Mosasaurs were a diverse group of marine lizards which, much like whales and other cetaceans, adapted to life in the oceans. And though we’ve been digging them up for 200 years now, new species are still being discovered. Recently a team of paleontologists discovered not just a new species but an entirely new genus in the Pembina Member of the Pierre Shale Formation in North Dakota, United States.

RELATED: Giant mosasaur digested large prey then spit up the bones

Researchers found a mostly complete skull and jaws as well as 7 cervical vertebrae, 5 anterior dorsal vertebrae, 11 ribs, and 3 structural bones supporting the brain called hypapophyseal peduncles. The bones belonged to an animal which lived approximately 80 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous period. Scientists dubbed the creature Jormungandr walhallaensis for Walhalla, North Dakota where it was found and for Jörmungandr, the world serpent from Norse mythology.

“The novel aspect about this study is the brain can very quickly distinguish whether an undesirable outcome is due to a (human) error, or due to something else.”

A new study demonstrates how the brain can tell the difference between an outcome that was due to human error and one where the person was not directly responsible. The process takes mere seconds.

“Our study highlights the importance of physical activity through childhood and adolescence, leading to better physical fitness, as it might be relevant to cerebellar volumes related to cognition and learning.”

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Voluntary movement coordination.

In 2008, Dr. Eben Alexander contracted a rare case of bacterial meningitis. As the pathogen wracked his brain, causing it to swell and suffuse with pus, Alexander entered a deep coma. He was not expected to survive. But live he did, and with a tale to tell. For in Alexander’s stricken state, he underwent a near-death experience, a profound out-of-body event. Four years later, the neurosurgeon detailed it in a best-selling book.

“I had no real center of consciousness,” he wrote. “I didn’t know who or what I was or even if I was simply… there, a singular awareness in the midst of a soupy, dark, muddy nothingness…”

More recently, Alexander’s popular account of his near-death experience attracted the attention of Pascal Michael, a PhD student in psychology at the University of Greenwich. Michael met Alexander after seeing him speak at an academic conference and was informed that Alexander had experimented with 5-MeO-DMT, a psychedelic closely related to DMT, secreted from the glands of the Colorado River toad.

The amygdala can hijack your brain’s response if it recognizes past trauma in a current situation. To regain control, simply press pause. Big Think.