Take a new look at nature through the eyes of physicists at next month's March Meeting of American Physical Society (APS), which takes place from March 16-20, 2009 at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh.
A herd of young birdlike dinosaurs met their death on the muddy margins of a lake some 90 million years ago, according to a team of Chinese and American paleontologists that excavated the site in the Gobi Desert in western Inner Mongolia.
The annual meeting of GSA's South-Central Section will feature a presentation on the Arlington Archosaur Site in Texas. Among the site's 95 million-years-old rocks is a rich deposit of fossils, not only of an as-yet-unnamed carnivorous theropod, but also of a large, herbivorous "duck billed" hadrosaur, prehistoric crocodiles, turtles, sharks, and a new species of lungfish.
Leatherback turtles, the most widely distributed reptiles on Earth, are threatened with extinction themselves, in large part due to the carelessness of humans. A Dalhousie University professor addresses the threat of plastics to this endangered species.
Despite the popularity of great white sharks in television and cinema, relatively little is known about their biology, and even less is known about their evolutionary origins. A new 4-million-year-old fossil from Peru provides important evidence suggesting the shark's origins may be more humble than previously believed.
Austin has become the largest city in the country to be certified as a community wildlife habitat by the National Wildlife Federation. Community wildlife habitats create spaces that provide food, water, cover, and places for wildlife to raise young throughout an entire community"”in individual yards and in public areas such as schools, parks, and businesses.
New software developed with help from the Wildlife Conservation Society will allow tiger researchers to rapidly identify individual animals by creating a three-dimensional model using photos taken by remote cameras.
For the first time ever, rescuers used a new sedation delivery system to help free an entangled North Atlantic right whale. The new system was developed at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in collaboration with NOAA and the Univ. of Florida and the Univ. of Wisconsin veterinary schools to make the animals more approachable by rescue boats.
The Wildlife Conservation Society today released its third report on pronghorn and natural gas drilling in Wyoming's Upper Green River Basin. The report revealed that while most pronghorn appear to be unaffected by gas drilling in the study areas, others are losing ground to areas of highest development.
The Wildlife Conservation Society's India Program (WCS "“ India) has released a unique training video on YouTube that showcases the latest scientific methods for estimating the numbers of wild tigers and their prey.
White-nose syndrome (WNS) is a poorly understood condition that, in the two years since its discovery, has spread to at least seven northeastern states and killed as many as half a million bats. Now researchers have suggested the first step toward a measure that may help save the affected bats: providing localized heat sources to the hibernating animals.
University of Adelaide research has discovered that there are many more species of Australian lizards than previously thought, raising new questions about conservation and management of Australia's native reptiles.
Lizards living in tropical forests could be in serious peril from rising temperatures associated with climate change. In fact, those forest lizards appear to tolerate a much narrower range of survivable temperatures than do their relatives at higher latitudes and are actually less tolerant of high temperatures.
High-speed movies by MIT neuroscientists reveal the first glimpse of rat whiskers in action, showing the micromovements underlying the rat's tactile perception, which is closely related to the human sense of touch. These patterns, which are larger and more complex than any previously observed, are key to a rat's perceptions and behavior.
The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), together with the World Bank and Global Environment Facility (GEF), announced today a commitment of $2.8 million toward tiger conservation across its range. WCS will lead a new project, Tiger Futures, in partnership with other conservation organizations with long-term field experience in tiger conservation throughout countries spanning the big cat's geographical range in Asia.
For the first time, researchers have documented a shift in breeding ranges for northerly species in North America. The study parallels findings in Europe.
"Psychedelica" seems the perfect name for a fish that is a wild swirl of tan and peach zebra stripes and behaves in ways contrary to its brethren, including bouncing like a ball along the seafloor. The new species has rare forward-looking eyes and is described in the journal Copeia.
With one "howl" of a good idea, University of Montana scientists have developed the howlbox, a low-cost device that emits wolf calls and then records any responses. It offers another tool to track the controversial species.
University of Montana researcher Scott Mills and his students have noticed an exceptional number of white snowshoe hares on brown earth. He contends that climate change and the color mismatch are causing much more hare mortality.
A combination of changing weather patterns, overfishing, pollution, and other factors have conspired to drive penguin populations into a precipitous decline, according to long-term research funded by the Wildlife Conservation Society.
When in a predator's grips, many lizards drop their tails to escape. But what price do they pay for freedom? A team led by biology professor Gary Gillis of Mount Holyoke College found the lizards were compromised: They could no longer jump without tumbling backwards, making it difficult to land safely when jumping between branches.
The economy isn't just squeezing the middle class on land, it's also affecting fish.
According to a study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and other organizations, researchers discovered a surprising correlation between "middle class" communities in Eastern Africa and low fish levels.
Chinstrap penguins and fur seals showed persistent preferences for particular foraging areas even after a storm reduced the availability of food of choice in those areas, according to a study by Dr. Joseph Warren, Assistant Professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University and colleagues.
University of Utah biologists discovered that young "right whales" learn from their mothers where to eat, raising concern about their ability to find new places to feed if Earth's changing climate disrupts their traditional dining areas.
Scientists have recovered fossils from a 60-million-year-old South American snake whose length and weight might make today's anacondas and reticulated pythons seem a bit cuter and more cuddly. Named Titanoboa cerrejonensis by its discoverers, the size of the snake's vertebrae suggest it weighed 1,140 kilograms (2,500 pounds) and measured 13 meters (42.7 feet) nose to tail tip -- and that's a conservative estimate.
Times are tough for wildlife living at the frontier between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Armies are reportedly encamped in a national park and wildlife preserve on the Congolese side, while displaced herders and their cattle have settled in an adjoining Ugandan park.
The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) released photos today from the first large-scale census of jaguars in the Amazon region of Ecuador"”one of the most biologically rich regions on the planet.
Popularized by the 2005 movie "March of the Penguins," emperor penguins could be headed toward extinction in at least part of their range before the end of the century, according to a paper by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers published January 26, 2009, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
An international research team has discovered the first vertebrate with eyes that use mirrors rather than lenses to focus light. The spookfish, Dolichopteryx longipes, manages to focus light in the lower eye without using a lens. Light enters the lower portion of the eye and hits a mirror composed of stacks of crystals. This is the first time that this type of focusing mechanism has ever been found in a vertebrate.
Island-dwelling white-eyes have long been dubbed "great speciators" for their apparent ability to rapidly form new species across geographies where other birds show little or no diversification.
The global trade in frog legs for human consumption is threatening their extinction, according to a new study by an international team including University of Adelaide researchers.
New data released today by the Wildlife Conservation Society and Malaysia's Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) reveals that a population of endangered Asian elephants living in a Malaysian park may be the largest in Southeast Asia.
Last winter, government agencies killed one third of Yellowstone National Park's bison herd due to concerns about the possible spread of a livestock disease to cattle that graze in areas around the park. Such drastic measures may be unnecessary, however, according to researchers who have assessed the risk of disease transmission from Yellowstone bison to cattle.
A treasure trove of information about pre-human New Zealand has been found in faeces from giant extinct birds, buried beneath the floor of caves and rock shelters for thousands of years.
New tires allow race cars to take tight turns at high speeds. Hind wings give moths and butterflies similar advantages: They are not necessary for basic flight but help these creatures take tight turns to evade predators.
Human-made light sources can alter natural light cycles, causing animals that rely on light cues to make mistakes when moving through their environment. In the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, a collaboration of ecologists, biologists and biophysicists has now shown that in addition to direct light, cues from polarized light can trigger animal behaviors leading to injury and often death.
Pterosaurs have long suffered an identity crisis. Pop culture heedlessly "” and wrongly "” lumps these extinct flying lizards in with dinosaurs. Even paleontologists assumed that because the creatures flew, they were birdlike in many ways, such as using only two legs to take flight.
The Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society announced today that its efforts to protect a wildlife-rich coastal region in South America have paid off in the form of a new coastal marine park recently signed into law by the Government of Argentina.
The more an animal walks during the day, the less energy it has to reproduce. Makes sense right? Not so fast, say two researchers at Washington University in St. Louis.
They claim, based on a study of 161 mammalian species, that on average, animals which travel the longest distance each day to find food have the most offspring.
The study, the first of its kind aimed at disproving the long-standing theory that more walking equates to less reproduction, was conducted by Herman Pontzer, Ph.D., assistant professor, and Jason Kamilar, Ph.D., research associate, both in anthropology in Arts & Sciences.
To many people, bird song can herald the coming of spring, reveal what kind of bird is perched nearby or be merely an unwelcome early morning intrusion. But to Sandra Vehrencamp, Cornell professor of neurobiology and behavior, bird song is a code from which to glean avian behavior insight.
Sure, they're polygamous, but male emus and several other ground-dwelling birds also are devoted dads, serving as the sole incubators and caregivers to oversized broods from multiple mothers. It is rare behavior, but research described in the Dec. 19 Science found that it runs in this avian family, all the way back to its dinosaur ancestors.
The first beaver to be seen in New York City in 200 years has returned to the site where it was first spotted in 2007 -- on the lower Bronx River where it flows through the Bronx Zoo.
When you take a bite out of a hamburger or chomp down on a piece of gum, you share this function of the lower jaw with the vast majority of animals. But not all: for some animals, lifting the head rather than dropping the jaw is a good idea. This bizarre reversal of how feeding occurs was achieved in 210-million-year-old amphibians, the plagiosaurs.
Elephants in Zakouma National Park, the last stronghold for the savanna elephants of Central Africa's Sahel region, now hover at about 1,000 animals, down from an estimated 3,000 in 2006.
Despite protection policies to slow down boats in manatee-protection habitats, the number of injuries and deaths associated with collisions has reached record highs. Researchers have laid the groundwork for a sensory explanation for why manatees and other animals, including great whales, are hit repeatedly by boats. They have developed a novel device that addresses the root causes of these collisions.
Just as the first North Atlantic right whales are spotted making their seasonal migration from New England waters to their calving grounds off Florida and Georgia, these critically endangered animals are finally getting protection Tuesday from fast moving ships that accidentally kill or injure the majestic animals along the East Coast.
A new discovery challenges one of the strongest arguments in favor of the idea that animals with bilateral symmetry"”those, that like us have two halves that are roughly mirror images of each other"”existed before their obvious appearance in the fossil record during the early Cambrian, some 542 million years ago. Groove-like tracks on the ocean floor made by giant deep-sea single-celled organisms could lead to new insights into the evolutionary origin of animals.
How marine animals find their way back to their birthplace to reproduce after migrating across thousands of miles of open ocean has mystified scientists for more than a century. But marine biologists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill think they might finally have unraveled the secret.
The Wildlife Conservation Society, the Government of Cameroon, and other partners have collaborated to create a new national park to help protect the world's most endangered great ape: the Cross River gorilla.