Science Watch

An American woodpecker, believed extinct for 50 years, has turned up on film - alive and well and living in Arkansas.

The Ivory Billed Woodpecker was America’s largest woodpecker, but was believed to have died out. The destruction of its natural habitat for logging is one reason for its decline.

However, David Luneau of the University of Arkansas caught a fleeting image of a mysterious bird on his camcorder, while kayaking. Later identification shows it could only be the once extinct bird.

The brief footage can be found here: Ivory Billed Woodpecker sighting

This is great news, and what is even better is that the logging that once threatened it has long since finished.

Scientists hope that there may be breeding birds still alive in the extensive flooded woodlands, but need to find out just how many of America’s largest woodpecker remain alive and protect them - after all, the bird on the film could even be the last one of its kind, but hopefully not.

It’s not everyone who has a Great Wite Shark.

However, Monterey Bay Aquarium in California did have one - but after six months have finally decided to release theirs into the wild.

Fishermen had accidentally caught the female great white last year, and donated it to the aquarium, who tried hard to set aside a large tank for her use.

However, after damaging her nose against the glass walls, and killing two smaller sharks in the same tank, officials decided she was suffering stress and needed to be re-released.

The shark will be returned to the Pacific Ocean. A special transmitter will also be attached, which will stay with her for 30 days, recording her movements, before naturally falling off.

Source: California aquarium releases captive, but resolves to get another

Humans may not be the only ones to share a laugh and joke.

Research in America has found that other animals share similar brain patterns as humans laughing.

This includes chimps, dogs, and rats.

The suggestion is that the biology behind laughter was developing in animals before humans evolved.

And also that other animals may have some developed mechanism that is their animal equivalent to laughing.

Story: Animal laughs no joke says expert

No, seriously - a study of the atmosphere shows that there all kinds of crap in the air.

Not only that, but all this crap in the atmosphere could actually affect the weather.

A global study of the atmosphere found that for about 1 in every 4 bits of solid particle they found high in the atmsophere, was something from an animal or plant - like bits of fur, skin, algae, bacteria, or pollen, for example.

It’s now being estimated that around a billion tons of this gets into the atmosphere, every year.

Because there’s so much of this shit up in the atmosphere, it means that it must play an active role in weather formation, such as helping rain clouds form.

So now when it rains, you might be more thankful for an umbrella.

Story: Detritus of life abounds in the atmosphere

T Rex blood tissue has been extracted by Mary Schweitzer at North Carolina State University.

Cool. So does that mean we’ll Jurassic Park for real anytime soon?

Fortunately, and unfortunately, no - what they found is a squishy mushy mess of cells and their proteins.

DNA is needed for cloning dinosaurs, and DNA is even more fragile than most proteins. When cells die and start to break down, DNA goes pretty quickly.

Let’s face it, DNA is one big complex molecule and because of its complexity, once it starts to degrade the whole code becomes a relatively useless pulp.

Getting 68 million-year old dino cells is still pretty neat, though, as normally there’s little other than minerals where the dinosaur soft stuff once was.

However, scientists have found that it they crush up some of the fossil, they can sometimes get at actual dinosaur cells, preserved within a mineral shell.

The amount extracted can be tiny - but that’s a tiny amount that connects us to the monsters of the Cretaceous period, and provides much more detail for us to try and study them.

Will Jurassic Park - or its equivalent - one day come true? Almost certainly. But not today. :)

Story: Blood vessels recovered from T. rex bone