museum

New Madagascar dinosaur species had tiny arms

Don't cry for Tyrannosaurus rex and its teensy-weensy arms. It was in good company in the dinosaur kingdom with a recently discovered new species found in Madagascar. After a nearly 10-year dino drought on the island, two researchers uncovered the Dahalokely tokana, a creature with big back legs and itsy-bitsy front arms.

The critter was about as tall as a human male, but had a length of 9 to 14 feet. What helped the researchers peg it as a new species were some unique characteristics of the vertebrae, including the shape of cavities on the side. For dinosaur species, that's a lot like finding a fingerprint.

Besides being a new species, Dahalokely is also helping to fill in some puzzling gaps in the fossil record for Madagascar. "We had always suspected that abelisauroids were in Madagascar 90 million years ago, because they were also found in younger rocks on the island. Dahalokely nicely confirms this hypothesis," said project leader Andrew Farke, curator of paleontology at the Alf Museum.… Read more

San Francisco Exploratorium shows off its huge new digs

SAN FRANCISCO--Whether you're an adult looking for a cool place to have your kid's birthday party, or a kid wanting to get your hands messy with science, the Exploratorium has been a favorite for all ages since it first opened its doors more than 40 years ago. But it eventually faced a problem: space.

Originally located at the Palace of Fine Arts, the only building left standing in its original location from San Francisco's 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, the Exploratorium had outgrown the Beaux Arts house and began planning to move. Now completed, the Exploratorium will reopen to the public on April 17.

Its new space straddles the city and the bay at Pier 15, an overhauled warehouse located near the heart of downtown San Francisco. The hands-on science museum, founded by J. Robert Oppenheimer's physicist brother Frank in 1969, is using its new location to drive its popular mix of art and science into the 21st century. And it's huge. … Read more

FBI turns to Internet to solve $500 million Gardner heist

Maybe the Internet can lend a hand in resolving a two decades-plus mystery surrounding the biggest property heist in U.S. history. On March 18, 1990, a couple of robbers wearing police uniforms entered Boston's stately Isabella Gardner Museum, tied up the security guards, and ripped off 13 objects valued at up to $500 million.

Earlier today, the feds announced a breakthrough: The agency now knows the identity of the thieves and where the stolen art was transported. But in a bid to get out the word, the FBI has put together a Web site carrying updates about the … Read more

The 404 1,226: Where the faces don't match the voices (podcast)

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Bonobos opens stores that don't sell anything.

- The Smithsonian gets Warner Bros. movie props no one else wants.

- Moving Image art fair sells first ever "Vine art" for $200.… Read more

Playful new NY math museum not for squares

Math. The very word can conjure painful memories: long division, square roots, the quadratic equation.

Not only do many of us not like math; we're also not very good at it. In an international test of 15-year-olds, the U.S. placed 24th out of 64 countries.

"We don't currently, in this country, have a cultural expectation that yeah, you're going to learn math just like you're going to learn reading," said Glen Whitney. "It's OK to not be good at math."

Glen Whitney is good at math. He's got a Ph.D. in it, and is trying to change the way we think about one of our least favorite subjects. … Read more

Ancient d20 die now available in 3D-printed form

When we first looked into the ancient d20 die from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it spurred a lot of geeky excitement. The only thing that might have been more fun would have been uncovering an ancient Egyptian Atari cartridge.

Readers quickly chimed in about getting a replica made. There were pleas for ThinkGeek to get busy on it, or for someone with Autodesk and a 3D printer to tackle the project. Cornerstone Gaming on Shapeways has officially made it across the 3D-printed-ancient-die finish line.… Read more

Photoshop 1.0 source code now a museum artifact

The Computer History Museum has made the source code for Photoshop 1.0.1 into an exhibit that lets the public, or at least programmers, appreciate the inner workings of the historic software.

The museum published the software yesterday, following up on its earlier release of the source code underlying Apple's original MacPaint.

Source code is what humans write -- in Photoshop 1.0's case the brothers Thomas and John Knoll. The initial Photoshop is written in written 128,000 lines of code, a combination of the high-level Pascal programming language and low-level assembly-language instructions. When converted to … Read more

Adobe releases source code for 1990 version of Photoshop

How would you like to download a free and legal version of Photoshop?

Yep, free and legal. Better yet, it's an original -- as in the original version (1.0.1) that was released in 1990.

Via a special arrangement with Adobe Systems, the Computer History Museum announced in a blog post today that it has made available for download the entire 128,000 lines of source code for the first version of Photoshop: … Read more

First complete 'bionic man' unveiled in U.K.

He's got blood flowing through him, but he sure isn't human. Meet Rex, the world's first complete "bionic man."

Rex has the face of a man; prosthetic limbs; a functional artificial blood-circulatory system; and artificial organs including a pancreas, kidney, spleen, and trachea. At 6.5-feet tall, Rex is valued at a whopping $1 million.

Created for the TV documentary series "How to Build a Bionic Man," Rex was constructed by a team of roboticists. The researchers say they wanted to test scientific boundaries and demonstrate how modern science is beginning to catch up with sci-fi in the race to replace body parts with man-made alternatives. … Read more