Science News Roundup: Stuff that caught my eye this week
How to Build a Dinosaur (the Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins Way). Interior of Hawkin’s studio in Sydenham, where he build dinosaurs for London’s Crystal Palace.
Happy Friday! Here are a few of the stories that caught my eye this week:
How to Build a Dinosaur (The Paleontologist Way)
From Gunnar de Winter, aka the Curious Cub, comes word that Jack Horner of Montana State University (remember him? he’s one of the guys who thinks that up to a third of named dinosaurs may actually just be juvenile versions of other named dinosaurs) is making plans to build a dinosaur by turning on genes in chickens that were turned off long ago. While building a real dinosaur is probably far off in the future, they have managed to make a mutant chicken with teeth. Hey, it’s a start. Read more. (Or if you really want to read a lot, Jack Horner and James Gorman have apparently written a book about it.)
How to Build a Dinosaur (The Scholastic Way)
For kids who want to build their own dinosaurs online, Scholastic has a simple interactive application here. Your little paleontologist can build his/her own dinosaur using heads, bodies, legs, and tails from six different species. (Requires Flash.)
How To Build A Dinosaur (The Pixar Way)
For Toy Story fans.
Stealthy Solar Eclipse
Hey, did you see that partial solar eclipse this morning? Me either. But this time it wasn’t just because I was sleeping in. The eclipse was apparently only visible from a remote and uninhabited patch of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Antarctica. Which means that looking at pictures of it on the Web is for once the sensible (and not simply the lazy) thing to do.
And last but not least…
Stranded Penguin Update
Looks like Happy Feet, the emperor penguin who landed on New Zealand’s Peka Peka Beach last week may have a ride home. Assuming the penguin hasn’t caught any nasty diseases on his travels (and survives the next ten months in his temporary home at the Wellington Zoo), New Zealand investment advisor Gareth Morgan has offered Happy Feet a spot on his expedition to Antarctica next February. Or, if Happy Feet’s health doesn’t allow him to return to Antarctica, he can always join the colony of emperor penguins at SeaWorld in San Diego.
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4 Responses to “Science News Roundup: Stuff that caught my eye this week”
Why can’t Happy Feet come to San Antonio?
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Has he been invited? He’s a very polite penguin, you know. Doesn’t want to go where he isn’t wanted.
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It seems hard to imagine a worse idea than “they have managed to make a mutant chicken with teeth.” Like one day we will all be welcoming our giant Fowl-ian carnivorous overlords.
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