* Astronomy

Reassessing China's dinosaur 'Pompeii'

New geological fieldwork in China has changed our understanding of a famous dinosaur fossil site. Up to now, the site at Lujiatun, in Liaoning Province, northeast China, was called the 'Chinese Pompeii' because it was assumed the animals had been killed by volcanic gases and buried at the same time under clouds of ash from erupting volcanoes.
The story is rather different, however.
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Why Lizards Have Bird Breath

Whether birds are breathing in or out, air flows in a one-directional loop through their lungs. This pattern was unexpected and for decades, biologists assumed it was unique to birds, a special adaptation driven by the intense energy demands of flight.
But that view is wrong, according to University of Utah scientists who now have shown that bird-like breathing also developed in green iguanas - reptiles not known for high-capacity aerobic fitness. The finding bolsters the case that unidirectional bird-like flow evolved long before the first birds, arising nearly 300 million years ago in a common ancestor of lizards, snakes, crocodiles and dinosaurs including birds.
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Dinosaurs 'shrank' regularly to become birds

Huge meat-eating, land-living dinosaurs evolved into birds by constantly shrinking for over 50 million years, scientists have revealed.
Theropods shrunk 12 times from 163kg (25st 9lb) to 0.8kg (1.8lb), before becoming modern birds.
The researchers found theropods were the only dinosaurs to get continuously smaller.
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Fossils found in Siberia suggest all dinosaurs had feathers

The first ever example of a plant-eating dinosaur with feathers and scales has been discovered in Russia. Previously only flesh-eating dinosaurs were known to have had feathers so this new find indicates that all dinosaurs could have been feathered.
The new dinosaur, named Kulindadromeus zabaikalicus as it comes from a site called Kulinda on the banks of the Olov River in Siberia, is described in a paper published today in Science.
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