Scientists at the UK’s Liverpool John Moores University believe that methane gas emitted by sauropod dinosaurs may have had a major effect on the Mesozoic climate. Yes, this is basically a study on dinosaur farts.

Sauropods like Diplodocus, which lived 150 million years ago, probably generated methane in the same way modern cows do. The biggest ( Read more... )

Are you scientifically literate? Take our quiz
You may have an opinion on climate change, evolution education, stem-cell research, and science funding. But do you have the facts to back up your opinion? This quiz will test your basic scientific literacy.

50 multiple choice questions.

Some of these are gimmes. Some of them are more math then ( Read more... )

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Cal Tech via physorg.com: Body temperatures of dinosaurs measured for the first time
by Marcus Woo
June 23, 2011

Were dinosaurs slow and lumbering, or quick and agile? It depends largely on whether they were cold or warm blooded. When dinosaurs were first discovered in the mid-19th century, paleontologists thought they were plodding beasts that had to ( Read more... )

Fossilized teeth of early human ancestors bear signs that females left their families when they came of age, whereas males stayed close to home.

A chemical analysis of australopithecine fossils ranging between roughly 1.8 million and 2.2 million years old from two South African caves finds that teeth thought to belong to females are more likely ( Read more... )

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If you need to measure rainfall and all you have is a chinchilla, all is not lost!

http://news.discovery.com/earth/chinchilla-rainfall-chile.html

It's actually pretty cool:

THE GIST

• Chinchillas deposit their waste in personal scrap piles full of plants ( Read more... )

I am NOT okay with this!

Morph-osaurs: How shape-shifting dinosaurs deceived usDINOSAURS were shape-shifters. Their skulls underwent extreme changes throughout their lives, growing larger, sprouting horns then reabsorbing them, and changing shape so radically that different stages look to us like different species ( Read more... )

Examiner.com: University of Michigan paleontologist finds ancestor of apes and Old World monkeys
By Vince Lamb, Detroit Science News Examiner

It is not every day that one goes out looking for dinosaur bones, but instead finds a fossil that may not be as glamorous, but is even more important to science than yet another dinosaur. University of ( Read more... )

Yet another report from ontd_science's resident science correspondent.

Examiner.com: U of M scientists find climate change, mountain building led to mammal diversity patterns
by Vince Lamb, Detroit Science News Examiner

Travel from the Equator to the one of the poles and one finds that the climate becomes colder and harsher. During that same journey from ( Read more... )