99-Million-Year-Old ‘Hell Ant’ Paleontologists have found trapped in a piece of Burmese amber a unique scene of a prehistoric ‘hell ant’ (subfamily Haidomyrmecinae) attacking a nymph of Caputoraptor elegans, an extinct cockroach relative. The ancient encounter presents some of the first direct evidence showing how the newly-identified hell ant species, …
Read More »Old Bird Wings in Amber
The partial skeletal remains of an enantiornithine bird that lived 99 million years ago (Cretaceous period) have been found preserved in a piece of amber from northern Myanmar (Burma). Photograph of the amber specimen from the Angbamo site, Myanmar. Scale bar – 5 cm. Image credit: Xing et al, doi: …
Read More »55 Million Year Fossil
55-Million-Year-Old Fossil of Large-Sized Owl Found in Wyoming A new genus and species of owl that lived 55 million years ago (Eocene epoch) has been identified from a partial skeleton found in Wyoming, the United States. The discovery is reported in a paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. The …
Read More »Biologists Revive Microbes
101.5-Million-Year-Old Microbes A team of biologists from Japan and the United States has successfully revived aerobic microbes found in 101.5-million-year-old sediments from the abyssal plain of the South Pacific Gyre, the part of the ocean with the lowest productivity and fewest nutrients available to fuel the marine food web. Magnified …
Read More »85 Million Years Younger
Earth’s only natural satellite formed 4.425 billion years ago — around 85 million years later than previous estimates, according to a new modeling study by researchers from the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Technische Universität Berlin and the Institut für Planetologie at the University of Münster. When the Moon …
Read More »Giant Wombat In Australia
Giant Wombat-Like Marsupials Roamed Australia 25 Million Years Ago Paleontologists have identified a giant wombat-like marsupial that lived 25 million years ago (Oligocene epoch) in what is now Australia. Named Mukupirna nambensis, the prehistoric creature was at least five times larger than living wombats and so different that the researchers …
Read More »45-55 Million Year Old Orchid Pollinaria Attached to Pollinating Insect Found in Piece of Baltic Amber
A new study published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society documents evidence of an orchid fossil trapped in Baltic amber that dates back 45-55 million years ago (Eocene epoch), beating the previous record for an orchid fossil found in Dominican amber some 20-30 million years old. A fungus …
Read More »Sony Announces 60 Million PS4s Shipped–Can Microsoft Catch Up?
Sony shared good news last week as part of its quarterly report. The company has shipped a full 60 million PlayStation 4 and PS4 Pro ($399 at Amazon) consoles. The company also sold 2.9 million devices in the past three months, up from 2.3 million devices shipped in the same …
Read More »Google Home now helps you cook over 5 million recipes
Google announced today that the Google Home device is now able to talk you through cooking more than five million recipes. Google partnered with Bon Appetit, The New York Times, Food Network and other recipe databases to bring the best recipes right to your Google Home device. How does it …
Read More »Apple Clips scored up to 1 million downloads in its first 4 days
In its first four days on the market, Apple’s new social video editing app Clips reached between 500,000 and a million downloads, according to estimates from app store analytics firm App Annie. However, despite heavy press coverage and featured positions in the App Store, Clips hasn’t yet broken into the top 20 …
Read More »