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About 67 million years ago, two dinosaurs faced off in a showdown in what is now Montana before being buried together in a single grave.
It is not clear which dino won the war. Triceratops horridus and Tyrannosaurus rex each died of battle wounds.
The Triceratops fossil first appeared in 2006 when it was eroded from rocks in the Hell Creek Formation. Later, it was seen that the T. rex fossil matched it.
When commercial paleontologist Mark Eatman found the tangled fossils, the discovery was like something out of the “Jurassic Park” movies coming to life.
“Dueling dinosaurs” went on display at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh in April.
And now Eatman has struck dino gold again.
Dino-mite!
This specimen might be the rock star of dinosaurs.
The horned dinosaur fossil, which was exhibited for more than a year at the Museum of Evolution in Maribo, Denmark, was eventually recognized as a previously unknown species.
Lokiceratops rangiformis, named in part after the Norse god of mischief, was a cousin of Triceratops and lived in a swampy environment with other horned dinosaur species about 78 million years ago.
Lokiceratops had a flamboyant, fierce appearance befitting a metalhead that helped it defend its territory and court mates: a skull adorned with a shield-like frill, horns over its eyes, and spade-shaped horns on the back.
defying gravity
When NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams went on a test flight aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule on June 5, they were expected to return about eight days later from their visit to the International Space Station.
The duo is likely aiming to return in July, according to the space agency.
The return date continues to change as Boeing and NASA try to figure out different problems, such as helium leaks and thruster failures, that occurred during the spacecraft’s first crewed journey.
Considering that the service module of the problematic capsule will not return, engineers are trying to understand the issue as much as they can before the Starliner hits the road.
All Over the Universe
For the first time, astronomers are watching a supermassive black hole wake up in the middle of a distant galaxy.
The detection of an unusually bright glow by a telescope in 2019 initially clued scientists that something unusual was happening in the galaxy located 300 million light-years away.
Now the international team has an unprecedented sight of the sleeping giant coming to life and consuming all possible cosmic material.
Meanwhile, researchers may have uncovered a primitive type of black hole as they reexamine the late British physicist Stephen Hawking’s popular theory in the search for elusive direct evidence of missing matter in the universe.
ocean secrets
A 246-million-year-old fossil found in an unexpected place reveals how far some ancient creatures roamed the earth.
The late paleontologist Robert Erwan Fordyce, professor emeritus at the University of Otago, first noticed the fossil of a nothosaur in New Zealand. The discovery marked a rare example of a marine reptile unearthed in the Southern Hemisphere.
The surprising finding caused researchers to question how reptiles moved from one side of Earth to the other, which was then dominated by a supercontinent called Pangea.
Paleontologist Benjamin Kear from the Museum of Evolution at Uppsala University in Sweden says that nothosaurs, which paddled in the water with their limbs, swam around Pangea, using the global ocean as a coastal route.
Once upon a time a planet
Mapping the ruins of the rock gardens could help researchers piece together exactly what happened to the Polynesian sailors who originally lived on Easter Island.
Researchers are divided into two camps as they study the remote Pacific island also known as Rapa Nui, home to hundreds of monumental stone heads called Moai.
Some experts suspect that limited resources are leading to a catastrophic decline in population. Others believe that the isolated group lived a sustainable life until 18th-century European settlers brought disease to the island.
New research using satellite imagery and machine learning shows that the island had a much smaller and more stable population, and that islanders were able to subsist on sweet potatoes and other crops grown using an ancient farming technique.
discoveries
Examine these findings in detail:
— As Voyager 1 explores uncharted cosmic territory, the probe is sending back valuable scientific data for the first time since a computer glitch disabled the spacecraft seven months ago.
— Scientists have discovered microplastics in human penises, adding to a growing list of potential health concerns around tiny particles.
— A 3,300-year-old ship filled with hundreds of intact jars unearthed at the bottom of the Mediterranean is one of the oldest shipwrecks ever found.
— Meet Fernando Trujillo, a Colombian marine biologist who traveled to the Amazon decades ago on a mission to save the mysterious pink river dolphins.
— For years, astronomers thought Jupiter’s Great Red Spot was first observed on the planet more than 350 years ago. A new analysis reveals that the observations made in 1665 were related to something else.
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