The worlds strongest insect
10:17 Mar 24 2010
Times Read: 893
Beetle 'world's strongest insect'
After months of trials, a contender for the title of World's Strongest Insect has been named by scientists. Skip related content
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Enlarge photo .The dung beetle species Onthophagus taurus can pull a load 1,141 times its own body weight - the equivalent of an average person pulling six fully laden double decker buses.
Dr Rob Knell, one of the researchers from Queen Mary, University of London, said: "Insects are well known for being able to perform amazing feats of strength, and it's all on account of their curious sex lives.
"Female beetles of this species dig tunnels under a dung pat, where males mate with them. If a male enters a tunnel that is already occupied by a rival, they fight by locking horns and try to push each other out."
Dr Knell's team tested the ability of beetles to resist a rival by measuring how much force was needed to pull them from their holes.
The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Dr Knell said: "Interestingly, some male dung beetles don't fight over females. They are smaller, weaker and don't have horns like the larger males. Even when we fed them up they didn't grow stronger, so we know it's not because they have a poorer diet.
"They did, however, develop substantially bigger testicles for their body size.
"This suggests they sneak behind the back of the other male, waiting until he's looking the other way for a chance to mate with the female.
"Instead of growing super-strength to fight for a female, they grow lots more sperm to increase their chances of fertilising her eggs and fathering the next generation."
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100324/tsc-beetle-world-s-strongest-insect-4b158bc.html
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Climate catastrophe ushered in the dinosaurs:study
Jean-Louis Santini
catastrophe more than 200 million years ago ushered in the age of the dinosaurs by wiping out their rivals, a new study says. Skip related content
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The volcanic eruptions lasted about 600,000 years
Enlarge photo The volcanic eruptions lasted about 600,000 years Enlarge photo But the reasons underlying dinosaurs' survival, diversification and massive size …More Enlarge photo .Related content
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An abrupt rise in atmospheric gases, coupled with powerful volcanic eruptions decimated crurotarsans, creatures closely related to today's crocodiles, according to a study led by Brown University paleobiologist Jessica Whiteside.
The paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was the first to make the link between volcanic activity, climate change and the widespread extinction of a specific animal species.
Scientists gathered fossil evidence of plant and animal extinctions, along with the carbon signature found in the wax of ancient leaves and wood in lake sediments intermixed with basalt that marked the volcanic activity.
They found that huge volcanic eruptions throughout the planet increased the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, wiping out half of plant species and marking the end of the Triassic period, one of five great mass extinctions of Earth's history.
More than 200 million years ago, the supercontinent Pangea broke up as the North American and African plates began drifting apart. During their separation, the plates created a basin that eventually became the Atlantic Ocean while fissures cleaved the area.
Massive outflows of lava ensued, covering over 3.5 million square miles (nine million square kilometers), an area about the size of the continental United States.
The volcanic eruptions lasted about 600,000 years.
But the reasons underlying dinosaurs' survival, diversification and massive size for 160 million years while their crurotarsan foes did not evolve in a similar fashion remains a "mystery," Whiteside told AFP.
One of the main hypotheses is that they were somehow physiologically superior to the crutotarsans, she added. "The truth is that nobody really knows, it just happened at the right place at the right time."
She said it was a "very complicated" situation similar to the mass extinction and disappearance of dinosaurs when a meteorite hit the Earth.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20100324/tsc-climate-catastrophe-ushered-in-the-d-e123fef.html
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A new species of dinosaur has emerged from the rocks in the western US state of Utah.
Buried by a collapsing sand dune, perhaps 185 million years ago, researchers report in the journal PLoS One that the new dinosaur was probably a plant eater and an early relative of the giant animals later known as sauropods.
Named Seitaad ruessi, the species was 10-to-15 feet long and three-to-four feet high.
Its bones were found protruding from sandstone at the base of a cliff, directly below an ancient Anasazi cliff dwelling.
No humans were around at the time of the dinosaurs, but researchers said the bones could well have been visible when the early Indians lived there.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100324/tsc-new-species-of-dinosaur-discovered-4b158bc.html
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'Rare' fossil of new dinosaur species found in US
It had a body the size of a sheep, a long neck and tail, and lived some 185 million years ago. Scientists call this dinosaur find "a rare skeleton of a new species." Skip related content
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The skeleton of Seitaad had been 'swallowed' in a fossilized sand dune when it …More
Enlarge photo .Paleontologists unearthed the partial remains of the plant-eating creature, named Seitaad ruessi, in the red rocks of the Navajo Sandstone region of the western US state of Utah.
The bones were found just below stone and adobe dwellings of the ancient Anasazi people in a site known as the Eagles Nest.
Seitaad is an ancestor of the giant long-necked, long-tailed dinosaurs such as Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, and Brachiosaurus that roamed Earth in the late Jurassic period, according to research published in the March 24 edition of PLoS ONE, the online open-access journal produced by the Public Library of Science.
The study was conducted by paleontologist Joseph Sertich, a Stony Brook University doctoral student, and Mark Loewen of the Utah Museum of Natural History.
"Although Seitaad was preserved in a sand dune, this ancient desert must have included wetter areas with enough plants to support these smaller dinosaurs and other animals," Sertich said in a statement on Tuesday.
"Just like in deserts today, life would have been difficult in Utah's ancient 'sand sea.'"
The remains were discovered in 2004 and excavated the following year.
Seitaad ruessi is a sauropodomorph, a type of dinosaur common during the Early Jurassic period, when all of the continents were still joined together in the supercontinent of Pangaea.
The discovery "confirms the widespread success of sauropodomorph dinosaurs during the Early Jurassic Period," the scientists said.
Researchers believe the animal "was buried in a suddenly collapsing sand dune that engulfed the remains and stood them on their head," according to the statement.
"The missing parts of the skeleton were lost to erosion over the past thousand years, but were almost certainly visible when Native Americans lived on the cliff just above the skeleton."
The name Seitaad is derived from a Navajo word referring to the legend of a sand-desert monster, while the second part honors US explorer Everett Ruess, who vanished in the southern Utah desert in 1934 at age 20.
When it was alive, the Seitaad ruessi likely weighed between 32 and 40 kilos (70 and 90 pounds) and could walk on four legs or stand up and walk on its rear legs.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20100324/tsc-rare-fossil-of-new-dinosaur-species-c2ff8aa.html
Dont ya just love copy n paste ?
doyouthinkhesaurus ? run like hell
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