Washington, April 17: A team of geochemists has come across evidence that Earth''s atmosphere 2.4 billion years ago was oxygen-rich, as pointed out by the origin of sulfur in rocks.

Sedimentary rocks created more than 2.4 billion years ago sometimes have an unusual sulfur isotope composition thought to be caused by the action of ultra violet light on volcanically produced sulfur dioxide in an oxygen poor atmosphere.

Washington, April 17 : Scientists have studied alligators to analyze what life may have been like for dinosaurs at low oxygen levels of 12 percent during pre-historic times.

The scientists chose the alligator as a test subject for the study because they are believed to be the modern relatives of the dinosaurs.

"We knew testing the effects of different oxygen levels would work with alligators because crocodilians have survived in their basic shape and form for 220 million years. They must be doing something right to have survived the oxygen fluctuations," said scientist Tomasz Owerkowicz.

Washington, April 17 : The discovery of an ancient flute in Xinglongwa, China, has suggested that Chinese musical instruments could be 3000 years older than previously calculated.

Traditional Chinese musical instruments are believed to have originated from the reign of Huangdi, or the Yellow Emperor, some two thousand years ago.

But, a flute made of bones, unearthed at the Xinglongwa Site in Inner Mongolian in 1986, has changed the timeline for musical instruments in China.

The ancient flute was made from the bones of bustard, a kind of bird usually seen in Northeast China. The tube is 18 centimeters long, with finger holes still evident.

Washington, April 17 : Scientists at Singapore's Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) have become the first to transform the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) into methanol, which is a widely used industrial feedstock and clean-burning biofuel.

The IBN researchers report that by using organocatalysts, they activated CO2 in a mild and non-toxic process to produce methanol, a widely used industrial feedstock and clean-burning biofuel.

Organocatalysts are catalysts that are comprised of non-metallic elements found in organic compounds.

Washington, April 17 : By combining information from three different telescopes, scientists are learning what happens when some of the largest galaxy clusters in the Universe collide with each other in a cosmic free-for-all.

Galaxy clusters are the largest objects bound by gravity in the Universe.

Washington, April 17 : A new research has led to the discovery of unusual microbial life under an inland Antarctic glacier, a place where cold, darkness and lack of oxygen would previously have led scientists to believe nothing could survive.

The microbes were found in an unmapped reservoir of briny liquid chemically similar to sea water, but buried under an inland Antarctic glacier.