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Observatory: A Ball on the Seafloor Casts Doubt on Views of How Life Diversified

In the summer of 2007 during an expedition off the Bahamas, a team of scientists made an unusual discovery. On the seafloor more than 2,000 feet down, a remote submersible vehicle recorded video of what one of the researchers, Mikhail V. Matz of the ...

From HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times,  1 Dec 2008

Observatory: Turtles on the Half Shell: New Fossils Show an Evolutionary Step

From the fossil record, you’d think that turtles burst upon the world with their shells intact. The oldest known species, a 210-million-year-old fossil from Germany, has a complete bottom shell, called a plastron, and a complete top shell, or carapace. ...

From HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times,  1 Dec 2008

Observatory: A New Understanding of Iceberg Formation May Aid Climate Studies

One process that contributes to the rise of sea levels is the calving of icebergs from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. As these expanses of ice flow from land into water, they form floating extensions, or shelves. It’s at the leading edge of ...

From HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times,  1 Dec 2008

Blanket of soil may hide glaciers on Mars

The surface of Mars can be a bumpy place, particularly in the mid-latitudes. There, steep peaks are often surrounded by broad lobes of material that stretch away from the peaks for up to a dozen miles. Scientists have long thought that those big bumps ...

From HENRY FOUNTAIN, International Herald Tribune,  24 Nov 2008

Observatory: Study of Old Penguin Bones Reveals a New Species

It’s not every day that a scientist studying one animal species comes across another, previously unknown, one. But that’s what happened to Sanne Boessenkool of the University of Otago in New Zealand. What makes the discovery even more unusual is the ...

From HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times,  21 Nov 2008

Observatory: Blanket of Soil May Hide Vast Martian Glaciers

The surface of Mars can be a bumpy place, particularly in the mid-latitudes. There, steep peaks are often surrounded by broad lobes of material that stretch away from the peaks for up to a dozen miles. A mountain on Mars surrounded by a lobate deposit. ...

From HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times,  21 Nov 2008

Invasive plants in Galápagos may really be native

For years, conservationists have been concerned about the impact of invasive plant species in the Galápagos Islands. Hundreds of species have been identified as being nonnative, introduced through human contact. The idea is to remove these plants to ...

From HENRY FOUNTAIN, International Herald Tribune,  21 Nov 2008

Observatory: Invasive Plants in Galápagos May Really Be Native

For years, conservationists have been concerned about the impact of invasive plant species in the Galápagos Islands. Hundreds of species have been identified as being nonnative, introduced through human contact. The idea is to remove these plants to ...

From HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times,  20 Nov 2008

Drip Irrigation May Not Save Water, Analysis Finds

In an effort to make irrigation more efficient — to obtain more “crop per drop” — farmers have adopted alternatives to flooding and other conventional methods. Among these is drip irrigation, shown above, in which water flows only to the roots. Drip ...

From HENRY FOUNTAIN, EcoEarth News,  18 Nov 2008

Observatory: Using a Variety of Tools, Researchers Unravel Tale of German Graves

Three years ago, archaeologists in Germany made what they described as a lucky find: a group of four graves near the Saale River, dating back to the Late Stone Age, 4,600 years ago. The graves contained two to four bodies each, adults and young ...

From HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times,  17 Nov 2008

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