The Blue Acceleration: Recent Colossal Rise In Human Pressure On Ocean Quantified

Human pressure on the world's ocean accelerated sharply at the start of the 21st century and shows no sign of slowing, according to a comprehensive new analysis on the state of the ocean.

Claiming ocean resources and space is not new to humanity, but the extent, intensity, and diversity of today’saspirations are unprecedented, according to new research [Credit: PxFuel]

Scientists have dubbed the dramatic rise the "Blue Acceleration". The researchers from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, synthesized 50-years of data from shipping, drilling, deep-sea mining, aquaculture, bioprospecting and much more. The results are published in the journal One Earth.

The scientists say the largest ocean industry is the oil and gas sector, responsible for about one third of the value of the ocean economy. Sand and gravel are the ocean's most mined minerals to meet demand from the construction industry. As freshwater become an increasingly scarce commodity, around 16,000 desalination plants have sprung up around the world in the last 50 years with a steep rise since 2000, according to the analysis.

Lead author Jean-Baptiste Jouffray from the Stockholm Resilience Centre said, "Claiming ocean resources and space is not new to humanity, but the extent, intensity, and diversity of today's aspirations are unprecedented"

The industrialization of the ocean took off at the end of the last century, driven by a combination of technological progress and declining land-based resources.

Global trends in use of the marine environment. Usage reached an inflection point
around the turn of the new millennium [Credit: One Earth]

"This Blue Acceleration is really a race for ocean resources and space, posing risks and opportunities for global sustainability"

The study highlights some positive human impacts. For example, the area protected from some exploitation has increased exponentially with a surge since 2000 that shows no signs of slowing. And offshore wind farm technology has reached commercial viability in this period allowing the world to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

The authors conclude by calling for increased attention to who is driving the Blue Acceleration, what is financing it and who is benefiting from it? The United Nations is embarking on a "decade of the ocean" in 2021. The scientists say this is is an opportunity to assess the social-ecological impacts and manage ocean resources for long-term sustainability.

They highlight there is a high degree of consolidation relating the seafood industry, oil and gas exploitation and bioprospecting with just a small handful of multinational companies dominating each sector. The team suggests that banks and other investors could adopt more stringent sustainability criteria for ocean investments.

Source: Stockholm Resilience Centre [January 24, 2020]

Archaeologists Analyze The Composition Of A Roman-Era 'Makeup Case'


A study carried out by researchers from the Merida Consortium, the University of Granada (UGR) and the Institute of Cultural Heritage of Spain has analysed the contents of a scallop shell discovered in a 1st century AD grave and found traces of makeup.

Image of the scallop with pigment residues
[Credit:University of Granada]

First discovered in 2000 during excavations of a funerary complex in the former capital of the Lusitania, Augusta Emerita (present-day Merida) the 'make-up case' was uncovered in a deposit of cremated remains alongside ceramic cups, bone spindles, nails, glassware and the remains of a detachable bone box.

The make-up case is made from a bivalve malacological mollusk specimen of pecten maximus (viera). Once the shell was opened, it was possible to document the cosmetic remains, specifically, a small ball of a “pinkish” powdery conglomerate via a combination of X-ray diffraction (XRD), electron microscopy and chromatographic analysis.

The study revealed that the pinkish deposit was composed of a granite lacquer, mixed with a rose madder  to obtain the colouration and then an astringent compound was used as a fixative agent [Credit: University of Granada]

The use of the mollusk as a cosmetic container is a practice that dates back thousands of years across various civilisations. One of the earliest examples is tiny shells in the Sumerian city of Ur from 2500 BC that contained pigments used for cosmetics.

The study revealed that the pinkish deposit was composed of a granite lacquer, mixed with a rose madder to obtain the coloration and then an astringent compound was used as a fixative agent.

The results of the study have been published in the latest issue of Saguntum.

Source: University of Granada [January 24, 2020]

The Zanclean Megaflood Of The Mediterranean – Searching For Independent Evidence


Beneath the waters of the Alboran Sea, and in the shadow of an underwater volcanic structure, is a body of sediment that seems to have accumulated during a major flood 5.3 million years ago that filled the basin of a partially drained Mediterranean Sea. These sediments are candidates to be added to the list of new evidence found in the last years of the so-called Zancliense mega-flood, according to an article published in the Earth-Sciences Reviews.

Satellite image of the Gibraltar Arc
[Credit: NASA]

The paper reviews the recent findings published so far that support the hypothesis of a mega-flood that put an end to the Messinian Salinity Crisis, an event that occurred some 6 million years ago during which the Mediterranean Sea was isolated from the Atlantic Ocean and became a gigantic salt pan.

"The sedimentary deposits we have identified are compatible with a large flood through the Strait of Gibraltar. It is an elongated sedimentary body that accumulated on the leeward side of the flood thanks to the protection that the volcanic building provided against the force of the water flow that came from the Atlantic Ocean and entered the Mediterranean basin", explains Daniel Garcia-Castellanos, researcher at the Institute of Earth Sciences Jaume Almera of the CSIC (ICTJA-CSIC) and first author of the article.

According to the researchers, this accumulation of sediments has a maximum thickness of 163 metres, extends over about 35 km and is about 7 km wide. The identification of this group of materials has been possible thanks to the images obtained by means of the reflection of seismic waves on the bottom of the Alboran Sea. In these images, the authors of the study detected a series of chaotic and discontinuous stratified reflection profiles located between the Miocene and Pliocene sedimentary layers. In addition, these sediments are arranged parallel to an erosive channel identified in 2009 at the bottom of the Alboran Sea.

This channel, about 390 km long, extended from the Gulf of Cadiz through the Strait of Gibraltar to the Algerian Basin. The canal would have been excavated by the massive influx of water from the Atlantic Ocean once the connection with the Mediterranean Sea through the Strait of Gibraltar was re-established some 5 million years ago.

Isobath map of the eastern Alboran basin with the volcanic edifice location. Orange lines
show the main flood paths [Credit: Garcia-Castellanos et al, 2020]
Once the massive inflow of water entered in the Alboran basin, the channel split into two branches to overcome the topographic obstacles in its path. The volcanic edifice may have been one of these topographic obstacles during the flood leading to the deposition of the recently identified sediments along the seamount lee side.

These sediments identified in the Alboran Sea can be added to the rest of evidence found and published in recent years that support the hypothesis of a massive flood and are summarized in the present article.

The Noto Canyon, in the northern Malta Escarpment, and a body of sediments of up to 860 m in thickness buried at the east of this canyon are two of the other pieces of evidence proposed in this article that may sustain the megaflood hypothesis. Both parts of evidence were analyzed in a previous study published in Scientific Reports in 2018.

However, and despite all summarized pieces of evidence, Daniel Garcia-Castellanos is cautious. "Ten years after publishing the first observations that were related with the Zanclean flood we are still finding new evidences to sustain it, but they are not conclusive. All of the evidences that have been summarized in this article may have other possible interpretations and, before convincing the scientific community it will be necessary to have other studies that consider the hypothesis from other angles."

Researchers from the University of Malta, the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research (GEOMAR), the Instituto de Ciencias del Mar (ICM-CSIC), Istituto Nazionale di oceanografia e di geofisica Sperimentale (OGS) and the University of Sevilla also participated in the study.

Source: Institute of Earth Sciences Jaume Almera [January 26, 2020]

Clays In Antarctica From Millions Of Years Ago Reveal Past Climate Changes

Members of the TASMANDRAKE research group of the Andalusian Earth Sciences Institute (IACT), which pertains to the University of Granada and CSIC, have published a research paper in the prestigious international journal Scientific Reports describing their analysis of clays from Antarctica dating back 35.5 million years, to reconstruct past climate changes.

Glaucony grains observed under an electron microscope
[Credit: University of Granada]

Their study was conducted in the area known as Drake Passage—the body of water that separates South America from Antarctica, between Cape Horn (Chile) and the South Shetland Islands (Antarctica). The results help to better understand the climatic conditions prior to the formation of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, thus evaluating possible links between the development of the ice sheet in Antarctica and the changes in the tectonic and paleoceanographic configuration. Such questions constitute key facets of past climate functioning that provide boundary conditions for today's climate models, which predict a general rise in sea levels over the coming centuries.

The article analyses the relevance as a climatic indicator of the mineral commonly known as 'glauconite', which is more properly termed 'the glauconia facies' or 'glauconia'. This is a type of green clay, formed mainly in shallow marine environments (<500 15="" below="" br="" c="" conditions.="" m="" oxygenation="" specific="" temperatures="" under="" very="" with="">
The existence of this clay formation in the Antarctic region has received little scholarly attention to date compared to other geological records on the planet. The characteristic green-coloured mineral has been observed around Antarctica and the Antarctic Ocean in sedimentary sequences of the Terminal Eocene Event—that is, before one of the main climatic transitions in Earth's history. The Eocene–Oligocene climate transition took place approximately 34–33.6 million years ago.

Northwest region of the Antarctic Peninsula (South Shetland Islands)
[Credit: University of Granada]

This scientific contribution describes, for the first time in the Antarctic Ocean, a glauconitisation event (in which glauconia was formed) approximately 35.5 million years ago in the Weddell Sea, northeast of the Antarctic Peninsula between South America and Antarctica.

The formation of glauconia 35.5 million years ago marks the onset of progressive sea level rise in the north Weddell Sea during the Terminal Eocene. The results of this scientific study thus provide new insights regarding changes in paleoceanographic conditions just prior to the Eocene–Oligocene climate transition and the controversial opening and deepening of Drake Passage.

Studying the weather of the past to predict the future

The separation of the Antarctic continent from South America and Oceania allowed bodies of water to transfer freely between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. This new circulation of bodies of water resulted in the Circumpolar Current and, with it, the thermal insulation of the Antarctic and the formation of the ice cap on a continental scale.



Map of Antarctica showing the location of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), which flows from west to east.

The ACC is a fundamental element in the deep global circulation connecting the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian

Oceans. It is therefore an important part of the global ocean circulation network that distributes

heat around the Earth [Credit: University of Granada]

The opening of Drake Passage between South America and the Antarctic Peninsula is therefore considered one of the most important events in the history of the Earth's oceanic and atmospheric circulation. However, in the absence of dating for the formation of the sedimentary basins of Drake Passage, it is difficult to specify the precise age when the Passage began to open up and the Circumpolar Current started to form. The glauconia analysis conducted by the TASMANDRAKE research group contributes to progress in this area of study.

To put these changes into perspective, Adrian Lopez Quiros, the principal author of the research, notes that "it is necessary to study the past to understand the present and help predict the future," by better understanding the tectonic, climatic, and paleoceanographic conditions that led to the onset and subsequent evolution of this important ocean current.

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a major reference source for climate forecasts, established several possible future climate scenarios in 2014. However, the new data, when comparing simulations with real-world data, predict even greater impacts than those previously foreseen in the IPCC climate scenarios. Therefore, climate change is developing faster than previously thought. With its research, the TASMANDRAKE group aims to provide new variables for these models—focusing on sediments and geophysics—to ensure that its results reflect real-life events even more accurately, especially in terms of the transoceanic currents, global warming, and rising sea levels.

Source: University of Granada [January 23, 2020]

'Doomsday Clock' Closer To Midnight Than Ever

"We are now expressing how close the world is to catastrophe in seconds – not hours, or even minutes,"

The Doomsday Clock on Thursday ticked down to 100 seconds to midnight, symbolizing the greatest level of peril to humanity since its creation in 1947 as the threat posed by climate change and a growing nuclear race loomed large.
1/23/2020

"We are now expressing how close the world is to catastrophe in seconds – not hours, or even minutes," said Rachel Bronson, president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in announcing the change
[Credit: Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press]

The danger level was compounded by information warfare and disruptive technologies ranging from deepfake video and audio to the militarization of space and the development of hypersonic weapons.

"We are now expressing how close the world is to catastrophe in seconds—not hours, or even minutes," said Rachel Bronson, president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in announcing the change.

The decision on the clock is taken by panels of experts, including 13 Nobel laureates. It was originally set at seven minutes to midnight, and the previous worst—two minutes to midnight—held from 2018 to 2019 as well as 1953. The furthest it has ever been is 17 minutes, following the end of the Cold War in 1991.

On the nuclear front, the arms control boundaries that helped prevent catastrophe over the last half century are being dismantled and may be gone by next year, said subject expert Sharon Squassoni.

This includes the demise in 2019 of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, with the US and Russia entering a new competition to deploy once banned weapons. The US has suggested it won't extend New START, an arms reduction treaty signed in 2010.

"This year could see not just the complete collapse of the Iran nuclear deal," added Squassoni, with Tehran boosting its enrichment efforts.

And despite initial hopes US President Donald Trump's unorthodox approach to North Korea may produce results, no real progress ensued, said Squassoni, with Pyongyang instead vowing to press ahead with a new strategic weapon.



The Doomsday Clock on Thursday ticked down to 100 seconds to midnight
[Credit: Iris Royer De Vericourt/AFP]

On climate, two major UN summits fell dismally short of the action required to limit long-term warming to the goals laid out by the Paris Agreement that scientists say is necessary to prevent catastrophe.

The effects were already apparent in the record-breaking heat waves and floods India faced in 2019, and the wildfires that raged from the Arctic to Australia.

"If humankind pushes the climate into the opposite of an ice age," said Sivan Kartha, a scientist at the Stockholm Environmental Institute, "we have no reason to be confident that such a world will remain hospitable to human civilization."

Yet the experts took heart in mounting climate activism spearheaded by a youth movement that is spurring some governments to action.

Misinformation campaigns and fake news catalyzed by deepfake videos are potent threats to social cohesion, while the rise of AI weapons like drones that attack targets without human supervision create new uncertainty.

Russia meanwhile has announced a new hypersonic glide missile and the US is testing its own weapons that severely limit response times of targeted nations.

Space, long an arena for international cooperation, is also becoming increasingly militarized with multiple countries testing projectile and laser anti-satellite weapons and the US creating a new military branch, the Space Force.

"We ask world leaders to join us in 2020 as we work to pull humanity back from the brink," said Mary Robinson, chair of The Elders leadership group and former president of Ireland.

"Now is the time to come together—to unite and to act."

Source: AFP [January 23, 2020]
Scientists move 'Doomsday Clock' to latest time in history

By Don Jacobson

Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Executive Chair Jerry Brown 

announces Thursday the "Doomsday Clock" was moved

 forward 20 seconds to its latest time in history.

 Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI | License Photo

Jan. 23 (UPI) -- The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists on Thursday moved up its "Doomsday Clock" to 100 seconds before midnight -- the closest it's ever come to symbolic world destruction in the gauge's 73-year history.

The group set the clock -- which symbolically reflects how close the world is to "midnight," or its destruction -- ahead by 20 seconds during the event Thursday, to 11:58 p.m., and 20 seconds. It had been at two minutes to midnight since 2018.


The group's moving the clock reflects all relative events that occurred in 2019.

Before Thursday, two minutes to midnight had been the closest the clock has been to midnight -- having reached that point just twice since the clock was established. The first was 1953 during the Cold War and followed the first U.S. test of a thermonuclear weapon.

Former California Gov. Jerry Brown, the group's executive chairman, former Irish President Mary Robinson and former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon unveiled the new position at Thursday's event.

Bulletin of Atomic Scientists President and CEO Rachel Bronson said the move reflected the opinion of the scientists that the world had entered "a two-minute warning" for its survival.

"When the board kept the clock at two minutes to midnight in 2019, we argued then that the global situation was abnormal, and that this 'new abnormal' was simply too volatile and too dangerous to accept as a continuing state of world affairs," she said. "Today we feel no more optimistic."

The decision was made by the group's science and security board following a year in which man-made threats to humanity, such as nuclear proliferation and climate change, were hastened by moves away from international cooperation, she said. The science board found that both nuclear and climate change situations worsened last year.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists first began the tradition in 1947 as a way to gauge the world's proximity to nuclear holocaust. In 2007 the group added climate change as a factor in the clock's setting.

"We have seen influential leaders denigrate and discard the most effective methods for addressing complex threats -- international agreements with strong verification regimes -- in favor of their own narrow interests and domestic political gain," Bronson said.

The furthest the clock has ever been from midnight was set in 1991, at 11:43, or 17 minutes from "doomsday," after the United States signed the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and the Soviet Union dissolved.

Ancient Statue Found In Cambodia's Siem Reap

Siem Reap Provincial Environment Department officials and archaeologists are conducting research on a large Makara animal statue carved on a rock at the Phnom Kulen National Park in Siem Reap province’s Svay Loeu district.1/23/2020

Credit: Khmer Times

Provincial Department of Environment director Sun Kong said yesterday the head portion of the broken statue was found by a resident on Saturday and the officials went to inspect the site on Sunday.

He added that the statue was made of sandstone during the sixth century and the body was broken into pieces, noting that officials found 13 pieces of the body nearby the site

Credit: Khmer Times

Mr Kong said: “According to the experts, this Makara animal statue is one that we have never seen before. It is approximately 2.14 metres in length and about 0.97 metres high. We have not yet moved the body parts or excavated the head from the site and have told park rangers in the area to guard it in order for officials from relevant ministries and institutions to come and study in detail about the site’s history and reconstruct the pieces.”

He noted that experts have not found a foundation of any temple at the site and believe it was just carved out on the rock.

Credit: Khmer Times

Chhim Samrithy, 38, a craftsman from the province who discovered the statue, said yesterday he spotted it on Saturday while searching for bamboo. “I usually walk in the forest to look for some unique and sacred objects and suddenly spotted this rare statue,” he said. “After seeing it, I took environmental officials and archaeologists to the site and also helped to find some of the missing pieces of the statue.”

Long Kosal, Apsara Authority spokesman, said that the authorities’ archaeologists visited the site yesterday and will conduct additional studies to add it to the records.

Credit: Khmer Times

He said: “The Kulen National Park area is rich in ancient artefects, both above and below the ground. Therefore, I urge people, especially those living in the area, to avoid excavating or clearing archaeological sites. If they find ancient objects, please report to the authorities for research to be done to preserve them for future generations.”

Author: Pech Sotheary | Source: Khmer Times [January 23, 2020]

The Salt Of The Comet

More than 30 years ago, the European comet mission Giotto flew past Halley's comet. The Bernese ion mass spectrometer IMS, led by Prof. em. Hans Balsiger, was on board. A key finding from the measurements taken by this instrument was that there appeared to be a lack of nitrogen in Halley's coma - the nebulous covering of comets which forms when a comet passes close to the sun.

1/20/2020 

Gas and dust rise from "Chury's" surface as the comet approaches the
point of its orbit closest to the sun  [Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM]

Although nitrogen (N) was discovered in the form of ammonia (NH3) and hydrocyanic acid (HCN), the incidence was far removed from the expected cosmic incidence. More than 30 years later, researchers have solved this mystery thanks to a happy accident.

This is a result of the analysis of data from the Bernese mass spectrometer ROSINA, which collected data on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, called Chury for short, on board the ESA space probe Rosetta (see info box below).

Risky flight through the comet Chury's dust cloud

Less than a month before the end of the Rosetta mission, the space probe was just 1.9 km above the surface of Chury as it flew through a dust cloud from the comet. This resulted in a direct impact of dust in the ion source of the mass spectrometer ROSINA-DFMS (Rosetta Orbiter Sensor for Ion and Neutral Analysis-Double Focusing Mass Spectrometer), led by the University of Bern. Kathrin Altwegg, lead researcher on ROSINA and co-author of the new study published in the prestigious journal Nature Astronomy, says: "This dust almost destroyed our instrument and confused Rosetta's position control."

A plume of dust from Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, seen by
 the OSIRIS Wide Angle Camera on ESA's Rosetta spacecraft on 
3 July 2016. The shadow of the plume is cast across the basin, which
 is in the Imhotep region

[Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA]

Thanks to the flight through the dust cloud, it was possible to detect substances which normally remain in the cold environment of the comet on the dust particles and therefore cannot be measured. The amount of particles, some of which had never before been measured on a comet, was astonishing. In particular, the incidence of ammonia, the chemical compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula NH3, was suddenly many times greater.

"We came up with the idea that the incidence of ammonia in the ROSINA data could potentially be traced back to the occurrence of ammonium salts," explains Altwegg. "As a salt, ammonia has a much higher evaporation temperature than ice and is therefore mostly present in the form of a solid in the cold environment of a comet. It has not been possible to measure these solids either through remote sensing with telescopes or on the spot until now."

Ammonium salt and its role in the emergence of life

Extensive laboratory work was needed in order to prove the presence of these salts in cometary ice. "The ROSINA team has found traces of five different ammonium salts: ammonium chloride, ammonium cyanide, ammonium cyanate, ammonium formate and ammonium acetate," says the chemist on the ROSINA team and co-author of the current study, Dr. Nora Hanni.

Ammonium chloride is one of five different ammonium salts the ROSINA team has found traces of [Credit: University of Bern]

"Until now, the apparent absence of nitrogen on comets was a mystery. Our study now shows that it is very probable that nitrogen is present on comets, namely in the form of ammonium salts," Hanni continues.

The ammonium salts discovered include several astrobiologically relevant molecules which may result in the development of urea, amino acids, adenine and nucleotides. Kathrin Altwegg says: "This is definitely a further indication that comet impacts may be linked with the emergence of life on Earth."

Source: University of Bern [January 20, 2020]

Remains Of Pre-Hispanic Sweat Lodge Found Near La Merced, Mexico City

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a pre-Hispanic sweat lodge near La Merced, a market area in the historic center of Mexico City.

1/23/2020 

Credit: Edith Camacho, INAH

The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said in a statement Tuesday that the temazcal, as a domed, pre-Hispanic sweat lodge made out of mud or stone is known, was found during an excavation at a property on Talavera street, which is now known for the sale of baby Jesus statues.

Temazcales were used by indigenous people in Mesoamerica for medicinal purposes, spiritual rituals and childbirth.

Credit: Edith Camacho, INAH

Archaeologists found blocks made out of adobe and tezontle –a volcanic rock – that were used to build the sweat lodge as well as a bathtub used to heat the structure with steam. Based on the remains they found, the INAH team concluded that the temazcal was five meters long and about three meters wide.

INAH said the discovery has allowed archaeologists to pinpoint the location of Temazcaltitlan, one of the oldest neighborhoods of Tenochtitlan, the Mexica capital that would become Mexico City.

Credit: Edith Camacho, INAH

According to a chronicle of pre-Hispanic times in Tenochtitlan, a temazcal was built in Temazcaltitlan to bathe and purify Quetzalmoyahuatzin, a noble Mexica girl.

Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, a noble indigenous man who lived in colonial times, wrote in his Cronica Mexicayotl that ordinary residents of Tenochtitlan also bathed there.

Credit: Edith Camacho, INAH

The head of the INAH team that found the temazcal said the discovery is the first concrete evidence of Temazcaltitlan’s vocation as a center of bathing and purification.

Victor Esperon Calleja said the neighborhood belonged to the district of Teopan (also known as Zoquipan), which was the first territory built on Lake Texcoco and occupied by the Mexicas. It is believed that the female deities of earth, fertility, water and the pre-Hispanic beverage pulque were also worshipped in Temazcaltitlan.

Credit: Edith Camacho, INAH

In addition to the temazcal remains, on the same Talavera street property archaeologists found the remnants of a home that was possibly inhabited by a noble indigenous family shortly after the Spanish conquest and structures of a tannery, which operated during the last century of colonial rule before Mexico gained its independence in the early 19th century.

“The findings suggest that in the 16th century this area was more populated than we initially thought,” Esperon said.

Credit: Edith Camacho, INAH

“Given that it was an area of chinampas [floating agricultural gardens], it was thought that there were few houses but at this property we have evidence of the wooden pilings and stones that were used for the wall foundations [of a home],” he added.

Esperon said that the methods used to build the house allowed archaeologists to date it to the first century of colonial rule between 1521 and 1620.

The walls of the four-room home were decorated with red motifs and its floor was made of adobe blocks, features that the archaeologist said indicated that it was “inhabited by an indigenous family, possibly of noble origin.”

The tannery, Esperon said, likely made leather from cattle slaughtered at the San Lucas abattoir, which was located close to where the Pino Suarez Metro station now stands.

Source: Mexico News Daily [January 23, 2020]

EVEN BEFORE AUSTRALIA'S WILDFIRES

Platypus On Brink Of Extinction

Australia's devastating drought is having a critical impact on the iconic platypus, a globally unique mammal, with increasing reports of rivers drying up and platypuses becoming stranded.1/21/2020 

The platypus is one of the world's strangest animals
[Credit: Torsten Blackwood/AFP]

Platypuses were once considered widespread across the eastern Australian mainland and Tasmania, although not a lot is known about their distribution or abundance because of the species' secretive and nocturnal nature.

A new study led by UNSW Sydney's Centre for Ecosystem Science, funded through a UNSW-led Australian Research Council project and supported by the Taronga Conservation Society, has for the first time examined the risks of extinction for this intriguing animal.

Published in the international scientific journal Biological Conservation this month, the study examined the potentially devastating combination of threats to platypus populations, including water resource development, land clearing, climate change and increasingly severe periods of drought.

Lead author Dr Gilad Bino, a researcher at the UNSW Centre for Ecosystem Science, said action must be taken now to prevent the platypus from disappearing from our waterways.

"There is an urgent need for a national risk assessment for the platypus to assess its conservation status, evaluate risks and impacts, and prioritise management in order to minimise any risk of extinction," Dr Bino said.

Alarmingly, the study estimated that under current climate conditions and due to land clearing and fragmentation by dams, platypus numbers almost halved, leading to the extinction of local populations across about 40 per cent of the species' range, reflecting ongoing declines since European colonisation.

UNSW Sydney's Centre for Ecosystem Science leads new research into
the extinction risk of the platypus [Credit: Tahnael Hawke]

Under predicted climate change, the losses forecast were far greater because of increases in extreme drought frequencies and duration, such as the current dry spell.

Dr Bino added: "These dangers further expose the platypus to even worse local extinctions with no capacity to repopulate areas."

Documented declines and local extinctions of the platypus show a species facing considerable risks, while the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recently downgraded the platypus' conservation status to "Near Threatened".

But the platypus remains unlisted in most jurisdictions in Australia - except South Australia, where it is endangered.

Director of the UNSW Centre for Ecosystem Science and study co-author Professor Richard Kingsford said it was unfortunate that platypuses lived in areas undergoing extensive human development that threatened their lives and long-term viability.

"These include dams that stop their movements, agriculture which can destroy their burrows, fishing gear and yabby traps which can drown them and invasive foxes which can kill them," Prof Kingsford said.

The UNSW-led project raises concerns about the decline
of platypus populations [Credit: UNSW Science]

Study co-author Professor Brendan Wintle at The University of Melbourne said it was important that preventative measures were taken now.

"Even for a presumed 'safe' species such as the platypus, mitigating or even stopping threats, such as new dams, is likely to be more effective than waiting for the risk of extinction to increase and possible failure," Prof Wintle said.

"We should learn from the peril facing the koala to understand what happens when we ignore the warning signs."

Dr Bino said the researchers' paper added to the increasing body of evidence which showed that the platypus, like many other native Australian species, was on the path to extinction.

"There is an urgent need to implement national conservation efforts for this unique mammal and other species by increasing monitoring, tracking trends, mitigating threats, and protecting and improving management of freshwater habitats," Dr Bino said.

The platypus research team is continuing to research the ecology and conservation of this enigmatic animal, collaborating with the Taronga Conservation Society, to ensure its future by providing information for effective policy and management.

Source: University of New South Wales [January 21, 2020]

Domesticated Wheat Has Complex Parentage

Certain types of domesticated wheat have complicated origins, with genetic contributions from wild and cultivated wheat populations on opposite sides of the Fertile Crescent. Terence Brown and colleagues at the University of Manchester report these findings in a new paper published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.
1/22/2020 

Credit: WikiCommons

A wild form of wheat called emmer wheat was one of the first plant species that humans domesticated. Emmer is not grown widely today, but gave rise to the durum wheat used for pasta and hybridized with another grass to make bread wheat, so its domestication was an important step in the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture.

While the archaeological record suggests that cultivation began in the southern Levant region bordering the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea around 9,500 years ago, genetic studies point to an origin in the northern region of the Fertile Crescent, in what is now Turkey. To clarify emmer's origins, researchers screened 189 types of wild and domesticated wheats and used the more that 1 million genetic variations that they identified to piece together the genetic relationships between different kinds of wheat.

Based on the analysis, the researchers propose that an emmer crop, which humans cultivated but had not yet domesticated, spread from the southern Levant to southeast Turkey, where it mixed with a wild emmer population and ultimately yielded the first domesticated variety. The results of this hybridization can be detected in wild emmer plants in Turkey today.

The complex evolutionary relationships between wild emmer and cultivated wheat varieties uncovered by the analysis are similar to the interbreeding that occurred between wild and cultivated populations of other grain crops, such as barley and rice.

The authors add: "We used next-generation DNA sequencing technologies to detect hundreds of thousands of variants in the genomes of wild and cultivated emmer wheat, giving us an unprecedented insight into the complexity of its domestication process. The patterns we observed do not fit well with a simplistic model of fast and localized domestication event but suggest instead a long process of cultivation of wild wheat by hunter-gatherer communities connected throughout the Fertile Crescent, prior to the emergence of a fully domesticated wheat form."

Source: Public Library of Science [January 22, 2020]