On the radar

News from the world of science

T. rex ancestor was a murphi

Scientists have identified a new species of dinosaur from fossil remains found in Argentina, and it's suggested the lanky, metre-long Eodromaeus murphimay have been a distant ancestor of the fearsome T. rex.

Two Eodromaeusfossils, which were found side by side, date back around 230 million years and indicate the newly described dinosaur species had serrated teeth, long fingers, a long tail and possibly air sacs in its neck. Details are published in Science.

Lake is under 4km of ice

A Russian team is close to breaking through to a large lake beneath Antarctica, according to reports.

The oxygen-laden Lake Vostok is around 250km long, 50km wide, lies under nearly 4km of ice and has been isolated for around 14 million years.

For two decades scientists have been looking to access its waters, and a Russian project is nearly there, drilling through a borehole that's over 3.6km deep and advancing at around 3 metres per day. "We can make it this time," Valery Lukin, director of the Russian Antarctic programme, told Nature.

This is really exciting because it means that if we can design molecules that interfere with IRF5 function, it could give us new anti- inflammatory treatments for a wide variety of conditions

- Dr Irina Udalova from Imperial College London, co-author on a paper in Nature Immunology that suggests a molecule called IRF5 is a ‘master switch’ of inflammation in some immune system cells