16/10/2009

Available for over a year

DARWINOPTERUS The fossil of a bizarre-looking flying reptile was revealed by British and Chinese scientists in Proceedings of the Royal Society B this week, raising questions about how species evolve. Darwinopterus, named after the father of evolution, appears to fit between primitive, long-tailed pterosaurs and an advanced species with a shorter tail. But it does not, as expected, show a smooth transition between them, with a medium length tail. Instead the 160-million-year-old fossil has the long tail of the primitive pterosaur and the extended neck and jaw of the later animal. Dr David Unwin, one of the lead scientists, thought at first that it might be a fake. Now he believes it's evidence of a controversial theory of evolution. BIODIVERSITY Extinction rates are at least 100 times what they were before humans came along, and it's only getting worse. Yet internationally agreed targets for stemming the loss of biodiversity will be missed next year. Freshwater ecosystems in particular are collapsing around the world in what's being called the silent crisis. So much water is used or diverted by humans that some rivers, including the Nile and the Colorado, regularly fail to reach the sea. Jon visits the Back Bay Science Center in Newport Bay California, a state which has lost more than 90 per cent of its wetlands, to talk with Professor Peter Bryant from the University of California and Professor Georgina Mace from imperial college, at an international conference on biodiversity in Cape Town South Africa, explains what's going wrong. NASA'S LCROSS MISSION NASA's latest attempt to find water on the moon by crashing two spacecraft into a crater last week was less spectacular than many people had expected. Thermal images from the Lunar reconnaissance Orbiter have provided a few points of data, and scientists are still hopeful that other instruments will provide results. But what will this mission mean for the future of manned space flight. Science in Action asks the BBC's Science Correspondent Jonathan Amos to explain what may happen next. MARCUS CHOWN The Victorians used to think the Sun was a giant lump of burning coal. Now many scientists see the universe as a cosmic computer, processing information. But science author Marcus Chown warns that both views demonstrate the danger of describing reality with reference to the everyday world around us. Marcus came in to Science in Action to talk about his latest book, 'We Need to Talk About Kelvin'.