headed by Chandra Wickramasinghe, the director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham, who was also a co-founder of Panspermia theory.

The finding however has already come under sharp criticism, with astronomers claiming that the meteorite looks more like a rock that could be found on earth as the study provides vague details of the finding.

Astronomer and lecturer Phil Plait wrote in his blog on Slate that the chemical analysis presented “doesn’t prove it’s a carbonaceous chondrite, let alone a meteorite,” and there is “no reason to trust that what they have is a meteorite.”

Plait also cited a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology Patrick Kociolek as saying that there was no sign that the diatoms illustrated in the study were “fossilized material,” and that most of them were species that represented “a clear case of contamination with freshwater.”

Speaking with HuffingtonPost, the author of the study did not deny that the meteorite his team studied contained known freshwater species from Earth. But there were also “at least half a dozen species that diatom experts have not been able to identify,” Wick

ramasinghe added. …

via Rock solid proof of alien life? Scientists claim fossilized algae inside meteorite — RT.