News around the World

Maya Angelou passes away at 86

Renowned poet and author Maya Angelou passed away recently at the age of 86 at her home in North Carolina. Angelou also worked as a dancer and singer, but she is well known for her writing, specifically, her 1969 book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

She began writing when she was only seven-years-old during her rough childhood. She quit studying dance and drama in high school in San Francisco when she was only 14 years old and instead became the city's first black female cable car conductor! She later returned to high school and graduated at the age of 17 and gave birth to her son a few weeks later.

While working as a waitress Angelou's love for music and dance grew and she toured Europe in the mid-1950s in the opera production Porgy and Bess. Years later in 1957 she recorded her first album, Calypso Lady.

One year later she became a member of the Harlem Writers Guild in New York. She worked constantly to perfect her writing skills to make her books as interesting as possible.

"I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine...before she realises she's reading," Angelou once said. Over the years she has published seven autobiographies, several books of poetry, three essays, and even received the Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2011.

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First 3D pterosaur eggs discovered

The very first three-dimensionally preserved eggs of ancient flying reptiles have been discovered in the Turpan-Hami Basin in Xinjiang, northwest China. The five eggs came from a new type of pterosaur, one of the largest flying animals to ever live. They most likely went extinct in a storm 120 million years ago, according to study researcher Xiaolin Wang.

The discovery is especially important because not only is the fossil record of pterosaurs lacking, but these are the very first non-flattened pterosaur eggs discovered! Amazingly, the eggs were still soft and somewhat

flexible. They had a hard and thick outer shell with a soft inner membrane, similar to the eggs or some types of snakes.

The parent pterosaurs of these likely buried them in the sandy shore to prevent them from getting dried out, according to researchers. Along with the eggs, dozens of fossils that belonged to a new type of pterosaur were found.

The new genus and species has been named Hamipterus tianshanesis.

This cluster of fossils has led researchers to believe that pterosaurs lived in large groups and were social animals. More likely than not, this means that thousands more bones and skulls may be hidden in the area where these were found!

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