Insect pollination extended by 50 million years, claim scientists in Science (AAAS) News and ScienceDaily 11 November 2019, and PNAS 11 November 2019 doi: 10.1073/pnas.1916186116. Scientists from China, Germany and USA have studied a beetle preserved in Burmese amber and found it was carrying pollen grains from a flowering plant. The beetle belongs to a […]
“Good coral parenting” for reef recovery found, according to reports in ScienceDaily 16 September 2019 and Scientific Reports 16 September 2019, doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-50045-y. Corals live in a symbiotic relationship with algae – single celled plants that provide the coral with a lot of nutrients, as well as giving the corals their colour. When the corals […]
Reef in no trouble at all, says expert in an interview recorded by the Institute of Public Affairs. Dismissed university Professor Peter Ridd, a marine geophysicist at James Cook University, made the following comments about the Great Barrier Reef: “When you bury down to the data about that bleaching event in 2016, at the extreme […]
Rising seas will drown mangroves, claim Australian scientists in a report in ABC News 1 July 2019. Scientists at Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory of Australia are studying mangrove swamps to assess the effect of climate change and rising sea levels. According to Madeline Goddard, one of the researchers, “Across the world the […]
Fossil ‘meteorite impact dino graveyard’, according to reports in BBC News, National Geographic and ScienceDaily 29 March 2019, CNN and Science News 1 April 2019, and PNAS published online 1 April 2019, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1817407116. Palaeontologists in North Dakota USA have found a fossil graveyard they claim was formed as a result of the impact of […]
Oldest fossil flowers found, according to articles in ScienceDaily 18 December 2018 and Live Science 19 December 2019, and eLife 18 December 2018, doi: 10.7554/eLife.38827.001. An international group of scientists has studied 34 rock slabs containing 198 specimens of a previously unknown fossil flower. The fossils are from the South Xiangshan Formation, an outcrop of […]
Weevil larvae at sea according articles in Journal of Experimental Biology, 13 December 2018, doi: 10.1242/jeb.195792. Flightless insects and small invertebrates are found all over the world, including remote islands. In order to get to such places they must cross long stretches of ocean. Even if they are carried on rafts of vegetation they will […]
“Impossible” dandelion flight described, in Nature News and ScienceDaily 17 October 2018, and Nature 17 October 2018, doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0604-2. Anyone who has tried to keep dandelions from taking over their gardens and lawns knows how efficiently these plants spread their flying seeds. Each dandelion seed is suspended under a parachute-like structure called a pappus, formed […]
John Mackay and Joseph Hubbard have found some great fossils in the Newcastle Coal Measures, on the east coast of Australia. These included fossil thorns on what seems to be a previously unrecorded species of Neuropteris, a seed fern. Regardless of what the classification finally turns out to be it means one challenging thing, so […]
Did dinosaurs stop to smell the flowers? According to articles in ScienceDaily 7 August 2018 and Historical Biology, doi: 10.1080/08912963.2018.1502288 published online 25 July 2018, they could have. Many flowers attract pollinators by producing fragrances. George Poinar, an entomologist at Oregon State University and his son Greg, a perfume collector, have examined fossil flowers found […]