Curious Kids: what was the biggest dinosaur that ever lived?

Getty Images Nic Rawlence, University of OtagoWhat actually was the biggest dinosaur? – Zavier, 14, Tauranga, New Zealand. Great question Zavier, and one that palaeontologists (scientists who study fossil animals and plants) are interested in all around the world. And let’s face it, kids of all ages (and I include adults here) are fascinated by dinosaurs that break records for the biggest, the longest, the scariest or the fastest. It’s why, to this day, one of most famous dinosaurs is still Tyranosaurus rex, the tyrant king. These record-breaking dinosaurs are part of the reason why the Jurassic Park movie franchise has been so successful. Just think of the scene where Dr Alan Grant (played by New Zealand actor Sam Neill) is stunned by the giant sauropod dinosaur rearing up to reach the highest leaves in the tree with its long neck. But how do scientists work out how big and heavy a dinosaur was? And what were the biggest dinosaurs that ever lived? Calculating dinosaur size In an ideal world, calculating how big a dinosaur was would be easy – with a nearly complete skeleton. Standing next to the remarkable Triceratops skeleton on permanent display at Melbourne Museum makes you realise how gigantic and formidable these creatures were. By measuring bone proportions (such as length,...

Read More........→March 19, 2025

What’s the difference between climate and weather models? It all comes down to chaos

Nadia Piet/AIxDESIGN & Archival Images of AI / Better Images of AI , CC BY-SA Andy Hogg, Australian National University; Aidan Heerdegen, Australian National University, and Kelsey Druken, Australian National UniversityWeather forecasts help you decide whether to go for a picnic, hang out your washing or ride your bike to work. They also provide warnings for extreme events, and predictions to optimise our power grid. To achieve this, services such as the Australian Bureau of Meteorology use complex mathematical representations of Earth and its atmosphere – weather and climate models. The same software is also used by scientists to predict our future climate in the coming decades or even centuries. These predictions allow us to plan for, or avoid, the impacts of future climate change. Weather and climate models are highly complex. The Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator, for example, is comprised of millions of lines of computer code. Without climate and weather models we would be flying blind, both for short-term weather events and for our long-term future. But how do they work – and how are they different? The same physical principles Weather is the short-term behaviour of the atmosphere – the temperature on a given day, the wind, whether it’s raining and how much. Climate is about long-term...

Read More........→February 11, 2025