And You thought Your Grandmother was Old?!

Scientists have believed for years that flowering plants developed about 140 to 190 million years ago. However, recent studies have shown that they bloomed up about 215 million years ago, about 25 to 75 milllion years earlier than previously believed.
Because previous fossil records show that some species that survive off of nectar like wasps and bees showed up around 200 million years ago, this evidence also supports the dates presented by insect fossil records.
The team's findings were published online in the March 15 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, if you wish to read the full experimental findings.

-bexchada

Alligators have one-way lungs

     A new finding shows that alligators have birdlike lungs, in which air flows in only one direction instead of in and out of chambers.  In birds, this is an adaptation to low-oxygen environments in the upper atmosphere.
     Birds and crocodiles share a common ancestor, which also gave rise to the dinosaurs.  Since it is unlikely that such a structure would evolve twice in close relatives, it seems nonbird dinosaurs also had such lungs.
     Interestingly, the alligators in the study were either under anesthesia or dead .  In other words, alligator wrestlers were too expensive to hire.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8453053.stm

-Brown Rhino

Future of Biosphere

Our class, Ezine, is over.  Our magazine can be found at Magcloud- it's called Biosphere.  So it's time to talk about the blog.

It seems like an eternity has passed since this was last updated.  Despite this, Biosphere's story is not over.  Although updates will be sporadic, they will, hopefully, exist.  In other words, this isn't over yet.

-Brown Rhino