Science Special News

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Nest of dinosaur eggs found in India

Three Indian explorers are giving amateurs a good name. The fossil enthusiasts recently set out on an 18-hour hunt near the central city of Indore and ended up with more than a hundred dinosaur eggs."They are the typical, spherical eggs that researchers interpret as having been laid by sauropod dinosaurs," paleontologist Hans-Dieter Sues told National Geographic News via email after viewing photos of the find. Sues is an associate director for research and collections at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and a former member of the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. Distinguished by their long necks and tails, plant-eating sauropods are among the largest creatures known to have roamed the Earth.These particular sauropod eggs were found in clusters of six to eight, one of the discoverers told the Hindustan Times.

The eggs were laid during the Cretaceous period, roughly 146 to 66 million years ago, by dinosaurs between 40 and 90 feet (12 and 27 meters) long, he added. Along with the eggs, the fossil hunters uncovered fossilized footprints of the dinosaurs, which used to come from miles around to make their nests in the sandy shores of a long-gone waterway. Dinosaur eggs have been found at hundreds of sites worldwide, Sues said, and "there are thousands of such eggs from the Late Cretaceous in central India." While "it is neither unusual nor unexpected," Sues said, "this is a nice find."

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Phobos mission 'could be key test'

Mars' moon Phobos could be the target for a technology trial that would seek to return rock samples to Earth. A UK team is developing a concept mission that aims to land a spacecraft on the potato-shaped object and grab material off its surface. These small rock fragments would then be despatched to Earth in a capsule. "It is being seen as a technological demonstrator for an eventual Mars sample return," said Dr Andrew Ball from the Open University. Those aspects of the mission that worked well could be incorporated into a full-scale assault on the Red Planet. Both Europe and the US have made the objective of bringing back Martian rocks to Earth laboratories a top priority for their space programmes. A joint venture is likely to occur within the next 15-20 years. But getting on and off a large planet will be extremely difficult, and the British satellite manufacturer Astrium is proposing to test the required technologies on the low-gravity target of Phobos first. "It would be a three-year mission. We're looking at a 2016 launch," said Marie-Claire Perkinson, a principal mission systems engineer at the Stevenage company.

Even so, the Phobos concept has a number of challenging steps, all of them capable of killing the mission if a single element goes wrong. It is envisaged that a "mothership", powered by an ion engine, would fly into orbit around Mars where it would release a lander craft down on to the surface of the moon. This robot vehicle might do some in-situ experiments but its main task would be to core, drill, or scoop up surface "soil" into a sealed vessel. Then, it would lift off from Phobos using chemical thrusters to attempt to dock with, or be captured by, the passing mothership. If that succeeds, the sample vessel would be transferred across and packaged inside an additional bio-secure sealed-container ready for the trip home.

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How long is the Great Wall of China ?

Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: Researchers are to carry out the first detailed survey of the Great Wall of China to establish just how long the ancient barricade is, Xinhua reports. Along with checking its dimensions the four-year study, which starts in May, will map the wall's exact route. And it will check the condition of the fortification, built to protect the northern border of the Chinese Empire. The wall, the world's largest man-made structure, is estimated at over 5,000 kilometres (3,100 miles) in length. The study will be conducted by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping in 13 provinces, regions and municipalities, the Xinhua official news agency said. Archaeologists had lobbied for the survey to be done to provide scholars with an accurate understanding of the construction. Known to the Chinese as the "long Wall of 10,000 Li", the Great Wall is in fact a series of walls and earthen works begun in the 5th Century BC and first linked up under Qin Shi Huang in about 220BC. It was listed as a Unesco world heritage site in 1987.

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Ancient chimps 'used stone tools'

Submitted by Pandora & Waspie: Chimpanzees in West Africa used stone tools to crack nuts 4,300 years ago. The discovery represents the oldest evidence of tool use by our closest evolutionary relative. The skill could have been inherited from a common ancestor of chimps and humans, the authors say, or learnt from humans by imitation. Alternatively, humans and chimps may have developed tool use independently, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal reports. Chimpanzees were first observed using stone tools in the 19th century. Julio Mercader and colleagues found stone tools at the Noulo site in Ivory Coast, the only known prehistoric chimpanzee settlement. The excavated stones showed the hallmarks of use as tools for smashing nuts when compared with ancient human or modern chimpanzee stone tools.

Also, several types of starch grains were found on the stones, which the researchers say is residue derived from cracking local nuts. "Chimpanzee material culture has a long prehistory whose deep roots are only beginning to be uncovered," write the researchers in Proceedings. The tools were found to be 4,300 years old, which, in human terms, corresponds to the later Stone Age, before the advent of agriculture. The age of the tools was determined by subjecting charcoal from the same ground layers to the technique of radiocarbon dating.

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Giant squid lights up for attack

Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: Enormous deep-sea squid emit blinding flashes of light as they attack their prey, research shows. Taningia danae's spectacular light show was revealed in video footage taken in deep waters off Chichijima Island in the North Pacific. Japanese scientists believe the creatures use the bright flashes to disorientate potential victims. Writing in a Royal Society journal, they say the squid are far from the sluggish, inactive beasts once thought. In fact, the footage, taken in 2005 - the first time T. danae had been captured on camera in their natural environment - reveals them to be aggressive predators. The squid, which can measure over 2m (7ft) in length, deftly swim backwards and forwards by flapping their large, muscular fins. They are able to alter their direction rapidly by bending their flexible bodies. The films, taken at depths of 240m to 940m (790 to 3,080ft), also show the cephalopods reaching speeds of up to 2.5m (8ft) per second as they attack the bait, capturing it with their eight tentacles. However, the intense pulses of light that accompanied the ferocious attacks surprised the research team.

Dr Tsunemi Kubodera from the National Science Museum in Tokyo, who led the research, told the BBC News website: "No-one had ever seen such bioluminescence behaviour during hunting of deep-sea large squid." The footage reveals the creatures emitting short flashes from light-producing organs, called photophores, on their arms. Writing in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the team said: "[The bioluminescence] might act as a blinding flash for prey." The light would disorient the squid's intended prey, disrupting their defences, they added. It could also act, the scientists commented, "as a means of illumination and measuring target distance in an otherwise dark environment."

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Dinosaur prints found in Mexican desert

Submitted by Pandora: A Mexican man has discovered dozens of dinosaur footprints dating back up to 110 million years along the banks of a dried river, scientists said on Tuesday. Biologist Oscar Polaco said the footprints, found by a local resident in a desert region in central Mexico, belonged to three prehistoric species that came to drink water in the area, once a swampy zone close to the sea.Polaco said more studies needed to be done to determine what species of dinosaur the fossilized prints, each one up to 60 cm (24 inches) across, belonged to."At the moment we can confirm these are footprints that belong to dinosaurs that lived during the early Cretaceous (period)," the scientist said.The early Cretaceous period began about 144 million years ago and followed on from the late Jurassic period. The Cretaceous period is considered the last period before dinosaurs disappeared from earth about 65 million years ago.

The footprints are spread across land belonging to a local cooperative, whose members have built a fence round the site to protect it.Last year scientists identified 30 other dinosaur prints in the same region, an area famous for the large numbers of fossils deposited there.The prints found in 2006 belonged to 20-meter (66 foot)-long animal that weighed between 30 metric tons and 40 metric tons, with a small head, long neck and heavy feet.Mexican researchers say those prints may have been made by a brontosaurus.

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We're all conspiracy theorists at heart

Why are conspiracy theories so popular? We may not always believe what we're told, but we still can't resist listening to them. Guy Smith, producer of 9/11: The Conspiracy Files, suggests the answer may lie deep within us all. Guy Smith: I admit it. If I'm being really honest, I can't deny that I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist. Perhaps we all are. It's easy to dismiss all conspiracy theories as "bunkum", but remember just occasionally they do turn out to be true. Remember Watergate? Iran-contra? Special Branch collusion with loyalist terrorists in Northern Ireland? As Jim Fetzer, one of the leading 9/11 conspiracy theorists says, "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you." I've just spent the best part of nine months investigating the numerous conspiracy theories surrounding the al-Qaeda attacks on 11 September, 2001. They range from the plausible - that intelligence agencies in the Middle East may have had some inside knowledge about what was planned - to the totally wacky - that United 93's passengers were abducted by government agents. But the deeper you dig in the dark world of conspiracies, the more you realise that different theories share much in common. The conspiracy theorist seizes on any apparent inconsistency and from that germ of truth the story is built up.

What happened to the white car apparently involved in Diana's accident? Was there a second gunman on the Grassy Knoll? And why did it take so long to scramble US fighters on 9/11? And we can't help but be fascinated by them. Perhaps it's because deep down, we're all story tellers. It's one of the things that makes us who we are. Since the dawn of time, we've been creating heroes and monsters as a way of trying to make sense of the world. In the beginning, we told those tales round camp fires. Now, it's through internet chat rooms or on mobile phones. But it's still basically the same process - weaving stories out of real life.

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Ancient coin shows Cleopatra was no looker

Submitted by Tower of Babel: So maybe Mark Antony loved Cleopatra for her mind. That's the conclusion being drawn by academics at Britain's University of Newcastle from a Roman denarius coin that depicts the celebrated queen of Egypt as a sharp-nosed, thin-lipped woman with a protruding chin. In short, a fair match for the hook-nosed, thick-necked Mark Antony on the other side of the coin, which went on public display Wednesday at the university's Shefton Museum. "The image on the coin is far from being that of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton," said Lindsay Allason-Jones, director of archaeological museums at the university, recalling the 1963 film "Cleopatra," which ignited the tempestuous romance between the two stars. The notion that Cleopatra was not in Taylor's league was hailed as a revelation in British newspapers on Valentine's Day, though the image is hardly a discovery. Replicas of the denarius can be found on eBay, and images on other ancient coins are no more flattering.

Cleopatra's legend has grown over the centuries. Plutarch, in the "Life of Antony" written a century after the great romance, said of Cleopatra: "her actual beauty, it is said, was not in itself so remarkable that none could be compared with her."