Nature Hub

  By Jonathan Amos BBC Science Correspondent, Edtied by Amal Udawatta, IMAGE SOURCE, D.POL/MEF Image caption, Two replica skeletons exist in the US, but this will be the first showing in Europe A replica of what could have been the largest animal ever to walk on land is coming to London in the New Year. A cast of the sauropod dinosaur known as Patagotitan will go on show at the Natural History Museum - assuming it fits within the gallery space. Measuring some 35m (115ft) from nose to tail, the beast could have weighed up to 60 or 70 tonnes in life. "We should be able to get it in but there won't be much wriggle room," said exhibition developer Sinéad Marron. Image caption, MEF researcher Dr Diego Pol lies next to the dinosaur's thigh bone The replica skeleton is being loaned from Argentina's Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio (MEF), whose staff excavated the animal's giant bones in 2014. Their exhumation of the 100m-year-old beast caused a sensation. A photo

    From - Knowable Magazine,    By - Boyce Upholt,   Edited by - Amal Udawatta, The now-extinct Haast’s eagle hunting moa in New Zealand, which lacked other large predators. Today scientists are looking at the ancient history of the islands’ birds to better understand how “natural” biological invasions happen. CREDIT: ART BY JOHN MEGAHAN /  PLOS BIOLOGY  2005 New Zealand has long been known as a place for the birds — quite literally. Before people arrived 700 years ago, the archipelago hosted an idiosyncratic ecosystem, nearly free of mammals. More than 200 bird species filled a food web all their own. Rather than cows or antelopes, there was a family of flightless birds known as moa. And in place of apex predators like tigers, New Zealand had Haast’s eagle. Ever since a group of farm workers drained a swamp in the late 1860s and uncovered its buried bones, this eagle has captivated researchers. Julius Haast, the explorer and geologist who published the first notes on the species, des