Ahira's Hangar

David Zindell's Neverness, A Requiem for Homo Sapiens and all things Science Fiction and Fantasy
It is currently Thu Mar 28, 2024 12:44 pm

All times are UTC




Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 163 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ... 11  Next
Author Message
 Post subject: Re: 400,000 year old DNA
PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2003 11:56 pm 
Offline
Master Pilot
User avatar

Joined: Wed Feb 12, 2003 3:33 pm
Posts: 455
Thank you all. Turiya, you are also doing a great job. <i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: News from the laboratory....
PostPosted: Sun Apr 27, 2003 7:37 pm 
Offline
Master Pilot
User avatar

Joined: Sat Feb 01, 2003 8:13 pm
Posts: 323
Location: K-ville, NC
One of my favorite news sites has finally come back up, albeit with a rather different look. Check it out. www.quickblog.com/user/geeknews/ ________________
I wanna feel the metamorphosis and cleansing I've endured within my shadow. Change is coming. Now is my time. Listen to my muscle memory. Contemplate what I've been clinging to. -Tool, "Forty-Six & Two"<i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: News from the laboratory....
PostPosted: Mon Apr 28, 2003 5:59 pm 
Offline
Lady Scryer
User avatar

Joined: Sun Nov 17, 2002 5:11 pm
Posts: 9653
Location: Michigan, USA
Odd round rocks linked to big meteorite
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 Posted: 9:51 AM EDT (1351 GMT)

OSCEOLA, Missouri (AP) -- Geologists think they might have discovered one of the largest meteorite craters in the United States.

Some 350 million years ago, a space boulder 400 meters across entered the Earth's atmosphere and struck an area near the future site of Osceola, Weaubleau and Bolivar in the Missouri, according to researchers.

Southwest Missouri State University geologist Kevin Evans recently started looking into the possibility of a meteorite crater. Now, other researchers have banded together to dig more deeply into his theory.

A meteorite, researchers say, would explain how folded-over rock formations and deposits of rock with shattered quartz ended up in the Ozarks.

The theory also explains the presence of numerous round rocks around Osceola. Researchers think the stones may have formed when liquefied rock flew into the air and cooled into balls before they hit the ground.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.



Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
****Tavern Wench of DOGMA, the Defenders of George Martin's Art****<i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Earthquake Warnings
PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2003 12:35 pm 
Offline
Master Pilot
User avatar

Joined: Wed Feb 12, 2003 3:33 pm
Posts: 455
I came across an article in the New York Times about the ability to give warning of impending earthquakes.
www.nytimes.com/2003/05/0...2QUAK.html
The warnings would be only tens of seconds in advance, but they might be enough to give warning for people to get under cover, put gates down on bridges etc. Downside is that there is still the possibility for false alarms. <i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Lunar Eclipse this week
PostPosted: Sat May 10, 2003 3:07 pm 
Offline
Master Pilot
User avatar

Joined: Wed Feb 12, 2003 3:33 pm
Posts: 455
From Astronomy.com:

For the first time in more than two years, a total lunar eclipse will soon darken the full moon for most of North and South America, Europe, and Africa.

From about the Rocky Mountains eastward the full moon will rise at sunset on Thursday, May 15 in its usual brilliant-white splendor. At 9:05 p.m. EDT (01:05 UT May 16), the eclipse will officially begin as the moon enters Earth's outer shadow, the penumbra. About 10 p.m. EDT the eastern edge of the moon will dip into Earth's umbra, initiating the slow descent into darkness. More than an hour later, at 11:13 p.m. EDT, totality begins as the entire moon is submerged in Earth's shadow. After 53 minutes, totality ends when the moon's orbit starts to ease the satellite back into sunlight. The eclipse ends at 2:15 a.m. EDT when the moon slips out of the penumbra.

Regions west of the Rockies will not be able to see totality in its entirety. But residents and neighbors of Seattle, Washington, will have a great photo opportunity as the orangish full moon rises in the midst of the eclipse. Alaska will only witness the moon during the final partial phases. Observers in Africa and Europe will see the eclipsed moon early on Friday morning, May 16, with the transformed moon setting as dawn breaks.

<i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Lunar Eclipse this week
PostPosted: Wed May 14, 2003 5:02 am 
Offline
Lady Scryer
User avatar

Joined: Sun Nov 17, 2002 5:11 pm
Posts: 9653
Location: Michigan, USA
From www.nationalgeographic.com
A mysterious group of apes found in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa has scientists and conservationist scratching their heads. The apes nest on the ground like gorillas but have a diet and features characteristic of chimpanzees.
The apes are most likely a group of giant chimpanzees that display gorilla-like behavior. A far more remote possibility is that they represent a new subspecies of great ape. Researchers plan to return to the region later this month to collect more clues to help resolve the mystery.

The detective story began in 1908 when a Belgian army officer returned home with several gorilla skulls from near the town of Bili on the Uele River and gave them to the Belgium's Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren. In 1927 the museum's curator classified the skulls as a new subspecies of gorilla, Gorilla gorilla uellensis.

Intrigued by the subspecies, Colin Groves, now an anthropologist at the Australian National University in Canberra, examined the skulls in 1970 and determined that they were indistinguishable from western gorillas, one of the two known species of gorilla. No further specimens of this gorilla from Bili have since been found.

In 1996, Swiss-born, Kenya-based wildlife photographer and conservationist Karl Ammann embarked on a quest to rediscover the mysterious gorillas.

To date, Ammann has not found the gorilla. But he has collected a wealth of information including skulls, ground nests, hair and fecal samples, footprints, and, most recently, photographs of what appears to be a chimpanzee that behaves like a gorilla.


A remote camera trap captured this shot of a "Bondo mystery ape" in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Most experts believe the unusual band of apes are giant chimpanzees that display gorilla-like behavior. One countervailing theory, however, holds that the band represents a new subspecies of great ape.

Scientific analysis of this data is still being conducted. Ammann awaits the results before making an official announcement about the finds. Meanwhile, he continues to recruit scientists to study the case.

Shelly Williams, an independent primate behavior specialist in Atlanta, Georgia, who has a doctorate in experimental psychology, spent two months in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo last year trying to determine the identity of these apes. She said "at the very least, we have either a new culture of chimps that are unusually large or hybrids with unusual behaviors."

Williams and Groves will meet Ammann in Kenya this month before traveling to the Congo to conduct further studies on the mysterious apes.

Ground Nesting Chimp?

Since Ammann launched his quest, he has led expeditions into the Bili forest in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo where the original skulls were recovered. On his first trip, Ammann recovered a skull which had a pronounced ridge on its forehead characteristic of gorilla. The rest of the measurements link the skull to that of a chimpanzee.

For the next several years civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo made travel to the Bili forest difficult. Ammann recruited a bush meat hunter from Cameroon to visit and survey the area. The hunter returned with photographs and reports of gorilla ground nests in an area north of Bili.

In 2000, Ammann returned to the area described by the bush meat hunter with a group of ape researchers. Although they did not find a live ape, the group did stumble across several well-worn ground nests in swampy river beds.

Ground nests are characteristic of gorillas. Chimpanzees are thought to prefer to sleep in trees. However, an analysis of feces found in the nests suggests that whatever left them was eating a diet rich in fruits, a diet characteristic of chimpanzees, not gorillas.

Other evidence collected from the site includes hair samples, which have been sent out to various laboratories for DNA analysis. The initial results indicate they belong to a chimpanzee. All of this evidence is causing the researchers to believe that what Ammann has found is a chimpanzee that behaves like a gorilla.

"It is a chimpanzee," said Esteban Sarmiento, a functional anatomist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York who traveled to the region with Ammann in 2000. "There are presently three recognized subspecies of common chimpanzee Pan troglodytes and it could represent a fourth subspecies or change our present understanding of where to draw the divisions between subspecies."

Giant Chimps

Local hunters in the region added to the mystery when they told Ammann and his colleagues about two kinds of chimpanzees in the region. Normal chimps, so-called "tree-beaters," are easily killed with poisonous arrows when they feed in trees.

Another, large chimpanzee seldom climbs trees and does not succumb to the poison arrows shot by the hunters. Called "lion killers," these big chimpanzees flee through the thick forest and disappear when shot at by hunters.

Evidence for these giant chimpanzees collected by Ammann includes a photograph of a cadaver alongside the hunter that killed it and casts of some large footprints. The pronounced ridge, called a sagittal crest, on the skull that Ammann found in 1996 is thought to be formed to support large jaw muscles, an indication of large body size.

"Giant chimpanzees occasionally occur here and there in the central and eastern subspecies, but evidence so far indicates that Karl [Ammann] may have a population of giants in his area," said Groves. "Presumably their giantism is relevant to their ground nesting behavior."

This group of what appear to be a distinct culture of ground-nesting chimpanzees is the now focus of Ammann's research. "Work has started on habituating one of the ground nesting chimp groups. This is done by provisioning them with sugar cane," he said.

This habituation will allow the researchers to document this new culture of chimpanzee as the researchers await the results of nuclear DNA analysis to determine if what they have is indeed a new subspecies of chimpanzee or simply a unique culture. Either way, the scientists are intrigued.

"Discovering an isolated group of apes exhibiting unusual cultural behaviors is just as important as identifying new DNA profiles. That's why continuous observation, habituation, and surveying are so important," said Williams.

Additionally, researchers have not yet given up on the possibility of finding gorillas in the area.

"I would think there is a strong possibility that south of Bili on the other side of the Uele River there may be gorillas, and this would seem an important area to turn our attention to," said Sarmiento.




Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
****Tavern Wench of DOGMA, the Defenders of George Martin's Art****<i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: SARS from the stars?
PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2003 2:27 pm 
Offline
Master Pilot
User avatar

Joined: Wed Feb 12, 2003 3:33 pm
Posts: 455
Saw this article today:

LONDON (Reuters) -- Could SARS have come from outer space? Some scientists think so.

Instead of jumping from an unknown animal host in southern China, a few researchers in Britain believe the virus that has baffled medical experts descended from the stratosphere.

"I think it is a possibility that SARS came from space. It is a very strong possibility," Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe told Reuters.

The director of the Cardiff Center for Astrobiology in Wales and a proponent of the theory that life on Earth originated from space, admits the theory defies conventional wisdom.

But in a letter published in The Lancet medical journal on Friday he and his colleagues argue there are too many puzzling aspects about the respiratory illness that has killed nearly 700 people and infected more than 3,800 to dismiss the idea.

Many scientists skeptical

Other virologists believe it simply isn't possible because the virus is too fragile to survive in outer space.

"I think it is completely nuts," said Dr Anne Bridgen, a molecular virologist at the University of Ulster.

"It has a lipid (fatty) coat on the outside and it would tend to dry out in an atmosphere such as space," she told Reuters.

Professor Ian Jones, an expert in virology at the University of Reading in southern England, described the idea as bizarre.

"SARS is a new virus but it is only a new relative of a family of viruses that we understand quite well," he said, referring to the coronavirus family which includes a virus linked to the common cold.

"The difference is that it is a causing a severity of disease that we haven't seen before in the human population."

Wickramasinghe stressed that SARS suddenly appeared in China late last year and is a new coronavirus with a different genetic sequence from similar viruses in animals. Its origin has also not been traced. He believes these factors could suggest it evolved differently and may have come from a far-off place.

Conventional wisdom 'dreadfully amiss'

"There doesn't seem to have been a human origin for this. It seems to have come from somewhere else," said Dr Milton Wainwright, a molecular biologist at the University of Sheffield in England and a co-author of the letter.

"There is a lot of debate about where it could have come from and we are providing an answer," he added.

Wickramasinghe said there is no known virus that has fallen from outer space. "There is no known virus that has been picked up from high in the stratosphere," he said. "Not to date."

Yet Wickramasinghe and Wainwright believe the original outbreak in China is also significant because if the virus did fall to Earth it would most likely land east of the Himalayas, the weakest point in the stratosphere and easiest to break through.

In studies of air samples taken from 25 miles above the Earth, large numbers of micro-organisms were found, Wickramasinghe said, so it is possible SARS came from space.

"The fact that many cases in China cannot be traced to infected people means that something is dreadfully amiss in the idea of conventional wisdom," he said. <i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Way back in our family tree....
PostPosted: Tue Jul 15, 2003 6:32 am 
Offline
Lady Scryer
User avatar

Joined: Sun Nov 17, 2002 5:11 pm
Posts: 9653
Location: Michigan, USA
Mars Makes Closest Pass To Earth

POSTED: 11:01 a.m. EDT July 14, 2003
UPDATED: 3:31 p.m. EDT July 14, 2003

Mars is making its closest pass to Earth in 50,000 years over the next few months.




The Red Planet and earth will pass as close as they ever get, about 35 million miles apart instead of the usual distance of about 60 million miles.

The opportunity will provide sky watchers a great view of the planet, according to a USA Today report.

The planets are passing so close this year because both orbit the sun in ways that are not perfectly circular. When Earth is in a more distant part of its orbit in relation to the sun, and Mars is in the part of its orbit that's closest the sun, the two planets are closer to each other, according to the report.

Astronomers believe that this month may be the best time to look at the Red Planet because dust storms are expected to obscure the view next month.

In mid-July, Mars rises at about 10:30 p.m. in the constellation Aquarius in the southeastern sky in the USA, according to the report. Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
****Tavern Wench of DOGMA, the Defenders of George Martin's Art****<i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Astronomy and Van Gogh
PostPosted: Fri Jul 25, 2003 1:08 am 
Offline
Master Pilot
User avatar

Joined: Wed Feb 12, 2003 3:33 pm
Posts: 455
CNN) -- Using old-fashioned detective work and modern astronomical tools, researchers said they have solved one of the most intriguing mysteries in art history, the moment that Vincent van Gogh immortalized in his painting "Moonrise."

The Dutch artist created the masterpiece the night of July 13, 1889, while watching a nearly full moon rise over a hill exactly at 9:08 p.m. local time, according to astronomer Donald Olson and colleagues.

At that moment, "the scene in front of van Gogh looked almost exactly like that painting," the Southwest Texas State University physics professor said.

Olson and fellow Southwest professors Marilynn Olson, his wife, and Russell Doescher pieced together a variety of clues: notes from the artist, lunar table calculations and personal excursions to identify and analyze the location in France depicted in the work.

Letters to van Gogh's brother Theo narrowed the possible range to the summer months of 1889.

The work itself, painted near a monastery in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in southern France, offered enough hints to figure out about where van Gogh set up his easel: an unusual double house beside a hill, an intersecting wall and clumps of harvested wheat.

Van Gogh was known to have painted by direct observation, not memory. And a peculiar ridge that obscures a portion of the rising moon serves as the de facto smoking gun to calculate the moment recorded in the painting.

"There is no wiggle room at all on the time," Olson said. "The night before and after it would not align with the cliff. We can absolutely tell which date it is."

The research, presented in the July edition of Sky & Telescope magazine, drew high marks from some space and history buffs.

"The van Gogh sleuthing is a delightful piece of detective work and certainly entirely reasonable as far as I can tell," said John Briggs, an engineer and astronomical historian with the University of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory. <i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Life in the icecubes on Mars? Theory of an Aussie.
PostPosted: Tue Aug 05, 2003 10:57 am 
Offline
Master Pilot
User avatar

Joined: Wed Feb 12, 2003 3:33 pm
Posts: 455
SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) -- Giant ice towers that formed next to steaming volcanic vents in the freezing atmosphere of Mars may be the best place to look for life on the red planet, an Australian geologist said on Monday.

Nick Hoffman of the University of Melbourne said the latest images taken by the Mars Odyssey orbiter had revealed curious hotspots in the Hellas Basin that could be similar to ice towers in Antarctica, where microbial life forms live on chemical energy.

These hotspots, he said, could prove a better place to find signs of life than gullies that some speculate may have been gouged by running water.

"I don't personally believe that (finding life) is a credible possibility, but nonetheless, if you are going to find life on Mars, this is probably the place it will be," he said.

Tracking bacteria

Hoffman has worked on potential Mars ice towers with Professor Phil Kyle of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in the United States.

Their research, based on NASA imagery and the study of the Mount Erebus volcano on Antarctica's Ross Island, was presented at the 6th international Mars conference in Pasadena, California, in July.

On Ross Island, steam from volcanic vents is converted directly into ice as it touches the frigid air, building tall, hollow chimneys where a microclimate allows bacteria to live.

"On Mars, similar structures could be doubly valuable for potential Mars microbes," Hoffman said, dubbing the prospect of finding life on the planet "a remote possibility."

NASA's latest Mars mission, carrying two rovers to probe for signs that conditions on Mars once favored life, will not go anywhere near Hellas Basin, a deep impact crater about the size of Australia in the southern hemisphere of the planet.

Nor will the European Space Agency's Mars Express, which blasted off in June.

Searching for water

Scientists hope the two expeditions, plus a Japanese mission, will find evidence that liquid water once existed on Mars and may have left long gullies or channels in the inhospitable terrain.

Hoffman said infrared images taken by the Odyssey showed the hotspots in the Hellas Basin -- laid out in a chain -- were hotter than the surrounding environment both during the day and at night.

Once the Odyssey's companion satellite, the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, takes high-resolution images of the formations in clear light, it will be possible to identify them definitively as ice towers or something else.

Hellas Basin is the deepest part of Mars and has the highest air pressure, a prerequisite for liquid water. Elsewhere, the planet's atmosphere is so thin that water cannot form so heated ice is likely to become vapor, missing out the liquid phase.

"There will not be a convenient hot spring of liquid water flowing on the surface but there will be a steamy, moist vent in the ground with a lot of ice present and possibly an ice tower," Hoffman said. <i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Here come Mars.....
PostPosted: Thu Aug 07, 2003 11:59 am 
Offline
Master Pilot
User avatar

Joined: Wed Feb 12, 2003 3:33 pm
Posts: 455
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Mars is getting ready for its close-up, with the red planet coming as near to Earth this month as it has in almost 60,000 years.

Its closest pass will come on August 27 at 5:51 a.m. EDT (0951 GMT), when Mars will be less than 34.65 million miles (55.76 million km) away.

The last time it came nearer was around September 12 in 57,617 B.C. when Mars came about 25,000 miles (40,230 km) closer, at a distance of 34.62 million miles (55.72 million km) from Earth.

"If Neanderthals had telescopes, they would have seen it a little bit better than we will on August 27," said astronomer Geoff Chester of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington.

Won't look much bigger

To backyard observers, Mars will be the brightest natural object in the sky except for the sun and the moon, Chester said in a telephone interview. Even though it will be close, it will not look much bigger than it usually does.

"People are kind of all thinking that all you've got to do is go outside and you're going to see this big red blob that's half the size of the moon," Chester said. "That's not the case."

What people will most likely see is a brilliant pinkish object dominating the southern sky. At that point, Mars will be the brightest thing in the heavens. Venus would have shone bright if it had been visible, but it will be hidden behind the sun when Mars comes closest to Earth.

Mars will appear to be about the same size as a middling-sized crater on the moon, Chester said.

To get an idea of how big Mars will seem at its closest, the typical thumb held at arms' length covers about one degree of the sky, or 3,600 arc seconds. The moon is about half a degree of the sky, or 1,800 arc seconds. Mars at its closest will appear to be 25.11 arc seconds -- only about one more arc second than its usual 24.

Even closer in 2287

Mars will get even closer to Earth on August 28, 2287 -- but still not as close as it did in the Neanderthals' time.

"It is a marvelous opportunity to get people interested in astronomy and what you can see from your own backyard," said Stephen Maran, an astronomer and spokesman for the American Astronomical Society. "We hope that more and more people will get used to looking at the sky so they will be interested in

efforts to cut down on light pollution."

As Earth's next-door planetary neighbor, Mars has always been a subject of fascination. Recent NASA probes have sent back images suggesting water once flowed on or near the martian surface -- an exciting prospect for those curious about whether Earth-type life ever existed on Mars, since water is seen as a

prerequisite for life on other planets.

On Monday, NASA selected the low-cost Phoenix probe as the first so-called Scout mission to Mars. Phoenix is expected to land on Mars in late 2008, in terrain suspected of harboring large quantities of ice within 1 foot (0.348 meter) of the surface, and then will analyze subsurface material, NASA said in a statement. <i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Here come Mars.....
PostPosted: Fri Aug 08, 2003 5:03 am 
Offline
Master Pilot

Joined: Thu Mar 28, 2002 2:23 am
Posts: 3363
I have marked my calendar 4 the 27th! And now Danlo looked in that direction, too. He remembered that snowy owls mate in the darkest part of deep winter, and so along with this beautiful white bird perched in a tree a hundred feet away, he turned to face the sea as he watched and waited.

Ahira, Ahira, he called out silently to the sky. Ahira, Ahira<i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: a rodent the size of a buffalo...
PostPosted: Fri Sep 19, 2003 5:57 am 
Offline
Lady Scryer
User avatar

Joined: Sun Nov 17, 2002 5:11 pm
Posts: 9653
Location: Michigan, USA
Fossil Shows Rodent Was Size of a Buffalo

WASHINGTON (Sept. 18) - A rodent the size of a buffalo? Researchers say they have found fossils for a 1,545-pound giant that thrived millions of years ago in a swampy South American forest.

''Imagine a weird guinea pig, but huge, with a long tail for balancing on its hind legs and continuously growing teeth,'' said Marcelo R. Sanchez-Villagra of the University of Tubingen in Germany, the first author of a study appearing this week in Science.

The formal name of the rodent is Phoberomys pattersoni. The last term is in honor of Brian Patterson, a Harvard professor who led a fossil-collection expedition to Venezuela in the 1970s. Informally, the skeleton is called Goya.

Researchers found the fossils in a semidesert area of Venezuela, about 250 miles west of Caracas.

When Goya lived there, some 6 million to 8 million years ago, the area was a lush paradise for a large plant eater.

''At the time it was forested and swampy with a big river and a lot of vegetation,'' said Sanchez-Villagra.

The giant rodent grazed on grasses, which he must have eaten in large amounts to support his great size. Goya had fur, a smooth head with small ears and eyes, and a large tail that enabled it to balance on two hind legs to watch for predators, said Sanchez-Villagra.

And there were a lot predators to worry about, he said.

''We know that there were crocodiles in the same location where we found this animal,'' said Sanchez-Villagra. ''They were some of the largest crocs ever - more than 10 meters (33 feet) long.''

Goya also had to worry about a large carnivore called the marsupial cat, and huge flesh-eating birds called phorracoids, he said.

Phoberomys pattersoni lived during a time when South America was isolated from the rest of the world. The isthmus of Panama had not linked the two Americas, and the southern animals evolved independently of those on the other continents.

That changed about 3 million years ago. The shifting land masses became joined at what is now Panama and animals from the two Americas began to mix. That may have spelled the demise of Goya, although it remains a mystery exactly why the animal went extinct, Sanchez-Villagra said.

''Many animals from North America made it to South America and many from the south went north,'' he said. ''When that happened, many of the animals from South America became extinct because of competition.''

In an analysis of the Sanchez-Villagra study, R. McNeill Alexander of the University of Leeds, England, wrote in Science that the large rodent may have died out because it simply couldn't escape predators.

Alexander said most rodents are small enough to hide in the ground when threatened, but Phoberomys pattersoni was too large to burrow. As do most large animals, it would have to depend on running to escape a predator. Alexander said that suggests this question: ''Would large rodents generally be too slow to be successful?''

Sanchez-Villagra said Goya's skeleton, particularly the leg bones, suggests that it walked differently from most modern rodents, such as its close cousin the guinea pig. Mice, rats and guinea pigs scamper along in a crouched position, with legs bent at the knee and elbow.

Because of Goya's mass, however, it had to stand straight, more like a sheep than a mouse.

As a result, Alexander wrote in Science, ''Seen from a distance, it would have looked much more like a buffalo than like a scaled-up guinea pig.''

An analysis of Goya's teeth show they were ideally adapted for eating grasses. Sanchez-Villagra said chewing tough grasses can eventually wear out the teeth. But in Goya, the teeth were constantly growing so they remained at the length needed to grind up grass.

Sanchez-Villagra said the closest living relative to Phoberomys pattersoni is probably the pacarana, a slow-moving rodent that can grow to 33 pounds and lives in the tropical forest of the western Amazon River basin. It is considered rare.

The largest living rodent is another South American animal, the capybara, which can weigh up to 110 pounds. The most common rodents are mice, which weigh one to two ounces, and rats, which can weigh up to 10 ounces or more. The rodent clan also includes squirrels, beavers and prairie dogs.


Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
****Tavern Wench of DOGMA, the Defenders of George Martin's Art****<i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: a rodent the size of a buffalo...
PostPosted: Fri Sep 19, 2003 2:51 pm 
Offline
Master Pilot

Joined: Thu Mar 28, 2002 2:23 am
Posts: 3363
And now Danlo looked in that direction, too. He remembered that snowy owls mate in the darkest part of deep winter, and so along with this beautiful white bird perched in a tree a hundred feet away, he turned to face the sea as he watched and waited.

Ahira, Ahira, he called out silently to the sky. Ahira, Ahira<i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Galileo crashes
PostPosted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 4:38 am 
Offline
Lady Scryer
User avatar

Joined: Sun Nov 17, 2002 5:11 pm
Posts: 9653
Location: Michigan, USA
Galileo Ends 14-Year Mission in Jupiter
(AP) - NASA's aging Galileo spacecraft concluded its 14-year, $1.5 billion exploration of Jupiter and its moons on Sunday with a streaking suicide plunge into the planet's turbulent atmosphere. The spacecraft passed into the shadow of the solar system's largest planet and several minutes later entered its atmosphere at 2:57 p.m. EDT. The unmanned spacecraft, traveling at nearly 108,000 mph, was torn apart and vaporized by the heat and friction of its fall through the clouds.


RIP Galileo Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
****Tavern Wench of DOGMA, the Defenders of George Martin's Art****<i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 163 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ... 11  Next

All times are UTC


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum

cron
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group