Nearly 237 million years ago, a spiky and toothy bottom dweller skulked the Late Triassic oceans that once covered present-day China. What sets this newly discovered giant salamander-sized prehistoric amphibian apart is not its impressive body–it’s that it lived in the ocean. The newly described Gerrothorax maritimus is the first example of a fully marine
What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to Popular Science’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Spotify, YouTube, Apple, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for
From orbit, today’s space-based laser instruments measure Earth’s forests and terrain one narrow line at a time. Between those lines are enormous gaps that include millions of acres of land scientists never directly measure. NASA’s CASALS instrument will blend machine learning with an ultra-compact lidar instrument to adaptively ‘sweep’ large swaths of Earth’s surface. This
Humans are exerting increasing influence over how water moves through lakes, rivers, soil, and the subsurface, and a new NASA study shows where those effects are greatest. Using more than two decades of satellite measurements of subtle changes in Earth’s gravity, the researchers sharpened the picture of how—and why—terrestrial water storage has changed. This map
The climate just got its annual checkup, and the results aren’t looking so hot. “If Earth were a patient coming in for an annual physical, I would say its condition is serious and getting worse,” Oregon State University researcher Bill Ripple says. Ripple is the lead author of a new paper chronicling the state of
Seasonal changes redistribute enough water around Earth to shift the planet’s center of mass back and forth by fractions of an inch relative to its geometric center. NASA scientists are on the case, tracking the oscillations because Earth’s center of mass is a crucial reference point for satellite navigation and elevation measurements. A team, led
