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The Original Jurassic Park

Before the movie or even the book, the United States dedicated a park specifically to Jurassic dinosaurs. Dinosaur National Monument straddles the border between Colorado and Utah, a national park stuffed to the canyons with fossils from dinosaurs that roamed long ago. Hoplosuchus the armored crocodile from the late Jurassic is missing the very tip…

This week in Tech Reads: DIY electronic brain stimulation, a chat with the man who invented the browser tab, the strange hi-caffeine soda that fuels Germany’s hackers, and so much more! Greg Miller looks at the strangely adventurous world of do-it-yourselfers experimenting with electronic brain stimulation, using home-brewed hardware and inspired by a small clutch…

Geek.com seems to have spotted an experimental new web Gmail layout that replaces the left-side control panel with a slide-in menu, uses pins instead of stars, and adds a “reminder” feature—all within a heavily-redesigned layout. No word if this test setup will ever roll out to users. [Geek.com]

Artist creates detailed Star Wars mosaics using thousands of staples

New York-based Artist James Haggerty creates crazy mosaics out of staples. Thousands and thousands of staples. The amount of detail in his series of Star Wars characters is insane! The Darth Vader piece alone was made with 10,496 multi-colored staples. “The Side” is a 40 x 32″ mosaic made with (7,696 Silver and 2,800 Red)…

Police finds priceless Van Gogh taken by Nazis hidden in bank vault

Agents from the Agencia Tributaria—the Spanish IRS—announced the find of a priceless Van Gogh which disappeared from the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Vienna, Austria. Dated in 1889, the painting “Cypress, sky and field” was discovered in a safe deposit box that belonged to a Spanish fraudster. According to El Mundo (in Spanish), the 13.7 x 12.6-inch…

FDA Approves First Prosthesis Controlled by Muscle Electrical Signals

Dean Kamen’s DEKA Arm is an electronic prosthetic that mimics natural arm and hand movement with an amazing level of finesse. It’s controlled by electrical signals from the wearer’s muscles. This week, the DEKA Arm became the first muscle-controlled prosthetic approved by the FDA for sale to the general public. The user controls the DEKA…

This 4K New Zealand Timelapse Transports You to Lord of the Rings Land

Super-sharp 4k video, in the right hands, is powerful technology. Witness the grandeur of New Zealand’s dreamlike landscapes, brought straight to you by Martin Heck. This painstaking timelapse was shot over four months in some of the most remote locations across New Zealand. Those infinite skies, hulking mountains, and crystalline waters could make even the…

Get Your Artifacts Identified Today at the Museum of Natural History

The American Museum of Natural History is one of Gizmodo’s favorite places in NYC, and today’s an especially cool day to visit: it’s Identification Day, when you can bring in your fossils, unidentified plants, unknown family heirlooms, or just about anything else old or unusual, and have it identified by museum experts. It’s like Antiques…

Mango the Brown Bear Makes Veterinary History at an Israeli Zoo

Mango is a 19 year old male Syrian brown bear who lives at Israel’s Ramat Gan Safari Park, a zoo not far from Tel Aviv. Earlier this week, he made veterinary history after undergoing a complex spinal surgery. Mango had been suffering from a condition most commonly known as a “slipped disc.” The formal term…

Everyone Has To Make Sacrifices For The Corporate Future, On Continuum

Continuum’s dystopian corporate-dominated future, featuring chemical weapons and indentured servitude, isn’t going to arrive all by itself. That beautifully dark world will require work — and yes, sacrifice — on the part of everyone to arrive. But it’s the way things are supposed to turn out! Spoilers ahead… There’s a moment towards the end of…

Beats by Apple, Mis-Delivered Drones, Viral Fakes, and More

Well it’s been a busy week here at Gizmodo. We’ve been following the unexpected news around Apple and Beats by Dre, debunking more viral images that are totally fake, checking out awesome tech at Bell Labs, and so much more! Here’s what we’ve been doing all week. Beats by Apple Is Making Monster’s Big Mistake…

The New Grimm Regime Is Nothing But Trubel, And That’s Awesome

Grimm is about a warrior destined to keep the world safe from the monsters that secretly live among us. This Grimm is powerful, a fierce fighter, strong of heart; this Grimm is smart, resourceful, and a brilliant detective. And this Grimm’s name is not Nick goddamn Burkhardt. Sorry, but the arrival of Trubel has made…

Make a DIY 3D “Hologram” Like the One That Brought Tupac Back to Life

Holograms are super cool, but they’re hard to make at home. Pepper’s Ghost, on the other hand, is a relatively simple 19th century optical trick that looks like a 3D hologram and brought a very dead Tupac Shakur back to the stage. And Joey Shanks is here to show us how to rig up a…

An Interplanetary Magnetic Dance

The Earth’s magnetic field is the original forcefield, a wall of electromagnetic force that protects us from high-energy charged particles spewed by our sun during solar eruptions. The dance between our field and the sun is dynamic and beautiful. Charged particles impacting on the magnetic field produce aurora. Image credit: N. Tsyanenko The solar wind…

How to Get Your Bike Back After It’s Been Stolen

Bike theft is a major problem throughout America with an estimated 800,000 to 2 million bikes going missing each year. That’s a cost of nearly $50 million—and that’s just the small minority of thefts that are actually reported. And with ever increasing numbers of urban commuters forgoing cars for bikes, this silent epidemic only stands…

In The Future, Parcel Delivery Is Equal Parts Macabre And Hysterical

Fun, creative, and hilariously dark, JohnnyExpress is a short from South Korean animation company Alfred ImageWorks that manages to pack a fantastic story into a runtime of just five minutes and twenty-six seconds. It takes about 1:45 to get to the big reveal, but you’ll want to watch from the beginning. Trust us – you…

A Rare Trip On The Floating Train Yard Of Hudson Harbor

The only two options that freight trains have for accessing the east side of the Hudson River are to cross a bridge in Albany—140 painstaking miles North of New York City—or to ride a rail barge across the Hudson through the highly efficient marine-rail operation run by NYNJ Rail in Jersey City. There used to…

Space Junk on an Australian Cattle Station

Not all junk stays in orbit, and not all things that land are found. A Delta 2 rocket launched in 1990, re-entering the atmosphere within months. Yet it took 18 years to discover the rocket casing on a cattle station in the Australian outback. Delta 2 rocket casing discovered while mustering cattle in Australia. Image…

The Universe Is A Pretty Violent Place

In the latest episode of It’s Okay to be Smart, Joe Hanson takes a look at the far future of Earth, our solar neighborhood, the Milky Way and the Universe at large. Writes Hanson: It’s natural to wonder what the future has in store for us. While we may not be able to predict what…

1980s Architects Wanted a Restaurant On Top of the Williamsburg Bridge

The Williamsburg Bridge has spanned the East River since 1903, connecting what’s now Brooklyn’s most notoriously hip(ster) neighborhood to Manhattan. In the 1980s, the bridge was in serious disrepair—and architects wanted to replace it with a mirror-finish masterpiece topped with a restaurant. Imagine the view! DRC Consultants Inc., Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas Inc. and…