on morning sickness and dead european parrots

[acroyear]

Causes of Morning Sickness Revealed | LiveScience:

As irritating as morning sickness may be for pregnant women, it may protect embryos.

Doctors have long known that morning sickness — the nausea and vomiting usually experienced in early pregnancy — is actually a good sign of a healthy pregnancy, despite the discomfort it brings.

However, scientists have debated whether morning sickness actually helps pregnancies succeed. It could just be an annoying byproduct of a healthy pregnancy, as pregnant women and their embryos carry out a tug of war over the body's resources.

Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted): Monty Python's Dead Parrot Discovered:

A team of researchers, including a former postdoctoral colleague of mine, recently described fossils from two Lower Eocene parrot-like birds that were discovered in Denmark. The analysis of the fossils reveals that one of the ancient parrots, named Mopsitta tanta, is the largest fossil parrot found so far and it has the most northerly distribution yet known. Further, it resembles modern parrots almost as closely as younger fossils found from the Miocene, making it the earliest modern parrot yet found.

[...]

The new species has been nicknamed the Danish Blue Parrot in honor of the Monty Python "dead parrot" skit where Michael Palin claimed that a newly purchased "Norwegian Blue Parrot" was not "bleedin' demised" as his disgruntled customer asserted, but was simply "shagged out following a prolonged squawk."

This Mopsitta tanta fossil humerus provides support for the hypothesis that modern parrots appeared approximately ten million years after the K/T boundary.