Around 55.5 million years ago, there was a time period with more than 5°C – 8 °C warmer global average temperature than today, which named “Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum” (PETM). As a result, there were crocodiles and even crocodiles in the Arctic and the region was completely ice-free. Now, a new study suggests that if we […]
Category Archives: Prehistoric
Dinosaurs were already doomed as the frequency of Asteroid Impacts increased 290 million years ago
By studying lunar craters, scientists have discovered that the asteroid impacts became more frequent about 290 million years ago. So was just a matter of time for dinosaurs to becoming extinct.
What If Earth’s History Compressed Into The Year of 2018
What if the Earth’s history (our planet’s age is approximately 4.54 billion years), compressed into just one year, let’s say the year of 2018? @YearOnEarth just did that. At midnight on the 31st of December 2017, Chris Jennings started a little project for the incoming year: tweeting the entirety of the geological history of the […]
The Significance of Fossils in Revealing the Evolution on Earth
It’s ironic how calling a person a “monkey” or “orangutan” is considered offensive when we all know that humans are descended from these apes. Well, sometimes it is hard to find logic in the customs and practices of our society, but if you are willing to find the path of evolution that turned monkeys into […]
Earth can be a model for detecting vegetation on exoplanets
Back in December 1990, during its flyby of Earth, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which studied the planet Jupiter and its moons, as well as several other Solar System bodies, pointed its instruments towards Earth, at the urging of Carl Sagan. And, it has found evidence of life on our planet. This can be a key to detect […]
Top 15 Largest Birds in the World
Birds (Aves or avian dinosaurs) range in size and weight from the 5 cm (2 in) and 1.6-2 grams bee hummingbird to the 2.75 m (9 ft) and 104-156 kg (229-344 lbs) ostrich. Here are the top 15 largest bird species in the world (by body weight). Birds form one of six basic animal groups, […]
Dinosaur-killer Asteroid Triggered a Global Warming which lasted 100,000 Years
Around 66 million years ago, an asteroid or comet at least 10 kilometers (6 miles) in diameter impacted a few miles from the present-day town of Chicxulub in Mexico (hence it is dubbed as the “Chicxulub impactor”, the “dinosaur-killer”), at around 64,000 kilometers per hour (40,000 mph). The impact has created a crater (Chicxulub crater) […]
What’s the Difference Between a Meteoroid, a Meteor, a Meteorite, an Asteroid, and a Comet?
Hint: they are all space rocks. But, there are some differences. The biggest difference between an asteroid and a comet, for example, is what they are made of.
What a fossil revolution reveals about the history of ‘big data’
In 1981, when I was nine years old, my father took me to see Raiders of the Lost Ark. Although I had to squint my eyes during some of the scary scenes, I loved it – in particular because I was fairly sure that Harrison Ford’s character was based on my dad. My father was […]
What did Ancient Earth Look Like
I stumbled upon an amazing web page showing what did ancient Earth look like. On the “Dinosaur Pictures and Facts” web page (dinosaurpictures.org), there’s also an interactive animation. On this page, you can either select the years (i.e. 600 million years ago) or jump to a particular event (i.e. first multicellular life) and see how ancient […]
