A fossil uncovered in Africa over 70 years ago has led to modern researchers identifying what was likely the earliest dinosaur, Nyasasaurus parringtoni. In the 1930s, Rex Carringon, a fossil hunter from Cambridge, first made the find in southern Tanzania. It wasn't until 1975 that one of his students mentioned the fossil in his dissertation. But the significance of the fossilized remains was not discovered until University of Washington paleontologist Sterling Nesbitt and Sarah Werning of UC Berkeley led a research team that searched for them and other specimens, which sat in drawers at London's Natural History Museum for many years. The team discovered additional bones to support their research at the South African Museum. 

Nyasasaurus parringtoni is thought to have lived 245 million years ago, at least 10 to 15 million years earlier than any other known dinosaur. The creature was roughly the size of a Labrador retriever with a tail that was about five feet long. 

Read more on this story in the San Francisco Chronicle. Link

(Image Credit: Mark Witton, Natural History Museum)

Star Wars and golfing: they simply go hand in hand. It's now possible to choose from likenesses of Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Yoda, a Storm Trooper or R2D2 as a covers to protect your golf clubs. Now all that's needed is a landspeeder golf cart and then you're ready for Masters (of the tournament and Jedi variety).  

See available outlets at Golf Digest. Link 

Eyewire, an online multiplayer game pioneered by Professor Sebastian Seung at MIT, allows players to map the three-dimensional structure of neurons in the brain. Every player, in essence, becomes a contributor to important neuroscientific research. Scientiists hypothesize that all mental properties from memory to mental illness are encoded in the the connections between neurons. Until these pathways can be mapped, the hypothesis cannot be proven. 

Eyewire players help to "break the code" by analyzing brain images to map connections in the retina. According to a decription of the game given by its creators,  

Players will "trace the wires” of the brain as if absorbed in play with a 3D jigsaw puzzle consisting of image pieces computed by artificial intelligence. The experience will rely on the spectacular graphics and other motivators of video gaming, but allow users to apply their minds to a worthy cause. [The project] will transform 21st century science and society by mobilizing our collective hearts and minds to understand how the brain works and why it malfunctions.

Play, learn and discuss the game at Eyewire.org. Link

(Image Credit: Eyewire.org)

Australian researchers have completed facial reconstruction on Homo Floresiensis, the 18,000-year-old skeletal remains of a human female thirty years of age, approximately 66 to 77 pounds and only three feet in height. The skeleton was found in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003. The reconstruction project was lead by Dr. Susan Hayes, a researcher specializing in facial anthropology at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales. Dr. Hayes unveiled the facial model for the first time at an Australian archaeology conference this December.  

The skeleton, nicknamed "The Hobbit" by scientists, has been the subject of debate as to whether this early female represents an extinct species of human or is an anomaly. Prior to 2007, some scientists argued that the woman may have had a condition called microcephalia that made her small in stature. Yet a 2007 study revealed that the brain cavity of the specimen, which accommodated a brain roughly one third the size of a human's, was not consistent with that of a person suffering from microcephalia.

See more on this story at Live Science. Link via HuffPost Science 

(Image credit: University of Wollongong)

Wayward trends of the art world. Alert, nurturing book editors who watch for and encourage fledgling artists in hopes of discovering the next Maurice Sendak. Illustrators using proximity and relationship to text, color, composition and other design techniques to capture the attention and stimulate the learning process of young readers. These are common elements of iconic illustrations in the great picture books of childhood.

See more illustrations from the book at Brain Pickings. Link.

(Image credit: Chris Haughton)
 

These jagged, crystalline 'flowers' form on thin layers of new ice in the Arctic Ocean, and only under conditions of extremely low winds and temperatures under -7° F. Deposits take shape on the surface of sea ice when water vapor skips the liquid phase and becomes solid. The formations have a high salt content — three to five times that of sea water, according to estimates by experts. The salt accumulates from brine that is wicked up from the ocean through the ice surface on which they grow.

Beauty is in the eye ...of the fruit fly! For 38 years, the Nikon Small World competition has selected prime photographic examples of microscopic form. Winning entries like the fruit fly eye above prove that beauty can be found in the essence of items that could be imagined as ingredients in a witches brew, such as fruit fly eyes, cricket tongue and mouse colon. So if your beer goggles don't have the desired effect at this year’s holiday party, it might pay to carry a microscope as backup. 

See the entire gallery of winning photographs for 2012 at Nikon Small World. Link. 

(Image credit: Dr. Michael John Bridge/University of Utah/Nikon Small World)