«Grandma, what big teeth you have!»

One of our early ancestors, a Therapsid (the group that gave rise to mammals) that lived 250 million years ago, has been recently discovered in Tiaraju, Brazil. Tiarajudens eccentricus ("eccentric teeth from Tiaraju") is the earliest of our known ancestors (and one of the oldest discovered land-dwelling animals) to be able to eat vegetables. However, as its name states: there are some things quite more unique in this extinct animal

 Reconstruction of T. eccentricus by Juan C. Cisneros.

Its most noticeable feature are the 12 cm canine "saber teeth" that protrude downwards from its upper jaw, such a distinct feature for a  plant-eater. Juan Carlos Cisneros, paleontologist of the Federal University of Pinauí and leader of the team that discovered the new species, believes the herbivore used this huge teeth to defend itself from predators.

Reconstruction of the head of T. eccentricus by Juan C. Cisneros.

Cisneros points out also another less noticeable but equally "eccentric" feature of the new species: it has 13 molars in its palate, unlike any other animal discovered so far.

Fossilized skull of T. eccentricus.

You can read the full article, published in the latest edition of the Science magazine, here.

Farewell to the voyager

After 33 years of traveling and unconditionally helping us to understand our universe, Voyager 1 is no longer in our neighborhood. The spacecraft is now at the almost incomprehensible distance of more than 17 billion (17 x 10⁹) km from its home planet -our beloved Earth- and has left the influence from our Sun. In other words, the Voyager 1 has finally left our Solar System.

Artist concept of the two Voyager spacecraft as they approach interstellar space. Image credit: NASA/JPL.

The spacecraft is now in a region called "heliosheath", were the solar wind of our Sun has a velocity of almost zero in relation to our star.

Voyager 1 was launched by NASA on September 5th, 1977, while its twin, the Voyager-2, was launched some days earlier, on August 20th. Together, they have studied all the exterior planets of our Solar System (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune -no, I'm not forgetting Pluto: it's no longer a planet, get over it!).

 Artist rendering of the Voyager 1.

Voyager 1 is since February 17, 1998 the man-made object most distant from Earth, after it surpassed the distances traveled by the spacecrafts Pioneer 10 and 11.

More information on the Voyager 1 status and in the mission in general can be found here and here, respectively.

2012 phenomenon is a hoax

Ok, just a short one. The title of this post explains itself:

www.2012hoax.org

And some Neil Degrasse Tyson, of course.

Kitten vs Dinosaur

Originally from the Cat versus Human blog.

Sunlight our future

So, we all know that using crude oil for feeding our civilization has several environmental, social and economical cons. Looking for a viable, clean and cheap source of energy is an imperative. Solar energy has been seen for a long time as promising replacement for petroleum, but, how feasable is to use it?

Parabolic dishes in Almeria, Spain, used to obtain solar energy. Photo by the Sandia National Laboratory.

Well, solar power is still vigorous, at least according to iSuppli, a market research firm. Thru a press release, iSuppli states that the market for this kind of energy is expected to grow more than 40% in 2011 compared to this year. However, solar energy market has shrunk compared to 2009, when it grew almost 98% compared to the precedent year.

Graphic by iSuppli

Recently, the South African government anounced that they are building the biggest solar energy plant ever constructed. As well, Europe will have its biggest solar energy plant in Italy.

A new (?) eurogiant

From the almost prehistoric times when there was no Internet, I am back with some news about our old good fellows, the dinosaurs. This time we go again to Spain, exactly to Teruel, where a team of paleontologists has discovered the fossil of the largest dinosaur's femur (the upper bone of the leg) ever to be found in Europe.

 Location of Teruel, Spain

Along with the femur, which measures 1,92 m, there have been found a right tibia 1,25 m long, 15 tail vertebrae, 11 chevrons, a nearly complete set of teeth and part of the skull. The sediments surrounding the bones are 145 million years old, so this dinosaur may have lived in between the late Jurassic and the early Cretaceous.

 

Photo by Dinopolis, the Teruel dinosaur thematic park.

In 2006, Turiasaurus riodevensis (something like "lizard of Riodeva, Turia", being Turia the latin name for Teruel), the biggest European dinosaur known until now (with a lenght exceeding 30 m), was unearthed from this same spot (the Riodeva dig). However, the discovery can't be yet assigned to a species, neither T. riodevensis nor a new one.

Reconstruction of Turiosaurus riovedensis, by Carin L. Cain.

The flamboyant, brand-new Triceratops's cousins

Two new species of Ceratopsians (group of horned, plant-eating dinosaurs whose most famous representative is the Triceratops) have been discovered in Utah, U.S.A. The bigger of them has been named Utahceratops ("Horned face from Utah") and  is interesting mainly because of  its almost horizontal brow horns, a completely new feature within Ceratopsians. The other one is simply too baroque: it has 15 horns! Kosmoceratops (something like "Ornamented horned face"), has the most decorated head of all Dinosaurs discovered so far.

Artist's reconstructions of the heads of Kosmoceratops (left) and Utahceratops (right), by Lukas Panzarin.

Comparison between the Utahceratops (left) and Kosmoceratops (right) skeletons, by Scott D. Sampson et al. The bones colored in yellow are the ones that were recovered.

Once believed to be used as a defense against carnivores, the horns and all other features that were characteristic of Ceratopsids skulls are now thought to be mainly ornamental. Each species had a very particular set of horns and neck frills that may be used to spot representatives of their own kind, as well as to show off and engage in battle between males during the mating season, the same way as most Cervids do nowadays.

Like Ceratopsians? This is the second post of this blog related to this group of Dinosaurs. Click here to see the first one.

30 seconds on Mars

Brief news on the red planet and related stuff:

• Last week, NASA's Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter (MRO) spoted rocks from a Martian area called Nili Fossae that may contain fosilized life, as they are very similar to Stromatolites, rocky formations from Pilbara, Australia, that were created by the activity of some of the earliest life forms on Earth.
• This week, the MRO rebooted and put itself in safe mode for an unknown reason, but it's back online.
• Meanwhile, Italian astrophysicists stated during the European Congress of Planetary Science that Phobos (one of the two Martian moons, being the other one Deimos) may have been originated from an asteroid impact with Mars and that is not a meteorite captured by the red planet, as it was previously thought.

Mars.

Shrunk and gone: a story about the Moon

Have you ever seen the Moon low in the horizon, when it is just rising? Do you remember how big it looks at that moment and how it seems to have shrunk when it is high in the sky? Well, even if this phenomenon is caused by an optical illuson, our natural satellite is actually shrinking.

 Photograph by Justo Ruiz.

The Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter (LRO), an artificial satellite launched on June18th, 2009 by the US's National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to study the Moon discovered what have been called lobated scarfs, a type of cliffs caused by the Moon's shrinkage.

The data obtained by the LRO shows that the Moon has reduced its radius in 100 m during a yet indetermined time span -it may go from one hundred thousand (1 x 10⁵) to one billion (1 x 10⁹) years. Yet, the Moon's shrinkage, caused by the cooling of its is interior, is not affecting its crust as it is already cold, thus causing this one to wrinkle. This is, roughly, how the lobated scarfes are originated.

Graphic showing how lobated scarfs are created, as the Moon's crust is pushed together due to our natural satellite's shrinkage. Image by NASA.

So, the Moon is shrinking, but is still ours, as always, right? Well, not forever, because the Moon is actually moving away from us and will eventually be gone forever.

The gravitational interaction between the Earth and the Moon that is responsible for the tidals of our seas is causing our natural satellite to be 3,8 cm farther away from us and is accelerating its revolution time around our planet to compensate this fact.

So, the Moon will look smaller and smaller each year in the sky and someday, in a very distant future, it won't be there no more. Don't believe me? Just watch:

Now, here's the explanation on why this is happening:

More information on the shrinking Moon can be found here.

So far yet so close (at least roughly)

By the end of August 2010, the biggest extrasolar planetary system discovered so far was announced by a team of European astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

Artist recreation of the recently discovered extrasolar planetary system. Original image from ESO.

Five planets have been confirmed to orbit HD 10180, a star very similar to our Sun located 127 million light-years from us, within the Hydrus constellation. There is also the possibilty that two more planets orbit the star and, if that's the case, the HD 10180 system will be almost as big as ours, given that our cosmic neighborhood consists of eight planets (Pluto is no longer one, remember?).

Yet, seemingly so close to our solar system, there are major differences to take into account. The five confirmed planets are as big as Neptune and their orbits span from six to 600 Earth days.

One of the unconfirmed planets may be the size of Saturn and would orbit HD 10180 in 2200 Earth days. The other one may be 1,4 times the size of our planet, but it's yet quite far from habitable (at least by us) as it would be so close to its star that its "year" lasts only 1,18 Earth days. Besides that, this "evil twin" of the Earth is the smallest planet discoverd so far.

The discovery of this rich extrasolar planetary system took about six years and was performed using the world's most powerful spectrograph, an instrument that captures and analyzes light signatures, at ESO's telescope at La Silla, Chile.

The first extrasolar planet was discovered in 1995 around 51 Pegasi and was called 51 Pegasi b, being abbreviated as 51 Peg b and nicknamed Bellerophon. As of September 8th, 2010, there have been announced 490 confirmed detections of such celestial bodies.

More information on the HD 10180 system can be found here. As well, an official video from ESO about the program can be seen below.