Rebecca Walton's blog

A number of papers published in PLoS ONE in 2008 have been featured in some recent round-ups of the year's best—and quirkiest—research. From worm grunting to an explanation for the superior sound of Stradivarius violins compared with modern violins, as ever, the highlighted articles cover a wide range of different scientific disciplines and topics.

Paul Sereno’s paper wasn’t – by any means – the only PLoS ONE paper published last week to have been covered by the press and by bloggers.

After the massive media buzz surrounding the last paper published in PLoS ONE by Paul Sereno, in which he and colleagues described the anatomy and behaviour of Nigersaurus taqueti (dubbed “the Mesozoic cow” by the press), you can imagine that we were quite excited to receive another paper from the University of Chicago Palaeontologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence.

This week saw the publication of another dinosaur study in PLoS ONE. In the article, entitled, Dinosaurian Soft Tissues Interpreted as Bacterial Biofilms, Thomas Kaye, at the Burke Museum of Natural History, and colleagues reported that material recovered from dissolved dinosaur bones by palaeontologists in 2005 (and believed to be dinosaurian soft tissue) may actually have been slimy biofilm created by bacteria that coated the voids once occupied by blood vessels and cells.

Some of the topics presented in the news coverage of several papers published in PLoS ONE last week included birds, music and artificial intelligence.