ScienceDaily: Fossils & Ruins News

Geologists know well how rock towers and arches shimmy, twist and sway in response to far-off earthquakes, wind and even ocean waves. Their latest research compiles a first-of-its-kind dataset to show that the dynamic properties, i.e. the frequencies at which the rocks vibrate and the ways they deform during that vibration, can be largely predicted using the same mathematics that describe how beams in built structures resonate.

Sediment cores taken from the Southern Ocean dating back 23 million years are providing insight into how ancient methane escaping from the seafloor could have led to regional or global climate and environmental changes, according to a new study.

Whether nectar-sucking butterflies or blood-sucking mosquitoes - the ingestion of liquid food has long been known for many insects and other arthropods. A research team now shows that millipedes also use a sucking pump to ingest liquid food. A sucking pump has thus evolved independently in different groups of organisms over several 100 million years. In the process, astonishingly similar biomechanical solutions for ingesting liquid food have evolved in widely distant animal groups.

Just before the closing scenes of the Cretaceous Period, India was a rogue subcontinent on a collision course with Asia. Before the two landmasses merged, however, India rafted over a 'hot spot' within the Earth's crust, triggering one of the largest volcanic eruptions in Earth's history, which likely contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs. In a recent study, scientists excavating the fossilized remains of plant material wedged between layers of volcanic rock describe a new plant species based on the presence of distinctive fruit capsules that likely exploded to disperse their seeds.