- World’s first desktop computers unearthed in London house clearance Interesting Engineering
- Priceless barn find: World’s first microcomputers discovered by cleaners New Atlas
- World’s 1st PC rediscovered by accident in UK house clearance nearly 50 years after last sighting Livescience.com
- House cleaners find two of the world’s first desktop PCs in random boxes — Intel 8008-powered Q1 PC has 16KB of memory, 800 kHz CPU Tom’s Hardware
- Talk about a blast from the past! Two of the world’s first desktop computers dating back over 50 years are dis Daily Mail
Tag Archives: unearthed
Pioneering Biomarker for Resistant Depression Unearthed – Neuroscience News
- Pioneering Biomarker for Resistant Depression Unearthed Neuroscience News
- Cingulate dynamics track depression recovery with deep brain stimulation Nature.com
- Researchers discover biomarker for tracking depression recovery National Institutes of Health (.gov)
- A Newly Discovered Brain Signal Marks Recovery from Depression Scientific American
- Effects of deep brain stimulation on cognitive functioning in treatment-resistant depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis | Molecular Psychiatry Nature.com
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Video: Hear Trump’s unearthed comments on destroying evidence as he faces new obstruction charge – CNN
- Video: Hear Trump’s unearthed comments on destroying evidence as he faces new obstruction charge CNN
- Trump Documents Case: Carlos De Oliveira and Walt Nauta Play Key Roles The New York Times
- National Security Implications of Trump’s Superseding Indictment: A Damage Assessment 2.0 Just Security
- Panic at Mar-a-Lago: How the new obstruction charges may produce even more witnesses against Trump The Hill
- New charges for Trump in classified documents case involve video evidence – Oregon Capital Chronicle Oregon Capital Chronicle
- View Full Coverage on Google News
World’s first ‘worm’ dating back 220 million years has been unearthed in Arizona
The world’s first ‘worm’ dating back 220 million years has been unearthed in Arizona.
It’s a ‘missing link’ in evolution that sheds fresh light on the origins of amphibians.
Named Funcusvermis gilmorei, it lived at the beginning of the age of the dinosaurs.
The primitive creepy-crawly was identified from its tiny jaws and teeth – which remarkably survived fossilisation.
While its Latin name refers to it as a ‘funky worm’, it actually belongs to a group called caecilians, which also include frogs and salamanders.
Ben Kligman, a doctoral student at Virginia Tech who led the dig at Petrified Forest National Park, said: “The discovery of the oldest caecilian fossils highlights the crucial nature of new fossil evidence.
“Many of the biggest outstanding questions in palaeontology and evolution cannot be resolved without fossils like this.”
Mr Kligman, who previously discovered a 220-million-year-old species of cynodont or stem-mammal, a precursor of modern-day mammals added: “Fossil caecilians are extraordinarily rare and they are found accidentally when palaeontologists are searching for the fossils of other more common animals.
“Our discovery of one was totally unexpected and it transformed the trajectory of my scientific interests.”
He previously discovered a species of cynodont or stem-mammal – a precursor of modern-day mammals – from the same period.
Funcusvermis was found in a layer known as the Chinle Formation. The rocks were positioned near the equator at the time – in the centre of the supercontinent Pangaea.
(Adam Marsh / Virginia Tech/ SWNS)
The region was just as hot as today – but much more humid.
Mr Kligman said: “Seeing the first jaw under the microscope – with its distinctive double row of teeth – sent chills down my back.
“We immediately knew it was a caecilian – the oldest caecilian fossil ever found – and a once-in-a-lifetime discovery.”
It fills an 87 million-year gap in the fossil record – which hid the early evolutionary history of caecilians.
Scientists have debated over the relationships of caecilians to their amphibian relatives for decades.
Mr Kligman said: “Funcusvermis extends the humid equatorial pattern of occurrence seen in all known fossil and living caecilians.
“It suggests the biogeographic history of caecilians has been guided by restriction to these ecological settings.
“It was likely due to physiological constraints linked to humidity and constrained by the drift of continental plates into and out of the humid-equatorial zone after the fragmentation of Pangaea.”
(Ben Kligman / Virginia Tech / SW SWNS)
Modern caecilians are limbless amphibians with cylindrical bodies.
A compact, bullet-shaped skull helps them burrow in leaf litter or soil searching for prey such as worms and insects.
They are now only found in South and Central America, Africa and southern Asia.
An underground existence has made studying them difficult for scientists.
Mr Kligman quipped: “They are like an eyeless sock puppet – with the body of a worm.”
Funcusvermis even shares skeletal features with early frog and salamanders.
It adds to evidence of a common ancestor. Funcusvermis also resembles dissorophoid temnospondyls – an ancient group of amphibians.
Mr Kligman said: “Unlike living caecilians, Funcusvermis lacks many adaptations associated with burrowing underground, indicating a slower acquisition of features associated with an underground lifestyle in the early stages of caecilian evolution.”
Many of the biggest outstanding questions in palaeontology and evolution cannot be resolved without fossils like this
Funcusvermis was named after “Funky Worm” from US 70s band Ohio Players’ album Pleasure.
The song was often played while excavating fossils at Thunderstorm Ridge.
‘Funcus’ is derived the English word Funky for the upbeat, rhythmic form of dance music while ‘vermis’ is Latin for worm.
Lead palaeontologist Adam Marsh said: “As the eponymous song says, it’s the funkiest worm in the world.”
The lower jaws of at least 70 individuals of Funcusvermis have since been recovered as of last summer – making the area the most abundant fossil caecilian-producing bonebed ever discovered.
Only a handful of disarticulated bones have been found including upper and lower jaws, a vertebra and part of a hind-limb.
Without complete skeletons, the body length of Funcusvermis cannot be exactly determined.
But inferences from isolated elements such as the lower jaw being less than a quarter of an inch long, indicate Funcusvermis was a very small animal.
Mr Kligman said: “Since its discovery in 2017, the Thunderstorm Ridge site has produced a diverse assemblage of over 60 animals ranging from freshwater sharks to dinosaurs.
“Several other new species discovered at this site have been recently described.”
Many other new species from this site are currently under study and will be published in upcoming years.”
Funcusvermis is described in the journal Nature.
This article was amended on January 27 2023 to make it clear that Funcusvermis gilmorei was not a true worm.
Fossils of car-sized dinosaur-era sea turtle unearthed in Spain
Nov 17 (Reuters) – Plying the subtropical seas that washed the coasts of the archipelago that made up Europe 83 million years ago was one of the largest turtles on record, a reptile the size of a small car – a Mini Cooper to be precise – that braved dangerous waters.
Researchers on Thursday described remains discovered in northeastern Spain of a turtle named Leviathanochelys aenigmatica that was about 12 feet (3.7 meters) long, weighed a bit under two tons and lived during the Cretaceous Period – the final chapter in the age of dinosaurs. It is Europe’s biggest-known turtle.
It dwarfed today’s largest turtle – the leatherback, which can reach 7 feet (2 meters) long and is known for marathon marine migrations. Leviathanochelys nearly matched the largest turtle on record – Archelon, which lived roughly 70 million years ago and reached about 15 feet (4.6 meters) long.
“Leviathanochelys was as long as a Mini Cooper while Archelon was the same size as a Toyota Corolla,” said paleontologist and study co-author Albert Sellés of the Institut Català de Paleontologia (ICP), a research center affiliated with Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
It was good to be the size of a car, considering the hazardous traffic in the ancient Tethys Sea in which Leviathanochelys swam. Huge marine reptiles with powerful jaws called mosasaurs were the largest predators – some exceeding 50 feet (15 meters) in length. Various sharks and rays as well as long-necked fish-eating marine reptiles called plesiosaurs also lurked.
“Attacking an animal of the size of Leviathanochelys possibly only could have been done by large predators in the marine context. At that time, the large marine predators in the European zone were mainly sharks and mosasaurs,” said Oscar Castillo, a student in a master’s degree program in paleontology at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and lead author of the study published in the journal Scientific Reports.
[1/2] An illustrated reconstruction of the large Cretaceous Period sea turtle Leviathanochelys aenigmatica, which lived about 83 million years ago and whose fossils were found in Catalonia’s Alt Urgell county in northeastern Spain, is seen in this undated handout image. ICRA_Arts/Museu de la Conca Della – Institut Catala de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont/Handout via REUTERS
“During the Cretaceous, there was a tendency in marine turtles to increase their body size. Leviathanochelys and Archelon might represent the apex of this process. The reason for this increase in body size has been hypothesized to be predatory pressures, but there might be other factors,” Castillo added.
Other large turtles from Earth’s past include Protostega and Stupendemys, both reaching about 13 feet (4 meters) long. Protostega was a Cretaceous sea turtle that lived about 85 million years ago and, like its later cousin Archelon, inhabited the large inland sea that at the time split North America in two. Stupendemys prowled the lakes and rivers of northern South America about 7-13 million years ago during the Miocene Epoch.
Scientists unearthed the Leviathanochelys remains near the village of Coll de Nargó in Catalonia’s Alt Urgell county after fossils protruding from the ground were spotted by a hiker in the Southern Pyrenees mountains. To date, they have found parts of the posterior portion of its carapace, or shell, and most of the pelvic girdle, but no skull, tail or limbs.
The fossils indicated that it possessed a smooth carapace similar to leatherback turtles, with the shell itself about 7.7 feet (2.35 meters) long and 7.2 feet (2.2 meters) wide. Leviathanochelys appears built for the open ocean, returning to land only rarely – for instance to lay eggs.
The presence of a couple of bony bulges on the front side of the pelvis differs from any other known sea turtle, indicating that Leviathanochelys represents a newly discovered lineage. It shows that gigantism in marine turtles developed independently in separate Cretaceous lineages in North America and Europe.
Leviathanochelys aenigmatica means “enigmatic leviathan turtle” owing to its large size and the curious shape of its pelvis that the researchers suspect was related to its respiratory system.
“Some pelagic (living in the open ocean) animals show a modification in their respiratory system to maximize their breathing capacity at great depths,” Sellés said.
Reporting by Will Dunham in Washington, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Skeleton of female “vampire” unearthed at cemetery in Poland: “Pure astonishment”
Nicolaus Copernicus University
The remains of a female “vampire” have been unearthed by archaeologists at a cemetery in Poland, researchers announced this week.
The Polish researchers came across the remains of a woman with a sickle around her neck and a triangular padlock on her foot at a gravesite in the village of Pień. The farming tool, according to ancient beliefs, was supposed to prevent a deceased person thought to be a vampire from returning from the dead.
The research team, led by Professor Dariusz Polinski of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, made the unique discovery in late August.
In an interview with the Polish Press Agency PAP, Magdalena Zagrodzka, who represented the research team, said the human remains also had a silk headdress, which was woven with gold or silver thread. While the padlock and sickle are linked to 17th-century superstitions, Zagrodzka said the cap is evidence of the high social status of the deceased.
Zagrodzka said that the sickle and padlock “may have protected against the return of the deceased, which was probably feared. In this context, these practices can be considered so-called anti-vampiric.” The farming tool was placed with the blade on the neck. It was believed that such an arrangement would cause the head to be cut if the deceased tried to “get up.”
This type of practice became common throughout Poland in the 17th century, as a response to a reported vampire epidemic. Polanski explained that in addition to practices with a sickle, sometimes corpses were burned, smashed with stones or had their heads and legs cut off.
Experts are planning further research at the cemetery, aided by new technologies for surveying the area. In addition, researchers from the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Krakow will conduct DNA testing on the remains to learn more about the deceased woman.
In an interview with CBS News, Polinski said the find left him speechless.
“Such a discovery, especially here in Poland, is astonishing, especially now — centuries later,” he said. “Pure astonishment.”
This is not the first such discovery in the country. Archaeologists led by Lesley Gregoricka of the University of South Alabama in the United States found six so-called “vampire skeletons” at a cemetery in northwest Poland in 2014.
Dinosaur ribcage unearthed in Portugal backyard
In early August, a team of Portuguese and Spanish researchers exhumed parts of what they believe is a fossilized brachiosaurid sauropod skeleton in Monte Agudo, Pombal, in Portugal, according to a news release last week.
Sauropods — which included the world’s largest dinosaurs — were herbivorous dinosaurs recognized by their long necks and tails. Based on the remains uncovered, the researchers estimate that the dinosaur was around 12 meters (39 feet) high and 25 meters (82 feet) long.
The team has so far unearthed important parts of the skeleton, including vertebrae and ribs.
“It is not usual to find all the ribs of an animal like this, let alone in this position, maintaining their original anatomical position,” said Elisabete Malafaia, postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, in the release.
“This mode of preservation is relatively uncommon in the fossil record of dinosaurs, in particular sauropods, from the Portuguese Upper Jurassic.”
The discovery is part of an ongoing project, which began in 2017.
In that year, while construction work was being carried out at the property, the owner noticed several fossilized bone fragments in his backyard, according to the release.
He contacted the research team, which began the first excavation that year.
Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist and professor at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, who was not involved in the project, called it “gobsmacking — a dinosaur ribcage sticking out of somebody’s garden.”
“(It goes to show) you can potentially find them anywhere there is rock of the right age and right type for preserving Jurassic-aged bones, whether it’s in the badlands or someone’s backyard,” he told CNN, adding that finding dinosaur remains involves chance and circumstance. In dry badland terrain, erosion by wind and water exposes rock and the topography is often a hotspot for fossils.
Dinosaurs from the Brachiosauridae group, which the skeleton is thought to belong to, lived between the Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous periods around 160 to 100 million years ago, the press release added.
This is not the first fossilized dinosaur discovery in Europe recently. In June, it was reported that the remains of a spinosaurid — a bipedal predatory dinosaur with a crocodile-like visage — had been found on the Isle of Wight, an island to the south of England.
Elsewhere in the world, a new species of carnivorous dinosaur which was 11 meters (36 feet) long with arms similar to the Tyrannosaurus Rex was uncovered in northern Patagonia, Argentina, scientists announced last month.
The preservation of the skeleton found in Pombal indicates that more of it could be discovered, with further excavation at the site planned.
Ancient Colossus Unearthed in Portugal May Be Largest Dinosaur Ever Found in Europe : ScienceAlert
Paleontologists in Portugal have unearthed the fossilized skeleton of what could be the largest dinosaur ever found in Europe.
The remains are thought to be those of a sauropod, a herbivorous dinosaur 12 meters (39 feet) tall and 25 meters long that roamed the Earth around 150 million years ago.
“It’s one of the biggest specimens discovered in Europe, perhaps in the world,” paleontologist Elisabete Malafaia, from the Faculty of Sciences at Lisbon University, told AFP on Monday.
The bones were uncovered by Portuguese and Spanish scientists in the garden of a house near Pombal in central Portugal at the beginning of August.
Among the bones collected, they found the remains of a rib about three meters long, Malafaia said.
Fossil fragments were first noticed at the site in 2017, when the owner was digging up his garden to make way for an extension.
He contacted paleontologists, who unearthed part of the dinosaur skeleton earlier this month and have been examining it ever since.
Sauropods have characteristically long necks and tails and are among the largest animals to have ever lived.
The fossils discovered at the Monte Agudo site in Pombal are thought to be those of a brachiosaurid who lived during the Upper Jurassic period.
The fact that the vertebrae and ribs were found at the same location and in the position they would have been in the dinosaur’s anatomy is “relatively rare”, Malafaia said.
The team may conduct more digs in the coming months at the site and in the surrounding area.
© Agence France-Presse
Windows 11 TPM, Secure Boot requirements get unearthed in old Windows 10 build
Back in June last year when Microsoft announced Windows 11 for the first time, the company laid out the minimum system requirements for the new OS. At the time, such strict requirements caused a lot of commotion since even a couple of generations-old CPUs were deemed un-supported for Windows 11. And though the company later revised its compatible CPU list to add some more of Intel models, the other necessities like Trusted Platform Module (TPM) version 2.0 – or Platform Trust Technology (PTT) in the case of Intel -and Secure Boot remained unchanged. Some games too, like Valorant, were blocked on systems which did not have TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot so as to enfore anti-cheat measures.
Microsoft later explained in detail how such technologies like TPM 2.0 and Virtualization-based Security (VBS) took the security aspect of Windows 11 to the next level, and also demonstrated successful hacker attack on a system with TPM and other such security features disabled.
In case you are wondering when exactly the Redmond giant started adding in these requirements on Windows 10, Twitter user and prolific leakster Xeno spotted the change within the Build 21327 for the first time. This was available in the appraiserres.dll in the Windows 10 build 21327.
Did you know that Cobalt build 21327 is the earliest public build to mention that a TPM module would block your system from installing “Sun Valley”? pic.twitter.com/loUqZvM78c
— Xeno (@XenoPanther) August 27, 2022
Speaking of the appraiserres DLL file, there’s a workaround available for bypassing the system requirements check on Windows 11 which basically involved deleting this file.
Never-before-seen armoured dinosaur is unearthed in Argentina
Fossilised remains of a never-before-seen armoured dinosaur the size of a CAT with a row of protective spines running from its neck to its tail are unearthed in Argentina
- The remains of a never-before-seen armoured dinosaur unearthed in Argentina
- Experts say species Jakapil kaniukura looks like primitive relative of Stegosaurus
- Weighed as much as a house cat and probably grew to about 5ft (1.5 metres) long
- May represent a lineage of armoured dinosaurs previously unknown to science
The fossilised remains of a never-before-seen armoured dinosaur that was the size of a house cat have been unearthed in Argentina.
Palaeontologists say Jakapil kaniukura looks like a primitive relative of Ankylosaurus or Stegosaurus and may represent an entire lineage of species previously unknown to science.
It dates back to the Cretaceous period and lived between 97 million and 94 million years ago.
J. kaniukura had a row of protective spines running from its neck to its tail, experts said, and probably grew to about 5 feet (1.5 metres) long.
It was a plant eater – with leaf-shaped teeth similar to those of Stegosaurus – likely walked upright and sported a short beak capable of delivering a strong bite.
New discovery: The fossilised remains of a never-before-seen armoured dinosaur that was the size of a house cat have been unearthed in Argentina. A computer simulation has brought the new species Jakapil kaniukura to life (pictured)
Palaeontologists say Jakapil kaniukura looks like a primitive relative of Ankylosaurus or Stegosaurus and may represent an entire lineage of species previously unknown to science
The species probably would have been able to eat tough, woody vegetation, according to palaeontologists at the Félix de Azara Natural History Foundation in Argentina.
The partial skeleton of the dinosaur was discovered in the Río Negro province in northern Patagonia.
It joins Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus, and other armour-backed dinosaurs in a group called Thyreophora.
Most thyreophorans are known from the Northern Hemisphere.
The fossils from the earliest members of this group also more commonly date back to the Jurassic period, about 201 million years ago to 163 million years ago.
The discovery of J. kaniukura ‘shows that early thyreophorans had a much broader geographic distribution than previously thought,’ palaeontologists Facundo J. Riguetti, Sebastián Apesteguía and Xabier Pereda-Suberbiola wrote in the new paper.
The partial skeleton of the dinosaur was discovered in the Río Negro province in northern Patagonia
It dates back to the Cretaceous period and lived between 97 million and 94 million years ago
The fossils from the earliest members of this group also more commonly date back to the Jurassic period, about 201 million years ago to 163 million years ago.
The dinosaur was a plant eater – with leaf-shaped teeth similar to those of Stegosaurus – likely walked upright and sported a short beak capable of delivering a strong bite
It joins Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus, and other armour-backed dinosaurs in a group called Thyreophora
It was also surprising that this ancient lineage of thyreophorans survived all the way into the Late Cretaceous in South America, they added.
In the Northern Hemisphere, these older types of thyreophorans mostly appear to have gone extinct by the Middle Jurassic.
But on the southern supercontinent Gondwana, however, they apparently survived well into the Cretaceous.
Some later thyreophorans survived longer — including Ankylosaurus, which went extinct with the rest of the non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
A computer simulation from Gabriel Díaz Yantén, a Chilean palaeoartist and palaeontology student at Río Negro National University, has brought the new species to life.
It shows what it may have looked like when it walked the Earth.
The discovery was revealed in a journal called Scientific Reports.
KILLING OFF THE DINOSAURS: HOW A CITY-SIZED ASTEROID WIPED OUT 75 PER CENT OF ALL ANIMAL AND PLANT SPECIES
Around 66 million years ago non-avian dinosaurs were wiped out and more than half the world’s species were obliterated.
This mass extinction paved the way for the rise of mammals and the appearance of humans.
The Chicxulub asteroid is often cited as a potential cause of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event.
The asteroid slammed into a shallow sea in what is now the Gulf of Mexico.
The collision released a huge dust and soot cloud that triggered global climate change, wiping out 75 per cent of all animal and plant species.
Researchers claim that the soot necessary for such a global catastrophe could only have come from a direct impact on rocks in shallow water around Mexico, which are especially rich in hydrocarbons.
Within 10 hours of the impact, a massive tsunami waved ripped through the Gulf coast, experts believe.
Around 66 million years ago non-avian dinosaurs were wiped out and more than half the world’s species were obliterated. The Chicxulub asteroid is often cited as a potential cause of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event (stock image)
This caused earthquakes and landslides in areas as far as Argentina.
While investigating the event researchers found small particles of rock and other debris that was shot into the air when the asteroid crashed.
Called spherules, these small particles covered the planet with a thick layer of soot.
Experts explain that losing the light from the sun caused a complete collapse in the aquatic system.
This is because the phytoplankton base of almost all aquatic food chains would have been eliminated.
It’s believed that the more than 180 million years of evolution that brought the world to the Cretaceous point was destroyed in less than the lifetime of a Tyrannosaurus rex, which is about 20 to 30 years.
<!- - ad: https://mads.dailymail.co.uk/v8/de/sciencetech/none/article/other/mpu_factbox.html?id=mpu_factbox_1 - ->
Advertisement