Science

They have discovered one of North America's oldest aquatic reptiles and complete. It represents a whole new group of plesiosaurs.

Recall that plesiosaurs were not dinosaurs, but lived in the seas around the same time that large lizards, which correspond to periods Cretaceous and Jurassic (about 200 to 65 million years).

The specimen in question measured 2 feet in length, and has been baptized with the name of nichollsi borealis in memory of the paleontologist Elizabeth (Betsy) Nicholls.

The plesiosaurs were a group of aquatic carnivores that could grow to 12 meters long. The nichollsi lived about 112 million years and appears just to fill a gap of 40 million years of which were never discovered fossils.

What is striking is that the skeleton was almost complete, except for one shoulder and the right forelimb. This makes it the most complete plesiosaur fossil and best preserved in North America.

Source: LiveScience

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Archaeologists have discovered a coastal village on the Mycenaean culture of 3500 years ago, a civilization that preceded the Greeks between 1600 and 1100 BC. The town is spectacularly preserved, since many of its walls still stand.

The site was originally discovered in 2001 but just released now. It is partially under water, set on a rocky coastline, isolated and narrow. Archaeologists believe they have been a Mycenaean military post.

"This is a breakthrough for stress," said Daniel Pullen, an archaeologist at Florida State University, who discovered the site. "It is rare indeed to locate an entire town built during the Bronze Age that shows this level of preservation." There are at least 900 walls.

The most important thing is that most Mycenaean towns are completely buried for thousands of years of dirt accumulation.

"Usually to excavate Mycenaean buildings you have to dig a lot," Pullen told LiveScience. "But what we have here is a plan of a village completely preserved for us. We have fortified walls, many buildings, and you can even see where the doors. We can see how buildings were linked together, because we have many streets and alleys obvious. "

Scientists believe that this is a military post, because all buildings are constructed with a fixed network, or whether they were built all at once, it was a city that grew over time.

Further evidence that this was a military base is that there is little evidence of agriculture in the reservoir. Even there was not much arable land nearby to support the number of people who have lived there.

The place was dubbed Korphe-Kalamianos by Pullen and colleagues. It is located about 100 kilometers from Athens, on the Aegean Sea. And, then we will have been about 65 miles from Mycenae, the capital of the Mycenaean civilization.

Source: LiveScience

Computer experts provide evidence of how life may have originated on our planet, thanks to a simulation carried out by networks of supercomputers.

For some time scientists are suggesting that the oceanic vents (or hydrothermal vents) could be a source of biological molecules such as DNA and RNA, but until now it was unclear how they could have survived the high temperatures and pressures that occur near these places.

But scientists at University College London, led by Peter Coveney, Center for Computational Science at UCL, have developed a computer simulation that shows the structure and stability of DNA while inserted between mineral layers.

Here in Espaciociencia, and we spoke of a recent theory that says life might have originated between layers of mica. But it was not known how the molecules could react in such circumstances, and rarely used computer simulation to understand the possible chemical pathways that formed the first biomolecules.

"Just now," says Professor Coveney, "has facilitated the use of computer networks for scientists, enabling simulations of sufficient size to model these large biomolecule and mineral systems.

Previous studies have shown that molecules such as DNA could be inserted in minerals rolling, but none could show a level of atoms and molecules how the DNA interacts with the mineral, or how DNA could tap into the mineral layers. These minerals were common in the early Earth, about 2500 million years.

Thanks to the simulation could see that the structure of DNA inserted into the rolling minerals became stable and was protected by warm temperatures of the fumaroles.

"The networks of supercomputers are essential for this type of study," said Professor Coveney, "time to run these simulations is thus reduced from years to a desktop computer, just hours using the thousands of available processors along continents. "

Source: ScienceDaly

Image: Flickr

A widespread legend that Ireland has St. Patrick, a Christian missionary who brought Christianity to the island in the V century, cast the snakes out of Ireland.

Saint Patrick is the patron saint of the island nation, and as history has chased the snakes and threw them into the sea after they started attacking him during a period of 40 days he spent at the top of a mountain. This legend is usually tell when someone asked why no vipers in Ireland.

And no, there is no native snakes in Ireland. One of the few places in the world where this snake is not present (such as New Zealand, Iceland, Greenland and Antarctica).

But imagine, the patron saint had nothing to do with that no snakes in Ireland. "In no time there were snakes in Ireland, so there was nothing for St. Patrick's care to the sea," said Nigel Monaghan, National Museum of Ireland, who researched the fossil record in search of the reptile Irish so frightened that she gets to Indiana Jones.

Most scientists blame the absence of the last ice age, which kept the island too cold for snakes for thousands of years, until about 10 thousand years when the warm period began in which we live . And then the rolling seas island reptiles kept away.

Great Britain held a land bridge with Europe until about 6500 years, so it was re-colonize by snakes who had returned to northern Europe to leave the continental ice. But Ireland was fought 2000 years before, and because the seas had risen enough to cut the overland link with Britain.

Source: National Geographic

Image: Flickr