Geologists say they have found hundreds of dinosaur egg clusters

Geologists in southern India say they have found hundreds of dinosaur egg clusters which could be about 65 million years old.

Are those really dinosour's egg clusters? Maybe they're true maybe something else.

It was a chance find discovered when a team of scientists were locating a place to excavate an ancient riverbed in the state of Tamil Nadu.

As they dug deeper they saw layers of what looked like fossilised eggs.

The photos and samples were then sent to various universities who confirmed that they were dinosaur eggs.

Each egg is the size of a football - about 13 to 23cm in diameter, lying buried in sandy nests.

The leader of the team, MU Ramkumar, told the BBC the finding is significant and could help to unravel the mystery about the extinction of dinosaurs.

'Infertile'

"The important finding is that these eggs have been found in different layers that means the dinosaurs came to the place over and over year after year," he said.

More reading at BBC News

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Killer bees may actually increase food resources for native bees

A long-term, before and after study of Africanized bee invasion of Mexico's Yucatan shows that 'killer bees' may actually increase food resources for native bees

Aggressive African bees were accidentally released in Brazil in 1957. As "killer bees" spread northward, David Roubik, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, began a 17-year study that revealed that Africanized bees caused less damage to native bees than changes in the weather and may have increased the availability of their food plants.

Scientists feared that dangerous swarms of Africanized bees would compete with native bees. Roubik took on the daunting task of sorting out the role of invading pollinators in tropical forests. In 1988, he set up bee traps in Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve—a vast area of mature tropical rainforest in Quintana Roo state on the Mexican Yucatan—with Rogel Villanueva-Gutiérrez, professor at the Colegio de la Frontera del Sur in Mexico. Africanized bees arrived in 1989.

"Our long view of the invasion shows that bees maintain higher-order evolutionary relationships with plants despite ups and downs in bee species within families," said Roubik. "Evolutionary relationships between bees and flowers, along with their flowering schedules, may be the fundamental currency that maintains this community."

Pollen from each plant species has a unique shape. Researchers compared pollen on bees in traps to pollen from flowers in the forest to determine which plants the bees were visiting.

Over the next 17 years, a severe drought and three hurricanes devastated native bees, but their populations rebounded each time. Africanized bees took over pollination of two plant families that had been important food sources for native bees: the cashew family and the spurge family. However, Pouteria, one of the plants native bees prefer, became more common. A few rare species of bees disappeared from traps later in the study.

Roubik cautions that native populations in less diverse areas might be less resilient to invasions. "Basically we're seeing 'scramble competition' as bees replace a lost source of pollen with pollen from a related plant species that has a similar flowering peak—in less-biodiverse, unprotected areas, bees would not have the same range of options to turn to."

Source - EurekAlert

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First clown in space

Cirque du Soleil founder, Guy Laliberte has become the "first clown to go into orbit". He paid $35m (£22m) for his ticket.

Laliberté, 50, the Canadian billionaire was accompanied in the Soyuz TM-16 spacecraft by Russian cosmonaut Maksim Surayev and US astronaut Jeffrey Williams.

He says he will make the ISS astronauts laugh during his 12-day stay, and produce a web event that highlights the issue of clean water for all.

"I'm an artistic person and a creator. I'm not a scientific. I'm not an engineer," he said.

"Life has given me some qualities, some assets and I have built up a team of very creative people around the world."

He has a 95% stake in Cirque du Soleil, a circus arts and theatre performance company that turned 25 this year.

The entertainment tycoon has said he will try to persuade his fellow spacemen to don red clown noses.

Laliberté may be one of the last private visitors to the space station for several years as Nasa retires its shuttle programme and turns to the Russian space agency to ferry US astronauts to the orbiting lab, crowding out places for tourists.

Via - BBC News

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Huge Batman Collection Missing

The second largest collection in US of Batman collectables and television show memorabilia which was owned by the late Ben Novack Jr. has been taken from several warehouses in Broward County. Sources said the locks on the warehouses where the items were kept had been cut.

Novack, son of Miami Beach's Fontainbleau Hotel founder Ben Novack Sr., was killed July 12th while he and his wife were attending a conference at the Rye Town Hilton Hotel that he had organized through his company, Convention Concepts Unlimited.

New York police, who investigating the millionaire's unsolved murder, say it will be up to Florida police to not only investigate the missing collection but also determine how Novack's wife Narcy gained access to a safe deposit box kept by Novack's late mother even though she was not authorized to do so.

CBS station WFOR-TV's news partner The Miami Herald report Narcy Novack is locked in a bitter court battle with her daughter May Abad over the family's multimillion-dollar estate. Each has accused the other of plotting Novack's murder.

New York State Police questioned Narcy Novack two days after her husband's homicide as part of a polygraph exam. The report says Novack "showed indications of deception" during the examination. Police also search the Novack's Ft. Lauderdale home but have not released what, if any, evidence was seized.

Source - CBS

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2in cactus grew to 10ft

The two-inch high cactus that William Thompson bought for his son grew and grew and grew. Now less than three years later it has outgrown the family home.

The giant plant is 10ft high and touching the conservatory roof. The family are very excited with the cactus and don't want to get rid of it, but they haven't a clue what to do.

Mr Thompson, an oil rig worker from Hull, said: 'It started off as a tiny plant on the shelf.

'We then put it in a larger pot as it began to grow, then into another larger pot and another larger pot. It hasn't stop growing and every time you go into the conservatory it seems to be bigger.

'We have had to move it into the middle of the room so that it's growing into where the ceiling peaks, but it's touching the ceiling and there's no room for it to grow anymore.

'I'm worried if I put it outside, even if I wrap it in plastic during the winter, that it will die. Maybe an expert can tell us what to do.'

The bad news for the Thompsons is that the cactus - probably a Pilosocereus - may have another five or six feet to grow yet.

Mr Thompson and his wife Angela, 42, a council worker, are desperate to save the plant because their son William, 13, adores it.

'I had to put it outside for a short while when I was tiling the conservatory, but it wasn't doing too well and we brought it back in because he didn't want it to die. But I might have to put it into the garden soon.'

The family water the plant every month and the incredible growth rate is even more remarkable as they don't feed it. Experts recommend potash-based feed such as tomato fertiliser.

Read more at Dailymail

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