A Nocturnal Dinosaur With Eyes and Ears Like an Owl 08/05/2021
Fossils of Shuvuuia deserti depict a small predatory creature with exceptional night vision and hearing. Image: Mick Ellison/American Natural History Museum, CC BY-ND
Today, barn owls, bats, leopards and many other animals rely on their keen senses to live and hunt under the dim light of stars. These nighttime specialists avoid the competition of daylight hours, hunting their prey under the cloak of darkness, often using a combination of night vision and acute hearing.
But was there nightlife 100 million years ago? In a world without owls or leopards, were dinosaurs working the night shift? If so, what senses did they use to find food and avoid predators in the darkness? To better understand the senses of the dinosaur ancestors of birds, our team of paleontologists and palaeobiologists scoured research papers and museum collections looking for fossils that preserved delicate eye and ear structures. And we
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There’s excitement in the air as New York City moves toward opening at full capacity. One of the casualties of the pandemic, of course, was the city’s museums, which shut down for much of the past year. So it’s our pleasure to report that the much-anticipated redesigned Allison and Roberto Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals, whose reopening was postponed over COVID-19 concerns, will reopen at the American Museum of Natural History on June 12.
Organized by curator George E. Harlow, the museum’s division of physical sciences, the halls’ permanent exhibit will tell the story of how minerals formed on Earth and how humans used them for millennia for personal adornment.
Articulation project blends art and science
ELLSWORTH A pair of Ellsworth neighbors have breathed new life into an Atlantic white-sided dolphin that had washed ashore in Rye, N.H.
No, Captain Toby Stephenson, a member of the staff at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, and Dasha Herrrington, a junior at John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, weren’t able to revive the dolphin. It had long been dead when it was found – so long that its insides seemed to be turning into soup.
Instead, the duo finished a skeleton articulation of the dolphin for the Blue Ocean Society earlier this month and Herrington was able to show off her work at the state science fair.