A Big-Nosed Dinosaur and Ancient Time-Keeping

Everything new this week was old. Paleontologists in Utah discovered a cowlike species of dinosaur (about 65 million years old), and archaeologists in Scotland found what may be the world’s first lunar calendar (10,000 years old). Meanwhile, astronomers tell us that all of Earth’s gold was formed by ancient stars colliding (4.5 billion years ago) and that there is a moon orbiting Neptune we all somehow failed to notice (also quite old).

Andrey Atuchin/Natural History Museum
of Utah, via Associated Press

Developments

Paleontology: Call Me Big Nose

It looked like a cow with forward-facing horns and a big, bulbous snout. But Nasutoceratops — literally “big-nosed horned face” — was a relative of triceratops, living in what is now southern Utah during the late Cretaceous period. Paleontologists at the Utah Museum of Natural History, writing in The Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, identified it using fossil records unearthed in the state. 

The Nasutoceratops had distinctive long, curved horns, a relatively understated neck flourish and pronounced nose, the researchers said. Alas, its sense of smell was not proportional to its proboscis.

 

Archaeology: Times Past

Twelve large, moon-shaped pits discovered in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, represent the oldest lunar calendar ever discovered, archaeologists say. The pits mimic the phases of the moon, National Geographic reported, lining up with it perfectly during the midwinter solstice. 

At 10,000 years old, the pits are by far the oldest calendar yet discovered. “It shows that Stone Age society was far more sophisticated than we have previously believed,” said Richard Bates, a geophysicist at the University of St. Andrews who was involved with the discovery.

 

Astronomy: New Moon

Mark Showalter, an astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., was studying photos of Neptune taken by the Hubble Telescope in 2009 when he noticed a “little extra dot that I was not expecting to see.” That dot, it turns out, is the first Neptunian moon to be found in the last 10 years. 

Designated S/2004 N 1, the small (12 miles across) moon completes an orbit around Neptune every 23 hours, and brings the total number of known Neptunian moons to 14, the New Scientist reported.

Of course, a new name is in order. Whoever decides will have to play by the rules set by the International Astronomical Union: Neptune’s moons are all named after water deities from Greek and Roman mythology.

 

Space Gold

Speaking of things glimpsed by Hubble, scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics recently witnessed a celestial collision that may explain the origins of gold on Earth, The Associated Press reported. The nature of heavy metals like gold and platinum have long been a source of debate among astronomers. 

One theory proposed a decade ago by European researchers was that they were the result of collisions and mergers of neutron stars. Last month, the Harvard-Smithsonian scientists witnessed such a collision, then noticed an odd glow that lingered for days. Infrared light in that glow may be evidence that gold and other heavy elements had been forged in the crash, they said. How those elements make it to Earth is still anybody’s guess.

 

Coming Up: Crossing the Frost Line

It could be the “comet of the century,” says Space.com, if it doesn’t get ripped apart by extreme solar forces first. Comet ISON (for the International Scientific Optical Network telescope used to discover it last year) is on a path to slingshot around the Sun later this year, coming so close (about 40 million miles) to Earth in December that it might be visible during daylight. 

But before that happens, ISON has to survive a long, treacherous journey, starting with a late-July crossing of the so-called “frost line,” the spot about 250 million miles from the Sun where radiation could begin to melt much of the comet’s water. If ISON survives, Earth is one step closer to a Christmas spectacular.