Science

What’s the word for a bear that’s half polar bear and half grizzly? No one’s come up with a definitive name yet (grizzlar?) but a hybrid animal of this type was shot and killed recently by an Inuit hunter in northern Canada. Researchers believe it was both: a polar-grizzly hybrid, something only rarely seen in the wild, but becoming increasingly …

Cephalopods thrive in warm oceans? Warming oceans are bad news for a number of marine species, but cephalopods — the many-armed mollusk group that includes octopus, squid and cuttlefish — are doing just fine. In fact, over the past 60 years their numbers have been on the rise, according to a new study. The international team, led by researchers from …

Alien enthusiasts claim they have proof of life on the moon after spotting structures which suggest it is occupied. A YouTube video posted by true believers Secureteam uses Google Earth to identify what they insist is five 200ft tall towers at the rim of a crater. Other, more sober observers, might suggest that the object seen by SecureTeam 10 on …

The discovery hints at life after mass extinction and shows early marine reptiles did not evolved slowly after Permian-Triassic mass extinction 250 million years ago. The new species, an ichthyosaur named Sclerocormus parviceps, was a marine reptile dating to the Lower Triassic, and it looked nothing like other ichthyosaurs scientists have studied. Ichthyosaurs were a group of marine reptiles which …

The Earth is warmed by Solar superflares? Earth could have grown warm enough for liquid water as far back as 4 billion years ago thanks to massive and frequent solar flares. The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, suggests that solar radiation — rather than meteor impacts — may have kindled organisms in Earth’s primordial soup. The results could …

This afternoon, NASA announced that it will launch its OSIRIS-REx (which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security – Regolith Explorer) spacecraft on September 8th. OSIRIS-REx now enters final preparations for launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5, currently scheduled for Sept. 8 from Cape Canaveral at the beginning of a launch window that lasts a little more …

Mount Etna, a volcano in Sicily, erupted on Saturday morning. Europe’s highest active volcano, Mount Etna in Sicily, erupted on Saturday, a week after researchers detected an increase in volcanic tremors. The powerful eruption was caught on camera by local journalist Turi Caggegi. The video shows ash and smoke bursting hundreds of metres into the air as lava gurgles from …

Today the world learned that Tyrannosaurus Rex probably had lips. New findings from University of Toronto vertebrate palaeontologist Robert Reisz challenge the idea of what therapods might have looked like when dinosaurs roamed the earth. His research will be presented today at a conference at U of T Mississauga – and it’s already making headlines. “When we see dinosaurs in …

University of Florida researchers confirmed in a recent study the capture of three Nile crocodiles in South Florida. The ancient icon eats everything from zebras to small hippos to humans in sub-Saharan Africa. Now three juveniles of the monster crocodile, have been found in South Florida, swimming in the Everglades and relaxing on a house porch in Miami.

Two teams of scientists have independently identified a gene-encoded enzyme in birds that converts yellow pigments obtained from the diet into red pigments, which birds then use to color their feathers, bills and bare skin. The genes belong to a wider family of genes that also play an important role in detoxification, suggesting how heightened redness may be a sign …

Japan has a plan to make its Olympics opening ceremony unlike any other. A start-up, called Star-ALE, is designing a man-made meteor shower that could be seen over Tokyo during the 2020 games.