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If a coprolite can be linked to the creature that made it, any contents can be reasonably identified as a part of the diet, says Martin Qvarnström, a vertebrate paleontologist at Uppsala University in Sweden. "Some pterosaurs looked like creatures from your nightmares", says Brian Andres, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Sheffield in England. S. taylori had slender limbs, small hands and straight claws, all of which point to a ground-dwelling creature, says Davide Foffa, a vertebrate paleontologist at National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh. Its fossils were unearthed from limestone rocks laid down as sediment sometime between 157 million and 152 million years ago in what is now Germany, says David Martill, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Portsmouth in England. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses about the depth of the sea Kraken Mare Saturn's moon Titan which contains a mix of methane, ethane and nitrogen.

According to an article in Science News, researchers propose that remnants of a Mars-sized object called Theia, which collided with Earth about 4.5 billion years ago and formed the moon, still exist today as dense material on Earth's core. Geophysicists have discovered two large zones of rock at the base of Earth's mantle, known as large low-velocity provinces, which are denser than the rest of the mantle rock. While some scientists believe these masses are remnants of tectonic plates, the researchers suggest that they are actually remnants of Theia's core and mantle. The simulations conducted by the researchers indicate that a substantial portion of Theia's core and mantle would have sunk into Earth's core and uppermost mantle, respectively, after the collision. The team proposes that the material from Theia's mantle slowly sank over millions of years to form the large low-velocity provinces. The article also mentions that a collision between Earth and a protoplanet is the leading theory for the moon's formation and may have also jump-started plate tectonics. [Extracted from the article]

Since the shells show no signs of being dissolved, the trilobite's gut may have had an alkaline or neutral pH. Researchers discovered the partially digested meals when they looked at a digital 3-D reconstruction of Bohemolichas incola, a trilobite species that lived 465 million years ago. For the first time, scientists have unearthed a fossilized trilobite whose final meals were preserved within its digestive system. [Extracted from the article]

Space rocks may light up Venus' sky News Occasional flashes light up Venus' shroud of clouds. But meteors there will be substantially brighter and more noticeable because they are traveling faster on average: The space rocks enter Venus' atmosphere at about 25 kilometers per second compared with about 20 km/s for those entering Earth's. [Extracted from the article]

News A species that lived about 520 million years ago and was thought to be the oldest known bryozoan is instead a type of colony-forming algae, a new study proposes. The leaflike flanges described by Smith and colleagues could just as easily be interpreted as body parts of individual animals in the bryozoan colony, says invertebrate paleontologist Paul Taylor of London's Natural History Museum. Because the tentacles that bryozoans use to snatch prey from the water are made of soft tissue and typically don't preserve well, their absence from the new fossils is not at all surprising, Taylor says. [Extracted from the article]

Any relatively permanent redistribution of mass would contribute to drift, but water probably has the biggest influence, says Clark Wilson, a geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin. The North Pole drifted about 1.6 meters toward the east coast of Greenland between 1993 and 2010. Glacier and ice sheet melting, which has accelerated over the last several decades, contributed about 4.1 cm/yr to the North Pole's drift during the study period, Wilson and colleagues estimated. [Extracted from the article]

In September 2022, NASA steered the DART spacecraft into Dimorphos, a moonlet of the larger asteroid Didymos, to test a strategy for knocking any future Earth-bound asteroids off course (SN: 11/5/22, p. 14). The space rock now has 37 boulder companions (small blue dots) after a NASA spacecraft collided with it last September. News When a probe smashed into a small asteroid last year, the collision did more than change the asteroid's orbit - it also blasted a few dozen boulders into space. [Extracted from the article]

- Sid Perkins Tallies of the most common ways humans use wild vertebrates, by number of species Numbers within circle intersections denote species used for two or more purposes Ray-finned fishes Reptiles Land-based Cartilaginous fishes Amphibians Freshwater-based Mammals Birds Marine-based Pets Food Collections Clothes Medicine DIAGRAM: Tallies of the most common ways humans use wild vertebrates, by number of species The IUCN considers human use to be a threat for nearly 40 percent of exploited vertebrate species - roughly 5,800 in total. [Extracted from the article]

Perforated bones excavated at an ancient settlement in northern Israel are the oldest known wind instruments found in the region. All the flutes were made from the wing bones of waterfowl that spent winter months at the lake, Davin and colleagues determined. [Extracted from the article]

News Runoff from irrigation has moved so much water from land to sea that Earth's rotation might have measurably shifted. Computer simulations suggest that from 1993 through 2010, irrigation alone nudged the North Pole by about 78 centimeters, scientists report in the June 28 G eophysical Research Letters. [Extracted from the article]

Sea-surface temperatures in some parts of the North Atlantic Ocean have soared to new heights. The return of El Niño this year means warmer-than-normal sea-surface temperatures. On June 10, for instance, the North Atlantic's average sea-surface temperature was 22.7° C. That's about 1 degree C higher than the average recorded for this date from 1991 through 2020. [Extracted from the article]

The article examines how the migration of beavers into the Alaskan tundra is changing the ecosystem. It cites climate change making the region more habitable for beavers as the cause of the migration before discussing how the ponds created by beaver dams have increased biodiversity.

Calculations suggest that if the stellar energy falling on TRAPPIST-1b were distributed around the planet - by an atmosphere, for example - and reradiated equally in all directions, the planet's dayside surface temperature would be about 120° Celsius. News A rocky planet that circles a small star nearly 40 light-years from Earth is hot and has little or no atmosphere, a new study suggests. [Extracted from the article]

The article reports on Geoscientist Jaap Nienhuis of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and his colleagues has found that delta areas worldwide have gained land in the past 30 years, despite river damming.

The article discusses a research in which Yuzhang Li, a materials scientist at Stanford University, and his colleagues, have obtained images of individual carbon dioxide molecules trapped in a series of molecular cages.

The article reviews the study reported in "Physical Review X" that gives evidence of what appears to be the oldest known respiratory infection in a dinosaur and the theory that germs usually do not fossilize well. It discusses the lesions found in the vertebrae of a 150-million-year-old juvenile sauropod Dolly pointing to a lung infection that moved into the bones and vertebrae. The long-necked dinosaur, closely related to Diplodocus, was discovered in southwestern Montana.

The article focuses on the Carbon Mineral Challenge launched in December 2015 that calls on scientists and rock enthusiasts to search for carbon-bearing minerals worldwide. Topics mentioned include a background on the screening process to be performed by the International Mineralogical Association, the discovery of abellaite in 2010 at the Eureka mine in Nevada, and the requirements for recognizing a mineral including the use of natural sample.

Evaporation of water from foliage drives the sappy suction, says climatologist Gregory Quetin of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Over the course of a year, the world's plants harness about 0.03 watts per square meter of sap-pumping power on average, the team reports August 17 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences. When it comes to hoisting sap, plants are real power lifters. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the development of synthetic wood, including its strength, the use of sugar polymers, chitosan and polymer resin in its composition and its potential use in packaging, referencing an article by materials chemist Shu-Hong in the "Science Advances" journal.

News EARTH & ENVIRONMENT The massive Tonga eruption generated a set of tsunamis that may have started out as a single mound of water roughly the height of the Statue of Liberty. Pressure wave-generated tsunamis have been reported for only one other volcanic eruption: the 1883 eruption of Krakatau in Indonesia. Those quicker-than-expected arrival times - plus the fact that the pressure wave tsunamis for the Tonga eruption were comparable in size with the gravity-driven ones - could complicate early warnings for these tsunamis. [Extracted from the article]

Although that evidence points to higher oxygen levels than some models suggest for that time, it's possible that oxygen was a substantial component of the atmosphere even earlier than the Silurian, Kump says. Charcoal, a remnant of wildfire, is physical evidence that provides, at the least, a minimum threshold for oxygen concentrations. News Bits of charcoal entombed in ancient rocks unearthed in Wales and Poland push back the earliest evidence for wildfires to about 430 million years ago. [Extracted from the article]

The article offers information on the Auroras that may heat up Jupiter's skies. Topics include largely due to the feeble illumination of the sun there, pressure waves created by turbulence lower in the atmosphere, molecules are created when charged particles in the solar wind, Astrophysicist Vivienne Baldassare of Washington State University in Pullman studies black holes in dwarf galaxies.

The article discusses the study by evolutionary biologist Dakota McCoy and colleagues on birds-of-paradise species with black feathers which revealed that the feathers can absorb light that hits it.

A space rock probably about 4 to 5.4 kilo-meters wide crashed into Earth about 280 million years ago, and material blasted from that impact may have created a bevy of secondary craters, Sid Perkins reported in "Impact caused a cascade of craters" (SN: 3/26/22, p. 12). Although some asteroids have satellites or companions, it's unclear whether the rock that struck Earth about 280 million years ago was traveling solo. But of the more than 28,000 known asteroids near Earth, only about 900 are at least 1 kilometer wide, says planetary scientist Thomas Kenkmann of the University of Freiburg in Germany. [Extracted from the article]

REVIEWS & PREVIEWS BOOKSHELF Some 66 million years ago, give or take several millennia, a 10-kilometer-wide asteroid slammed into our planet. Black begins her tale by exploring what happened in the Hell Creek area of today's Montana, whose rocks offer what is perhaps the best record of a dinosaur habitat. The Last Days of the Dinosaurs ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, $28.99 The demise of nonavian dinosaurs 66 million years ago dramatically reshaped ecosystems as other animals, such as small mammals (illustrated), took over. [Extracted from the article]

The article reports on a study by planetary scientist Thomas Kenkmann of the University of Freiburg in Germany and colleagues which reported several groupings of secondary craters in Wyoming formed by impact debris blasted from a larger crater on Earth.

The article reports on a study by vertebrate paleontologist Melanie During et al which examined features in fish bones that record seasonal and annual growth cycles at a Tanis site in North Dakota to estimate the timing of asteroid impact on Earth 66 million years ago. Topics include the findings that the impact took place during springtime in the Northern Hemisphere and the significance of determining the impact's season in understanding global patterns of survival of animals after the strike.

The article discusses some volcanic hot spots may be fueled by molten material that originates surprisingly close to Earth's surface. While some of the hottest spots are fed by plumes of buoyant material welling up from deep within Earth, as expected, the molten flows that drive activity at cooler hot spots result from relatively shallow geophysical processes.

The article discusses that second possible exomoon is identified. Some of the same researchers who found the first purported exomoon now say that they've found another. Dubbed Kepler 1708 b i, the satellite has a radius about 2.6 times that of Earth and circles a Jupiter-sized exoplanet that orbits its parent star about once every two Earth years.

The article discusses that remains of ancient hermits are preserved in rocks as seafloor sediments during the Cambrian Period in southern China suggests the hermiting behavior dated to about 170 million years ago.

The article discusses the amount of sunlight reflected from Earth into space is 30 percent less than before as measured by ground based instruments, which could be due to decline in ice cover resulting in absorption of more radiation.

The article discusses that track-rich coastal site of Matalascañas Trampled Surface in southern Spain exposed the preserved footprints of elephants, cattle, deer, pigs, wolves, water birds and even Neandertals and first footprints discovered of newborn straight tusked elephants of the ice age.

The article discusses earthquakes in the New Madrid Seismic Zone, examining attempts to determine the size of earthquakes in 1811 and 1812 as well as earthquakes which occurred in the area after 1812. Seismologist Susan Hough studied terrain and reported quake intensities, historian Kent Moran studied accounts of the earthquakes, and seismologist Chris Cramer studied other intraplate quakes. Research on liquefaction and sand boils by seismologist Thomas Holzer is also examined.

The article presents an image of a pool of water on top of Greenland's ice sheets and discusses how scientists are researching the formation and drainage of such pools and how ice-sheet melting affects sea levels.

The article discusses research on coastal erosion in the Gulf of Mexico associated with large storms including Hurricanes Ike, Katrina, and Ivan. Such erosion is attributable to high-speed winds and coastal ocean surges sufficiently powerful to remove coastal dwellings from their piers. Storm-induced reconfiguring of shorelines is said to be a popular research topic. At the root of that interest is high-technology equipment that facilitates collection of large amounts of relevant data, notably sonar, global positioning systems (GPS), and laser altimetry. U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) researcher Asbury Sallenger is cited regarding the benefits of these technological innovations.

The article discusses Mount St. Helens, its volcanic eruption in 1980, and signs of ecological recovery in the land areas damaged that are visible in 2010. The environment of Mount St. Helens is described and ecosystem characteristics that have emerged are discussed. The emergence of life in the eruption's area of impact is described for various plant and animal species. INSET: Predicting if what goes up will fall back down.

The article discusses the paleontological value of fossils that are found with intact soft tissues including skin, flesh, or feathers. Such finds give paleontologists much-wanted information on what prehistoric animals looked like. Example findings are noted regarding the appearance of Triceratops and other animals. Also noted are computer simulations in which scientists add virtual tissue to fossil bones to better understand the shape and size of prehistoric animals.

The article discusses bioturbation, or soil and sediment disturbances effected by plants and animals, and its relationship to other fields of science including geology, ocean chemistry, and evolutionary biology. It discusses early work on bioturbation by evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin and modern research by marine biogeochemist Robert C. Aller, geologist Kevin J. Cunningham, and others. INSET: Anatomy of a burrow.

The article discusses research on the geologic history of Niagara Falls and the Great Lakes during the Ice Age that started about 100,000 years ago. It describes the melting of a glacier that retreated starting 13,000 years ago and climate drying and their influence on water body size and the location of the falls.

The article discusses how scientist are trying to decode the mysteries of banded iron formations (BIFs) within the Earth, which are among the oldest rocks and are named for the alternate amounts of iron (Fe) between layers. Scientists hypothesize that Fe atoms were created by nuclear reactions inside massive stars seeding Earth and the galactic system with the raw materials for planet formation. Fe is the most abundant element on Earth, most of which lies within its core. Topics include the theory by geologists regarding the formation of BIFs, why BIFs are so puzzling, and an overview of research that is shedding light on when and how some of the bands formed including the interaction between the ocean and atmospheric oxygen, which is discussed in detail.