A Blog Around The Clock

What Did Dinosaurs Hear?:

What did dinosaurs hear? Probably a lot of low frequency sounds, like the heavy footsteps of another dinosaur, if University of Maryland professor Robert Dooling and his colleagues are right. What they likely couldn't hear were the high pitched sounds that birds make.

Scientists Join Fight To Save Tasmanian Devil From Deadly Cancer:

CSIRO scientists have joined the battle to save Australia's iconic Tasmanian devils from the deadly cancer currently devastating devil populations.

Stray Penguins Probably Reached Northern Waters By Fishing Boat:

Guy Demmert got quite a surprise when he hauled a fishing net into his boat off the coast of southeast Alaska in July 2002. There among the salmon, in living black and white, was a Humboldt penguin, thousands of miles from where any of its kind should have been.

Hormone Helps Mice 'Hibernate,' Survive Starvation:

A key hormone enables starving mice to alter their metabolism and "hibernate" to conserve energy, revealing a novel molecular target for drugs to treat human obesity and metabolic disorders, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found. The starvation-fighting effects of the hormone, called fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21), are described for the first time in a study appearing online today in Cell Metabolism.

Climate Change And Deforestation Will Lead To Declines In Global Bird Diversity, Study Warns:

Global warming and the destruction of natural habitats will lead to significant declines and extinctions in the world's 8,750 terrestrial bird species over the next century, according to a study conducted by biologists at the University of California, San Diego and Princeton University.

24 Species Believed New To Science Discovered In Suriname Rainforest:

Conservationists are in the northern Amazon nation of Suriname today calling for better environmental protections from illegal mining and other threats. To make the case for improved conservation practices, scientists from Conservation International (CI) and partner institutions are presenting a report to government officials that details eastern Suriname's invaluable biodiversity. The report documents the results of a 2005 expedition and 2006 follow-up survey, led by CI's Rapid Assessment Program (RAP), during which researchers found 24 species previously unknown to science.