Saber-toothed attacked each other, skulls show

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  This is the skull found in 2010 at Badlands National Park which reopened the 70-year-old nimravid murder case. Two red arrows point out the paired the upper canine punctures. (BADLANDS NATIONAL PARK)

Distinctive bite marks on the skulls of cat-like saber-toothed predators that once skulked about North America have revealed a nasty family secret: these felines often ambushed and killed each other.

The discovery came as a result of the accidental unearthing of a new skull of what's called a nimravid -- not a true cat, but a group of cougar-like animals with large saber-like canine teeth that lived from 32 to 34 million years ago. The skull had clear signs of being mortally bitten by another nimravid.

"The nimravid skull was found in 2010 in Badlands National Park by a girl during a Junior Ranger activity right next to the visitor center," said paleontologist Clint Boyd of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, who was working in the park at the time. "It had a magnificent set of bite marks on it."

The skull brought to mind another found in 1936 that also had nimravid bite marks which had long been interpreted as a rare case. But the new skull raised the question of just how common these bite marks are on nimravids.

To find out, Boyd and his colleagues gathered up as many nimravids skulls as they could from collections and took a closer look at them. This included some that were on display for the public.

"Some of the best specimens with bite marks were right in front of people," he said. "Older specimens did not show the bite marks until they were cleaned up." Some actually still had dirt in the holes made by the bite marks and others had had the holes repaired by curators unaware of their significance.

"What we found is that these bite marks are a lot more common than previously thought."

In fact the bite marks make it clear that the nimravids were attacking their competitors from behind and killing by getting one fang into an eye socket or puncturing the skull.

What's even more startling is that nimravid fang marks are not found on the skull of any of their prey, said Boyd, who is presenting his results on Oct. 30 at the meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver. That's because they used the canines to tear out the soft tissues in the throats of their prey and would have been careful not to bang them on bone, which might have damaged their most important hunting weapon.

"Damaging their canines could be a life-threatening event," said Boyd. Yet fatal nimravid bite marks are found on a surprising 10 percent of nimravid skulls in three species of nimravids over a range of four million years.

"They're still taking into consideration not damaging their canines," said Boyd, noting how the eyes are a common target with the other canine just glancing the skull. But they are definitely taking a bigger chance when they attack their own kind.

Among other things, the discovery suggests that the typical museum mural representation of nimravids facing off in battle is probably dead wrong.

"Upper canines and lower canines can be seen in the (skulls)," he said. "So all the attacks are coming from behind. This was an ambush style attack against a competitor."

The lack of any signs of healing also means that the majority of these attacks were fatal, which rules out another old hypothesis, based on the 1936 specimen (which showed some healing), that the biting might be part of a mating behavior.

"It's very hard to get behavior from fossils," said Kurt Spearing, a researcher at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, who works on fossil cats and their close relatives and was not directly involved in Boyd's work.

But in this case, he agrees that the behavior of nimravids is remarkably clear: "These guys were incredibly aggressive towards each other."

Invasive earthworms harming Great Lakes forests

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  Scott Loss uses a liquid-mustard mixture to sample earthworms. The mustard contains a skin irritant that causes earthworms to come to the surface. A recent decline in ovenbirds (also known as Seiurus aurocapilla), a ground-nesting migrat (SARA SCHMELZER LOSS.)

DENVER –  Gardeners and farmers may love earthworms for their rich castings and composting help, but in forests near the Great Lakes, the creatures are alien invaders.

No earthworms are native to North America's northern forests (massive ice age glaciers kept the land worm-free). But in the years since settlers arrived, 15 earthworm species have appeared in Minnesota, from Europe and Asia. Some of the invasive speciesare changing local forests, scientists have discovered.

"After these mixers come in, there's a loss in plant species," said Kit Resner, graduate student and soil biogeochemist at the University of Minnesota and lead study author.

The earthworms eat away at the puffy duff layer blanketing the forest floor, where species such as salamanders and ovenbirds live, Resner reported Sunday (Oct. 27) at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting. Duff is fallen organic material, such as leaves, slowly decomposing on the ground.

And in the sugar maple forests near the Great Lakes, the churning worms actually compact the upper soil layers instead of loosening them, Resner said.

"People assume that soils are homogeneous across all areas, and they're really not," Resner told LiveScience. "In agricultural areas, where you have compacted soils, [earthworms] aerate the soils. Forest soils are really different than agricultural soils. Here, we have a structure. And in this case, they actually compact it."

The compaction decreases downward water flow through the soil, drying out the upper soil layers, Resner and her colleagues found. The worms also change the soil chemistry, raising levels of calcium, potassium and phosphorous.

The net result is a loss of understory plants the young trees, ferns and wildflowers that grow in the spaces between big trees. And without the duff layer, some animals lack a place to live.

"It's like they've been pushed out of their homes," Resner said.

Tech to protect against the next hurricane Sandy

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  Sept. 24, 2013: A house in Toms River, N.J., in the process of being elevated to comply with new federal flood insurance regulations. (AP PHOTO/WAYNE PARRY)
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  New York's mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested expanding the East side of the island of Manhattan and developing it to withstand a storm -- acting as a shield for the existing inland areas. (MAYOR'S OFFICE)
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  A proposal by Dutch engineering firm Arcadis to build a barrier in the Verrazano Narrows between New York's Brooklyn borough and Staten Island, shielding the Upper New York Bay. (AP PHOTO/ARCADIS)

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A year after tropical storm Sandy tore through the Northeast, killing more than 100 and causing $50 billion in damage, areas all over the region are devising plans to prevent similar storm damage in the future.

What will the changes look like? Proposed solutions range from physically expanding the coast of Manhattan to re-introducing oysters in certain areas in the hope that they will slow down waves.

One of the most ambitious proposals, championed by New York's mayor Michael Bloomberg, is to physically expand the East side of the island of Manhattan and develop it, with the new land -- and new buildings designed to withstand a storm -- acting as a shield for the existing inland areas.

Many are skeptical.

"I think it's a big development project in disguise. I'm not opposed to that per se, but it’s not a good response to Sandy," Malcolm Bowman, professor of oceanography at Stony Brook University, told FoxNews.com. He added that Manhattan was not nearly as hard-hit as surrounding areas, so the focus should not be there.

'We've seen those pictures of a 'green beard' growing around lower Manhattan. That's almost science fiction. It's not plausible.'

- Malcolm Bowman, professor of oceanography at Stony Brook University

Another proposal that would protect more area calls for a giant sea barrier that would stretch five miles across the mouth of New York harbor, connecting New Jersey and Breezy Point, New York. The goal is to keep high water out of New York City and parts of New Jersey during storms.

"It would need to be about 30 feet high. It would have openings to let tides in and out on a regular basis, and have guillotine-like blades that would be let down during storms to cut off big surges," Bowman said.

However, the project is controversial and would take decades and cost $20 billion or more, according to a city government report.

Meanwhile, more manageable changes are already being made all over the Northeast in areas affected by Sandy, from a $40 million sand dune being built in Mantoloking, New Jersey, to new building codes that have led people to put their homes on pilings and elevate them many feet in the air.

Near Philadelphia, one utility company is preparing by making its electric grid “smarter” so it automatically switches energy from damaged lines to good ones, and increasing its tree-trimming budget by $10 million.

In New York City, a 428-page government plan calls for dozens of new construction projects in response to Sandy.

"The City will use flood protection structures, such as floodwalls, levees, and local storm surge barriers," reads the plan.

That means building up land in vulnerable areas and securing it with stone walls, as well as building much smaller versions of the giant barrier.

The report goes on to call for building up natural-seeming formations to take some of the brunt of waves.

"When placed appropriately, wetlands, oyster reefs, and living shorelines, including coastal forests, possess effective wave-attenuation properties," it reads.

Those mundane-sounding improvements are often the best, some experts say.

"New York City has been very proactive… From beach replenishment (much of which has already been done) to revision of building codes, to development of improved communications methods," Anne Ronan, professor of Civil Engineering at NYU Polytechnic University, told FoxNews.com.

But other recent proposals may be motivated more by a "cool" factor than an actual record of success.

"Oysters might add a bit of roughness and slow the water down, but I don't think it really would help in New York harbor to be honest," Bowman said.

"And we've seen those pictures of a 'green beard' growing around lower Manhattan. That's almost science fiction. It's not plausible. You know, people forget that this is a major commercial harbor, with ships coming in and out all the time."

In the end, he says, what’s been done is not enough -- and that a large sea barrier is the best long-term solution.

"Could Sandy happen again? Yes!” Bowman said. “In living memory of older people the 1938 ‘Long Island Express’ hurricane ripped apart eastern Long Island, killed over 700 people and destroyed 8900 houses, leaving 63,000 homeless."

"Politicians aren't really facing up to the challenges. I think elected officials kind of just cross their figures and hope it doesn't happen on their watch," Bowman said.

Archaeologists recover 5 cannons from wreck of Blackbeard's ship

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  Oct. 28, 2013: The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Smilax and personnel from the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources worked to recover five cannons and multiple barrel hoops from the Queen Anne's Revenge in Beaufort Inlet, N.C. (DAVID WEYDERT/US COAST GUARD)

Archaeologists have recovered five more cannons from the wreck Blackbeard's flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, off the coast of North Carolina.

State underwater archeologists on Monday raised the largest of the guns, weighing in at about 3,000 pounds.The other four weigh about 2,000 pounds, the Carteret County News-Times reported.

Project Director Billy Ray Morris says historians think the largest cannon was made in Sweden, indicating that Blackbeard had guns from different countries. State officials say about 280,000 artifacts have been recovered from the wreck.

“It was just an absolutely fantastic day,” Morris told the Carteret County News-Times. “If we can get this team in the future and weather like we had today, we will have the artifacts up by the end of 2014."

Blackbeard, the world's most famous pirate, captured a French slave ship and renamed it Queen Anne's Revenge in 1717. Volunteers with the Royal Navy killed Blackbeard in Ocracoke Inlet the following year, five months after the ship sank.

The wreck was located in 1996 in Beaufort Inlet. According to the News-Times, archaeologists hope to retrieve all of the artifacts from the site by next year because of deterioration brought about by hurricanes that have hit the coast.

Morris told the News-Times that 30 cannons have been discovered at the site and at least eight remain on the ocean floor. As of Monday, 22 cannons have been raised from the wreckage. 

"We know the records state that the Queen Anne’s Revenge had 40 cannons, and I believe we’ll find some more before it’s all over, but I’m not sure if we’ll find all 40,” he said.

Chupacabra' makes Mississippi appearance in time for Halloween

Recent Chupacabra Sightings

The mythical chupacabra -- a coyote-like creature from Hispanic folklore -- is said to attack goats and other livestock. "Sightings" across the U.S. have lead to some ... intriguing pictures.

The infamous 'chupacabra' may have resurfaced again just in time for Halloween. Mississippi residents caught the hairless monster on camera on a lot near their home.

"If a zombie had a dog, it would look like that," Jennifer Whitfield who captured the video of the mysterious creature told WLOX.

After posting the video online, Whitfield discovered she wasn't the only one in her neighborhood to spot the creature.

"I kept looking up ‘hairless coyote,' and it kept saying ‘chupacabra,'" Amanda Denton who lives a few streets over from Whitfield told the station. "We've been running back and forth to our cars because we didn't want the chupacabra to get us."

Denton and her husband Jonathan called Animal Control who were unable to capture the animal.

"I didn't know what it was, but then Animal Control couldn't find it, so maybe it was a chupacabra," Jonathan told WLOX.

Whether the animal is the mythical chupacabra who is said to kill animals and then suck their blood, the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks warns residents to stay away should they encounter the creature.

"It's probably sick, weak, and not able to hunt on its own, so it's going to the nearest food source it can find," Sgt. Burnette told the station.

Largest dino of all time is digitally recreated

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  This is the 40-meter original skeleton, Argentinosaurus huinculensis reconstruction at Museo Municipal Carmen Funes, Plaza Huincul, Neuquén, Argentina. (DR. BILL SELLERS/THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER)

A digital reconstruction of the world’s largest known land animal, the Cretaceous dinosaur Argentinosaurus, has allowed it to take its first steps -- albeit virtually -- in over 94 million years.

The recreation, outlined in PLoS ONE, is the most anatomically detailed walking simulation so far for a dinosaur, according to the researchers. The study also provides the first ever virtual trackway for Argentinosaurus.

The skeleton used in the study shows that the plant-eating dinosaur measured at least 131 feet long. The reconstruction reveals that it lumbered along at around 5 miles per hour.

“The simulation shows a slow walking gait, which is to be expected, given that the animal weighs 80 tonnes,” lead researcher Bill Sellers from the University of Manchester’s Faculty of Life Sciences, told Discovery News. “What is interesting is how well the simulated footfall pattern matches up with typical sauropod trackways.”

For the study, Sellers and his colleagues laser scanned the huge dinosaur’s skeleton. They then used an advanced computer modeling system (Sellers has his own software called Gaitsym) that involves the equivalent of 30,000 desktop computers. It virtually recreated the dinosaur, including the sauropod’s movements.

The discovery that Argentinosaurus could walk counters prior speculation that the animal could not have done so, based on previous estimations of its size.

This latest research concludes not only that Argentinosaurus could walk, but that it was also at the top of its food chain.

“Once you hit 80 tonnes, you don’t have to worry about being eaten by predators,” Sellers explained. “We don’t know whether this animal used its long neck to graze over wide areas of low-laying vegetation or for reaching the tops of trees, but from its locomotion we know that it was a slow, steady mover.”

Argentinosaurus eggs, however, were no bigger than those of many dinosaurs and large birds. It's therefore likely that Argentinosaurus young were fairly small and would have been easy prey for other carnivorous species that lived along the Cretaceous planes of what is now Patagonia, South America.

Understanding how such past animals moved may help us to better understand modern day musculoskeletal systems.

“If you are trying to understand any body system that is shared by a range of different animals then it is often extremely useful to compare this system across different species,” Sellers explained. “Vertebrate muscles, skeletons and joints work exactly the same way in everything from fish to humans.”

He continued, “The really interesting aspect of dinosaur locomotion is that you are looking at animals that test the limits of the musculoskeletal system simply by virtue of being so big. They have to make compromises and come up with ways of coping that help us to understand the limits and compromises in the human musculoskeletal system.”

Phillip Manning is head of the Paleontology Research Group at the University of Manchester and is a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History.

Manning told Discovery News that paleontology is now undergoing a renaissance, with more interdisciplinary approaches, such as this, helping to solve long-standing questions.

“To carefully break down the key components of the locomotion of such vast animals as Argentinosaurus is allowing us greater insight to the biology and physiology of such vast organisms,” Manning said. “The diverse plethora of techniques and technology available to paleontology today is changing the way we study and interpret the fossil record.”

In the future, the researchers plan to digitally recreate other dinosaurs, such as Triceratops, Brachiosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex, in order to better understand their movements. Prior simulations of duck-billed hadrosaurs uncovered novel gaits, so Sellers joked that “running, skipping and jumping may well turn up.”

Earth 2? Scientists study rocky, Earth-sized planet 700 light years away

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  MIT researchers discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet named Kepler 78b that spins around its host star in a short 8.5 hours.(CRISTINA SANCHIS OJEDA)

Is it home away from home?

A planet with a similar mass and size to our own planet Earth, likely similarly composed of rocks and iron, has been spotted orbiting a star some 700 light years away in the constellation Cygnus, scientists announced Wednesday. But don’t expect to find your 2.0 living there.

"It's Earth-like in the sense that it's about the same size and mass, but of course it's extremely unlike the Earth in that it's at least 2,000 degrees hotter," said team member Josh Winn, an associate professor of physics at MIT and a member of the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. "It's a step along the way of studying truly Earth-like planets."

'It's Earth-like in the sense that it's about the same size and mass, but of course it's ... at least 2,000 degrees hotter.'

- Josh Winn, an associate professor of physics at MIT

The planet, deemed Kepler 78b, is lightning-quick compared to Earth, orbiting its star in just 8.5 hours. By contrast, it takes roughly 8,765.81 hours, or 365 days, for our planet to orbit the sun. Kepler 78b's speedy transit of its homeworld was identified by scientists in August.

But continued studies revealed other facts about Kepler 78b, notably its mass: The distant planet's mass is about 1.7 times that of Earth’s. But those scorching temperatures on the surface mean life as we know it is unlikely there.

The information was revealed in a pair of papers published Wednesday in the science journal Nature.

"The gold standard in science is having your findings reproduced by other researchers," explained Andrew Howard of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii. "In this case, we did not have to wait for this to happen."

Spotting planets against the inky black of interstellar space is a unique challenge. To find this one, the team analyzed the light given off by the star as the planet passes in front of it, or transits. The researchers detected a transit each time the star's light dipped, and measured this dimming to determine its size. The bigger the planet, the more light it blocks.

To measure the planet's mass, the researchers tracked the motion of the star itself. Depending on its mass, a planet can exert a gravitational tug on its star. This stellar motion can be detected as a very slight wobble, known as a Doppler shift.

Winn and his colleagues looked to measure Kepler 78b's Doppler shift by analyzing observations from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii — one of the largest telescopes in the world. The team analyzed starlight data taken over a period of eight days. Despite the telescope's strength, the signal from the star was incredibly faint, making a daunting task for the scientists.

"Each of the eight nights along the way, we were agonizing over it, whether it was worth continuing or not," Winn said.