The Mysterious Fukang Meteorite

When it slammed into the surface of Earth, there was little sign of the beauty that lay inside, because cutting the Fukang meteorite open yielded a breathtaking sight. Within the rock, translucent golden crystals of a mineral called olivine gleamed among a silvery honeycomb of nickel-iron. In China in 2000, the mysterious fukang meteorite, unearthed believed to be some 4.5 billion years old, which is as ancient as Earth itself. It is a pallasite, a type of meteorite with translucent golden crystals of a mineral called olivine embedded in a silvery honeycomb of nickel-iron. It’s a dazzling meteorite, and maybe the most spectacular extraterrestrial piece of rock man has ever seen. This majestic Fukang meteorite was found by a hiker, who had often stopped and had lunch on this giant rock, and he always questioned what the metal and crystals were. Eventually he decided and took a hammer and chisel and broke some pieces off, which he sent to the USA to confirm that it was a meteorite.

The original meteorite weighted just over a 1,000 kilogram, but the rock was so dazzling that everybody wanted a piece of it. Since then it has been divided into dozens of thin slices and auctioned or distributed around the world. Therefore, a total of 31 kilograms of specimen is on deposit at University of Arizona. Marvin Kilgore of the University of Arizona's Southwest Meteorite Centre holds the largest portion weighing at 420 Kg. In Feb 2005 saw the Chinese space rock transported all the way to the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, in Tucson, Arizona. The U.S. lab claims their polished slice of the original meteorite is the world's biggest pallasite cross section, measuring 36in by 19in.

In 2008, this piece was expected to fetch $2 million at an auction at Bonham's in New York, but unluckily, the likely bidders were more impressed with a couple of pieces of 130-million-year-old fossilized dinosaur’s dung that day, which sold at more than twice the estimate. According to Bonhams, pallasites are composed of approximately 50 % olivine and peridot crystals and 50 cent nickel-iron, and believed to be the relics of forming planets. They actually make up less than one per cent of meteorites, and believed to originate from deep inside intact meteors formed during the formation of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago and very few specimens are thought to have survived their descent through Earth's atmosphere.

Giant Tunnels Dug by Massive Sloths

Deep inside Brazil, there are tunnels large enough for an individual to walk through. The tunnels are very neat symmetrical too have been caused by any known geologic process, may be lined with claw marks. These mammoth tunnels are perhaps the craft of giant ground sloths humongous "paleoburrows" that no longer walk the Earth. The largest tunnel measured 2,000 feet long, 6 feet tall and 3 to 5 feet wide. An estimated 4,000 metric tons of dirt and rock were dug out of the hillside to create the burrow. It was evidently the work of not one or two individuals but several generations.

However tens of thousands of years after these megafauna did their digging, those tunnels still dot this part of South America. This discovery has a great feature up about it and up until the 2000s; little was known or written about this bounty of holes. But since he came upon his first one near Novo Hamburgo, Brazilian scientist Heinrich Frank has found more than 1,500 tunnels, found burrows that measure hundreds of feet long. Researchers have exposed one with branching tunnels that. It had to have been dug by numerous creatures over generations, not by one or two giant sloths. However, the big open question comes in mind, why?

The tunnels appear to be much larger than any burrowing animal would need to get away from bad weather or hungry predators. Some believes the burrows were dug by a genus of giant ground sloths, as large as modern elephants, that once lived in South America. Because they were some of the biggest land mammals on earth exceeded in size only by the mammoth. However, others believe that extinct armadillos, which were smaller than the giant sloths, were responsible for the burrows. Courtsey: CP

Mysterious Underwater ‘Crop Circles’

Planet earth is so strange, what lies keep underwater on earth has yet to be seen by human eyes. The discovery of amazing little puffer fish capable of creating elaborately designed ‘crop circles’ at the bottom of the ocean as part of an elaborate mating ritual. The behavior was first documented by a photographer Yoji Ookata as articles bounced around the web it was still difficult to imagine how a tiny fish could create such a large design in the sand, even when staring directly at photographic evidence.

Japanese’s photographer Yoji Ookata devoted his life just for exploring the planet earth, spent the last 50 years exploring and documenting his discoveries off the coast of Japan. One day, Ookata found something strange near Amami Oshima, which he had never been witnessed before, rippling geometric sand patterns almost 6 feet in diameter, 80 feet below sea level.

He came back, and returned with colleagues & television crew from the nature program NHK to document the mystery circle. He holds the underwater camera to capture the mystery circle and reasons behind this marvel.  He & his team discovered that strange design naturally design by small puffer fish only few inches in length that swims tirelessly through day and night to create vast organic sculpture using the gesture of a single fine.

Therefore, after careful observation the team found the circles serve a variety of crucial ecological functions, the most important of which is to entice mates. However, the female fish are fascinated to the hills and valleys within the sand and traverse them carefully to discover the male fish where the pair eventually lay eggs at the circle’s center, the grooves later acting as a natural buffer to ocean currents that protect the delicate offspring. Moreover, researchers also learned that the more ridges contained within the sculpture resulted in a much greater likelihood of the fish pairing.

 

 

 

 

 

The Transparent Glass Frogs, Which Internal Organs Are Visible Through Skin

Probably you’ve never seen such breathtaking creatures on earth. Yeah, this is really transparent frogs! Known to eat their own young!  EEEK! The glass frogs belong to amphibian family Centrolenidae (order Anura). Among the several strange and captivating amphibians on our planet, very special are the Glass Frogs. While the general background coloration of most glass frogs is primarily lime green, the abdominal skin of some members of this family is translucent. The internal viscera, including the heart, liver, and gastrointestinal tract, are visible through the skin The beautiful Glass frogs are a diverse family, ranging from Mexico to Panama, through the Andes from Venezuela and the island of Tobago to Bolivia, with some species in the Amazon and Orinoco River basins, the Guiana, and southeastern Brazil, and northern Argentina. As the global climate is changing, some of the rain- and cloud forests where Glass Frogs live are becoming too dry, making life difficult for the frogs. By watching the glass frogs, scientists can learn what impact global warming has on these forests and the astonishing species that inhabit them.

The Gross frogs are mostly live in in trees along the river in forests and rainforests allows them to lay their eggs on leaves hanging over the river.  Hence, at the time of eggs hatch, the tadpoles drop straight into the water. This wonderful frog family has a transparent skin, letting you to view inside its small body, looks as if they melt into the leaves and become one with them. Transparent animals like these frogs are spectacular to see, however glassfrogs are mostly active at night, which makes them very difficult to spot for predators. Conservationists are especially interested in transparent frogs because they may be good bioindicators. A bioindicator is a species that provides clues about the health of the environment where it lives.