MI weekly selection #167

Unusual nasal dome allowed ancient beast to trumpet like a dinosaur

An ancient wildebeest-like creature that lived during the Ice Age had an unusual skull shape that enabled it to bellow like a dinosaur, according to researchers who found the skull fossils on what is now Kenya’s Rusinga Island. Rusingoryx atopocranion, which lived between 75,000 and 50,000 years ago, had a high nasal dome similar to those sported by duckbilled dinosaurs that roamed the Earth around 75 million years earlier.

National Geographic

Global trade is spreading deadly bee disease worldwide

Deformed Wing Virus is threatening bees worldwide, thanks to global trade. The study found that the spread of the deadly virus is caused by humans, not nature. “This is clearly linked to the human movement of honeybee colonies around the globe,” said Lena Bayer-Wilfert, who led the research and who says there need to be tighter controls and more screenings on the importation of honeybees.

BBC

Ancient insect, modern butterfly share remarkable resemblance

An ancient insect that pollinated plants during the Jurassic period looked and acted much like a modern butterfly millions of years before butterflies ever came to be. Researchers studied 20 fossils of kalligrammatid lacewing and noted the striking resemblance.

Smithsonian Magazine

Water ice glaciers carried by nitrogen seas seen on Pluto

Mountains of water ice glaciers as hard as rock float in seas of nitrogen on Pluto, according to studies of photos and data gathered from the close flyby last July. NASA scientists say an area of the dwarf planet dubbed Challenger Colles may be a cluster of those glaciers, beached there by nitrogen flows.

The Washington Post

Researchers craft an optical switch with one atom

A research team in Switzerland reports development of a microscopic optical switch from a single silver atom, positioned near a platinum pad.

Gizmag