hello everyone,

i have some excellent news for those of you who love to read original research (or essays about original research) published by NATURE: they are providing ALL of their content free to everyone's iPhone through the end of April. to upload the free iPhone app, go here;

http://bit.ly/bqPavn

i also wrote a story about a paper published by NATURE regarding errors in interpreting fossils of ancient soft-bodied vertebrates and marine animals;

http://bit.ly/deCJi8

this paper has far-reaching implications for our understanding of evolution because the data suggest that the decay patterns of dead animals are not random prior to fossilization: their most derived characters decay first, which makes the fossils look more primitive than they really are. because there is a NATURE publicity video for this story, i asked the senior editor if they could make this paper "open access" and they agreed. this paper is freely available to anyone for two weeks, so be sure to download it to show them that their literature is important to the public.

i also wrote a story about a new bird-like dinosaur that predates Archaeopteryx by 15-20 million years, showing that birds and bird-like dinos are not directly related; they evolved separately;

http://bit.ly/cTWQJQ

cheers,
GrrlScientist
http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/
http://twitter.com/GrrlScientist
http://profile.to/grrlscientist/
American Expat living in Frankfurt, Germany