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A 33ft long fossil of an ichthyosaur, the largest UK example of a predator that roamed the seas at the time of the dinosaurs, has been uncovered at an English nature reserve. This dragon is the biggest, most complete fossil of its kind found in the UK. It is also thought to be the first ichthyosaur of its specific species (Temnodontosaurus trigonodon) found in the country. When lifted for conservation and study, the block containing the 6ft (2m) skull and surrounding clay alone weighed a tonne. In February 2021, Joe Davis, conservation team leader at Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust, discovered a dragon during the routine draining of a lagoon island for re-landscaping. Mr. Davis said: “The find has been fascinating and a real career highlight. It’s great to learn so much from the discovery of this dragon and to think that this living fossil swam in the seas above us. “Now, once again, Rutland Water is a haven for wetland wildlife, albeit on a smaller scale.” Dr. Dean Lomax, a...

Former Deputy Constable Bobby Joe Espinosa of the Harris County Precinct 4 was fired and arrested for stealing thousands of dollars from four Vietnamese businesses in Houston while in uniform. Espinosa, 39, was accused of stealing a total of $5,700 between September 2021 and March 2022. The former deputy constable used his authority as a law enforcement officer to get customers at the Vietnamese establishments to leave before coercing employees to open cash registers and remove money from tip jars. Espinosa, who spent seven and a half years with Precinct 4, was also accused of unplugging surveillance cameras and prying open game machines at the different locations for cash. The father of six was arrested on April 15 and charged with felony theft. Espinosa faced a judge in probable cause court on April 16. He was released after posting a $30,000 bond on Sunday. His conditions include a curfew set at 7 p.m. until 7 a.m. every day. He is also prohibited from possessing a firearm and bei...

'Without upholding academic freedom, we have no ability to explore ideas,' the professor said. A tenured Canadian professor who was fired after criticizing Black Lives Matter (BLM) has a proposed arbitration date set during which she intends to lay out her grievances against her former university. "All of my grievances are going forward together at this time," Frances Widdowson said during a recent interview with The College Fix. She confirmed to Fox News Digital that the proposed dates are Jan. 16-27, 2023, but they have not been confirmed. Widdowson, who taught economics, justice, and policy studies, was fired from Mount Royal University (MRU) in Calgary, Alberta, last December after stoking controversy for comments criticizing BLM, which she said "destroyed MRU" to such an extent that she "doesn’t recognize the institution anymore." Widdowson, who studied Indigenization initiatives for 20 years, also took flak for claiming that Canada's cont...

It's a question that has plagued astronomers for years: How did supermassive black holes , which can weigh billions of times the mass of the sun, grow so large, so quickly? Now, scientists are closer than ever to the answer. NASA announced last week that a potential "missing link" between the universe's first supermassive black holes and young, star-forming galaxies was hiding in plain sight — and it helps explain some of the mysteries of how the universe formed. Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers found a rapidly growing black hole dubbed GNz7q. The scientists say it's been "lurking unnoticed" in one of the most highly-studied areas of the sky, the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey-North field. Using archival data from Hubble 's Advanced Camera for Surveys, a team of international researchers determined the "monster" object existed just 750 million years after the Big Bang, during the "cosmic dawn" — th...

A gene linked to the development of hearing in humans has just been linked to sensory development in sea anemones, too. Called pou-iv (pow-four), the gene can be found in the tentacles of the starlet sea anemone ( Nematostella vectensis ), where it plays a crucial role in the animal's sense of touch. Cnidaria, the phylum to which sea anemones belong, is the closest relative to Bilateria, animals with bilateral symmetry such as humans, diverging from their last common ancestor that lived around 748 to 604 million years ago. The discovery of the gene's role in the starlet sea anemone suggests that it was present in their common ancestor and likely played a role in sensory development then, too. "This study is exciting because it not only opened a new field of research into how mechanosensation develops and functions in a sea anemone .. but it also informs us that the building blocks of our sense of hearing have ancient evolutionary roots dating back hundreds of millions of y...

On 11th December 1984 a little-known television producer and UFO researcher – Jamie Shandera – found an envelope left for him. The package had no return address but did contain copies of documents that would change people’s perception of the twentieth century and the events that might have actually shaped it. The documents themselves were stored on two rolls of 35mm film. The first one Shandera examined was labeled “Top Secret/Majic Eyes Only” – the title was even more intriguing – “Briefing Document: Majestic 12 / Prepared For President-Elect Dwight D. Eisenhower.” The top-secret writings appeared to reveal the known presence of extra-terrestrials here on Earth. The Majestic 12 group was a collection of top scientists and military leaders who had been established in 1947 to investigate the UFO phenomenon. Both the papers and the Majestic 12 group of which they spoke were ultimately disregarded by the FBI as nothing but a hoax when they investigated the claims. They pointed to certain ...