Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. A newly uncovered tyrannosaur leg bone is shaking things up in the dinosaur world. The leg bone uncovered in New Mexico belongs to an unusually large tyrannosaur--the group of dinosaurs that includes the mighty . The shinbone is three feet long and about five inches in diameter, only slightly smaller than the largest known specimen. The giant leg bone is detailed in a study published today in the journal .

An elephant foot bone found by archaeologists digging in southern Spain may be evidence that a troop of war elephants stomped through ancient Europe. It would be the first concrete proof of the legendary Carthaginian General Hannibal's troop of battle elephants, according to academics. Drawings of Hannibal's war against the Romans had long suggested that the beasts were used in fighting, but no hard evidence backed up the theories. Now the creatures' skeletal remains appear to have been found in an Iron Age dig near Cordoba. Beyond ivory, the discovery of elephant remains in European archaeological contexts is exceptionally rare, says the team of scientists in a paper published in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

Recovering the skeletal shape of an animal from a monocular video is a longstanding challenge.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. The is one of evolution's most infamous species--but it's also a very confusing creature. All present-day birds are technically dinosaurs, but the 150-million-year-old, raven-sized hunter is the earliest known example of an avian animal. At the same time, lived during the Jurassic Period among multiple other feathered dinosaurs that were birds in the true sense of the term. But if it's any consolation, it's often still difficult for paleontologists to tell them apart, too.

Artist Tom Jung's 1977 painting introduced the world to the look and feel of George Lucas' blockbuster adventure. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Darth Vader's reign has ended. For a brief time, he owned the mantle of "Most Expensive Piece of Star Wars Memorabilia," but before you could say "more wealth than you can imagine" he fell once again, with a new challenger rising to take his place. It was only this past September that a verified screen-used lightsaber hilt wielded by the Dark Lord of the Sith in and set a sales record by fetching $3.65 million.

A 20,000 year old fossil uncovered in a tarantula-filled cave has paleontologists stunned. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Bees are frequently associated with large queen-serving colonies featuring hundreds if not thousands of insects . They lay their eggs in small cavities, and they leave pollen for the larvae to eat," explained paleontologist Lazasro Viñola López . "Some bee species burrow holes in wood or in the ground, or use empty structures for nests." Viñola López, a researcher at Chicago's Field Museum, added that some European and African species even construct nests inside vacant snail shells. That said, a beehive inside a bone is a new one even for seasoned researchers. Estimated to be around 20,000 years old, this newly discovered specimen is also the first known example of such a home, past or present. The findings are detailed in a study published on December 16 in the journal . Researchers located the unique find while exploring the many limestone caves that dot the southern Dominican Republic. Sinkholes are common across the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, and are often so well sheltered from the elements that they function like underground time capsules. These windows into the past are largely thanks to the work of the island's owls . The predatory birds often make their nests inside these caves, where they regularly cough up owl pellets filled with the undigested bones of their prey. Over thousands of years, these layers of bones fossilize atop one another across carbonate layers created from rainy periods. "The initial descent into the cave isn't too deep-we would tie a rope to the side and then rappel down," Viñola López said. "If you go in at night, you see the eyes of the tarantulas that live inside." After proceeding past the large spiders through about 33 feet of underground tunnel, the paleontologists began finding various fossils. Many belonged to rodents, but there were also bones from birds, reptiles, and even sloths for a total of over 50 different animal species. "We think that this was a cave where owls lived for many generations, maybe for hundreds or thousands of years," said Viñola López. "The owls would go out and hunt, and then come back to the cave and throw up pellets.

Science Dinosaurs A'spectacular' dinosaur dome heads for the Smithsonian The famously thick-headed Pachycephalosaurus lived during the Late Cretaceous. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. A remarkably well-preserved dinosaur fossil has arrived at the Smithsonian's National Museum of National History. According to the institution's announcement, the nearly complete skull of a is set to make its public debut on December 22 in the FossiLab -the museum's working specimen preparation laboratory. "This skull is by far the most spectacular specimen of this type of dinosaur that we have at the museum," said Matthew Carrano, a paleontologist and the museum's Dinosauria curator.

Science Dinosaurs Why did this ancient bird die with tiny rocks in its throat? The 120-million-year-old fossil may also be a choking hazard PSA. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Fossils may reveal what type of animal died millions of years ago, but they rarely depict exactly they perished. Even rarer are the examples that clearly showcase an animal's exact cause of death.

In true feline style, cats took their time in deciding when and where to forge bonds with humans. According to new scientific evidence, the shift from wild hunter to pampered pet happened much more recently than previously thought - and in a different place. A study of bones found at archaeological sites suggests cats began their close relationship with humans only a few thousand years ago, and in northern Africa not the Levant. They are ubiquitous, we make TV programmes about them, and they dominate the internet, said Prof Greger Larson of the University of Oxford. That relationship we have with cats now only gets started about 3.5 or 4,000 years ago, rather than 10,000 years ago.