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Category: futurism – Page 865

Newly discovered coronavirus mutation could threaten vaccine race, study says

Scientists say they have discovered the first evidence of a “significant” mutation of the coronavirus — raising concerns that strides made toward a vaccine so far could become “futile,” according to a new study.

The researchers, who isolated a strain of the virus from a sample collected in India in January, said the mutation appeared to make the bug less able to bind to a receptor on human cells called ACE2, an enzyme found in the lungs.

The discovery of this mutation “raises the alarm that the ongoing vaccine development may become futile in future epidemic if more mutations were identified,” the researchers said, according to Newsweek. The study, which was published on biorxiv.org on Saturday, has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Scientists digitally reconstruct skulls of dinosaurs in fossilised eggs

The fossilised skulls of dinosaur embryos that died within their eggs about 200m years ago, have been digitally reconstructed by scientists, shedding new light on the animals’ development, and how close they were to hatching.

The rare clutch of seven eggs, some of which contain embryos, was discovered in South Africa in 1976, with the developing young found to be a species of dinosaur called Massospondylus carinatus.

The plant-eaters were ancestors of sauropod dinosaurs like diplodocus and, as fully-grown adults, would have walked on two legs, measured about five metres from nose to tail, and had long necks with small heads.