Fossil Of Earliest Known Bilaterian: Ikaria wariootia

A fossil the size of a grain of rice appears to be the earliest known bilaterian, the group of animals with two-sided symmetry, two openings and a through-gut. The group includes all vertebrates — including us — and many invertebrate groups. More than 100 Ikaria wariootia and their burrowing tracks were found in South Australia and were dated to more than 555 million years ago.

Fossil Skull Of Oldest Modern Bird

An extraordinary fossil skull belonged to the oldest modern bird ever found. The duck-sized Asteriornis maastrichtensis lived 66.7 million years ago, just 700,000 years before the asteroid impact that killed off all non-avian dinosaurs. Palæontologists were staggered to discover the skull when they used a CT scan to look inside a rock found in Belgium in 2000 by an amateur fossil hunter.

Chance discovery brings quantum computing using standard microchips a step closer

Researchers have discovered “by complete accident” a way to control the nucleus of a single atom using only electric fields. Theorists predicted in 1958 that an oscillating electric field could flip a nucleus, but it had never been observed. The finding hints that it might be possible to use standard silicon microchips as the quantum bits, or qubits, in a quantum computer without messing around with difficult-to-constrain magnetic fields.

Earth’s deepest life scavenges carbon

In one of the deepest layers of Earth’s crust ever explored, researchers are finding life. An analysis of rock samples from the bottom of the Indian Ocean has revealed microbes adapted to life within nutrient-poor hairline fractures in the Earth. Researchers found several species of bacteria, fungi and archaea that live in the rocks and feed on carbon from fragments of amino acids and other organic molecules carried in deep ocean currents.

Iron rain falls on ultra-hot giant exoplanet

A gas-giant exoplanet orbits so close to its star that liquid iron might rain in its skies. Astronomers glimpsed the tell-tale signal of gaseous iron in the spectrum of light observable at the boundary where day turns to night. Where night turns to morning, the signal is gone — hinting that the iron condenses into rainfall at night.

Tiniest dinosaur skull preserved in amber

This bird-like skull, exquisitely preserved in amber for almost 100 million years, belonged to probably the smallest dinosaur ever discovered. The skull is less than 2 centimetres long — suggesting that the creature was the size of a bee hummingbird (Mellisuga helenæ), the smallest living bird.

Postscript:

See World’s smallest dinosaur is probably a lizard

The parrots that understand probabilities

A group of kea, a type of parrot from New Zealand, have been surprising scientists by passing a series of intelligence tests based around probabilities and social cues. Researchers found that kea can outperform monkeys, showing abilities previously seen only in great apes such as humans and chimpanzees.

Early Earth might have been a water world

Early Earth might have been covered with ocean and almost devoid of land. Researchers examined the ratio of oxygen isotopes in a 3.2-billion-year-old slab of the planet’s crust that is exposed in Western Australia. High levels of oxygen-18 in the oldest rock suggest that continents (which absorb that isotope) might not have emerged until between 3 billion and 2.5 billion years ago.

Earth Temporarily Has A Second Moon

Earth has another moon. It is not the kind that will illuminate the night sky. It’s invisible to the naked eye and too tiny to do any classic moon moves, like tugging on the planet’s oceans. But it’s there, orbiting the Earth, accompanying us on our journey around the sun. A pair of astronomers discovered the miniature moon on the night of February 15.