2020

Views of Gravicalymene bakeri specimens

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An article published in the journal “Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology” reports the identification of a new species of trilobite that lived about 450 million years ago, in the Ordovician period, in today’s Tasmania. Dr. Patrick Smith of the Australian Museum Research Institute and Macquarie University and Dr. Malte Ebach of the University of New South Wales named it Gravicalymene bakeri assigning it to an already known genus and choosing the name of the species in honor of actor Tom Baker because he inspired them to become scientists by playing the protagonist of the famous TV show “Doctor Who”.

BitMEX's home page

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The founders of BitMEX, a well-known cryptocurrency trading platform, have been formally charged with violating US anti-money laundering regulations. One of them, Samuel Reed, has already been arrested while Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo and Gregory Dwyer are wanted. In fact, the allegations are multiple because BitMEX is also accused of operating in the US without the authorization of the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission). In August, BitMEX announced the introduction of its operators’ identity verification procedures, but evidently, it was too little and too late.

Molar of the Neanderthal man cataloged as Spy 94a

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An article published in the journal “Science” reports the results of the sequencing of the Y chromosome, the one that determines the male sex among humans, of three Neanderthals and two Denisovans. A team of researchers led by Martin Petr and Janet Kelso of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology performed high-quality sequencing using a very advanced approach to obtain the genetic sequences of the Y chromosomes of a total of 5 hominins. This made it possible to compare them with each other and with those of modern humans to obtain new information on the relationships among the various species. An interesting conclusion is that the Neanderthal Y chromosome was received from Homo sapiens with whom they must have interbred much earlier than we thought, no less than 100,000 years ago and possibly even 370,000 years ago.

Elegy for Angels and Dogs by Walter Jon Williams (Italian edition)

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The novel “Elegy for Angels and Dogs” by Walter Jon Williams was published for the first time in 1990.

A group of noble people and rich industrialists, all immortal, are the Party Set, a group taking part to a tour across the solar system to have parties in which panoramas that include planets and moons are the background to entertainment that also includes new drugs. Ordinary people can only watch those parties from afar to be updated on what immortals are up to.

Even in an apparently idyllic situation within a group of people who are supposed to represent the peak of humanity, crimes are committed. In that situation, a murder can have unpredictable repercussions.

Spinosaurus aegyptiacus skeleton

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An article published in the journal “Cretaceous Research” reports the discovery of hundreds of teeth of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus in the ancient Kem Kem river system, along the border between today’s Morocco and Algeria. A team of researchers collected about 1,200 fossil teeth in an ancient river bed in today’s Morocco, and analysis revealed that nearly half of them were of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus. Their conclusion is that it’s evidence that about 100 million years ago, in the Cretaceous period, this dinosaur was well adapted to aquatic life, a confirmation of the thesis supported by a growing number of paleontologists.