Researchers at the University of Bonn have found evidence indicating that some Sauropod dinosaurs, typically known for their enormous size, were island dwellers and evolved into dwarfs.

By studying the structure of their fossils, researchers confirmed that the sauropod dinosaur Magyarosaurus dacus never grew any larger than a horse. The results appear this week in PNAS.

An international team of researchers has captured an enormous cloud of cosmic gas and dust - BYF73 - in the process of collapsing in on itself, a discovery which could help explain how massive stars form. The team’s findings have been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Astronomers have a good grasp of how stars such as our Sun form from clouds of gas and dust, but how heavier stars form is still largely unknown.

Using ancient DNA preserved in bones from Siberian mammoths 25,000 to 43,000 years old, scientists have brought the primary component of the specimens' blood "back to life."

The seven-year research effort, detailed this week in Nature Genetics, reveals special evolutionary adaptations that allowed the mammoth to cool its extremities down in harsh Arctic conditions to minimize heat loss.

The findings will also help scientists study the DNA of other extinct species, such as Australian marsupials.

Astronauts could one day tend their own crops on long space missions, and researchers from Purdue say a variety of strawberry called Seascape seems to meet the requirements for becoming a space crop.

Seascape strawberries are day-neutral, meaning they aren't sensitive to the length of available daylight to flower. Seascape was tested with as much as 20 hours of daylight and as little as 10 hours. While there were fewer strawberries with less light, each berry was larger and the volume of the yields was statistically the same.

The findings are detailed in Advances in Space Research.


It almost looks like they're floating

Mountains that rise from the seafloor, called seamounts, represent one of the most common ecosystems on earth, say scientists from the NOAA and Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi.

Their findings reverse previous beliefs about the prevalence of seamounts, which they say are "treasure troves" of marine biodiversity. The results are published in Oceanography.

Although researchers have thoroughly explored some 200 seamounts and mapped and sampled a hundred others, this study is the first to estimate that more than 45,000 seamounts dot the ocean floor worldwide — a total of roughly 28.8 million square kilometers or an area larger than the continent of South America.

Plants are getting too much blame for global warming, according to a study by scientists at the University of Ediburgh and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

The research, published in New Phytologist, suggests that plant leaves account for less than one per cent of the Earth's emissions of methane, considered to be about 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The results contrast with a previous scientific study which suggested that plants were responsible for producing large amounts of the greenhouse gas.