Ankylosaurs, Euoplocephalus, top, with it's relative, Edmontonia, below. Artwork by John Sibbick.

Built like an armored tank, it has been long-thought that ankylosaurs could pack a pretty mean wallop with the end of their tail club. But could an ankylosaur have caused enough damage trying to defend itself against, say, a T. rex? By using CT scans of a Euoplocephalus (a smaller and older relative of the well-known Ankylosaurus), University of Alberta researcher Victoria Arbour has found that a larger tail club could have fractured bone, whereas smaller tail clubs would have produced low-impact forces, but could not fracture bone. The tail club, when swung from side-to-side could have conveniently hit a T. rex’s ankles!

A couple of years ago I wrote a story for National Geographic about regional foods. Not the standard mascots like Philadelphia Cheesesteak or New England clam chowder, but the obscure, sometimes incongruous but often delicious concoctions that have managed to stay within state borders.

There are plenty of offbeat delicacies associated with just one state; a huge pastry called kringle in Wisconsin, for example, or the toasted ravioli cherished in Missouri. I recently learned in a New York Times article about a Utah favorite called a pastrami burger, which as it sounds, is an over-stuffed rendezvous of two red meats. There are also lots of dishes linked to what food historians call "micro regions." It's a fairly loose term, and can be used to describe an area within a state, or larger areas that may involve a couple of states or more.



If we aren’t alone in the universe, how would we treat our intergalactic neighbors?

The new movie District 9 considers this question by envisioning a present-day Earth where humans and extraterrestrials coexist, albeit uneasily.

Two decades after a colossal spacecraft has stalled over Johannesburg, South Africa, its passengers—millions of confused, malnourished aliens called “prawns” by disparaging humans—have been ghettoized into a grimy, apartheid-echoing militarized zone known as District 9. Then an evil corporation called Multi-National United decides to relocate them to an even more bantustan-like tent city. The subsequent eviction process touches on a host of legal and ethical issues like: What would earthlings do to ET visitors? Kill them? Conduct medical experiments? Attempt to extract valuable weaponry? All of the above?

To aid in our speculation, Pop Omnivore talked to Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the nonprofit SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and author of the new book Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

The feathers of extinct species hold color information. Shown here is a fossil bird specimen from the famous Messel quarry in Germany. Photo © Jakob Vinther.

In 1860 a single feather from the Solnhofen limestone quarry in Germany was the first evidence of Archaeopteryx, the now famous earliest-known bird. Last year, it was again a single feather, this time from Brazil, that a creative team from Yale University used to establish that pigment-bearing structures called melanosomes are preserved in some fossils.

The small paper by Jakob Vinther, Derek Briggs, and Richard Prum had thunderous implications. Not only were the visible patterns of feathers in fossils meaningful and related to pattern, but structures in fossils not visible to the naked eye could be used to infer color. The color of what? The color of feathers in extinct dinosaurs and birds. It is not a stretch to say that we are at the dawn of a new day in how we view the past. The colors of the prehistoric world, once left to the imaginations of paleoartists, will from this point on be knowable and based in science.

Few inventors can claim credit for saving more than a million lives, but Nils Bohlin is one of them. Fifty  years ago the Volvo engineer modified an airplane device and came up with the three-point seat belt—one strap across the hips, one across the chest, both anchored to the same point on the car floor.

Just as gas-powered autos depend on oil, the world’s future fleet of electric cars may well depend on an obscure element now mined in only a handful of places: lithium. Because it is the world’s lightest metal and good at holding a charge, lithium in batteries can deliver the energy electric cars need without weighing them down or requiring frequent recharging stops.

Zinjanthropus has changed quite a bit in appearance since this species was found 50 years ago. Art by Peter Bianchi © National Geographic.

Fifty years ago, Louis and Mary Leakey discovered the remains of Zinjanthropus boisei, a member of the human lineage researchers now call Paranthropus boisei or Australopithecus boisei.

National Geographic ran a story on the discovery of "Zinj" in 1961. It was hailed as a missing link. Now we know that this species was an evolutionary dead end. It may be that it was too specialized, in this case for heavy chewing. Big teeth and massive jaw muscles may have been the wrong thing to invest in, as opposed to big brains, for instance. 

Ferula asafoetida

I was shopping for Indian spices with a friend not long ago and she steered me toward a small yellow container of a powdered spice called asafoetida, or hing in Hindi. She explained that it tastes like onion or garlic, but that I’d have to fry it in oil to bring out that flavor; otherwise it would be highly unpalatable. Why, I mused, would anyone bother with asafoetida when onions, garlic or leeks were more predictable? My caution grew when I learned that the name of the spice is based on the Latin word “foetida,” meaning stinky, and that colloquially it is also known as Stinking Gum or Devil’s Dung.

My friend is a scholar of Jainism, one of India’s main religions. She explained that “devil’s dung” is one of the ways that Jains can add pungency to their cuisine without using onion or garlic, which are forbidden.

Are you a green type? The new Ecofont, from the Dutch marketing firm Spranq, aims to be one. Co-owner Alexander Kraaij says it uses less ink than other typefaces, thus saving money and resources. In fact, he contends, a company with 5,000 workers could trim up to $125,000 a year from its printing costs.

Of all Pisa’s leaning towers—yes, there are several—the famous one is the least likely to topple. That’s because an 11-year restoration effort, involving three years of painstaking soil removal, has successfully steadied the precariously poised campanile. Pisa’s soil is mostly compressible clay and sand, which gives way over time and causes big buildings to shift.

The alarm went off at four. The men dressed quickly, piled into their vehicles, and drove to a lake in the mountains at the base of a massive rockfall. In the icy light of their headlamps, the limestone glowed like a cemetery of newly-risen ghosts. They opened the back of the van and together lowered her stiff body to the ground. She was naked save for the clear plastic in which she was wrapped. They had to hurry; the sun would be up soon.

When two park rangers rolled up an hour later, they could not believe what they were seeing. Four men in dark clothes were carrying what appeared to be a naked, spear-wielding woman above their heads as if regal pallbearers. Two others followed behind, burdened with lights and equipment. As the rangers approached, heavy clouds smeared the last stain of red from the dawn.

It may seem like madness for a photographer to repeatedly risk his life in one of the most dangerous places on Earth, but that is exactly what Pascal Maitre did on five visits to Somalia. (He photographed the street scene above in Mogadishu.) Without a stable government since 1991, the country is arguably the scene of Africa’s worst humanitarian crisis. It’s one of the deadliest places a journalist can be. Pascal began photographing there in 2002 and established the relationships that made this month’s “Shattered Somalia” story possible. In 2008 he returned with writer Robert Draper.

In the early 1800s an Englishman could be hanged for stealing a shirt. By the end of the 1900s, growing concern for individual rights had caused the death penalty to disappear from the United Kingdom and nearly everywhere else in the Western world. Two exceptions are Belarus and the United States, although this year New Mexico became the 15th state to outlaw capital punishment. Death-penalty opponents cite the exoneration of 131 people on death row since 1973 as well as the high cost of capital cases.

Graves laden with luxuries offer a revealing new look at the wealthy military culture that gave birth to Alexander the Great. Excavations in Archontiko have uncovered 450 tombs from the sixth century B.C. Archaeologists Pavlos and Anastasia Chrysostomou, of the Greek Ministry of Culture, describe scores of warriors whose armor, swords, and shoes sparkled with gold and silver as well as noblewomen adorned with gold, silver, amber, and faience. Other funerary items—a scarab from Egypt, ceramics from the eastern Mediterranean—foreshadow the empire that the fabled Macedonian general would conquer 200 years later. —A. R. Williams

Photo: A gold mask and gold-trimmed helmet, seen here on a mannequin, were found in a Macedonian warrior’s grave. Photograph by Gianluca Colla

The currents in Key Largo felt like underwater trade winds that just did not want to quit. The wrecks are deep and need light brought down to them to illuminate large areas on these iron reefs. If I were shooting a very small area I could use dual strobes mounted on the housing but our goal was to create an atmosphere of an underwater studio with generator powered HMI lights on150 foot long cables, a Nuytco prototype submarine LED, handheld HIDs and strobes on photoeyes. 150 pounds of cable and lights were ferried 115 feet down the line to the wreck in a pumping knot and a half current … in the dark.

 
The good news: Scientists in Ottawa have a plan to deal with a zombie plague. The bad news: Things don't look good for humankind.

The newly published analysis, "When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection," (PDF, Adobe Acrobat required to view) concludes that "an outbreak of zombies infecting humans is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead."

There's more to this marriage of silver screen and ivory tower than mere whimsy. Lead researcher Robert Smith? (who spells his otherwise common name with a diacritical question mark to help differentiate it) concedes that the world probably doesn't need a literal model of the spread of zombie-ism, but the principles it illustrates are being used to fight monstrous real-world diseases like swine flu and HIV.

Jack Epstein knows chocolates. In his San Francisco store, Chocolate Covered, he sells more than 350 gourmet varieties. Single origin. High cocoa content. Salted. Spiked with chili, bacon, or sake-soaked ginger. Made with goat’s milk or sheep’s milk. And now a brand based on camel’s milk—the only one of its kind in the world.

Epstein has just received his first shipment from the Al Nassma company in Dubai, which launched its confections in the United Arab Emirates last October. As it starts to expand to specialty stores abroad, general manager Martin van Almsick believes it’s on track to become the Godiva of the Middle East.

Food is, of course, a major theme in Julie & Julia, the new movie about Julia Child's life in France and modern-day New Yorker Julie Powell’s attempt to cook every recipe in Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."

But place also plays a part. The movie begins as the Childs move from Washington, D.C. to Paris in 1949. The city instantly captures Julia's heart (and obviously her appetite). I'm an incurable Francophile, and all I could think about was what life was like in 1950s Paris. How much did Julia pay for the eggs she needed to whip up meringue? Were apartment rents exorbitant? Why, before she made the pivotal decision to attend the Cordon Bleu, did Julia dabble in hat-making?

I turned to the National Geographic archives for answers. This magazine has covered the City of Light at least two dozen times over the last five decades, but one story caught my eye with a title so perfect I had to read it twice: "Home Life in Paris Today, July 1950."

Hello everyone—welcome back to my “On Assignment” posts and greetings from Sumatra where I am beginning a tiger story for National Geographic Magazine (NGM).

 David Doubilet and dive guide Colby discuss HMI light cable connection. Photograph by Jen Hayes. (Click image to enlarge.)

I am working on an assignment called Artificial Reefs. These structures occur on the bottom of the sea by design, by accident or sometimes the unfortunate product of war. In many cases artificial reefs provide valuable structure and habitat where there is little to none.