Dinosaurs

A top-of-the-line farm tractor stands taller than an African elephant. And fully loaded with grain, a combine harvester weighs up to 36 tons—as much as a small herd of pachyderms. As these mechanical beasts lumber across fields, their extreme heft can slowly crush the soil and make it harder for plant roots to grow. Such effects, a new study suggests, could diminish harvests across 20% of global cropland in the coming decades. “Heavy machinery is something we should not ignore,”…

Researchers have discovered a partially complete skull of new dinosaur species in Argentina that they say could be a close relative of an armless group of dinosaurs that roamed the southern hemisphere. They say the new species, called the Guemesia ochoai, offers new evidence of a unique ecosystem during the Late Cretaceous, more than 70 million years ago. Guemesia ochoai was a member of Abelisauridae, a clade of carnivores that roamed what is now Africa, South America, and India. The researchers have said that the newly…