in all directions on a larger scale than can be presently observed, some scientists say.
"Our ultimate goal would be to construct a new model that predicts the anomalies and links them together," George Efstathiou of Britain's Cambridge University said. "But these are early days; so far, we don't know whether this is possible and what type of new physics might be needed.
"And that's exciting."
Prehistoric reptile named for 9-year-old
SOUTHAMPTON, England, March 21 (UPI) -- A prehistoric flying reptile has been named for the 9-year-old British girl who found fossilized bones of the creature on the Isle of Wight, scientists said.
After the bones found by Daisy Morris were determined to be from a previously undiscovered species of pterosaur, a scientific paper was published in which the creature was dubbed Vectidraco daisymorrisae, the BBC reported Thursday.
Daisy started fossil hunting at age 3, her mother Sian Morris said, and found the bones "sticking out of the sand" on the beach in 2009 when she was 4 years old.
The family took the bones to expert Martin Simpson at the University of Southampton.
"I knew I was looking at something very special," Simpson said. "And I was right."
The finding was an example of how "major discoveries can be made by amateurs," he said.
Her mother said Daisy has shown a knack for fossil hunting.
"She has a very good eye for tiny little fossils and found these tiny little black bones sticking out of the mud and decided to dig a bit further and scoop them all out," she said of her daughter's discovery.
"We are all very proud of her."
Radar sees meteor crater under Russia lake
CHELYBINSK, Russia, March 21 (UPI) -- Scientists say a radar probe of a lake in Russia's Urals revealed a crater possibly created by a fragment of a meteor that exploded over the region last month.
The meteor broke into seven large fragments when it exploded over the city of Chelybinsk and one of the chunks is believed to have fallen into frozen Lake Chebarkul, creating a hole in the ice about 25 feet in diameter.
Scientists from Russia's Institute of Earth Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radio Wave Propagation carried out a study of the lakebed, RIA Novosti reported Thursday.
"A 3-D image of the bottom shows a 3-meter (10-foot) crater that could have very probably been created by impact with a large meteorite fragment," researcher Alexey Popov said.
The crater isn't directly beneath the hole in the ice but is around 30 feet to one side of it, he said.
Emergencies Ministry divers had searched the site in February but failed to find traces of the meteorite fragment in the thick layer of silt covering the lake bottom, officials said.
The meteorite that exploded over Russia Feb. 15 created a massive shock wave that blew out windows and damaged thousands of buildings around the city of Chelyabinsk, injuring 1,200 people.
Extinctions tied to Earth's volcanic past
NEW YORK, March 21 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say the abrupt disappearance of half of Earth's species 200 million years ago has been linked to a dated set of gigantic volcanic eruptions.
Researchers from Columbia University say the eruptions may have caused climate changes so sudden that many species were unable to adapt, and the pace of those changes could have occurred at a rate similar to that of human-influenced climate warming.
Geological deposits date the so-called End-Triassic Extinction at precisely 201,564,000 years ago, they said, exactly the same time as a massive outpouring of lava.
"This may not quench all the questions about the exact mechanism of the extinction itself," Columbia geologist Paul Olsen said. "However, the coincidence in time with the volcanism is pretty much ironclad."
The geologic deposits analyzed in the study were from the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province, a series of huge eruptions known to have started around 200 million years ago when nearly all Earth's land was massed into one huge continent.
The eruptions spewed an estimated 2.5 million cubic miles of lava in four sudden spurts over a 600,000-year span -- a period when pollen, spores and 