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A Beginner’s Guide to Theropods, Part 4: TYRANNOSAURS!

A Beginner’s Guide to Theropods, Part 4: TYRANNOSAURS!

Stefan Lungu
Science & Nature

The tyrannosaurids of the late Late Cretaceous were in a unique position. While earlier theropods had spread freely across the continents, tyrannosaurs lived in a world of fragmented continents and inland seaways. In Asia and western North America, where they were restricted, rising mountains and ebbing seaways formed a huge diversity of habitats, inhabited by a huge diversity of hadrosaurs and ceratopsians. For the first time in theropod history, there were not only no other giant apex predators, but the next biggest carnivorous dinosaurs - dromaeosaurs and troodontids - were over an order of magnitude smaller than they were (Holtz). This meant they were free to not only inherit the role of big-game hunters but, throughout their ontogeny, to maintain their ancestral roles as mid-sized, long-legged pursuers of small, fast animals. 

Technology and the Murder of Small Talk

Technology and the Murder of Small Talk

Ijeoma Anaka
Current Events, Science & Nature, Technology

In an era dominated by smartphones and constant connectivity, the art of small talk seems to be dwindling. With our attention constantly fixated on screens, interactions that once formed the fabric of social cohesion are now becoming obsolete. But could our dependence on technology be more than just a cultural shift? Could it actually be shaping our physical evolution? This article explores the intriguing hypothesis put forward by some researchers that our reliance on technology might lead to the evolution of a physical trait: a node at the back of our necks.

Beyond Traditional Reforestation: Exploring Drone-Based Planting, Sensor-Based Monitoring, and SET Technologies

Beyond Traditional Reforestation: Exploring Drone-Based Planting, Sensor-Based Monitoring, and SET Technologies

Aidan O'Leary
Science & Nature

Capturing carbon from our atmosphere grows to be of extreme importance as “Earth’s temperature has risen by an average of 0.11 degrees Fahrenheit (0.06 degrees Celsius) per decade since 1850, or about 2 degrees Fahrenheit in total” (Lindsey and Dahlman 2024). Carbon and other elements help create a greenhouse effect, which keeps our Earth at a suitable temperature to support life. Currently, more carbon dioxide is in our atmosphere than is considered optimal for maintaining a stable climate. So what can we do about that?

Quantum Computing and Climate Modeling

Quantum Computing and Climate Modeling

Aidan O'Leary
Science & Nature, Technology

You may have heard of a unique computer known as a quantum computer. These computers are similar to traditional computers as they both need to be programmed to perform tasks, process information, and perform logical operations such as AND, OR, and NOT. While the two types of computers have some similarities, quantum computers differ in how they compute data, how they are programmed, the hardware and settings that are required to run them, and more. Quantum computers are of great benefit to us globally due to the fact that they can solve complex problems and create accurate predictions that would take a classical computer an exceptionally long time to compute.

From Stardust to Supernova

From Stardust to Supernova

Zoha Imran
Science & Nature

Imagine a billion-year cosmic dance in which stars are born out of the blackness of interstellar clouds, burn brightly for billions of years, and then meet their dramatic end. The story of stars' evolution is fascinating, revealing the mysteries of creation and destruction on a cosmic scale, from the birthplace of stellar nurseries to the blazing spectacle of supernovae.

A Beginner’s Guide to Theropods, Part 2: Crests, Horns and Sails

A Beginner’s Guide to Theropods, Part 2: Crests, Horns and Sails

Stefan Lungu
Science & Nature

The Early Jurassic World was a very uniform one. After the extremes of heat and drought that characterized the Triassic, a brief period of global cooling had reduced their therapsid and croc-line competitors to a handful of small mammals and lizardlike creatures and allowed the formerly restricted dinosaurs to spread throughout the world (Dunne et al). With the continents joined together, there were no major barriers to their dispersal, and so for the first time in dinosaur history, faunas the world over looked much the same (Holtz). Some faunal elements would have been familiar, if rare, parts of a Late Triassic ecosystem: long-tailed pterosaurs in the air, ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs in the sea, bipedal prosauropods and small coelophysids on land. Others were more novel: elephant-sized sauropods, bipedal and armored ornithischians, and hunting them all, the first truly large (6m+), apex-predator theropods. 

A Beginner’s Guide to Theropods, Part 1: Setting the Scene

A Beginner’s Guide to Theropods, Part 1: Setting the Scene

Stefan Lungu
Science & Nature

Theropods (meat-eating dinosaurs) permeate popular culture. Anyone who’s ever had a passing interest in dinosaurs knows T. rex and Velociraptor. They fill books and movies; they’re perpetual objects of childhood fascination for their size, power, and ferocity. They’re windows into a world lost forever, that we can only ever look dimly into. And, in the form of birds, they’re still around today. In this series, we’ll be looking at the Mesozoic through the eyes of theropods, taking a walk up the tree of life and through time to track the ever-changing Mesozoic world and our changing knowledge of it. We’ll see the roles they played in their ecosystems and look at their evolution and diversity, along with a number of historically important discoveries that helped enrich our view of the Age of Reptiles and the predators that stalked through it.

Light: More Than Meets The Eye

Light: More Than Meets The Eye

Zoha Imran
Science & Nature

Throughout the tapestry of human history, none has captured our collective imagination more than the profound enigma of light. This luminous entity has been the subject of enduring fascination. With questions as ancient as our existence, we have probed the very essence of light: its composition, its absence, and the way it bathes our world in its glow. 

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