Scienceblog

The Western wildfire smoke plumes have gotten higher in recent years, with more smoke and aerosols lofted up where they may travel further and have an influence on air quality over a larger area. Climate change is most likely to blame, since the Western United States has more aridity and less precipitation, which exacerbates wildfire activity. According to Kai Wilmot, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Utah, "should these trends persist into the future," increased Western U.S. wildfire activity will probably coincide with more frequent air quality degradation on a local to continental scale. The iNterdisciplinary EXchange for Utah Science, or NEXUS, at the University of Utah provided funding for the study, which was published in Scientific Reports. Smoke volume Wilmot and U colleagues Derek Mallia, Gannet Haller, and John Lin modelled plume activity for about 4.6 million smoke plumes in the Western U.S. and Canada between ...

A new species of dinosaur with limbs that are abnormally short, similar to those of Tyrannosaurus rex, has been found by Argentine paleontologists. According to a study published on Thursday in the journal Current Biology, a fossil of Meraxes gigas, as the new dinosaur has been named, was discovered in what is now Argentina's northern Patagonia region. The fossil revealed that the creature was 11 meters (36 feet) long and weighed more than four tons. The region would have been hot and muggy at the time, with plenty of streams and flora, including big trees. CNN was informed by Juan Canale, project manager of the Ernesto Bachmann Paleontological Museum in Neuquén, Argentina. According to the study, the carnivore belonged to the family of dinosaurs known as Carcharodontosauridae, which lived between 145 and 66 million years ago. In the past 30 years, a large number of Carcharodontosauridae fossils have been discovered, although nothing is known about their forearms, feet, or head. Wi...

The "murder hornet" is no longer around. Its name has at least vanished. The murder hornet, sometimes referred to as the Asian gigantic hornet, has a new name according to concerns that "the use of 'Asian' in the name of a nuisance insect might unintentionally promote anti-Asian sentiment," particularly "during a spike in hate crimes and discrimination against individuals of Asian heritage." In its database of Common Names of Insects, the ESA gave the species the name "northern giant hornet." The ESA claims that while all wasps are endemic to Asia, the term "Asian gigantic hornet" does not specifically describe the biology or behavior of the species. The proposal to change the species' name was written by Chris Looney, an entomologist with the Washington State Department of Agriculture. He claimed that the Vespa mandarinia scientific name, which was previously used for identification purposes, "is at best a neutral and ...

Around 6 million years ago, the ancestors of bears vanished, perhaps as a result of a drastic climatic shift. When pandas last roamed Europe was recently revealed by a pair of fossilized teeth in a museum collection. The fossilized teeth, which had been preserved for around 40 years, were analyzed by scientists, who found that they belonged to a hitherto unidentified species of ancient European pandas. The recently discovered species, which is closely related to contemporary giant pandas, possibly represented the last of Europe's pandas and inhabited the continent approximately 6 million years ago. Originally discovered in the late 1970s from a location in northwest Bulgaria, the teeth—an upper canine and an upper molar—were eventually stored in the Bulgarian National Museum of Natural History in Sofia. The teeth were neglected for many years since they were never properly cataloged. However, when museum employees recently came upon the curious teeth, they made the decision to look...

The diamond is most certainly going to surpass all other gemstone sales records in price. A enormous pink diamond that may be the largest of its kind discovered in the last 300 years has been unearthed by miners in Angola. The Daria-i-Noor diamond, the biggest pink diamond in the world and currently a part of the Iranian National Jewels, is estimated to weigh 182 carats. The pink diamond is reported to weigh 170 carats, making it somewhat smaller than this stone. According to a statement from the Lucapa Diamond Company, which owns Lulo and one other diamond mine in Angola, the new diamond has been given the name "Lulo Rose" after the Lulo mine in northern Angola where it was discovered. 27 diamonds weighing more than 100 carats have been discovered by the Lulo mining operation since 2015, including the biggest diamond ever discovered in Angola, the 404-carat "4th February Stone," which sold for $16 million in 2016. The fifth-largest diamond discovered in Lulo, The L...