How Do Fossils Form?

Contrary to popular belief, becoming a fossil can be easy instead of hard, and fossils can be abundant instead of rare. It all depends on what an organism is made of, where it lives and dies, and what happens next in the dust-to-dust process—preservation or natural recycling.

How Does Earth’s Carbon Cycle Work?

Hundreds of millions of years ago, massive ice caps sheathed Earth’s continents from coast to coast. Only the peaks of the planet’s mountains stood above the ice as glaciers ground and crushed their way through the bedrock, meandering slowly toward the snow-covered plains. Where the glaciers met the oceans, huge blocks of ice and rock calved from the glaciers and dropped into the sea. Life, mostly algae, cyanobacteria and other bacteria, somehow persisted in the small ice-free pockets of ocean water. Like an icy planet in a distant solar system, Earth during its formative years, a juvenile phase known as the “Snowball” Earth, was a far different place than the mostly blue planet of today.

Here’s Your Best Look at the World’s Largest Dinosaur Skeleton

Meet the titanosaur. It’s the newest exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, and it’s a dinosaur cast so large it doesn’t even fit into a single room.

This New Hadrosaur Species Is A Classic Missing Link

A new dinosaur species sheds some light on how duck-billed dinosaurs got their crests. Paleontologists say Probrachylophosaurus bergei is a missing link between two other species, and it fills in vital pieces of the story of how crests evolved.

Genetic Tweaks Are Revealing the Dinosaur Traits in Living Chickens

Look out your window, and you may just spot a living dinosaur. Instead of slipping into total annihilation 66 million years ago, the avian line of dinosaurs managed to not only survive but thrive in the aftermath of a mass extinction, giving rise to modern birds.

75 Million-Year-Old Blood Cells Found in Dinosaur Fossils

Dinosaurs fossils, we’ve all been taught, consist of bone—their flesh, skin, and organs having decayed long ago. But a new discovery might upend that assumption: Scientists have foundevidence of blood cells with the protein intact in eight fossils which were not even particularly well-preserved.

You Can Already Pre-order That Flapping, Flying, RC Pterodactyl

Just over a month after we first stumbled across PaulG Toys’ flying pterodactyl at Toy Fair 2015, the unique remote control toy is available for pre-order via a Kickstarter campaign. And early backers can get the pterodactyl and a wireless controller with a donation of just $250 if they’re confident the crowdfunding campaign will be a success.

Action Bronson – Mongolia ft. Hologram, Meyhem Lauren

KAYTRANADA – The Worst In Me ft. Tinashe

Future & Lil Uzi Vert – That’s It

H.E.R. – Damage

TOBE NWIGWE – EAT

2 Chainz – Quarantine Thick ft. Mulatto

A little bit of soul

This image of the Soul Nebula (IC 1848) combines 21.1 hours of exposures through Hydrogen-alpha, Oxygen-III, and Sulfur-II filters. This object resides in the constellation Cassiopeia the Queen.

Jellyfish in the ocean of space

Supernova remnant IC 443 has the common name the Jellyfish Nebula, and it lies at the top right of this image. The other, larger, nebula is IC 444. Both objects are in the constellation Gemini the Twins. Terry Hancock from Grand Mesa, Colorado

Seven sisters

The Pleiades (M45) is the most famous star cluster in the sky. It lies 444 light-years away in the constellation Taurus the Bull. The clouds of gas seen in this image are not connected to the stars, but are a dust cloud through which the cluster is passing. Dave Doctor from Las Cruces, New Mexico

Old friend

The Orion Nebula (M42) may be the most photographed deep-sky object of all. It’s a huge emission nebula and star-forming complex. In addition to the glowing hydrogen, however, the object also has regions of both reflection and dark nebulae. James Esch from Lovettsville, Virginia

Boom goes the star

The Cygnus Loop is a huge supernova remnant some 2,500 light-years away. It has many components, and this image shows two of them well. At the top is the Witch’s Broom (NGC 6960), and Pickering’s Triangle (which doesn’t have its own designation) lies down and to the lower left of the Broom. Naresh Singh from Saint Petersburg, Florida

Natural satellite