New Dinosaur Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis’ primary food was conifer needles off Trees

A newly discovered dinosaur species having a duckbill and habits of a moose has been given the name Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis officially this week. Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis used to live 69 million years ago in Alaska and was a species of hadrosaur, or duckbilled dinosaur.

The name of the species has been derived from Inupiaq, the language of Alaska Inupiat Eskimos that means 'ancient grazer'.

To get an idea about how different the world was during the late Cretaceous period, The Daily Beast had a word with earth sciences curator at the University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks, Pat Druckenmiller, who co-authored the paper in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.

Life Investigation for Enceladus mission projected to cost approximately $700 million

A proposed space mission is aiming to get back samples from Saturn's icy moon Enceladus, hoping to find out signs of life at another destination in our solar system. Presently, the mission named Life Investigation for Enceladus (LIFE) is just in the proposal stage.

But according to some experts, this can probably be among most promising missions not so far on the docket.

The moon has around 100 powerful geysers, blasting water from a subsurface ocean out of the south polar region into space. This has indicated that a satellite mission to the rock won't even need a lander or any additional gear for drilling or collecting samples. Instead, they must be floating across in orbit waiting for a satellite to come and collect them.

Thomson Reuters predicts Nobel Prize Winners

According to an annual analysis by Thomson Reuters, scientists, who discovered the technology known as CRISPR-Cas9, allowing researchers to edit virtually any gene they target, are one of the top contenders for Nobel prizes coming month.

The Intellectual Property & Science unit of Thomson Reuters, which is also the owner of the Reuters news service, announced the predictions on Thursday. The unit had correctly identified 37 scientists since 2002, who later become Nobel laureates, though not particularly in the year in which they were predicted.

IP&S, seller of data, has made its predictions on the basis of number of times work of a scientist has been cited by others in published papers.

Dead whale discovered washed ashore along southern Alameda County wildlife area

On Thursday, authorities said that a dead whale that was discovered washed ashore this week along a southern Alameda County wildlife area is the second deceased whale found in 2015 in bay waters.

US Fish & Wildlife Service spokesman Doug Cordell said that the whale was at first spotted floating near the San Mateo Bridge during the weekend and ultimately was seen at the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, on Wednesday. The whale was around 25 feet long.

Cordell said when the whale was found on the shore just west of Coyote Hills Regional Park near the Dumbarton Bridge, it was much decomposed and presently, there are no plans of moving it.

ESA's Rosetta data points to daily water-ice cycle near surface of comets

Scientists, looking at data from the Rosetta spacecraft, orbiting Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko since last year, have found a region on surface of the comet where water ice comes out and vanishes in sync with day, or rotation period of the comet.

Their findings have been published in the journal Nature on September 23, 2015.

Fabrizio Capaccioni, principal investigator for a key instrument on Rosetta named the Visible, InfraRed and Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS), said, "We suspected such a water-ice cycle might be at play at comets, on the basis of theoretical models and previous observations of other comets. But now, thanks to Rosetta's extensive monitoring at 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, we finally have observational proof".

Enamel has its origin in fish scales: Study

A finding by a group of researchers revealed more information about the origin of the enamel, which covers human teeth. According to LA Times, by looking at the evolution of prehistoric fish, it has been concluded by the researchers that enamel has its origin in the scales prior to developing on teeth and bones.

According to the researchers, enamel is a layer that protects teeth and bones. It is also known as the hardest part in the human body.

In the study of ancient animals, the researchers were already aware that in the beginning, this material appeared on the scales of fish. Earlier, they used to think that it moved to the teeth and bones following the process of evolution considerably rearranged the scales' location. But the latest finding offered a different scenario.

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