Newest Member Of The Solar System Just Announced, Capuchins Have Started Stealing Baby Howler Monkeys, And Much More This Week

This week, the US ran a solar storm emergency drill and it turns out we’re woefully unprepared, a fluorescent Archaeopteryx changed our understanding of the evolution of flight, and a new book claims to have identified six living relatives of Leonardo Da Vinci using DNA. Finally, the BBC’s Walking With Dinosaurs is back, and we had an exclusive chat with some of the experts behind the series.

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Newest Member Of The Solar System Just Announced – And It’s In An Extreme Orbit

The Solar System has just gotten a new official member. Currently, with the name of 2017 OF₂₀₁, this is a trans-Neptunian object (TNO). This means that it orbits the Sun further away than Neptune. Actually, its orbit is so big that it takes about 25,000 years to complete. Read the full story here

Stealing Baby Howler Monkeys Is Suddenly All The Rage Among Capuchins On Jicarón Island

White-faced capuchin monkeys on Jicarón Island have started abducting baby howler monkeys, surprised scientists report. It’s possible this behavior comes in waves, but it had not been detected in the first five years scientists intensively studied the population, and now appears to be spreading widely. The reasons are still unknown, but the authors think adolescent male boredom may be at the heart of it. Read the full story here

The US Ran A Solar Storm Emergency Drill And It Suggested The Real Thing Would Be Catastrophic

Researchers from a bunch of US government agencies recently published the results of the first-ever “Space Weather Tabletop Exercise” to assess their preparedness for a severe solar storm. It turns out, we’re woefully unprepared for such an event. Read the full story here

“Under UV Light, The Bone Glows Brightly”: A Fluorescent Archaeopteryx Just Changed Our Understanding Of The Evolution Of Flight

The Chicago Archaeopteryx is a remarkable fossil, the “best preserved” of its kind, in fact. That’s according to palaeontologist Prof Jingmai O’Connor, who’s something of an expert in the transition that saw theropods morph into birds. Now, never-before-seen Archaeopteryx feathers suggest it could fly, changing what we know about how flight evolved. Read the full story here

Six Living Relatives Of Leonardo Da Vinci Have Been Identified Using DNA, Claims New Book

Leonardo da Vinci – the artist, scientist, and archetypal polymath of the Renaissance – may still have descendants living among us. In a new book, researchers from the Leonardo DNA Project have put together the clearest view yet of the late genius’s family tree, suggesting that the da Vinci male lineage has remained genetically unbroken for at least 15 generations. Read the full story here

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Feature of the week:

The Longest Predatory Dinosaur Known To Science Was Probably A Great Dad, Too

Just over 90 million years ago, a prehistoric giant went extinct. Longer than Tyrannosaurus rex, and considerably taller, Spinosaurus was one of the largest theropod dinosaurs ever to stomp across the planet, but unless you count that time we heard a ringtone coming out of one’s belly in Jurassic Park III, we’ve never really got to properly appreciate what these things would’ve looked like alive. Well, that’s all about to change. Read the full story here