Wednesday, 8 February, 2012

78 million years ago, a pregnant predator of the Cretaceous ocean died and sank to the sea floor. Today, her fossil gives the first proof that plesiosaurs, one of the commonest and baddest marine reptiles of the era, did not lay eggs. It gave birth.

Hitting the road? What could be more enlightening than gawking at a cave, exploring a desert, or eyeballing the largest telescope in the world? Need proof that science is not just books and websites or equations and software? Get moving!

Darwin thought life had to predate the Cambrian era, and yet there was no evidence. In 1953, a Wisconsin geologist saw fossils aged almost 2 billion years. Now, life has been discovered in rocks from 3.5 billion years. What was life like, and how do we recognize it?

A report that people were in Texas 15,500 years ago settles a long dispute: The Americans who made Clovis-style spear-points were not the first Americans — despite heavy archeological skepticism. Pre-Clovis rules! But who were the pre-Clovis people, and why are scientists so dismissive of contrary evidence?

A small constriction in a buried pipe shows that the Maya were using pressurized pipes before year 750. It’s more proof that when it comes to water, people get inventive! And what did the Maya do with the New World’s oldest plumbing? How about storing water, supplying drinking water, and flushing toilets?

People have been controlling fermentation for at least 9,000 years. What were the ancients brewing, and how did alcohol change society?

It’s one of the biggest puzzles of paleontology: Why did North America’s large mammals go extinct shortly after the glaciers melted about 15k years ago? New study suggests that hunters get the credit — or blame.

Flax, the basis for linen, was spun and dyed, and lost in the mud. More than 30,000 years later, microscopic flax fibers provide the first cord in archeological history.

What you can’t see can still interest you. Archeologists use radar, magnetic, electrical gizmos to see through the ground, find places to dig.

A stone tool discovered in Polynesia came from Hawaii — 2500 miles away. Modern analytical techniques show that Polynesians did sail thousands of miles across the ocean — without a compass.