Topic
The application of physics and engineering principles to how living and extinct organisms move, feed and bear loads.
Simulated combat stress on six horned-dinosaur skulls shows Triceratops tolerated interlocking horns, University of Bristol researchers report. The skulls tolerated different blows, and the fighting styles are inferred from that.
Reality
Dana Korneisel's Nature study applied sturgeon backbone stiffness to fossil tetrapods and found their necks allowed little movement. Surrounding tissue would cut that further, so the neck-mobility explanation for the body-plan change loses ground.
Reality
Penn State researchers found guinea fowl raised with leg weights later carried the load at no added energy cost, while untrained birds used 23% more. The comparison is controlled and the groups are small, so it supports a narrow causal claim about leg loading in one species.
Reality
Macquarie and UNSW researchers report in PNAS that the 2 mm honey bee stinger is a double-piston micro-pump with continuous venom flow. The valve geometry would explain a detached stinger's delivery; the tests were in gel and a 3D-printed model.
Reality
Macquarie University researchers used high-speed video to show that a honey bee's 2-millimeter stinger pumps venom with two collapsible pistons. Each lancet carries a valve, and the pair pump in opposite directions to give a continuous flow.
Reality
Rutgers-led physics models of four mosasaur skeletons find Platecarpus and Tylosaurus lunged faster for their size than Mosasaurus and Plotosaurus. Most of that gap comes from how far each tail could curl, so the split in hunting styles is an inference drawn from anatomy.
Reality