Liaoning Province in China is known for the substantial amount of dinosaur fossils that’ve turned up in the dirt there. Over the years everything from insects to fish to plants have been discovered in such detail that even skin textures have been left behind in the rock.
Now it appears that a new feathered dinosaur that is cousin to the Velociraptor can be added to the long list of discoveries there.
The new dinosaur with a ridiculous name to try and pronounce, Zhenyuanlong suni, stood at about 5 feet tall, had wings too short to allow them to fly and some of the most complex feathers seen on a dinosaur up to this point. The feathers’ complexity is clearly visible on the rock that the near-complete skeleton has been found in and resemble the feathers of today’s eagles.
Professor Junchang Lü from the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences’ Institute of Geology:
“The first feathered dinosaurs were found here and now our discovery of Zhenyuanlong suni indicates that there is an even higher diversity of feathered dinosaurs than we thought. It’s amazing that new feathered dinosaurs are still being found.”
It’s also hugely terrifying to think of these semi-flying, feathered 5 foot dinosaurs tracking you down to feed their young.
Back in 2006 the New Horizon space probe left Earth on mission to visit Pluto.
On July 14th of this year, New Horizon will finally reach its destination and give us a closer look at the piece of rock that was once on the a-list of planets in our neighborhood.
In January New Horizon was brought out of hibernation in preparation for its approach to Pluto.
As photos began coming back showing Pluto in more detail than we’ve ever seen, scientists were a little bummed they weren’t seeing much of Pluto’s little moon-buddy, Charon. That all changed as scientists merged photos from the RALPH and LORRI cameras onboard the probe.
Suddenly they could plainly see the photobombing moon of Charon in the background of the Pluto photos they already had.
New Horizon’s mission includes mapping Pluto (and possibly Charon) and gathering as much info as possible about Pluto. Once it heads away from Pluto it will try to collect information about any object it can come across in the Kuiper Belt before moving into who-knows-where.
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of what appears to be an ancient lodging almost 20 feet wide and 65 feet long in central Reykjavík. A government-sponsored team stumbled across the remains of the building and believes it predates another, similar lodge discovered in 2001.
While dating information and analysis aren’t yet finished, the researchers firmly believe that this discovery will rewrite local history regarding the settlement of that area of Iceland.
Another great example that illustrates that we really don’t have a full grasp of the planet’s history with each new discovery…
And a reminder that somewhere…under layers of dirt…
The ancient ones are probably waiting for us to find them.
In May of 2013 during a geophysics survey along the Coast of Norfolk in England, researchers stumbled across what might be the oldest
evidence of human life in the region…footprints.
While skeptical at first, archaeologists have been doing extensive testing of dozens of foot-like indentations in a sediment layer that’s been
revealed by the tide and erosion in the area (similar to the discovery of a possible pyramid we talk about in the latest episode of the Weird Things podcast).
Scientists took photos of the indentations from every angle in order to create a 3D model that they could use to determine whether these odd
hollows in the sediment were, in fact, footprints or, perhaps, something else.
Almost a year later and with lots of careful analysis, researchers are agreeing that these are footprints left by what appears to be “…at least two
children and one adult male.” Researchers are estimating that these prints date back between 800,000 to 1 million years ago.
For quite a while archaeologists have suspected that people inhabited Portugal long before people claimed to have first inhabited Portugal. Within the last three years, researchers have discovered small rock pyramids on a small island called Pico as well as cave paintings and tons of new artifacts believed to possibly be several thousand years old on the nearby island of Terceira.
Now reports are buzzing the news feeds about a find that could validate the theory that people settled in the area long before historians imagined…
The owner of a private yacht out for a spin around the islands picked up something on his GPS instrumentation.
That something appears to be a perfectly shaped pyramid approximately 200 feet tall.
Researchers and archaeology experts are descending on the area in hopes of learning more about the discovery.
We’re secretly hoping they find underwater versions of everything from Stargate or Mermummies or…something else just as awesome.
King Richard III’s body has been missing for several centuries now. Most historians figured the guy was buried near Leicester, England…somewhere. Nobody could figure out where the hell the body ended up after Henry VIII’s people lost the records showing the location of the remains.
Using other records of the day, archaeologists determined that the King’s remains were buried somewhere near the altar of the Grey Friars Church…
The very same Grey Friars Church that was about to become a parking lot.
After construction began and trenches were being dug for the new parking lot, things came to a screeching halt as workers found they’d unearthed a skeleton…a skeleton that had been there for a very long time.
Scientists and archaeologists descended on the future home of another forgettable strip mall to see if they could learn more about the skeleton who’d been chilling just a few feet below the surface of the area for what appeared to be several centuries.
After a lot of testing, retesting and verified tests….there was no doubt as to whose body this was.
Discovered last summer, this story has resurfaced (totally intentional pun) as the lab-coats have determined that this, in fact and without a doubt, King Richard III’s remains.
Makes you wonder what the hell’s under the nearest WalMart.
They’ve taken on Moby Dick, Captain Nemo’s Nautilus and even a bunch of Goonies.
While giant squids have been captured in the past and alleged parts of them have surfaced here and there…seeing one in the wild has been something of a Holy Grail moment that misty-eyed scientists and cryptozoologists have dreamt about forever.
Everyone can prepare to drop your jaws because there is now video of one of these mysterious monsters going about its business deep in the Pacific Ocean.
A team of three Japanese scientists spent over 400 hours crammed in a 31 foot submersible over the course of 100 missions about 150 miles north of Iwo Jima.
At a depth of 2,066 feet, the lights from the submersible reflected onto the creature’s silver skin as it eyeballed the sub curiously before it swam off.
The Discovery Channel’s new branch, Curiosity, is keeping the footage secret until the season finale later this month when they’ll unveil it to the world for the first time…
Up until then? A lot of “Release the Kraken!” headlines.
We’re pretty sure that some of you have been in a house or a building with sagging floorboards before and just never really gave much thought to what was causing the sagging. Probably just figured,”Meh…old house. Sags.” End of story.
Mr. Steer of Plymouth, England had been wondering the same thing about one such sag in his living room for quite a while. Once he retired, he decided to get down to business and fix the problem.
He decided to repair the joists in the floor that might’ve been causing the sag when he noticed something else.
“I was replacing the joists in the floor when I noticed a slight depression – it appeared to be filled in with the foundations of the house,” he said.
“I dug down about one foot but my wife just wanted to me to cover it back up because we had three children running around at the time.
“I always wanted to dig it out to see if I could find a pot of gold at the bottom, so when I retired at the end of last year that’s what I started to do.”
What Steer found was a well dating back to the 16th century. With the help of a friend, Steer began excavating the well. During the excavation, Steer and his friend uncovered what appears to be a peasant’s sword.
After installing lights in the well and making it the new focal point of his living room, Steer’s research has taught him that the well was built in the 16th century by Sir Francis Drake to carry water from Dartmoor to Plymouth. The well had been covered over sometime around 1895.
Just hope they don’t find that video tape and that creepy little Samara Morgan doesn’t come crawling out in the middle of the night dripping well-water all over the floor.
In an awesome case of 1890s cutting-edge tech meeting modern technology, sound historian (yes…that’s a job) at Indiana University, Patrick Feaster, has done something amazingly nerdy and fantastic.
While looking for an illustration of the world’s oldest recording studio for a talk he was giving on Thomas Edison’s recordings, Feaster pulled a book for research. Upon glancing at the index, he noticed there was an article on the gramophone. When he turned to the article? A paper print of the actual recording.
In February of this year, Feaster had done something amazing with these old paper prints of the recordings…
He played them back.
By scanning these paper copies Feaster is able to unwind or ‘de-spiral’ the line that the needle would follow on the physical record. Remarkably these unwound spirals look a lot like a modern audio file. Using special software, Feaster is able to then play back the audio captured from a flat photo.
Feaster had already done this twice with two other recordings. What makes this recording interesting is that it predate his other finds.
“In that recording, Berliner tells us he’s making a record for Rosenthal to experiment with,” Feaster says. “He shares that they’re in this particular building in Hanover, and then he recites some poetry, sings a song and counts to 20 in several languages.”
According to Feaster and his colleagues what he accidentally stumbled across was the earliest known gramophone recording ever made…printed out on paper…and played back 122 years later.
This fall a collaboration between NOVA & National Geographic will show how scientists think primitive culture may have moved the five-ton, ten-foot-tall Moai statues on Easter Island.
One year ago Swedish Ocean Explorer Team (Ocean X), using sonar, came across something buried under the ice in the Baltic Sea. Tons of hopeful theories have been tossed around as to what it may be. Ufo? Sunken ship? Arctic Stonehenge? No one could guess from the sonar imagery.
Now, a year later, Ocean X is actually on site and beginning a deeper investigation into what this thing is that has even them baffled.
As they continue to uncover the mystery, pictures are starting to emerge from the site causing even more speculation and excitement.
There is definitely something down there. While the research team from Ocean X, a company that finds sunken ships and sells what they find for a substantial profit, explores the site their finds are not making this discovery any less fascinating.
Pictures and video are beginning to pop up online as the divers explore the strange anomoly. While the team has stated that it could be anything including a strange geological formation, they’ve also said that, due to funding, they don’t have much interest in spending too much time exploring it and need to get back to work on more profitable ventures.
“The object appeared more as a huge mushroom, rising 3-4 meters/10-13 feet from the seabed, with rounded sides and rugged edges. The object had an egg shaped hole leading into it from the top, as an opening. On top of the object they also found strange stone circle formations, almost looking like small fireplaces. The stones were covered in something resembling soot.
First we thought this was only stone, but this is something else. And since no volcanic activity has ever been reported in the Baltic Sea the find becomes even stranger. As laymen we can only speculate how this is made by nature, but this is the strangest thing I have ever experienced as a professional diver.”
We just want them to watch a copy of John Carpenter’s The Thing before they start messing around too much…oh…and to put their dogs away.
A shockingly well preserved Wooly Mammoth has been found in the far flung regions of Siberia and it could lead to the future resurrection of the species. The six-month old animal died over 10,000 years ago. It’s eyes and trunk are were found preserved in the permafrost.
But back to the main question, how does this lead to us bringing back the fuzzy beasts of yore?
Some scientists hold out hope that well preserved sperm or other cells containing viable DNA could be used to resurrect the mammoth lineage.
Despite the inherent difficulties, Dr Agenbroad remains optimistic about the potential for cloning.
“When we got the Jarkov mammoth [found frozen in Taimyr, Siberia, in 1997], the geneticists told me: ‘if you can get us good DNA, we’ll have a baby mammoth for you in 22 months’,” he told BBC News.
The beast did not initially yield a sufficient DNA sample but is being sent to Japan for further study. Meanwhile, scientists fret that further finds could be tainted by a burgeoning new black market trade. Siberian scavengers, who used to simply sell the recovered from the ice have since begun selling mammoth parts found in the permafrost online. For example, mammoth hair sells for $50 an inch.
