An article published in the journal “Science” describes a research on the origins of the first vertebrates. A team led by paleobiologist Lauren Sallan of the University of Pennsylvania collected a series of evidence that fish, which were the first vertebrates, originated in shallow waters near the shores of primordial seas some 480 million years ago.
IBM and Red Hat announced that they have reached an agreement with which IBM will acquire all Red Hat’s shares, whose value closed last Friday at $116.68, for $190 per share paid in cash for a total value of about $34 billions. Red Hat will become part of IBM’s Hybrid Cloud division while its CEO Jim Whitehurst will join IBM’s senior management reporting to CEO Ginni Rometty. This acquisition is oriented above all to make IBM a giant in the field of cloud services.
An article published in the journal “Historical Biology” describes the discovery of a new species of the genus Archeopteryx. A team of researchers examined a specimen discovered in the 1990s in a quarry in Bavaria, Germany, and passed through the hands of a number of owners. Thanks to a sophisticated microtomographic technique they were able to create a virtual representation that convinced them that it belongs to a species different from the two already known and they named it Archeopteryx albersdoerferi.
“The Dominators” is the first adventure of the sixth season of “Doctor Who” classic series, which aired in 1968. It’s a five parts adventure written by Norman Ashby and directed by Morris Barry.
A spaceship carrying two Dominators on board lands on the planet Dulkis on what’s called the Island of Death because it’s radioactive due to nuclear explosions carried out in the past, when it was a test site. The Quark robots are sent to perform some tasks and when a spaceship of visitors arrives in the area it gets destroyed and only their pilot Cully manages to escape.
The Tardis lands nearby and the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton), along with Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Zoe (Wendy Padbury), starts visiting the area. When they hear the sound of an explosion they look for safety in a nearby war museum, where they meet some natives who are trying to understand why their instruments are detecting no radiations.
An article published in the journal “Current Biology” describes the discovery of a bony fish that lived about 150 million years ago. Named Piranhamesodon pinnatomus, it’s part of the collection of the Jura-Museum in Eichstätt and was discovered in the same limestone deposits in which Archeopteryx fossils were found, in southern Germany. The fossils discovered show that the this fish teeth were similar to those of modern piranhas and it probably used them in the same way.
