Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Hot Links

This piece on dinosaur feathers preserved in amber came out in September, but I just now stumbled across it. Pretty amazing photo gallery.

Anthropologists from the NY Times Style section have discovered that portable generators can become status symbols in certain primitive societies - such as their own during a power outage.

This story tells how a reanalysis of human fossils originally excavated in 1964, has established that they are the oldest known skeletal remains of anatomically modern humans in the whole of Europe. It's amazing what you can figure out re-examining old collections. This post I put up a few weeks ago describes the reanalysis of a mastodon kill excavated thirty years ago that has established it as Pre-Clovis in age. It's taken us about 100 years to figure out how the Antikythera Mechanism worked. There's a reason we curate this stuff in museums.

Here is a beautiful photo gallery of The Forest of the Ancients - a bristlecone pine grove that contains the oldest living things on the planet.

3 comments:

Holly Heyser said...

Wow, the feathers in amber are amazing! Gotta say I love the idea of a T-Rex with the plumage of a harlequin duck. Or better yet, a spoonie...

Matt Mullenix said...

Just in time for a remake of Jurrasic Park!

Shiri Hoshen said...

This is cool.

The find itself is incredible, but truly awe-inspiring is the richness of the information right in front of our noses.

Amazing what you might find when you look in the same places, at the same things, with new eyes. :-)