March 1, 2012

The "rarest insect in the world" also happens to be freaking enormous

In 1918, a battered British supply ship was forced to run aground off the coast of Lord Howe Island, a volcanic remnant located hundreds of miles off Australia's eastern seaboard. There, the ship's crew was received by the island's famous Dryococelus australis, a positively massive, hand-sized species of stick insect known to Europeans as "tree lobsters." But these impressive bugs were not long for this world.


In the nine days it took the ship's crew members to repair their damaged vessel, a pack of stowaway rats had managed to jump ship and invade the island. A scourge had been unleashed upon the D. australis population. By 1920, the island had been overrun by rats, and the insects had vanished. The tree lobsters of Lord Howe — long believed to be endemic to the island — were presumed extinct.

But in 2001, scientists made an incredible discovery.

About thirteen miles southeast of Lord Howe sits another island, named "Ball's Pyramid," that would look right at home on the cover of a Tintin comic. It was here, about halfway up the island's precipitous, 1800-foot-high slope, that researchers discovered what is believed to have been one of the last bastions of tree-lobsterdom in the entire world: a collection of two dozen of the enormous black insects, huddled beneath the shelter of a single bush.


more

http://io9.com/5889341/the-rarest-insect-in-the-world-also-happens-to-be-freaking-enormous

March 1, 2012

This giant fossil flea once feasted on dinosaurs

This fossil reveals a flea that is about twice as big as any known species alive today. It dates back about 165 million years, and its razor-sharp mouth likely evolved for one purpose: to pierce and feed on dinosaur hides.

The fossil is one of about nine fossil specimens recently analyzed by paleontologists at the University of Kansas. Led by palaeoentomologist Michael Engel, the goal was to extend the understanding of the flea fossil record back to before the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. We now know that fleas like the one up top were about eight to 21 millimeters long, which is gigantic compared to modern fleas which clock in at a relatively paltry 1 to 10 millimeters.

Nature describes some of the flea's more appealing characteristics:



According to Engel, there would have been little point in evolving such fierce mouthparts to just use them on soft targets like early mammals and birds. In this case, it's almost certain that the fleas preyed primarily on dinosaurs, whose ultra-tough skin would have required mouths like these to pierce. That also would explain why these giant fleas thankfully disappeared from the fossil record as the dinosaurs were wiped out - without their primary host around anymore, these parasites no longer need to be quite so completely terrifying.

http://io9.com/5889387/this-giant-fossil-flea-once-feasted-on-dinosaurs

March 1, 2012

Neanderthals were sailing the Mediterranean 100,000 years ago

Humans likely first took to the seas about 50,000 years ago. But there's mounting evidence that our Neanderthal cousins were routinely sailing throughout the Mediterranean twice as long ago. Alternatively, they were just really good at long distance swimming.

We can't know what sorts of boats Neanderthals might have used. Presumably, they were made out of wood, which is exactly the problem — there's just no way wood is going to last 100,000 years, without rotting in even a tiny fraction of that time. But we can identify ancient Neanderthal presence through the distinctive Mousterian stone tools that they left behind, which have been found on the coastal Greek islands of Kefallinia and Zakynthos. Neanderthals must have crossed the water for their tools to end up there.

The only potential objection to this was the possibility that shifting sea levels might have once connected these islands to the mainland via a land bridge. But it looks like we can rule that possibility out, according to George Ferentinos of Greece's University of Patras. As New Scientist reports, Ferentinos has found that the sea levels in the Mediterranean were significantly lower 100,000 years ago, they were still about 180 meters higher than the bed of the Ionian Sea off the Greek coast, meaning no land bridge would have been possible.

It wouldn't have taken the Neanderthals too much effort to reach these islands — they're only about three to eight miles away, depending on the particular configuration of the coast. Ferentinos and his fellow researchers estimate that Neanderthals began seafaring sometime between 110,000 and 35,000 years ago. We should have a better idea of the exact date range once the stone tools on the islands have been more accurately dated.

more

http://io9.com/5889484/neanderthals-were-sailing-the-mediterranean-100000-years-ago

March 1, 2012

Chinese Villages Use Giant Balloons to Steal Natural Gas

What would you do for simple gas to cook, or heat your home during the winter? Would you be willing to fill a giant bag full with natural gas and carry it into your home, at the risk of, well, exploding? Because that's what villagers in the Shandong Province of China are doing.

The villagers come to the oil extraction facility to fill the massive gas bags because they're too poor to afford other means of heating and cooking gas, and they aren't allowed to connect lines to the oil field. So instead they carry around the giant bags of explosion. According to people who live in the area, they last for about five days before they have to be refilled.

There haven't been any reports of the bags exploding, though one elderly woman was lifted in the air when the wind caught hold of her bag. But other villages with makeshift gas-acquiring techniques haven't been so lucky, like one that had an explosion after a power outage to the main oil line. It's all terribly insane, of course, but also kind of ingenious.

http://gizmodo.com/5889094/chinese-villages-use-giant-balloons-to-steal-natural-gas

March 1, 2012

xkcd Toon: Late Night PBS

mouseover text:"Then it switched to these old black-and-white tapes of Bob Ross slumped against the wall of an empty room, painting the least happy trees you've ever seen. Either PBS needs to beef up studio security or I need to stop using Ambien to sleep."
http://xkcd.com/1023/