'Lucy' probably needed to watch her back. Researchers led by the University of Iowa have described and named a new crocodile species that roamed a region in Africa more than 3 million years ago. The species is named Lucy's hunter, because it overlapped with the famed Lucy and her hominin kin and would have hunted them. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Humans have contended with crocodiles for a long time.

In our case, we have only one object class ("insect") so the

New analysis of bone growth rings shows the'tyrant lizard king' grew very slowly. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Based on the annual growth rings (like those on trees) within fossilized leg bones, scientists estimate that usually reach adulthood at around 25 years old. However, new research argues that their growth phase lasted significantly longer. They may have become fully grown--approximately eight tons--after 40 years.

The team even extracted DNA from a tiny 100-year-old butterfly leg. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. When you think of butterflies, chances are you imagine unmistakable insects with bright, bold wings. But it turns out that individual butterfly species are sometimes shockingly difficult to tell apart. "Thanks to the genetic revolution and the collaboration of researchers and museums in various countries led by London's Natural History Museum, century-old butterflies are now speaking to us," Christophe Faynel, an entomologist at the Société entomologique Antilles Guyane, said in a statement .

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.

Reliable real-time analysis of sensor data is essential for structural health monitoring (SHM) of high-value assets, yet a major challenge is to obtain spatially resolved full-field aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties for trustworthy decision-making. We present an integrated SHM framework that combines principal component analysis (PCA), a Bayesian neural network (BNN), and Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) inference, mapping sparse strain gauge measurements onto leading PCA modes to reconstruct full-field strain distributions with uncertainty quantification. The framework was validated through cyclic four-point bending tests on carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) specimens with varying crack lengths, achieving accurate strain field reconstruction (R squared value > 0.9) while simultaneously producing real-time uncertainty fields. A key contribution is that the BNN yields robust full-field strain reconstructions from noisy experimental data with crack-induced strain singularities, while also providing explicit representations of two complementary uncertainty fields. Considered jointly in full-field form, the aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty fields make it possible to diagnose at a local level, whether low-confidence regions are driven by data-inherent issues or by model-related limitations, thereby supporting reliable decision-making. Collectively, the results demonstrate that the proposed framework advances SHM toward trustworthy digital twin deployment and risk-aware structural diagnostics.