A feathered dinosaur fossil about 12 inches long is older than bird-like dinosaurs from which birds are thought to have evolved, British paleontologists say. The discovery of the new bird-like dinosaur from the Jurassic period, dubbed Eosinopteryx, presents a challenge to widely accepted theories on the origin of flight, they said. The fossilized remains found…
Scientists believe they may have found the ‘strongest evidence yet’ that Mars may have supported life, but it’s unlikely in the form most people would recognize. New research published in the journal Nature Geoscience suggests a team of scientists could have discovered the ingredients of life in a huge crater up to 5km below the…
New astonishing pictures by the European Space Agency have revealed a 1,500km long and 7km wide river that once ran across Mars. The agency’s Mars Express imaged the striking upper part of the remnants of Reull Vallis river on Mars with its high-resolution stereo camera, ESA said. Reull Vallis, is believed to have formed when…
Scientists have shed light on a peculiar tentacled marine creature that lived 520 million years ago. Experts thought that Cotyledion tylodes may have belonged to the jellyfish-like cnidarian group. But new anatomical evidence from the animal’s fossilised remains suggests the species was an early member of the group of small marine organisms called entoprocts. The…
The first drill sample ever collected on Mars will come from a rockbed shot through with unexpected veins of what appears to be the mineral gypsum. Delighted members of the Curiosity science team announced that the rover was now in a virtual “candy store” of scientific targets—the lowest point of Gale crater, called Yellowknife Bay,…
Textbooks might have to be re-written when it comes to some of the earliest creatures, a study suggests. Researchers have found that our understanding of the anatomy of the first four-legged animals is wrong. New 3D models of fossil remains show that previous renderings of the position of the beasts’ backbones were actually back-to-front. The…
Astronomers say they’re hot on the trail of real-life alien moons — which could also potentially be viable candidates for habitable worlds, researchers say. Astronomers have found roughly 850 known alien worlds. And as recently announced at the American Astronomical Society meeting, the Kepler spacecraft has picked up 2,740 candidate planets since its 2009 launch….
Four years ago, NASA launched the Kepler space telescope in an attempt to learn just how common Earth-sized worlds are in the Milky Way galaxy. Now, scientists have unveiled part of the answer: About 17 percent – one in six – of Kepler’s target stars have Earth-sized worlds orbiting closer to their parent stars than…
What if instead of dust and rocks, our planetary neighbor Mars were a bit more lush? What if it had oceans, an Earth-like atmosphere, and green life coating its land? These are the questions Kevin Gill, a software engineer living in New Hampshire, sought to answer with his project, A Living Mars.
Scientists analyzing Australian rocks have discovered traces of bacteria that lived a record-breaking 3.49 billion years ago, a mere billion years after Earth formed. If the find withstands the scrutiny that inevitably faces claims of fossils this old, it could move scientists one step closer to understanding the first chapters of life on Earth. The…