Saturday, January 24, 2009

Earth's 10 most spectacular places

The International Year of Planet Earth may have declared a list of "the Earth's ten most spectacular places." At least that's what they're saying at the Discovery Channel's new Discovery Earth site, where they have a rundown of all ten (with photos). (No mention of it at the IYPE site, though: It may be that the Discovery Channel is just highlighting ten of the many, many U.N. World Heritage sites... their language is unclear as to who decided on these particular ten.)

Regardless, the photos will whet your appetite. With my visits in bold, they are:

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Wednesday, December 24, 2008

NPR: Quake tourists in China

NPR's Louisa Lim reports on tourists flocking to see Sichuan earthquake devastation in China.

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Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Itty bitty pterosaur

A cool new pterosaur fossil was reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Like so many interesting fossils of recent years, it's come out of China's Liaoning Province, which must be one big Lagerstatte. Unlike previously discovered pterosaurs, it had strongly curled toes, which indicate that it spent some of its time in trees, clutching cylindrical branches. It's small, too: really small, with a wingspan of only 25 cm, about the same as a barn swallow. Even so, it appears to be related (in a basal, primitive way) to the largest pterosaurs that ever lived, giants like Quetzalcoatlus.
Reference:
Xiaolin Wang, Alexander W. A. Kellner, Zhonghe Zhou, and Diogenes de Almeida Campos (2008). Discovery of a rare arboreal forest-dwelling flying reptile (Pterosauria, Pterodactyloidea) from China. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. February 11, 2008: 0707728105v1-0.
Image from New Scientist's article on the find.

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