Sid Perkins

Sid Perkins is a freelance science writer based in Crossville, Tenn.

All Stories by Sid Perkins

  1. Earth

    Scientists spy sixth undersea-vent ecology

    A new group of hydrothermal vents found in the Indian Ocean are populated by communities of organisms that differ significantly from other such groups of vent systems.

  2. Earth

    Antarctic sediments muddy climate debate

    Ocean-floor sediments drilled from Antarctic regions recently covered by ice shelves suggest that those shelves were much younger than scientists had previously thought.

  3. Paleontology

    New fossil sheds light on dinosaurs’ diet

    Vestiges of soft tissue preserved in a 70-million-year-old Mongolian fossil suggest that some dinosaurs could have strained small bits of food from the water and mud of streams and ponds, just like some modern aquatic birds do.

  4. Paleontology

    Completing a titan by getting a head

    When paleontologists unearthed the skeleton of a 70-million-year-old titanosaur in Madagascar in the late 1990s, they also recovered something that had been missing from previous such finds: a skull that matched the body.

  5. Paleontology

    That’s no footprint, it’s got no toes

    The impressions near Isona, Spain, long thought to be fossilized dinosaur footprints may actually record the feeding behavior of stingrays.

  6. Earth

    L.A. moves, but not in the way expected

    Researchers monitoring small ground motions along faults in Southern California ended up detecting an altogether different phenomenon: the rise and fall of the ground as local governments pump billions of gallons of water into and out of the region's aquifers.

  7. Earth

    Sahara to get hotter, drier, smaller

    By the end of this century, the world's hottest desert will be even hotter, drier, and smaller than it is now, according to an international team of climate modelers.

  8. Earth

    Resetting a clock from Earth’s rocks

    Better measurements of one of the rates of radioactive decay used to date extremely old rocks open up the possibility that Earth may have had a crust as many as 200 million years earlier than previously thought.

  9. Earth

    Deep-sea gear takes wild ride on lava

    When a set of instruments monitoring an underwater volcano got trapped in an eruption in early 1998, the scientists who had deployed the sensors ended up with more data than they bargained for.

  10. Paleontology

    A Ticklish Debate

    Paleontologists engaged in a contentious debate about the origins of feathers often reach interpretations that are poles apart, and they defend their views with fervor.

  11. Ecosystems

    Marine plankton put nitrogen in a fix

    New genetic analyses of tropical marine microorganisms hint that some species are converting significant amounts of atmospheric nitrogen into nutrients, helping to fortify the base of the ocean's food pyramid.

  12. Paleontology

    Study picks new site for dinosaur nostrils

    A new analysis of fossils and living animals suggests that most dinosaurs' nostrils occurred at locations toward the tip of their snout rather than farther up on their face, a concept that may change scientists' views of the animals' physiology and behavior.