#CRYPTID
Nessie sceptic saw something fishy during Loch Ness walk!
By Louise Glen- louise.glen@hnmedia.co.uk
26 September 20

Corey Sturrock on the banks of Loch Ness where he observed a large eel shape in the water...Picture: Gary Anthony..

A Nessie sceptic has been converted after spotting a giant creature rise out of the water while out for a walk.

Corey (23) and Lauren (22) Sturrock were walking at Dores on Saturday at around 3.40pm when they saw something the “size of a bus” emerge from the depths.

Mr Sturrock, who is a full-time carer for his wife, said he has always dismissed any talk of the Loch Ness monster, but after seeing the eel-like fish believes that there is something lurking in the waters that is quite unbelievable.

Mr Sturrock said he was reluctant to come forward in case people thought he was claiming to have seen Nessie.

But he said there were a number of people on the loch-side who saw the same thing.

He said: “I have been camping and walking on Loch Ness my whole life and I have never believed in the Loch Ness monster.

“But what my wife and I saw was something quite extraordinary and I would like to know if other people have seen the same.

“It was, what looked like to me and Lauren, like a massive eel. It was the size of a bus.

“It was massive.

“We saw the water rippling as if something was swelling, and that is what grabbed our attention.

“We then saw this thing, that looked like a massive eel rise from the water, and then go back under again.

“There was a large swell.

“Other people walking on the same path saw it as well.

“I reached for my phone – but it was all over in a matter of about 10 or 20 seconds – and it only showed itself for a few seconds. By the time I got my phone out it had gone underneath again.

“It didn’t look like all those Nessie drawings with the humps – it was just a large, or very large eel.

“After never believing there was anything in the loch, and no basis for belief in the Loch Ness monster, I would say that perhaps there are large eels in the water – and when they emerge they may look like a monster.

“Whatever it was it was some size.”

Not including Mr and Mrs Sturrock’s experience, seven Nessie sightings have been recorded in 2020 so far.

The latest in the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register was added on August 29 after photos were taken by tourist Mr Van-Schuerbeck.

A spokesman for the register

said he spotted an “unexplained phenomenon” when he looked back at photos taken near Point Clair.

A long-distance walker was also convinced earlier this month he captured the shadowy shape of the Loch Ness Monster while hiking between Fort Augustus and Invermoriston.

https://www.inverness-courier.co.uk/news/nessie-sceptic-saw-something-fishy-during-loch-ness-walk-213374/

A New Mass Extinction Event Has Been Discovered, And It Triggered The Rise of Dinosaurs


NASA's 3D portrait of methane in 2020. (NASA/Scientific Visualization Studio)

MICHAEL J. BENTON, THE CONVERSATION
25 SEPTEMBER 2020

Huge volcanic eruptions 233 million years ago pumped carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapour into the atmosphere. This series of violent explosions, on what we now know as the west coast of Canada, led to massive global warming.

Our new research has revealed that this was a planet-changing mass extinction event that killed off many of the dominant tetrapods and heralded the dawn of the dinosaurs.

The best known mass extinction happened at the end of the Cretaceous period, 66 million years ago. This is when dinosaurs, pterosaurs, marine reptiles and ammonites all died out.

This event was caused primarily by the impact of a giant asteroid that blacked out the light of the sun and caused darkness and freezing, followed by other massive perturbations of the oceans and atmosphere.

Geologists and palaeontologists agree on a roster of five such events, of which the end-Cretaceous mass extinction was the last. So our new discovery of a previously unknown mass extinction might seem unexpected.

And yet this event, termed the Carnian Pluvial Episode (CPE), seems to have killed as many species as the giant asteroid did. Ecosystems on land and sea were profoundly changed, as the planet got warmer and drier.

On land, this triggered profound changes in plants and herbivores. In turn, with the decline of the dominant plant-eating tetrapods, such as rhynchosaurs and dicynodonts, the dinosaurs were given their chance.


The dinosaurs had originated some 15 million years earlier and our new study shows that, as a result of the CPE, they expanded rapidly in the subsequent 10 million to 15 million years and became the dominant species in the terrestrial ecosystems. The CPE triggered the "age of the dinosaurs" which lasted for a further 165 million years.

It wasn't only the dinosaurs that were given a foothold. Many modern tetrapod groups, such as turtles, lizards, crocodiles and mammals date back to this newly discovered time of revolution.

A timeline of mass extinction events. (D. Bonadonna/MUSE, Trento/Author provided)
Following the clues

This event was first noticed independently back in the 1980s. But it was thought that it was restricted to Europe. First, geologists in Germany, Switzerland and Italy recognised a major turnover among marine faunas about 232 million years ago, termed the Rheingraben event.

Then in 1986, I recognised this independently as a global-scale turnover among tetrapods and ammonites. But at that time, the age dating was much weaker than now and it was impossible to be sure whether these were both the same event.


The jigsaw pieces started falling into place when an episode of about 1 million years of humid climates was recognised throughout the UK and parts of Europe by geologists Mike Simms and Alastair Ruffell. Then geologist Jacopo dal Corso spotted a coincidence in timing of the CPE with the peak of eruptions of the Wrangellia basalts.

Wrangellia is a term geologists give to a narrow tectonic plate that is attached to the west coast of the North American continent, north of Vancouver and Seattle.

Finally, in a review of the evidence from Triassic-aged rocks, the signature of the CPE was detected – not only in Europe, but also in South America, North America, Australia and Asia. This was far from being a Europe-only event. It was global.

The distribution of Wrangellia flood basalts in Alaska, Yukon and British Columbia. (University of British Columbia/EOAS)

Volcanic eruptions

The massive Wrangellia eruptions pumped carbon dioxide, methane and water vapour into the atmosphere, leading to global warming and an increase in rainfall worldwide. There were as many as five pulses of eruptions associated with warming peaks from 233 million years ago.

The eruptions led to acid rain as the volcanic gases mixed with rainwater to shower the Earth in dilute acid. Shallow oceans also became acidified.


The sharp warming drove plants and animals from the tropics and the acid rain killed plants on land, while ocean acidification attacked all marine organisms with carbonate skeletons. This stripped away the surfaces of the oceans and the land.

Life may have begun to recover, but when the eruptions ceased, temperatures remained high while the tropical rainfall ceased. This is what caused the subsequent drying of the land on which the dinosaurs flourished.

Most extraordinary was the re-casting of the marine carbonate factory. This is the global mechanism by which calcium carbonate forms great thicknesses of limestones and provides material for organisms like corals and molluscs to build their shells.

The CPE marked the start of modern coral reefs, as well as many of the modern groups of plankton, suggesting profound changes in ocean chemistry.

Before the CPE, the main source of carbonate in the oceans came from microbial ecosystems, such as limestone-dominated mud mounds, on continental shelves.

But after the CPE, it was driven by coral reefs and plankton, where new groups of micro-organisms, such as dinoflagellates, appeared and bloomed. This profound switch in fundamental chemical cycles in the oceans marked the beginning of modern marine ecosystems.

And there are going to be important lessons for how we help our planet recover from climate change. Geologists need to investigate the details of the Wrangellia volcanic activity and understand how these repeated eruptions drove the climate and changed the Earth's ecosystems.

There have been a number of volcanically-induced mass extinctions in the history of the Earth and the physical perturbations, such as global warming, acid rain and ocean acidification, are among the challenges we see today.

Palaeontologists will need to work more closely on the data from marine and continental fossil records. This will help us understand how the crisis played out in terms of the loss of biodiversity, but also to explore how the planet recovered.

Michael J. Benton, Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology, University of Bristol.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Phenomenon Shrinking Arctic Forests Linked to Legacy of Russia's Most Polluted City

(Ukususha/Getty Images)


CARLY CASSELLA
30 SEPTEMBER 2020

Rampant air pollution in northern Siberia is blocking sunlight and slowing the growth of boreal forests, new research suggests

The largest study of tree rings in Norilsk, Russia's most polluted city and the northernmost city in the world, has found air pollution from local mines and smelters are at least partly to blame for a phenomenon known as 'Arctic dimming'.

Similar to 'global dimming', this more regional effect occurs when tiny particulates – from air pollution, volcanic eruptions, and dust – gather in the atmosphere, where they partially absorb or scatter solar energy, messing with light availability, evaporation, and hydrology on the ground.

Long-term observations and satellite measurements have shown the amount of solar radiation reaching the Arctic's surface has decreased since the mid-century, but it wasn't clear if that was due to human pollution in the region.

Today, after nearly a century of heavy, unregulated mining, tree die-off near Norilsk has spread up to 100 kilometres, but this is one of the first studies to connect that shrinking forest with reduced sunlight.

"While the problem of sulphur emissions and forest dieback has been successfully addressed in much of Europe, for Siberia, we haven't been able to see what the impact has been, largely due to a lack of long-term monitoring data," says environmental systems analyst Ulf Büntgen from Cambridge University.

And yet, this region is one of the most heavily polluted in the world. So, by reading thousands of tree rings from living and dead conifers surrounding the city of Norilsk, researchers sought to reconstruct what happened to this once pristine forest.


Using wood and soil chemistry, they mapped the extent of Norilsk's uncontrolled environmental devastation over the course of nine decades.

"We can see that the trees near Norilsk started to die off massively in the 1960s due to rising pollution levels," says Büntgen.

Using solar radiation reaching the surface as a proxy for air pollution up in the atmosphere, the team's models provide "strong evidence" that Arctic dimming has substantially reduced tree growth since the '70s.

Today, the authors say, boreal forests in Eurasia and northern North America also have largely become a "dumping ground for large concentrations of anthropogenic air pollutants", and so the effects of Arctic dimming might be felt much more broadly outside the Norilsk region studied here.

Unfortunately, because of large-scale circulation patterns, we know that pollutants tend to accumulate in the Arctic atmosphere, and this means ecosystems up north may be especially vulnerable to global pollution as a whole.

Even knowing this, the authors were not prepared for the extent of the problem they uncovered.

"What surprised us is just how widespread the effects of industrial pollution are - the scale of the damage shows just how vulnerable and sensitive the boreal forest is," says Büntgen.


"Given the ecological importance of this biome, the pollution levels across the high-northern latitudes could have an enormous impact on the entire global carbon cycle."

Nor is pollution the only threat to these precious ecosystems, sometimes described as 'lungs' for our planet. Climate change looks as though it's also altering the diversity of boreal forests, while more intense and frequent wildfires are wiping out huge swathes of Siberia on an annual basis, contributing to further regional air pollution.

While some global warming models suggest tree growth will increase with climate change, the new research highlights that air pollution may outweigh this, meaning trees in the Arctic north will grow slower and weaker than before.

Further research should look at how air pollution could lead to reduced solar radiation, either through absorbing solar radiation directly or indirectly through its effects on clouds.

Given how important these boreal forests are as a carbon sink and how vulnerable they appear to be, the authors are calling for further insight into the long‐term effects of industrial emissions on the world's northernmost forests.

"This study appears particularly timely in the light of Norilsk's unprecedented release of more than 20,000 tons [of] diesel oil in 2020," they write, "an environmental disaster that emphasises the threat of Norilsk's industrial sector under rapid Arctic warming and permafrost thawing, and also stresses the ecological vulnerability of the high‐northern latitudes."

The study was published in Ecology Letters.

New Study of Neanderthal And Denisovan DNA Reveals a Surprising Link to Men Today


Neanderthal teeth from Spy 94a in Belgium.

 (I. Crevecoeur/Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology)

MIKE MCRAE
30 SEPTEMBER 2020

Decades of teasing apart Neanderthal DNA has produced an archive of ancient genes that spell out a history of love affairs between estranged branches of humanity's family tree.


Until now, the story has been rather lopsided. For whatever reason, the most well preserved material has come from female remains, leaving an entire male genetic history in the dark.

Finally, however, Neanderthal (aka Neandertal) men now get to tell their side, thanks to a newly conducting sequencing of their Y chromosome.

Researchers from around the globe collaborated to successfully identify male-specific DNA sequences from the remains of three Neanderthals recovered from sites in modern Russia, Spain, and Belgium.

All lived roughly 38,000 to 53,000 years ago, in what's essentially the twilight years of the now extinct humans.

These were compared with similar genes in their more eastern cousin, the Denisovan, represented by two sets of Siberian remains from individuals who lived around 70,000 and 120,000 years ago.

If we didn't know any better, we might guess these Neanderthal and Denisovan men would have fairly similar chromosomes. After all, they split from the same stock that divorced modern humans around 800,000 years ago, only their own separation was much more recent – about 400,000 years ago.

That wasn't what the researchers found at all. Rather, the Y chromosome in the Neanderthals was a closer match for ours than it was the Denisovans'.


"This was quite a surprise to us," says evolutionary geneticist Martin Petr from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the study's lead author.

"We know from studying their autosomal DNA that Neandertals and Denisovans were closely related and that humans living today are their more distant evolutionary cousins. Before we first looked at the data, we expected that their Y chromosomes would show a similar picture."

This discrepancy implies a swap took place shortly after their separation, exchanging the Neanderthal's original Y chromosome for one more like ours.

Exactly why such an exchange took place isn't clear.

We know our ancestors couldn't keep their hands off one another (or pretty much any other human population), with frequent genetic mixing events leaving a legacy of DNA in our own genomes today.

But this isn't like leaving behind a small genetic recipe for coping with a disease or malnutrition. It's a whole recipe book that potentially affects a wide range of male sexual and non-sexual characteristics.

One possibility is that this version of the Y chromosome was simply doing a better job.


"We speculate that given the important role of the Y chromosome in reproduction and fertility, the lower evolutionary fitness of Neandertal Y chromosomes might have caused natural selection to favour the Y chromosomes from early modern humans, eventually leading to their replacement" says Petr.

Computer simulations showed that relatively small Neanderthal communities scattered across the continent could have easily amassed a bunch of problematic mutations through inbreeding.

A more robust version of a Y chromosome picked up from humans could have added a fertility boost, quickly gaining ground as it was passed from fathers to sons down the family line.

Whoever those chromosome donors were, they eventually petered out themselves. Though more closely related to our modern global community, their bloodlines were also a dead end.

Just getting this level of detail from ancient male bones was a task in itself. Jokes about fragile masculinity aside, the Y chromosome isn't exactly a solid piece of work.

In the study, the researchers put the early human Y chromosomes together by using modern Y sequences as a template for a special set of probes. Clinging to as much shared DNA as they could, the probes also dredged up enough unique sequences to build a complete picture.


It's technology we might be able to use to fill in even more of the missing chapters of the Neanderthal's past.

"If we can retrieve Y chromosome sequences from Neandertals that lived prior to this hypothesised early introgression event, such as the 430,000-year-old Neandertals from Sima de los Huesos in Spain, we predict that they would still have the original Neandertal Y chromosome and will therefore be more similar to Denisovans than to modern humans," says senior author Janet Kelso from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

It's certainly possible, but given how studies like this tend to deliver more twists than any modern reality show, we're sure there'll be a surprise or two waiting in just about any set of male Neanderthal genes we find.

This research was published in Science.

Vast Majority of Reptiles Sold Online Have No Protection Under Law, Study Finds

(kozorog/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

TANYA WYATT, THE CONVERSATION
30 SEPTEMBER 2020

Rhinos, tigers, pangolins – we're used to hearing about the mammals that are snatched from the wild so that their body parts can be sold. But did you know that you can buy and sell 36 percent of all known reptile species over the internet?

That's more than one in three species, including the endangered speckled tortoise (the world's smallest species of tortoise) and the Seychelles tiger chameleon.

Reptiles are consistently overlooked by trade regulations. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is the world's mechanism for protecting wildlife in global markets.

This global agreement is supposed to regulate the trade of species to prevent them being overexploited, but a new study has revealed that more than 75 percent of reptiles traded online are species that are not covered by CITES. And as the online trade has grown, even reptiles protected by CITES are being taken from their natural habitats and sold to buyers around the world.

Reptiles are mostly traded for two reasons. In the fashion industry, their skins are made into leather. Reptile skins are what CITES mostly records, as this trade happens on a commercial scale. Thousands of skins of crocodiles, in particular, but lizards and snakes too, are shipped around the world to make boots, purses, and watch straps among other things.

Much less well documented, according to the new study, which I have also found in my own research, is the smaller scale trade in individual reptiles for "personal" use, like the pet trade.

Many are flown thousands of miles to be mistreated. (reggie35/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0)
Scaling back the trade

At first, it may not seem that the sale of one reptile here and there presents a problem. But the wildlife trade is a global phenomenon.

The tens, if not hundreds of thousands of individual sales of reptiles taking place around the world every year add up. The result is that small populations of reptiles – some of which only live in one particular place – are threatened with extinction.


The demand for rare and unique companion animals helps fuel this.

Farming reptiles, or breeding them in captivity, is often touted as a solution, but this approach has its own problems.

Captive breeding has been a source of illegal activity in the past. Businesses that were supposedly breeding reptiles in large quantities to meet demand were found to likely have been taking them from the wild instead.

This kind of laundering is difficult to control unless there are robust practices in place to trace reptiles all the way from source to final purchase.

Captive breeding in the reptile trade also has horrible consequences for animal welfare. As colleagues and I have argued, the reptile leather industry is extraordinarily cruel. Animals are often kept in unhygienic conditions and slaughter is usually done while the reptile is conscious. That means many animals are skinned while still alive.

The pet industry is little better. Reptiles are crammed into small boxes and flown as cargo all over the world, enduring days without food and water and in fluctuating temperatures. There is no guarantee that they will be better kept once they arrive at their new home.


The biggest demand for pet reptiles is in Europe and North America. This is an important and often overlooked point: advertising the harm that the exotic pet trade causes could help reduce demand where it is greatest.

The new research illuminates some of the areas where our understanding is most limited. We known that many reptiles are sold as ingredients in medicines for example, but we know almost nothing about the scale of this trade.

This requires investigation, as does the role of social media – including Facebook and WhatsApp – in supporting the buying and selling of reptiles and other wildlife.

The new study also raises an alternative to the way the wildlife trade is currently regulated. What if no trade was the default starting point?

Trade would only take place if there was sufficient evidence to show that it would not harm the survival of the species. This precautionary approach would address the lack of data for many species and also potentially simplify customs checks.

It's time to rethink how this trade is regulated, and our relationship to wildlife altogether.

Tanya Wyatt, Professor of Criminology, Northumbria University, Newcastle.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Huge Haul of Dinosaur Teeth Reveal The Spinosaurus Really Was a River Monster


Artistic reconstruction of new Spinosaurus description. (Gustavo Monroy-Becerril)
NATURE


CARLY CASSELLA
26 SEPTEMBER 2020

The discovery of more than a thousand fossilised teeth in a prehistoric river bed is eating away at our current definition of dinosaurs.

Today, palaeontologists generally consider this extinct group of reptiles to be solely land-based, but one enormous species simply won't stay dry.


The species, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, with its giant fin-like tail, has been causing waves in recent years, and some scientists are sure this dinosaur was a swimmer - the first known example among dinosaurs.

Now, hundreds of this creature's teeth, nearly half of the enormous haul found in Morocco, have this group more convinced than ever.

Spinosaurus teeth. (Beevor et al., Cretaceous Research, 2020)

"From this research we are able to confirm this location as the place where this gigantic dinosaur not only lived but also died," says palaeobiologist David Martill from the University of Portsmouth.

"The results are fully consistent with the idea of a truly water-dwelling 'river monster.'"

The massive haul of teeth belongs to both dinosaurs and some aquatic animals. Counting up over 1,200 fossils, researchers found just under half were from the Spinosaurus.

The sheer abundance of spinosaur teeth - relative to other dinosaurs - in the riverbed location is a reflection of their aquatic lifestyle, the team argues.

Artistic reconstruction of new Spinosaurus description. (Gustavo Monroy-Becerril)

"An animal living much of its life in water is much more likely to contribute teeth to the river deposit than those dinosaurs that perhaps only visited the river for drinking and feeding along its banks," they write.

In 2014, palaeontologist Nizar Ibrahim first made the case for a semi-aquatic Spinosaurus. Others who examined the fossils disagreed, arguing the dinosaur was a topsy-turvy floater at best, driven into the water by hunger for fish. Its skeleton, they said, was unsinkable.


Then, earlier this year, Ibrahim and his colleagues found a fossilised Spinosaurus tail - what some scientists have called a 'game-changer'.

The discovery added far more weight to the idea that this giant predator (famous for its cameo in Jurassic Park) spent at least some time swimming in the water (as it did in the film). So much so, the team declared its tail the first "unambiguous evidence for an aquatic propulsive structure in a dinosaur".

The new find in Morocco erases even more doubt. Ibrahim and his colleagues are now arguing the spinosaur was not just semi-aquatic but "largely aquatic" and spent "much of its life in water", where its teeth were shed at what is speculated to be a similar rate to modern crocodiles.

While many other Spinosaurus fossils have been obtained commercially, with unknown origins, these teeth come from the prehistoric Kem Kem river system, which once flowed from Morocco all the way to Algeria.

The ancient waterway, now long gone, was home to Cretaceous creatures like the sawfish, crocodiles, flying reptiles and, along its banks, dinosaurs.


During reconnaissance field work in the south east of Morocco, scientists discovered a sandstone bed of bone absolutely ridden with Cretaceous fossils.

Just over a kilometre away, the team met several miners in action, and they bought all the fossils the workers had found in the ancient river bank.

Spinosaur teeth have particular features that make them easy to identify, allowing the researchers to focus on them; the team found hundreds of fragments from the Spinosaurus - far more than any other dinosaur, or fish for that matter.

The authors admit the teeth might have gathered here from the Spinosaurus wading along the banks of the river, snatching its prey from the safety of the shore. But while the reptile's long neck might match up with that theory, its hind limbs aren't anything like those of modern wading birds, which are closely related to dinosaurs.

In fact, the authors say the short hindlimbs of spinosaurs are only consistent with one form of avian locomotion: active swimming.

And then there's simply the sheer number of teeth. Other dinosaurs were known to shed their teeth and wade on the shores of this river, too, so why are Spinosaurus fossils everywhere?

"With such an abundance of Spinosaurus teeth, it is highly likely that this animal was living mostly within the river rather than along its banks," argues University of Portsmouth palaeontologist Thomas Beevor.

The study was published in Cretaceous Research.

Archaeologists Found 115,000-Year-Old Human Footprints Where They Shouldn't Be

Caroline Delbert
House Beautiful 25 Sep 2020

Fossilized footprints in Saudi Arabia show human traffic on the cusp of a subsequent ice age.
Like carbon dating, scientists use isotopes and context clues to calculate the approximate age of fossils.

These human prints were surrounded by animals but not hunted animals, indicating humans were just thirsty.

A uniquely preserved prehistoric mudhole could hold the oldest-ever human footprints on the Arabian Peninsula, scientists say. The seven footprints, found amidst a clutter of hundreds of prehistoric animal prints, are estimated to be 115,000 years old.

⏳ You love badass history. So do we. Let's nerd out over it together.

Many fossil and artifact windfalls have come from situations like this special lakebed in northern Saudi Arabia. Archaeologists uncovered the site, deep in the Nefud Desert at a location nicknamed “the trace” in Arabic, in 2017, after time and weather wiped the overlying sediment away. It’s easy to imagine that a muddy lakebed was a high-traffic area in the Arabian Peninsula over 100,000 years ago.

When populations move on, these prints are left behind until they’re covered over. In the far, far older Burgess Shale event, some of the oldest organisms ever found were preserved intact because they likely fell into a mudslide and were killed instantly. An entire armored nodosaur was found in unprecedentedly good shape because it was encased in mud and in the cold of the ocean floor. If there were a finder’s fee for incredible archaeology, a lot of it would be paid to mud.

In their new paper, the scientists actually examine why that ancient mud was so special at all:


“An experimental study of modern human footprints in mud flats found that fine details were lost within 2 days and prints were rendered unrecognizable within four, and similar observations have been made for other non-hominin mammal tracks.”

That means their special, tiny batch of preserved footprints were made in unique conditions that also form a kind of “fingerprint” for pinning them all to the same timeframe. From there, scientists started to look at who made the footprints. Homo sapiens weren’t the only upright humanoid primate in the game, but the evidence, the scientists say, suggests we were the ones traipsing through the drying lakebed:

“Seven hominin footprints were confidently identified, and given the fossil and archeological evidence for the spread of H. sapiens into the Levant and Arabia during [the era 130,000 to 80,000 years ago] and absence of Homo neanderthalensis from the Levant at that time, we argue that H. sapiens was responsible for the tracks at Alathar. In addition, the size of the Alathar footprints is more consistent with those of early H. sapiens than H. neanderthalensis.”

The lake that forms Alathar today was likely part of a prehistoric highway that drew all the large animals in the area, forming a corridor dotted by freshwater rest areas that living things could travel on as they migrated with the weather or the changing climate. In this case, scientists found very little of the other factors that accompany prehistoric human travel, like knife or tool marks on animal bones indicating hunting.

“The lack of archaeological evidence suggests that the Alathar lake was only briefly visited by people,” the scientists conclude. “These findings indicate that transient lakeshore use by humans during a dry period of the last interglacial was likely primarily tied to the need for potable water.”

These Homo sapiens could be the last ones on their way through a temperate place as an impending ice age descends. That would also explain why their tracks weren’t tracked over by another group, at least not before an entire fresh layer of sediment accumulated.

“Immortal” In Tree Resin
An international team led by researchers at the University of Bonn extracted DNA from resin-embedded insects

On Sep 30, 2020


Credit: Georg Oleschinski / Universität Bonn

The phenomenon of using DNA from old fossils preserved in amber already inspired Hollywood – in the film Jurassic Park, scientists reproduce the DNA of dinosaurs extracted from a fossil mosquito embedded in a piece of amber and thereby resurrect them. In reality, however, the undertaking is much more difficult: all previous studies in which researchers took DNA samples from insects enclosed in tree resin were the results of modern environmental contamination and, in addition, were unreproducible, subsequently useless under the scientific method. An international team led by researchers at the University of Bonn now detected DNA from ambrosia beetles that were trapped in recent tree resin for less than seven years. The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.


Using so-called ancient DNA, scientists can draw conclusions about long gone times and the organisms living there. The use of organisms trapped in amber (fossil tree resin) with this finality was thought not to be possible after relatively recent fails in looking for DNA in a few thousand-year-old samples.

“Our new results show that it is indeed possible to genetically study organisms that were embedded in resin, although we do not know the time limit yet” emphasizes study leader Dr. David Peris of the Institute for Geosciences and Meteorology at the University of Bonn. The superordinate aim of the researchers is to dissolve step by step fundamental aspects of the DNA preservation in the resin and to determine the real temporal border, until when DNA in resins remains preserved.

Focus on relatively young resin samples

“Instead of looking for DNA in amber of 100 million years old or more, to dream about the resurrection of dinosaurs, we should start by detecting it in insects trapped a few years ago in resin,” highlights David Peris. The resin samples used were six and two years old and came from Madagascar. To detect the DNA, the scientists established a method based on the technique called polymerase chain reaction, which makes it possible to multiply genetic material in a test tube. This method is well-known in criminology and recently became famous, as the basic technology for the detection of the SARS-CoV-2. “This method allowed us to perform several authenticity checks, so that we could say certain that the detected DNA in our experiments was indeed from the beetles preserved in the resin,” explains Kathrin Janssen of the Institute of Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Parasitology, also part of University of Bonn, the second lead author.

The researchers found that water is stored in the embedded samples longer than previously thought, which has a negative effect on the stability of the DNA. In the future, the scientists plan to gradually analyze older samples with more sensitive “next generation sequencing” methods. “Investigating the time limit of DNA conservation and many other related issues is the aim of future experiments,” summarizes Kathrin Janssen.


###

Participating institutions:

Besides the University of Bonn, the Universitat de Barcelona, the Instituto Geológico y Minero de España (both Spain), the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt am Main and the University of Bergen (Norway) were involved in the study.

Publication: David Peris*, Kathrin Janssen*, H. Jonas Barthel, Gabriele Bierbaum, Xavier Delclòs, Enrique Peñalver, Mónica M. Solórzano-Kraemer, Bjarte H. Jordal, and Jes Rust: DNA from resin-embedded organisms: past, present and future. PLOS ONE, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0239521 *Equal contribution


https://www.uni-bonn.de/news/215-2020
Related Journal Article
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239521

Driven By Climate, More Frequent, Severe Wildfires In Cascade Range Reshape Forests
BIOLOGY
On Sep 24, 2020

Credit: Courtesy of Sebastian Busby | Portland State University

In recent years — and 2020 is no exception — parts of the Pacific Northwest that are typically too wet to burn are experiencing more frequent, severe and larger wildfires due to changes in climate. New research from Portland State University found that while the increased wildfire activity is causing widespread changes in the structure and composition of these mid-to-high elevation forests, the new landscapes are also likely more resilient to projected upward trends in future fire activity and climate conditions.

The study, led by PSU graduate student Sebastian Busby, examined temperate forests that burned expansively, severely and repeatedly between 2003 and 2015 in the central Cascade Range of Oregon and Washington. On Mt. Adams, these wildfires included the 2008 Cold Springs, 2012 Cascade Creek and 2015 Cougar Creek fires. On Mt. Jefferson, the wildfires included the 2003 Booth and Bear Butte Complex, 2007 Warm Springs Area Lightning Complex and 2014 Bear Butte 2 fires. Some areas Busby studied have burned again this summer as part of the Lionshead fire in the Mt. Jefferson area.

Busby said that historically, wet and cool climate limited fire events in these humid forest environments to an interval of 50 to 200-plus years. But climate change has led to warmer winters, reduced mountain snowpack and longer, drier summers and fire seasons. The time between repeated wildfire events in this study was less than 12 years.

“These forests are drying out earlier in the year, making them more vulnerable to frequent, severe and larger wildfires,” Busby said. “Because these forests have not historically burned very often, they’re composed of high densities of tree species that are not well-adapted to frequent and very large severe fires.”

True firs were the dominant conifer tree species across the study areas, but post-fire tree regeneration was generally very poor due to a lack of live mature trees remaining after the fires to reseed the forest.

The burned areas, however, did support the establishment of pines at a low density, which are functionally better adapted to fire. The findings suggest that in the near term, these forests may transition from a dense fir-dominated conifer forest into a patchy, low-density, pine-dominated forest that will likely lack the fuel connectivity conducive to crown fires. Busby said that while widespread forest composition change and forest cover loss may be alarming, the results indicate that the altered structure and composition are likely to be more resilient in the face of future fire and climate conditions, such as drought and heatwave events.

“From an ecological point of view, these reburned forests are going to have a greater abundance of tree species that are better adapted to fire and potentially have less flammable forest structure overall,” he said. “Now, in these post-reburned forests that are growing in a warmer and drier world, it will be up to us to decide whether we let future fires burn or not.”

If forest managers and other stakeholders choose to suppress them, they risk returning these forests to their historical dense structures, which thrived in cool and wet climates. However, under ongoing warming conditions, this alternative might increase the likelihood of severe and expansive fires in the future, negatively impacting human life, property, and natural resources.

“Wildfires are a natural ecological process on these landscapes and have been for thousands of years,” Busby said. “Wildfire can be a great catalyst for change, but that change doesn’t have to be entirely negative. We must learn to co-exist with wildfires, use them effectively, and embrace the positive elements they bring to our regional forests and ecosystems.”

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The findings are published in the journal Ecosphere. Busby’s co-authors are Andrés Holz, associate professor of geography at PSU, and Kevan Moffett, assistant professor of environmental hydrology at Washington State University-Vancouver.



https://www.pdx.edu/news/driven-climate-more-frequent-severe-wildfires-cascade-range-reshape-forests 

Related Journal Article

http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3247

Intelligent Camera Technology To Revolutionize Plastics Recycling

A new research project is aiming to develop a camera-based separation system that can separate plastic waste according to type. Implemented at plastic recyclers, the industry will be able to significantly increase the use of recycled plastics.


Credit: Lars Kruse, AU Foto.


A new research project is aiming to develop a camera-based separation system that can separate plastic waste according to type. The machine will be implemented at plastic recyclers, enabling the manufacturing industry to significantly increase the use of recycled plastics.

With a DKK 22.7 million (EUR 3 million) grant from Innovation Fund Denmark, Aarhus University has teamed up with waste management and recycling companies Vestforbrænding I/S, Dansk Affaldsminimering ApS and PLASTIX A/S in a project to develop a new technology that has the potential to significantly increase the purity of recycled plastic materials.

In contrast to common belief, plastic is not just one material, but rather a plethora of chemical compounds and filler materials, depending on its use. Plastic is therefore quite difficult to recycle at large scale, because the materials cannot simply be ‘boiled’ into one big, uniform and reusable material.

“Plastic is not just plastic. There are all sorts of different types of polymers, and they are virtually impossible to mix. For this reason, we want to develop equipment that can separate different plastics according to their specific properties by using three different types of cameras. This will make it possible to categorise plastic waste according to its exact properties, and then divide it into fractions that are actually usable,” says Associate Professor Mogens Hinge from the Department of Engineering at Aarhus University, who is heading the project.

It is important for several reasons that plastic waste can be sorted by type, says Head of Recycling and Reuse at Vestforbrænding I/S, Yvonne Amskov:

“With this new technology, we can increase the quality of citizens’ plastic waste and help send it back into the production cycle. Secondly, traceability is important to us, since it makes the entire process transparent and enables us to showcase what actually happens to citizens’ waste and how – specifically – it is recycled,” she says.

The separation will be controlled by artificial intelligence, and it will contain three different types of camera; a CMOS camera, a hyperspectral camera and a terahertz camera, that together can photograph the properties of the plastic material directly on a conveyor-belt system.

A CMOS camera is an ordinary digital camera like those in smartphones. The hyperspectral camera can register far more wavelengths than the human eye, and can therefore read the unique spectral signatures of different plastic types and a terahertz camera can register the refractive index of materials.

“Terahertz provides a detailed image of the specific properties of a given plastic material. Using terahertz technology, we can characterise material properties very accurately,” says Assistant Professor Pernille Klarskov Pedersen, an expert in terahertz technology from the Department of Engineering, Aarhus University.

The project is known as Re-Plast, and it will provide solutions to the major, global challenge of managing and recycling plastic waste using very accurate plastics separation, product documentation and materials traceability. The goal is recycled plastic with a plastic purity of at least 96 per cent by polymer type and sorted according to unwanted colours, filler materials, etc.

“By coupling the spectroscopic signals obtained with the chemical composition of the plastic, we can achieve pure, well-documented plastic fractions, which can then be recycled in the Danish plastics industry. The Re-Plast project aims to develop this technology, make it work, and then implement it in the industry. We want to take the technology all the way and show that it really does work at plastic recyclers. This will really boost the Danish circular economy,” says Mogens Hinge.