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Stories filed under: "chickens"

DailyDirt: Digging Up The Past

from the urls-we-dug-up dept

Though replete with accurate models, well-tested theories and millions of specimens, we’re still a long, long way from having a complete picture of the history of life on earth. New discoveries can still upend everything or point to entire unexplored aspects of our prehistory — and yet, slowly but surely, scientists are building a catalog of all that can be known about living things. Here are some of the latest projects helping to fill in branches on the evolutionary tree:

• After over 60 years known only as the “Tully Monster”, Illinois’ 300-million year old state fossil has finally been identified. Turns out it’s a relative of modern lampreys, and what researchers thought was its gut was actually a proto-backbone. [url]
• Scientists in Chile have genetically altered chickens to grow “dinosaur legs” like their prehistoric ancestors. They aren’t trying to build Jurassic Park, just to better understand how avian dinosaurs evolved into modern birds. [url]
• The world’s oldest land fossil is a fungus that was feeding on something even older. Scientists have long puzzled over its exact role in evolutionary history, but it may have given rise to the first complex-plant-bearing soil. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: biology, biotech, chickens, dinosaurs, evolution, fossils, gmo, life, prehistoric animals, tully monster

DailyDirt: Playing With Technological Fire…

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Sometimes people really leap before looking — and that can be especially dangerous when it comes to technologies that we don’t fully understand. Not too long ago, we created rivers so polluted that they’d actually catch on fire. We seem to be tuning in to the environmental repercussions of the chemical industry, but we might be making analogous mistakes when it comes to nuclear or biological technologies. Too much, too soon — and we’ll be cleaning up the aftermath for generations (if it can be cleaned up). Here are some quick links to some potentially concerning activities.

• Pumping water into the ground in order to extract more natural gas may be causing some man-made earthquakes in Arkansas. A seismologist says that an earthquake with a magnitude greater than 5.5 is extremely unlikely, but also states that the fault system in the area is largely unmapped. [url]
• Wired interviews Jack Horner on his experiments towards hatching dinosaur-like creatures from chickens. Since Horner is working on a really tight budget, he’s not actually creating any fancy DNA hybrids — just knocking out genes until he finds (he hopes) a set of genes that resembles a pre-historic, dinosaur-looking chicken-lizard. [url]
• Here’s an interesting TED talk that questions the wisdom of bioengineering animals. GATTACA, FTW. [url]
• To discover more interesting tech-related content, check out what’s currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: bioengineering, chickens, dinosaurs, earthquake