Why can't Ostrichs fly?

Study: Ancient flying birds began to forage on ground, lost ability over time

By Jennifer Viegas

updated 3:40 p.m. ET, Thurs., Jan. 28, 2010

The bird family tree just gained a new and distinctive member, according to Chinese paleontologists.

They have found a long-legged, toothy, stubby-armed, three-fingered dinosaur that was an important early member of the lineage that includes birds and their closest dino relatives.

The 160-million-year-old dinosaur, Haplocheirus sollers, is about 10 million years older than what is believed to be the world's first known bird,Archaeopteryx, and exhibits characteristics associated with both dinos and birds.

As a result, the new species helps to fill in the fossil record and cement the long-held view that birds did indeed emerge out of the Maniraptora "hand snatcher" clade.

"Many dinosaurs are very birdlike and early birds are dinosaurlike," co-author Xing Xu told Discovery News, adding that there is still debate over the exact moment when birds first emerged.

"It is more or less depending on what you call a bird a bird, which is somewhat an arbitrary procedure," said Xu, a professor in the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology & Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "For example, Epidexipteryx (a small, feathered "dinosaur") could be considered to be the earliest representative of the avian lineage."

For the study, published in the latest issue of Science, Xu and his colleagues analyzed the new dinosaur, discovered in orange mudstone beds at Junggar Basin in Xinjiang, China. According to Xu, the researchers determined it was "a relatively small carnivorous dinosaur" about 6.5 feet long with a slender head and "numerous small teeth."

The "hand snatcher" description seems quite appropriate in this case, since the dinosaur's hands had three strong fingers, with the middle finger being "much more robust than the others."

H. sollers belonged to the Alvarezsauroidea group of dinosaurs, now thought to have originated in Asia. Later members possessed a single, massive claw on each hand that was probably used for digging. The impressive middle finger on the new dinosaur likely represented an early evolutionary stage for this claw.

The new dinosaur, which was big for a bird but small for a dino, also shows how some dinosaurs shrunk down to bird size over time.

H. sollers is the world's largest and oldest known alvarezsauroid — 63 million years older than other known members of this group.

A second important dinosaur study this week, published in Nature and again co-authored by Xu, shows how another bird trademark — feathers — originated. Scientists previously wondered if they were first used for flight, insulation or display.

How I Feel

In the first place, I feel this question is weird. I never knew that Ostrich were ancient animals and could even possibly fly. This article though really informed me of the open world. Lastly, in this article they use dinosaur a lot so, if someone were looking blindly at this paper they would think it was about dinosaurs. that is how I feel about this article.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35129642/ns/technology_and_science-science/

Math Blog

Over 300,000 children are being used as child soldiers right now. This means they are being used soldiers , for sexual purposes, spys and even cooks. UNICEF has to go into Africa and rescue these poor children. Lastly, Lots more people are donating to this cause. What can you do to help?

Feeling That Cold Wind? Here’s Why.

By KENNETH CHANG

Published: January 9, 2010

A bitter wind has been blowing over parts of North America, Europe and Asia. Some places have been colder than ever, like Melbourne, Fla., which dipped to 28 degrees last Thursday, a record low. Europe has been walloped by snowstorm after snowstorm.

Enlarge This Image

Brian Rea

Related

• In Cold Snap, Floridians Shiver, and Pray for the Strawberries(January 7, 2010)

• Dot Earth Blog: Cold Patches in a Warm World

What’s going on? Global cooling?

Nope. A mass of high pressure is sitting over Greenland like a rock in a river, deflecting the cold air of the jet stream farther to the south than usual.

This situation is caused by Arctic oscillation, in which opposing atmospheric pressure patterns at the top of the planet occasionally shift back and forth, affecting weather across much of the Northern Hemisphere.

What’s notable this year is that the pattern of high pressure over the Arctic is more pronounced than at any time since 1950.

In most years over the past few decades, the opposite has been true: there has been lower-than-average pressure over the Arctic, and higher-than-average pressure over the mid-latitudes — the middle of which cuts through Maine, across the Great Lakes and on to Oregon.

That pattern allows the jet stream to blow unimpeded from west to east and keeps the cold Arctic air largely north of the United States. The result tends to be warmer temperatures across much of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains.

No one is quite sure what drives these flip-flops in air pressure.

“I tend to think of it as a random thing,” said John M. Wallace, who is a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington. “I don’t think we understand any reasons why it goes one way one year and the other way another year.”

What does seem clear is that these oscillations have nothing to do with global warming, or, for that matter, global cooling. For one, they’re not new. And this winter’s cold has not been global. Santa, by North Pole standards, has been experiencing a balmy winter.

“Pretty much all of the Arctic is above normal,” said Dr. Walter Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. In some areas, the temperatures are as much as 15 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.

In terms of global average temperature, this winter’s arctic oscillation “probably roughly cancels out,” Dr. Meier said. (In fact, last year ranked as the fifth-warmest year on record since 1850, the United Kingdom’s Met Office says.)

And it is certainly not the coldest air that has descended on the United States. In a great blizzard that swept across the East Coast in 1899, even parts of Florida dropped to below zero.

“We’re not close to those types of things,” said Michael Vojtesak of the National Weather Service

I feel that this topic explains lots about global warming and the reason for colder weather when it should always be warm. They tell us about our air in Greenland and how that is the reason we are experiencing colder weather here. They included that near the equator it is more hotter ,but up north or south it is very cold. That is my feelings for these topics.