All Stories by Sid Perkins
- Paleontology
Dear Mummy: Rare fossil reveals common dinosaur’s soft tissue
A mummified dinosaur unearthed in Montana a year ago is giving scientists a rare peek at what the creature's muscles and other soft tissues may have looked like.
- Earth
Shifting Sands
Sand dunes can provide scientists with clues about ancient patterns of wind and precipitation.
- Earth
Moderate flows help carve rivers
Measurements of erosion in a rocky river channel in Taiwan suggest that the day-to-day flow of water accounts for more rock wear there than occasional catastrophic floods do.
- Earth
Much that glitters is really old
New isotopic analyses of rock samples from one of the world's richest gold-mining regions suggest that the flecks of gold in those ores are more than 3 billion years old.
- Paleontology
Veggie Bites: Fossil suggests carnivorous dinosaurs begat vegetarian kin
Chinese rocks have yielded fossil remains of a creature that had rodentlike incisors and a hefty overbite, providing the first distinct dental evidence for plant-eating habits among theropod dinosaurs.
- Archaeology
Could the Anasazi have stayed?
New computer simulations of the changing environmental conditions around one of the Anasazi cultural centers in the first part of the last millennium suggest that drought wasn't the only factor behind a sudden collapse of the civilization.
- Earth
Chinese records show typhoon cycles
Historical records compiled by local governments along China's southeastern coast during the past 1,000 years suggest that there's a 50-year cycle in the annual number of typhoons that strike the area.
- Earth
Cave formations yield seismic clues
Analyses of toppled stalagmites and other fallen rock formations in two Israeli caves may provide hints about the rate of ancient earthquakes in the area.
- Earth
Global Impact: Space object may have spread debris worldwide
Sediments laid down about 3.47 billion years ago in what are now western Australia and eastern South Africa contain remnants of what may have been an extraterrestrial-object impact large enough to disperse debris over the entire planet.
- Earth
2002’s tornado tally well below average
As of August 1, barely half the usual number of tornadoes had struck the lower 48 states of the United States.
- Paleontology
Sea Dragons
About 235 million years ago, as the earliest dinosaurs stomped about on land, some of their reptilian relatives slipped back into the surf, took on an aquatic lifestyle, and became ichthyosaurs—Greek for fish lizards.
- Tech
Eau, Brother!
The combination of advanced sensor materials and powerful computer chips promises devices that can sense threats ranging from bacteria in food to explosives in land mines.
