Showing 20 articles starting at article 221

< Previous 20 articles        Next 20 articles >

Categories: Engineering: Biometric, Paleontology: Early Mammals and Birds

Return to the site home page

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Feathers, an owl head and oars suggest the people in this Iron Age grave were prepared for a long journey.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

The largest flightless bird ever to live weighed in up to 600kg and had a whopping head about half a meter long - but its brain was squeezed for space. Dromornis stirtoni, the largest of the 'mihirungs' (an Aboriginal word for 'giant bird'), stood up to 3m and had a cranium wider and higher than it was long due to a powerful big beak, leading Australian palaeontologists to look inside its brain space to see how it worked.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Since the introduction of plastic (polymer) banknotes in 2016, the number of counterfeit notes on the streets has increased, however, researchers have developed a novel technique called Polymer Substrate Fingerprinting, which identifies every banknote's fingerprint which is unique and unclonable.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

In a genetic surprise, ancient DNA shows the closest family members of an extinct bird known as the Haitian cave-rail are not in the Americas, but Africa and the South Pacific, uncovering an unexpected link between Caribbean bird life and the Old World.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

The remarkable genetic scissors called CRISPR/Cas9, the discovery that won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, sometimes cut in places that they are not designed to target.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

The fossil of a bird that lived alongside the dinosaurs was found with some sort of rocks in its stomach. Previously, researchers thought that these rocks were swallowed on purpose to help clean its stomach, like modern birds of prey do, giving a hint at its diet. But in a new study, scientists discovered that these rocks are quartz crystals that likely formed after the bird died -- its diet is still a mystery.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Love them or hate them, there's no doubt the European Starling is a wildly successful bird. A new study examines this non-native species from the inside out to learn what exactly happened at the genetic level as the starling population exploded across North America?

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

This new paper shows that melanin is more than just something that gives colour to the body. It played an important role in the evolution of warm-blooded animals and helped defined what birds and mammals look like today. By studying where melanin occurs in the body in fossils and modern animals researchers have produced the first model for how melanin has evolved over the last 500 million years.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

New research has found that optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging technology can be utilized to distinguish between legitimate and counterfeit travel documents.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Researchers are reporting an advancement of a chemical sensing chip that could lead to handheld devices that detect trace chemicals -- everything from illicit drugs to pollution -- as quickly as a breathalyzer identifies alcohol.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Three studies uncovered the unusual sex chromosomes of platypus, emu and Pekin duck. Platypus have five pairs of sex chromosomes forming an unusual chain shape, while the sex chromosomes of emu and duck are not as different between sexes as those of human.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

New research explains how a 'stop-start' pattern of evolution, governed by environmental change, could explain why crocodiles have changed so little since the age of the dinosaurs.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Scientists have found the most elaborately dressed-to-impress dinosaur ever described and say it sheds new light on how birds such as peacocks inherited their ability to show off.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

A single strand of hair in a crime scene contains many clues that can help identify a perpetrator. In a recent study, scientists have combined two modern techniques, called surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy and X-ray fluorescence, to distinguish between different colors in individual hair strands. Both these techniques are almost non-destructive and can be conducted with portable devices, making this a promising way to get supportive evidence in forensic investigations.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Molting is thought to be unorganized in the first feathered dinosaurs because they had yet to evolve flight, so determining how molting evolved can lead to better understanding of flight origins. Recently researchers discovered that the earliest record of feather molting from the famous early fossil bird Archaeopteryx found in southern Germany in rocks that used to be tropical lagoons ~150 million years ago.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Bird species that have lost the ability to fly through evolution have become extinct more often than birds that have retained their ability to fly, according to new research.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Human fingerprints have a self-regulating moisture mechanism that not only helps us to avoid dropping our smartphone, but could help scientists to develop better prosthetic limbs, robotic equipment and virtual reality environments, a new study reveals.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

New research sheds light on the production of an 800-year-old turkey feather blanket and explores the economic and cultural aspects of raising turkeys to supply feathers in the ancient Southwest.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Forensic science experts are refining an innovative counter-terrorism technique that checks for environmental DNA in the dust on clothing, baggage, shoes or even a passport.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Fossil bones collected in the early 1990s on Henderson Island, part of the Pitcairn Group, have revealed a new species of Polynesian sandpiper. The Henderson Sandpiper, a small wading bird that has been extinct for centuries, is formally named Prosobonia sauli after Cook Islands-based ornithologist and conservationist Edward K Saul.