natural history

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World's Most Expensive Fossil Vanished. Nat Geo Found It

Stan the T. rex has been hiding in UAE, getting ready to be displayed in Abu Dhabi museum

(Newser) - When one of the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex fossils ever found sold at a Christie's auction for $31.8 million in October 2020, experts worried the 39-foot-long specimen would be lost to the public, and to research. That prompted National Geographic to go looking for Stan, as...

Cave Clues Point to Parched Mideast for 10K Years

Iranian stalagmites indicate rain isn't coming anytime soon

(Newser) - For anyone holding hope that the dry conditions in the Middle East are but a temporary drought, two cave stalagmites taken from Iran tell a long history of the region's precipitation and give a grim prognosis: not much rain for the next 10,000 years. Thanks to their chemical...

Jurassic Park-esque Find: Blood-Filled Mosquito Fossil

But don't expect dinosaurs anytime soon

(Newser) - OK, so the mosquito is only 46 million years old—too recent to have sucked dinosaur blood. But for the first time in history, scientists have found a fossilized skeeter that's still got a belly full of blood, harkening back to the plot of Jurassic Park, the Smithsonian points...

Scientists Map DNA of Woolly Mammoth

Neanderthals, early humans could be next

(Newser) - Scientists have pieced together the nearly complete genome of the woolly mammoth from a hair strand found in Siberia, National Geographic reports. It's the first time scientists have decoded the nuclear DNA of an extinct species. The development makes it theoretically possible for the mammoths to roam the earth again...

Canyon Older Than Thought?
Canyon Older Than Thought?
Mar 6, 2008 7:56 PM CST

Canyon Older Than Thought?

Study says formation began 17M years ago; others stick to 5-6M

(Newser) - The Grand Canyon might be three times older than previously thought, the Washington Post reports. A study in Science claims that a river—not the Colorado, but a smaller one—began carving the oldest part of the canyon 17 million years ago. It contends that the canyon-building greatly accelerated 5...

Volcanoes Helped Doom Dinos
Volcanoes Helped Doom Dinos
Nov 13, 2007 2:42 PM CST

Volcanoes Helped Doom Dinos

Research shows extinction resulted from not only an asteroid but volcanoes too

(Newser) - Not one but two catastrophic events may have spelled destruction for the Age of Dinosaurs, previously thought to have ended when an asteroid or comet struck the earth. New research suggests the prehistoric giants died off in “an unfortunate coincidence of a one-two punch—of Deccan volcanism and then...

Creationists Open History Museum
Creationists Open History Museum
May 24, 2007 5:40 PM CDT

Creationists Open History Museum

On the sixth day, God created dinosaurs, says curator

(Newser) - A $27 million museum opening in Kentucky next week promises a different kind of take on natural history: a biblical one. At the Creation Museum, the Earth is 6,000 years old, evolution is a yarn, and dinosaurs were booked on Noah's Ark.

7 Stories