Gizmorama - April 30, 2014

Good Morning,

NASA's Curiosity rover has captured images of a pair of asteroids from the surface of Mars. The sights you see when you take a long trip.

Learn about this interesting story and more from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

P.S. Did you miss an issue? You can read every issue from the Gophercentral library of newsletters on our exhaustive archives page. Thousands of issues, all of your favorite publications in chronological order. You can read AND comment. Just click GopherArchives

***
*-- Curiosity spots asteroids from the surface of Mars --*
GREENBELT, Md. (UPI) - For the first time, NASA's Curiosity rover has captured images of an asteroid from the surface of Mars -- two of them, in fact. The imagery recorded by Curiosity and beamed back to Earth feature Ceres and Vesta, two of the largest asteroids in the asteroid belt that runs between between Mars and Jupiter. This Curiosity first was also a bit of a coincidence, as the SUV-sized rover had aimed its cameras at the Martian sky in order to snap shots of the Red Planet's two moons, not hunt for asteroids whizzing by. "This imaging was part of an experiment checking the opacity of the atmosphere at night in Curiosity's location on Mars, where water-ice clouds and hazes develop during this season," camera team member Mark Lemmon, of Texas A&M University, explained in a statement. "The two Martian moons were the main targets that night, but we chose a time when one of the moons was near Ceres and Vesta in the sky." NASA is currently on its way to get an even closer look at this two giant space rocks. NASA's Dawn spacecraft orbited the 350-mile-wide Vesta asteroid in 2011 and 2012, and it is preparing to orbit the 590-mile-wide Ceres in 2015.


*-- Pterodactyl found in China is most ancient to date --*
WASHINGTON (UPI) - Pterodactyls, the now extinct genus of flying reptiles -- and part of the slightly larger pterodactyloids family -- is five million years older than previously thought. That according to a new study which details the 2001 discovery of the oldest pterodactyl species found to date. Scientists estimate that the species Kryptodrakon progenitor spread its 4.5-foot wingspan roughly 163 million years ago. The found specimen's delicate bones were pulled from sand more than a decade ago during a dig at the Shishiugou Formation -- a treasure trove of Late Jurassic fossils located in a remote desert of northwest China. Kryptodrakon, which translates to "hidden dragon," is an homage to the movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," which was filmed at a location nearby. The bones of the ancient bird were originally misidentified, and weren't fingered as evidence of a new species of pterodactyls until scientists began reassembling the skeleton several years later. "I looked at it and said, 'That's not a theropod, that's a pterosaur.' And the rest is history," James Clark, a biologist at George Washington University's Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, told National Geographic. Clark is co-author of a new paper on the rediscovery, which was published this week in the journal Current Biology. The newly discovered species falls within the larger pterodactyloids family, a group that evolved from the even broader and more ancient order of pterosaurs -- the earliest flying vertebrates at 228 million years old. The mystery of Kryptodrakon (now solved) moves the evolutionary split of pterodactyloids from pterosaurs back five million years, and offers scientists new insight into how the animals made the transition from a mostly marine existence to a predominantly terrestrial one. "The pterodactyloid is the earliest, oldest and most primitive member of a group that would become huge," Brian Andres, lead author of the study and paleontologist at the University of South Florida, told PBS. "It would take over the skies. It would become the largest flying organism of all time." "In paleontology, we love to find the earliest members of any group because we can look at them and figure out what they had that made the group so successful," Andres added.

Missed an Issue? Visit the Gizmorama Archives