MI weekly selection #571

New dinosaur species’ traits hint at ceratopsian migration

Scientists have identified a previously unknown dinosaur species, Sasayamagnomus saegusai, that weighed about 10 kilograms and reached about 0.8 meters in length, based on fossil remains from southwestern Japan. The primitive member of the herbivorous ceratopsian group lacks the frills and horns of triceratops and other later ceratopsians, and its close relation to North America’s primitive ceratopsians suggests the group may have migrated from Asia to North America via the Bering Land Bridge about 110 million years ago.

Full Story: Sci-News

Stonehenge tale gets ‘weirder’

Weeks after publication of a study that redefines the origin of Stonehenge’s altar stone from Wales to northern Scotland, favoring Orkney as the specific source, a separate study has shown the megalith does not match the mineral and chemical composition of stones and rock deposits on Orkney’s islands. Excluding Orkney could quickly sharpen the search to other parts of the Orcadian basin, the source of the megalith’s old red sandstone, says Richard Bevins, lead author of the paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science, who also worked on the previous study.

Full Story: The Guardian

Food dye makes mouse skin transparent, experiments show

A common yellow food dye has turned mouse skin transparent and allowed researchers to see the animal’s organs in action, according to findings based on a long-established physics principle, called Kramers-Kronig relations, that says material that absorbs a large amount of one colour of light will bend other colours of light more. Light-absorbing molecules in the solution of water and tartrazine suppress the skin’s ability to scatter light, which could lead to advancements in biomedical research and health care applications, pending human testing.

Full Story: Live Science

Moon’s volcanoes may have endured until 120M years ago

Three lunar glass beads smaller than a pinhead have a chemical composition that suggests volcanic activity on the moon as recently as 120 million years ago, presenting the first physical evidence of volcanoes less than 2 billion years old. “It is unclear how the moon could have remained volcanically active at such a late stage; as the interior cooled and the lithosphere thickened, volcanic activity would have become less likely,” study co-author Yuyang He says.

Full Story: ScienceAlert

Researchers begin to crack the olfactory code

Data analytics, AI and structural biology have evolved to the point that scientists are able to study the sense of smell’s impact on stress, appetite, emotions and more. Devices that diagnose disease through odours, and other health and public safety applications, are in the works, and one research team trained an AI system on thousands of descriptions of molecular structures to assign smell labels.

Full Story: Nature