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The famous image of Einstein’s desk, exactly how he left it, mere hours after his death

Before his passing Einstein had refused the surgery for the internal bleeding that subsequently took his life; saying: “I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly”.

As can be seen here with the mountains of shuffled paper and scribbles on the blackboard, Einstein certainly did do his part and worked until the very end.

A baby pangolin is born quite helpless, other than the ability to suckle and cling. Until the baby is big enough to travel on its on, a mother pangolin will tote it around on her tail.

Today isn’t Tuesday, it’s Trilobite Tuesday! 

It has been said that Michelangelo once explained his approach to sculpture by stating that he merely freed already-existing pieces of art from their surrounding stone. Certainly in the case of trilobite preparators, such an approach is exactly the technique best utilized to achieve their goal. 

The above pictures illustrate one trilobite’s progression from a “fresh from the quarry” fossil, encased in matrix, to a spectacular museum worthy specimen.

Stegoceras:  A Radiator-nosed Dinosaur?

by Sid Perkins

A bipedal, German shepherd–sized dinosaur may have had soft tissues in its nasal cavity that cooled the blood flowing to its brain, a new study suggests. The plant-eating Stegoceras validum belongs to a group called pachycephalosaurs (which in Greek means “thick-headed lizards”).

CT scans of one particularly well preserved skull revealed delicate scrolls of bones in a chamber at the rear of the creature’s nasal cavity—bones that would have been covered with soft tissue containing smell receptors (purplish pink in reconstruction at lower right), researchers say.

A new study modeling fluid dynamics suggested something strange:  that air breathed in through Stegoceras’s nasal cavity would have largely bypassed its smell receptors. The mystery was solved after the researchers noticed a small bony ridge in the front part of the creature’s nasal cavity…

(read more: Science/AAAS)