Garjainia put the ‘hyper’ in ‘hypercarnivore’

A head built for meat-eating.

Image source: Foth et al/Wikimedia Commons/Petekub/Shutterstock/Big Think
  • A new analysis of fossils from the 1950s reveals an awesome predator.
  • Pre-dating the dinosaurs, the erythrosuchids were voracious "hypercarnivores."
  • Think terrifying crocodiles on steroids.
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animals ancient world evolution biomechanics dinosaurs garjainia erythrosuchid paleontology

How Mengzi came up with something better than the Golden Rule

What could be better than "do unto others as you would have others do unto you"?

Alain Nogues/Corbis via Getty Images

There's something I don't like about the 'Golden Rule,' the admonition to do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

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philosophy ancient world china personal growth community morality

How did Africa get its name?

These maps show surprising juxtapositions of ancient and modern toponyms of the Mother Continent.

Image: Hansueli Krapf, CC BY-SA 3.0
  • "Africa" is just one of the ancient names that competed to define the entire continent.
  • Geographical terms like Sudan, Maghreb, and Guinea have remarkably wide and changeable areas of application.
  • Newly independent African nations sometimes adopted names of former kingdoms – even faraway ones.
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Africa ancient world history state-building Maps

Ancient philosophic scrolls — scorched by Vesuvius — could be made readable once again

Carbonized papyrus scrolls may again see the light after thousands of years.

Digital Restoration Initiative/University of Kentucky
  • Researchers will be using new technology to examine famous ancient artifacts.
  • They'll use the powerful light source, Diamond, at the U.K.'s national synchrotron facility.
  • The team has developed a special technique to virtually unwrap the scrolls so that they can be read.
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history ancient world technology

How time stopped circling and percolating and started running on tracks

Outside Europe, much of the world followed an assortment of rules and understandings about what time meant.

SEBASTIAN KAHNERT/AFP/Getty Images

Reflecting on Albrecht Altdorfer's painting Alexanderschlacht (1529), or The Battle of Alexander at Issus, the German historian Reinhart Koselleck wrote that, for medieval Europe, time was marked by 'expectations' and thus the painting was filled with portents.

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history society ancient world philosophy time