'Crocodile-faced hell heron' dinosaur discovered in England

These giant birds could eviscerate you. People were raising them 18,000 years ago. | 'Crocodile-faced hell heron' dinosaur discovered in England | Byzantine warrior with gold-threaded jaw unearthed in Greece Created for {EMAIL} | [Web Version]( September 30, 2021 CONNECT WITH LIVESCIENCE  [Facebook]( [Twitter](  [LIVESCIENCE]( [LIVESCIENCE]( Amazing science every day [SIGN UP]( ⋅ [WEBSITE](  [] Top Science News [] [These giant birds could eviscerate you. People were raising them 18,000 years ago.]( [These giant birds could eviscerate you. People were raising them 18,000 years ago.]( (Steve Wilson/Getty Images) Whoever came up with the age-old riddle "Which came first: the chicken or the egg?" failed to consider the world's most dangerous (and Australia's largest) bird — the cassowary (Casuarius). New research suggests that the relationship between humans and cassowaries dates back to the late Pleistocene era — several thousand years before humans domesticated chickens and geese. "And this is not some small fowl," lead study author Kristina Douglass, an archaeologist at Penn State, said in a statement. "It is a huge, ornery, flightless bird that can eviscerate you — most likely, the dwarf variety that weighs 20 kilos (44 pounds)." Full Story: [LiveScience]( (9/30) [LinkedIn]( [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [Email]( [] History & Archaeology [] ['Crocodile-faced hell heron' dinosaur discovered in England]( ['Crocodile-faced hell heron' dinosaur discovered in England]( (Anthony Hutchings) Two toothy carnivorous dinosaurs with crocodile-type skulls once stalked the riverbanks on England's Isle of Wight, new fossils reveal. Scientists gave the creatures scientific names that translate to "horned, crocodile-faced hell heron" and "riverbank hunter." The predators are early species of spinosaurids, relatives of the weird, possibly amphibious Spinosaurus, which was bigger than Tyrannosaurus rex and had a large sail on its back. Full Story: [LiveScience]( (9/29) [LinkedIn]( [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [Email]( [] [Byzantine warrior with gold-threaded jaw unearthed in Greece]( [Byzantine warrior with gold-threaded jaw unearthed in Greece]( (Anagnostis P. Agelarakis) A rugged Byzantine warrior, who was decapitated following the Ottoman's capture of his fort during the 14th century, had a jaw threaded with gold, a new study finds. An analysis of the warrior's lower jaw revealed that it had been badly fractured in a previous incident, but that a talented physician had used a wire — likely gold crafted — to tie his jaw back together until it healed. "The jaw was shattered into two pieces," said study author Anagnostis Agelarakis, an anthropology professor in the Department of History at Adelphi University in New York. The discovery of the nearly 650-year-old healed jaw is an amazing find because it shows the accuracy with which "the medical professional was able to put the two major fragments of the jaw together." Full Story: [LiveScience]( (9/29) [LinkedIn]( [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [Email]( [] Natural Disasters [] [The melting of slush 'glue' threatens to calve large icebergs]( [The melting of slush 'glue' threatens to calve large icebergs]( (Beck / NASA Operation IceBridge) The thinning of an icy "glue" that holds fractured ice together may drive ice shelf collapse in Antarctica, according to a new study. Ice shelves are massive stretches of ice that build up over many thousands of years, Live Science previously reported. But warming air and rising ocean temperatures have been driving ice shelves to disintegrate. Many of Antarctica's ice shelves have fractured or collapsed in the past couple of decades, according to the new study, but exactly what's accelerating the ice loss has been unclear. To figure this out, a group of glaciologists zoomed in on rifts on Antarctica's Larsen C Ice Shelf, which calved a Delaware-size iceberg called A68 in July 2017. Full Story: [LiveScience]( (9/30) [LinkedIn]( [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [Email]( [] [Bright lava flows, smoke pour from La Palma volcano eruption in new Landsat photos]( [Bright lava flows, smoke pour from La Palma volcano eruption in new Landsat photos]( (NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey) New satellite images of an active volcano on the Spanish island of La Palma capture vivid streams of lava pouring down the coastal mountain range and nearing the Atlantic Ocean. The eruption began on Sept. 19 from fissures on the western flanks of the Cumbre Vieja crater on La Palma, which is one of Spain's Canary Islands, located off the coast of northwestern Africa. The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on NASA's Landsat 8 satellite captured glowing lava flows snaking across the island in images taken on Sunday (Sept. 26), a week into the eruption. Full Story: [LiveScience]( (9/29) [LinkedIn]( [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [Email]( [] Math & Physics [] [Who was James Clerk Maxwell? The greatest physicist you've probably never heard of.]( [Who was James Clerk Maxwell? The greatest physicist you've probably never heard of.]( (Stefano Bianchetti/Corbis via Getty Images) Everyone's a fan of Albert Einstein, and for good reason: He invented at least four new fields of physics, spun a brand-new theory of gravity out of the fabric of his own imagination, and taught us the true nature of time and space. But who was Einstein a fan of? James Clerk Maxwell. Who? Oh, he's only the scientist responsible for explaining the forces behind the radio in your car, the magnets on your fridge, the heat of a warm summer day and the charge on a battery. Full Story: [LiveScience]( (9/30) [LinkedIn]( [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [Email]( [] Your Health [] [Boy dies from rare 'brain-eating' amoeba found in splash pad at Texas park]( [Boy dies from rare 'brain-eating' amoeba found in splash pad at Texas park]( (Shutterstock) A boy in Arlington, Texas, has died from a rare and deadly brain infection he likely contracted from a city splash pad, health officials say. The boy, whose name and age were not released, was hospitalized at Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, on Sept. 5, where he was diagnosed with primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), a devastating brain infection caused by a single-celled organism called Naegleria fowleri, according to a statement from the City of Arlington Office of Communication. He died at the hospital on Sept. 11, the statement said. Full Story: [LiveScience]( (9/29) [LinkedIn]( [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [Email]( [] Astronomy & Astrophysics [] [Exceptionally rare planet with three suns may lurk in Orion's nose]( [Exceptionally rare planet with three suns may lurk in Orion's nose]( (ESO/L. Calçada, Exeter/Kraus et al.) There's now even more evidence that a bizarre star system perched on the constellation Orion's nose may contain the rarest type of planet in the known universe: a single world orbiting three suns simultaneously. The star system, known as GW Orionis (or GW Ori) and located about 1,300 light-years from Earth, makes a tempting target for study; with three dusty, orange rings nested inside one another, the system literally looks like a giant bull's-eye in the sky. At the center of that bull's-eye live three stars — two locked in a tight binary orbit with each other, and a third swirling widely around the other two. Full Story: [LiveScience]( (9/30) [LinkedIn]( [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [Email]( [] [Mars on the cheap: Scientists working to revolutionize access to the Red Planet]( [Mars on the cheap: Scientists working to revolutionize access to the Red Planet]( (Rocket Lab/UC Berkeley) While officials at NASA and the European Space Agency, as well as planners in China, plot out ultra-expensive and complicated missions to return samples from Mars, there are an increasing number of researchers blueprinting low-cost and novel ways to further explore the Red Planet. Be it via souped-up helicopters or inexpensive landers and orbiters, they say it's time to script new ways to gather more data from a variety of places on that remote world. How to use relatively low-priced craft for a next round of investigation is backed by Bethany Ehlmann, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Full Story: [LiveScience]( (9/29) [LinkedIn]( [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [Email]( [] Daily Quiz [] POLL QUESTION: Cicadas, winged insects that produce a loud buzzing song that can be heard throughout the summer, live on every continent except for _____. (Learn the answer [here]() [Vote]( [Africa]( [Vote]( [Asia]( [Vote]( [Europe]( [Vote]( [North America]( [Vote]( [Antarctica](   [Sign Up]( | [Update Profile]( | [Unsubscribe]( [Privacy Policy]( | [Cookies Policy]( | [Terms and Conditions]( CONTACT US: [FEEDBACK](mailto:livescience@smartbrief.com) | [ADVERTISE]( © Future US, Inc. 555 11th ST NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20004