Giant in Biological News

Scientists 'rebuild' giant moa using ancient DNA

Scientists have performed the first DNA-based reconstruction of the giant extinct moa bird, using prehistoric feathers recovered from caves and rock shelters in New Zealand. Researchers from the University of Adelaide and Landcare Research in New Zealand have identified four different moa speci...

Doubling a gene in corn results in giant biomass

University of Illinois plant geneticist Stephen Moose has developed a corn plant with enormous potential for biomass, literally. It yields corn that would make good silage, Moose said, due to a greater number of leaves and larger stalk, which could also make it a good energy crop. The gene know...

Tall tale of giant stingray circles the globe

RENO, Nev. If you couldn't believe your eyes when you saw the recent photo of a purported record-breaking 771-pound stingray, you may have been on to something. "While the photo is genuine and there's no denying that this is a huge stingray, the stingray in the photo was never weighed," Univ...

Doubling a gene in corn results in giant biomass

University of Illinois plant geneticist Stephen Moose has developed a corn plant with enormous potential for biomass, literally. It yields corn that would make good silage, Moose said, due to a greater number of leaves and larger stalk, which could also make it a good energy crop. The gene know...

Discovery of giant roaming deep sea protist provides new perspective on animal evolution

AUSTIN, TexasGroove-like tracks on the ocean floor made by giant deep-sea single-celled organisms could lead to new insights into the evolutionary origin of animals, says biologist Mikhail "Misha" Matz from The University of Texas at Austin. Matz and his colleagues recently discovered the grap...

Conservation International gets support from Dreamworks Animation to protect giant pandas

Arlington, Virginia (November 10, 2008) Conservation International (CI) today announced that it has received a contribution from DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. (NYSE: DWA) in support of its conservation efforts to protect the endangered giant panda. Yesterday in Los Angeles at an event launch ...

1,000 tags reveal mysteries of giant bluefin tuna

A giant Atlantic bluefin tuna weighing more than half a ton had the honor of being fitted with the 1000th electronic tracking tag placed on this threatened species when it was caught and released on Monday (October 20) in the Gulf of St. Lawrence off Port Hood, Nova Scotia. The prized fish, wh...

New giant clam species offers window into human past

Researchers report the discovery of the first new living species of giant clam in two decades, according to a report to be published online on August 28th in Current Biology , a Cell Press publication. While fossil evidence reveals that the new species, called Tridacna costata , once accounted f...

National Zoo giant panda pregnancy update

Scientists at the Smithsonian's National Zoo detected a secondary rise in urinary progestin levels in the Zoo's female giant panda Mei Xiang (may-SHONG) earlier this month. The results from the test on Thursday, June 19 lead scientists to believe the hormone rise indicates that it would be mid- to...

Tiny buckyballs squeeze hydrogen like giant Jupiter

HOUSTON, March 20, 2008 -- Hydrogen could be a clean, abundant energy source, but it's difficult to store in bulk. In new research, materials scientists at Rice University have made the surprising discovery that tiny carbon capsules called buckyballs are so strong they can hold volumes of hydrogen...

A fossilized giant rhino bone questions the isolation of Anatolia, 25 million years ago

Contrary to generally accepted belief, Anatolia was not geographically isolated 25 million years ago (during the Oligocene epoch): this has just been demonstrated by researchers from the Laboratoire des Mcanismes et Transferts en Gologie (LMTG) (CNRS/ University of Toulouse 3/IRD) and the Palobiod...

Scientists discover new species of giant elephant-shrew

SAN FRANCISCO (January 16, 2008) Although there is unquestionably much left to be discovered about life on Earth, charismatic animals like mammals are usually well documented, and it is rare to find a new species todayespecially from a group as intriguing as the elephant-shrews, monogamous mammal...

UI anthropologist, colleagues discover remains of earliest giant panda

Although it may sound like an oxymoron, a University of Iowa anthropologist and his colleagues report the first discovery of a skull from a "pygmy-sized" giant panda -- the earliest-known ancestor of the giant panda -- that lived in south China some two million years ago. The ancestor of today's...

Prehistoric mystery organism verified as giant fungus

Scientists at the University of Chicago and the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., have produced new evidence to finally resolve the mysterious identity of what they regard as one of the weirdest organisms that ever lived. Their chemical analysis indicates that the organism w...

A giant among minnows: Giant danio can keep growing

Two fish that share much in common genetically appear to have markedly different abilities to grow, a finding that could provide a new way to research such disparate areas as muscle wasting disease and fish farming, a new study shows. The study in the November issue of the American Journal of Phy...

Brighter future for giant panda?

Scientists at Cardiff University, using a novel method to estimate population, have found that there may be many more giant pandas remaining in the wild than previously thought. The giant panda is one of the world's most endangered and elusive species. It is found only in a restricted mountainous...

The giant protein titin helps build muscles

Imagine grabbing two snakes by the tail so that they can't wriggle off in opposite directions. Scientists at the Hamburg Outstation of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and collaborators from King's College in London have now discovered that something similar happens to a protein tha...

One small step means giant leap for spinal cord research

A new device developed at the University of Toronto that stimulates the muscles of patients with spinal cord injuries helps to increase walking function in those whose condition is not expected to improve. U of T researchers have found that functional electrical stimulation (FES), a process that...

Extinct giant deer's descendant found in UK

UCL (University College London) scientists have found that the closest living relative to the extinct Irish Elk (giant deer) lives on our shores. The team tested for DNA and skeletal features to prove that the giant deer - which roamed across Europe and Siberia with prehistoric man and is the subje...

Researchers find new giant amphibian fossils in Africa

Two new 250 million year-old species of large, meat-eating amphibians have been discovered by researchers, including investigators from McGill University. Their findings published in today's issue of Nature, describe the first and oldest amphibious carnivores from the Republic of Niger in West Afri...

Small species back-up giant marsupial climate change extinction claim

Thinking small in a time when everything was big has helped Queensland researchers to unearth new evidence that climate change, instead of humans, was responsible for wiping out Australian giant marsupials or megafauna 40,000 years ago. Instead of only excavating 'trophy specimens' such as giant...

August 2009 Geology and GSA Today media highlights

...eir discovery. Hypotheses have included erosion by giant floods, tectonic rifting, and collapse. Intense in...d through a pressurized aquifer and erupted in the giant outflow channels. The emerging picture is that the...r, named after the town Chicxulub, was formed by a giant meteorite impact about 65 million years ago. The i...

Leicester research paves way for first use in Europe of an insect to fight invasive plant

...disation was observed to be taking place between Japanese Knotweed and both giant Knotweed and Russian Vine. The hybrid between Japanese Knotweed and giant Knotweed (Bohemian Knotweed) is now known to be an important and hitherto u...

New discovery suggests trees evolved camouflage defense against long extinct predator

...w Zealand have evolved a similar defence to protect themselves from extinct giant birds, providing the first evidence of this strategy in plant life. "Pl...ival of humans New Zealand had no native land mammals, but was home to moa, giant flightless birds, closely related to the modern ostrich and the top herbivo...

Life on Earth came from other planets

...n be traced back to the solar system of the parent star. Because the parent star lost 40 percent to 80 percent of its mass after it became a red giant (blown away by its solar winds) its gravitational influences were reduced. Therefore, its planets would have increased orbital distances or might have...

Evolution: Crabs go deep to avoid hot water

...anography Centre, Southampton, have drawn together 200 years' worth of oceanographic knowledge to investigate the distribution of a notorious deep-sea giant the king crab. The results, published this week in the Journal of Biogeography , reveal temperature as a driving force behind the speciation and ra...

Ferns took to the trees and thrived

... DURHAM, N.C. -- As flowering plants like giant trees quickly rose to dominate plant communities during the Cretaceous period, the ferns that had preceded them hardly saw it as a disappointment. ...

Dino-not-so-soaring

... for 25 years used a published statistical model to estimate body weight of giant dinosaurs and other extraordinarily large animals in extinct lineages. By ...sample, we show that the statistical model is seriously flawed and that the giant dinosaurs probably were only about half as heavy as is generally believed" ...

Size did matter

... The mystery of giant sperm present in some living animal groups today h...evealed fossilised evidence for reproduction using giant sperm in a group of small aquatic crustaceans, cal...detected organs that are required for transferring giant spermatozoa. Since modern ostracods still produce...

Is this the beginning of the end of plant breeding?

...orm of asexual reproduction possible in a normally sexual species. Turning meiosis into mitosis is not enough to reach clonal reproduction, but it's a giant leap towards it. This has potential revolutionary applications in crop improvement and propagation. ...

CU-Boulder study shows 53 million-year-old high Arctic mammals wintered in darkness

... by Mary Dawson of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburg discovered fossil alligator jaw bones. Since then, fossils of aquatic turtles, giant tortoises, snakes and even flying lemurs -- one of the earliest forms of primates -- have been found on Ellesmere Island, said Eberle. The new Geo...

New book suggests Earth perhaps not such a benevolent mother after all

...nue and flourish. The Gaia hypothesis, named for the ancient Greek goddess of Earth, even put forth the idea that our planet behaves as a kind of giant organism, with its complex systems finely tuned to compensate when one system gets out of kilter. But actually it is the Gaia view that is out of ...

A combined tooth-venom arsenal revealed as key to Komodo dragon's hunting strategy

...stent with the team's discovery that the venom was also rich in toxins that prolong bleeding. The researchers also examined fossils of the Dragon's giant extinct relative Megalania ( Varanus priscus ). From similarities in skull anatomy they determined that this seven metre lizard would have used a si...

Komodo even more deadly than thought: Research

...ood pressure by preventing blood clotting and widening blood vessels, thus inducing shock in a victim. The researchers also examined fossils of the giant extinct dragon relative Varanus megalania and determined that this seven-metre-long lizard was one of the largest venomous animals to have ever live...

Princeton geoscientist offers new evidence that meteorite did not wipe out dinosaurs

...ted States, Mexico and India have led her to conclude that volcanoes, not a vast meteorite, were the more likely culprits in the demise of the Earth's giant reptiles, is producing new data supporting her claim. Keller, a Princeton professor of geosciences, and several co-authors lay out the case in a pa...

Large sponges may be reattached to coral reefs

...ld be generally applied to the restoration of other large sponge species removed by human activities or storm events. 20 specimens of the Caribbean giant barrel sponge were removed and reattached at Conch Reef off of Key Largo, Florida in 2004 and 2005 at depths of 15m and 30m. The sponges were affixed ...

Afghanistan declares its first national park

...d religious pilgrims as well as many foreigners currently living and working in-country. The park is near the Bamyan Valley, where the 1,500-year-old giant Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban once stood. "At its core, Band-e-Amir is an Afghan initiative supported by the international community. It ...

Field Museum paleontologist leads study on two new dinosaurs from China

...om animlas with long slender snouts like Xiongguanlong." Second find: A giant "ostrich-mimic" The team also discovered three specimens of a remarkabl... perished during its 14th year of life. Although it is hard to fathom, this giant was still actively growing when it died. Growth line spacing in the bones o...

World premiere in stem cell research in Montreal

...y stem cells from a small number of blood stem cells obtained from bone marrow. The multidisciplinary team, directed by Dr. Guy Sauvageau, thus took a giant step towards the development of a revolutionary treatment based on these stem cells. This worldwide first will advance stem cell research and could ha...

A dirty job but ...

...p clean industrial chemicals from America's soil. Now, an innovative Tel Aviv University soil-cleaning technique, which turns a cement truck into a giant mixer, may change things for industry and environmental specialists. Prof. Amos Ullmann and Prof. Neima Brauner of TAU's Faculty of Engineering and P...