Thousands of May Day protesters raise the pressure on Macron


Issued on: 01/05/2022 - 

03:50 May Day marchers in Paris, France on May 1, 2022. © Alain Jocard, AFP

Text by: NEWS WIRES|
Video by: Clovis CASALI


Thousands of people joined May Day protests across France on Sunday to demand social justice and salary increases and to push newly re-elected President Emmanuel Macron to drop his plan to raise the retirement age.

The cost of living was the main theme in the presidential election campaign and looks set to be equally prominent ahead of June legislative elections that Macron's party and its allies must win if he is to be able to implement his pro-business policies, including increasing retirement age to 65 for 62.

About 250 rallies were organised in Paris and other cities including Lille, Nantes, Toulouse and Marseille.

In the French capital, trade unionists were joined by political figures - mostly from the left - and climate activists.

Marchers carried banners reading "Retirement Before Arthritis", "Retirement at 60, Freeze Prices" and "Macron, Get Out".

"The stronger the mobilisation for this May Day, the harder we will be able to weigh on the government's policies," Philippe Martinez, the head of the hardline CGT union, told Reuters before the rallies.

>> May 1, International Workers’ Day: A brief history of resistance

"The government has got to deal with the purchasing power problem by raising wages," he said.

Macron won a new five-year presidential term after beating far-right challenger Marine Le Pen in last Sunday's runoff vote.

Among key protester demands: halting pension reform plans and an increase in wages

Far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, who came third in the first round of the presidential vote, was attending the Paris march.

He wants to rally a union of the left, including the Greens, to dominate parliament and force Macron into an awkward "cohabitation" but so far this has not materialised.

"We will not make a single concession on pensions," Melenchon said before the march started.

He said he still hoped an agreement to build a new "popular union" of the left could be reached by this evening.

Unlike in previous years, Marine Le Pen did not lay a wreath in Paris at the statue of Joan or Arc, whom her party uses as a nationalist symbol. She was replaced by the Rassemblement National Interim President Jordan Bardella, who said Le Pen was preparing for the legislative elections.

Le Pen urged voters in a video message to elect as many deputies from her party as possible in June so that she could "protect your purchasing power" and prevent Macron from carrying a "harmful project for France and the French people". France will hold parliamentary elections on June 12 and 19.

(REUTERS)

 

Did colonialism exacerbate the diabetes epidemic?

South Asians from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are six times more likely to develop diabetes as compared to Europeans. Dr Mubin Syed, a radiologist from Ohio, says famines in these regions that occurred during British colonialism could have contributed to the problem.

Declaration for the Future of the Internet

The Internet has been revolutionary. It provides unprecedented opportunities for people around the world to connect and to express themselves, and continues to transform the global economy, enabling economic opportunities for billions of people. Yet it has also created serious policy challenges. Globally, we are witnessing a trend of rising digital authoritarianism where some states act to repress freedom of expression, censor independent news sites, interfere with elections, promote disinformation, and deny their citizens other human rights. At the same time, millions of people still face barriers to access and cybersecurity risks and threats undermine the trust and reliability of networks.

Democratic governments and other partners are rising to the challenge. Today, the United States with more than 60 partners from around the globe launched the Declaration for the Future of the Internet.

This Declaration represents a political commitment among Declaration partners to advance a positive vision for the Internet and digital technologies. It reclaims the promise of the Internet in the face of the global opportunities and challenges presented by the 21st century. It also reaffirms and recommits its partners to a single global Internet – one that is truly open and fosters competition, privacy, and respect for human rights. The Declaration’s principles include commitments to:Protect human rights and fundamental freedoms of all people;

Promote a global Internet that advances the free flow of information;

Advance inclusive and affordable connectivity so that all people can benefit from the digital economy;

Promote trust in the global digital ecosystem, including through protection of privacy; and

Protect and strengthen the multistakeholder approach to governance that keeps the Internet running for the benefit of all.

In signing this Declaration, the United States and partners will work together to promote this vision and its principles globally, while respecting each other’s regulatory autonomy within our own jurisdictions and in accordance with our respective domestic laws and international legal obligations.

Over the last year, the United States has worked with partners from all over the world – including civil society, industry, academia, and other stakeholders to reaffirm the vision of an open, free, global, interoperable, reliable, and secure Internet and reverse negative trends in this regard. Under this vision, people everywhere will benefit from an Internet that is unified unfragmented; facilitates global communications and commerce; and supports freedom, innovation, education and trust.


DOWNLOAD THE DECLARATION (PDF) [62 KB]

THE DECLARATION FOR THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET PARTNERS

Albania | Andorra | Argentina | Australia | Austria | Belgium | Bulgaria | Cabo Verde | Canada | Colombia | Costa Rica | Croatia | Cyprus | Czech Republic | Denmark | Dominican Republic | Estonia | The European Commission | Finland | France | Georgia | Germany | Greece | Hungary | Iceland | Ireland | Israel | Italy | Jamaica | Japan | Kenya | Kosovo | Latvia | Lithuania | Luxembourg | Maldives | Malta | Marshall Islands | Micronesia | Moldova | Montenegro | Netherlands | New Zealand | Niger | North Macedonia | Palau | Peru | Poland | Portugal | Romania | Senegal | Serbia | Slovakia | Slovenia | Spain | Sweden | Taiwan | Trinidad and Tobago | the United Kingdom | Ukraine | Uruguay

OPEN CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

The Declaration remains open to all governments or relevant authorities willing to commit and implement its vision and principles. Contact the nearest U.S. embassy, mission, or representative to learn more.

How the 'vile' internet birthplace of QAnon is still inciting violence

Tom Boggioni
May 01, 2022

QAnon supporter (AFP)

According to a report from the Guardian, despite increasing awareness of domestic violence being fomented online following the Jan 6th Capitol riot, the message boards where QAnon gained a foothold and radicalized conservatives are thriving and filled with more exhortations to take up arms against Americans.

As The Guardian's Justin Ling reported, a recent mass shooting in Washington D.C., where a gunman shot four random people from his home before turning his gun on himself, appears linked to violent online rhetoric.

According to Ling, the April 22 shooting "was only the most recent mass-casualty attack to spawn out of the ugly extremist culture of unregulated internet message boards such as 4chan."

"That particular forum gave birth to QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory that Donald Trump is combating a cabal of leftist pedophiles, before it moved on to its even-more-extreme cousin 8chan," he wrote. "QAnon has been particularly effective in crafting the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump, inspiring the Capitol riot on 6 January 2021. A bipartisan Senate committee connected seven deaths to the attack."

RELATED: There's a 'new boogeyman' freaking out Americans susceptible to conspiracy theories

According to Oren Segal, vice-president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, no one should be suprised that violent attacks will continue.

“The chans – 4chan, 8chan, etc – are some of the most vile places on the internet,” Segal explained adding w that what might seem like black humor also encourages violent acts that "seeps outside the confines of the message boards."

Case in point, someone logged onto 4chan as "Raymond Spencer" -- the same name as the April 22 shooter -- 2 minutes before the shooting began and "started a new thread titled 'shool [sic] shooting'."

As Ling wrote, "The newly published message contained a link – to a 30-second video of images captured from the digital scope of Spencer’s rifle. The clip streamed images and sounds of the barrage of bullets which slammed into cars and shattered windows at an adjacent school while also maiming four strangers."

"Anti-extremist groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center have warned for years that 4chan and 8chan would continue inspiring domestic terror attacks. Cassie Miller, a researcher at the center, analyzed a self-selected survey of users to a white supremacist webforum. She found nearly 25% reported that they considered themselves radicalized – or, in their terms, 'redpilled' – by the culture of 4chan and 8chan," the Guardian report states before adding, "It was tied for the single most-reported pathway to radicalization."

As Segal notes, the forums continue to be a type of “cheering section" for violent acts, with the analyst warning they "normalize the kinds of narratives and grievances that are dangerous.”

Yiou can read more here.

CA$INO CAPITALI$M
Warren Buffett drops the hammer on Wall Street for turning the market into a 'gambling parlor'
Tom Boggioni
April 30, 2022

Warren Buffett. (Photo via Yuri Gripas for AFP)

Billionaire Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett hammered Wall Street stockbrokers and investment bankers on Saturday at his annual shareholders' meeting.

According to CNBC, the 91-year-old spoke at length and slammed the brokerages for encouraging clients to gamble on the market so they can profit from it.

The report states Buffett told the audience, "Wall Street makes money, one way or another, catching the crumbs that fall off the table of capitalism. They don’t make money unless people do things, and they get a piece of them. They make a lot more money when people are gambling than when they are investing.”

CNBC's Hugh Son added, "Buffett bemoaned that large American companies have 'became poker chips' for market speculation. He cited soaring use of call options, saying that brokers make more money from these bets than simple investing."

Buffett's longtime Berkshire Hathaway partner Charlie Munger also piled on Wall Street bankers, telling the crowd, "We have people who know nothing about stocks being advised by stockbrokers who know even less. It’s an incredible, crazy situation."

"I don’t think any wise country would want this outcome," Munger added. "Why would you want your country’s stock to trade on a casino?”

CNBC's Son added, "Warren Buffett has a long history of deriding investment bankers and their institutions –saying that they encourage mergers and spinoffs to reap fees, rather than improve companies."

You can read more here.

The cult of Elon Musk: Why do some of us worship billionaires?

Matthew Rozsa,

 Salon
April 29, 2022

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, and his brother Kimbal, a Tesla director, are under investigation by the federal regulators on suspicion of insider trading, according to a report. 

- Saul Martinez/Getty Images North America/TNS

Less than 24 hours after agreeing to purchase Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk may have already broken the deal which allowed him to perform a hostile takeover of the social media company. Although one of the terms is that he may only tweet about the acquisition "so long as such tweets do not disparage the Company or any of its Representatives," he posted two tweets on Tuesday which parroted right-wing talking points that attacked specific employees.

Normally there would not be many individuals applauding a wealthy CEO who purchased a company and then immediately attacked vulnerable employees, almost certainly knowing that doing so would instigate mass harassment against said employees (which is exactly what happened). In normal contexts, such a person would be classified as nothing more than a bully. Then again, when you are a billionaire with a cult of personality, there will always be people who applaud your actions.

How does a supercilious, uncharismatic billionaire bully attract a horde of ardent fans? According to experts, it all comes down to basic tenets of human psychology. Many people fantasize about being billionaires, so when they root for Musk, they're really rooting for what they perceive as a version of themselves — namely, as masters of the universe, "winners" in every sense that mainstream society deems worthy. In the process, they also reveal their own deep feelings of inadequacy.

"Most people aspire to a lifestyle that they're not willing to work for or that they can't afford," explained Dr. Tara Bieber, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In her interview with Salon, she emphasized that she was speaking from a strictly scientific perspective; this was not a question of any individual's political beliefs. It was, instead, a manifestation of the same trends that has caused past billionaires to amass cults of personality alongside their dollars: automotive entrepreneur Henry Ford, business magnate Howard Hughes, and more recently Apple founder Steve Jobs. Each of them possessed an undeniable charisma that drew people to them, and each carefully cultivated a public image consistent with the aspirational values of their time.

And, unsurprisingly, they also checked the right demographic boxes to benefit from various forms of societal privilege. For one thing, they are almost always white. For another, they are almost always male.

"One immediate commonality that I see is that all of these famed, admired, and perhaps infamous business leaders are male, and the stories we tell about them reflect an admiration for prototypical male qualities," Karen M. Landay, PhD, Assistant Professor of Management at the Henry W. Bloch School of Management at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, told Salon by email. Yet it is not the maleness that allows them to develop a billionaire cult of personality; that is only their foot through the door.

The next step is having psychopathic traits.

"I don't want to comment on whether [Musk] is one or not, because he's not my patient," Bieber told Salon. "But some of the psychopathic traits are being very charming, being very persuasive, being fearless and ruthless." All of these qualities were attributes to people like Ford, Hughes, Jobs and Musk, and each one can work to the benefit of society — if channeled correctly.

"Basically the difference between what we would call a psychopath and people that we admire is like a surgeon or a killer, a judge, or a gangster, they may have some of the same characteristics, but are either at a different intelligence level or they're doing things that are actually unacceptable to society," Bieber explained. As Landay explained, psychopathic tendencies consist of three personality traits: boldness, "such as interpersonal dominance"; lack of empathy and a tendency toward being mean; and disinhibition, "such as impulsivity."

"Essentially, individuals with psychopathic tendencies have the potential to be much a much worse than average jerk, yet because of those very qualities, it's plausible that they might find great success in business organizations," Landay told Salon. These can be used to benefit humankind — or only to glorify the billionaire's own ego. In the case of Musk taking over Twitter, the exhilaration from his supporters seems to stem both from a belief that he will help right-wing causes and from the sense that Musk can say or do whatever he wants without consequences. It is a dream come true for them, albeit lived out by another man.

Nor is that the only fantasy Musk is living out for these admirers.

"They're being fed the messages from society that you should be rich," Bieber told Salon. "You should have a nice car. You should have a beautiful girlfriend. And so they look at him and he's got those things and they want to be like him." Since they cannot actually acquire those things — and, if they try to create a poor facsimile in their own lives, will almost certainly know on some level that it is fraudulent — they respond in toxic ways.

"Unfortunately, I think it gives some people permission to behave badly to say mean things on social media, to treat their family members badly," Bieber explained. Even though they are not Musk and will never be Musk, "they'll take the aspects of his behavior and personality that they can play out and they'll do those in their real life."

If it seems like there is a macho subtext to all of this glorification, that isn't a coincidence.

"Interestingly, my own research on psychopathic tendencies revealed that when men and women engage in similar behaviors indicative of psychopathic tendencies, while men are rewarded, women are punished," Landay explained. "That is, men displaying these bold, mean, disinhibited behaviors are more likely to become leaders and be viewed as effective leaders, whereas women displaying those same behaviors are less likely than men to become leaders and more likely to be viewed as ineffective leaders."

Emma Haslett of The New Statesman used a similar lens to analyze Musk's behavior in a November article, one that assessed how Musk has leveraged his cult of personality into a volatile asset for his business brand.

The answer lies, at least in part, in Musk and his unfiltered personality. The New York Times described him as "at once a capitalist hero, a glossy magazine celebrity and a bomb-throwing troll". His communiques – like the "Tits university" and its "epic merch" – have given him cult-like status. He has smoked weed on a podcast, he tweets whatever he wants (including unsubstantiated accusations of paedophilia), and in 2018 he caused outrage (and a drop in shares) when he bemoaned analysts' "boring, bonehead" questions. Traditional investors see him as dangerously volatile – but his followers regard him as relatable and refreshingly down-to-earth.

At the end of the day, the cult of Elon Musk can best be understood using the same lens that Musk himself seems to apply to his day-to-day life: self-interest.

"Those who benefit from Musk's behavior will celebrate it, whereas those who don't (or perceive some loss due to his behavior) will decry it," Landay wrote to Salon. "In the case of Musk's purchase of Twitter, because of events such as the infamous ban of Donald Trump, based on Musk's prior comments, people on the right of the political spectrum are likely expecting a benefit in the form of loosening those restrictions and possibly a return of Trump's famously erratic Twitter behavior. For people on the left of the political spectrum, Trump's ban has been a welcome reprieve, so with Musk's ownership of Twitter, they're likely expecting to lose that reprieve."

Satellites detect California cow burps, a major methane source, from space

Reuters
April 30, 2022


By Valerie Volcovici

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Satellites have detected methane emissions from belching cows at a California feedlot, marking the first time emissions from livestock - a major component of agricultural methane - could be measured from space.

Environmental data firm GHGSat this month analyzed data from its satellites and pinpointed the methane source from a feedlot in the agricultural Joaquin Valley near Bakersfield, California in February.

This is significant, according to GHGSat, because agricultural methane emissions are hard to measure and accurate measurement is needed to set enforceable reduction targets for the beef-production industry.

GHGSat said the amount of methane it detected from that single feedlot would result in 5,116 tonnes of methane emissions if sustained for a year. If that methane were captured, it could power over 15,000 homes, it said.

Agriculture contributes 9.6% to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and about 36% of methane emissions, mostly from livestock.

The Biden administration late last year announced its plan to crack down on methane emissions from the U.S. economy.

The EPA unveiled its first rules aimed at reducing methane from existing oil and gas sources that require companies to detect and repair methane leaks. The Agriculture Department rolled out a voluntary incentive program for farmers.

At last year's climate talks, more than 100 countries pledged to cut methane emissions by 30% and to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. Much of this reduction would need to come from the livestock industry, according to the U.N. food agency, which said that livestock accounts for 44% of man-made methane emissions.

Several methods to reduce livestock methane emissions are being tested, including adding seaweed to cattle diets.

GHGSat provides its data to the United Nations' International Methane Emissions Observatory program.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Outrage erupts over anti-Semitic evangelical having the chutzpah to declare he would lead Holocaust march at Auschwitz

Bob Brigham
April 30, 2022

Photo by Eelco Böhtlingk on Unsplash

Former Donald Trump evangelical advisor Dr. Michael D. Evans created a stir when he announced he would be leading a "March of the Living" from Auschwitz to Birkenau in Poland to commemorate Yom HaShoah, a Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Writing in Religion Dispatches, Ben Lorber and Aidan Orly wrote "progressive Jewish activists such as ourselves have long expressed discomfort over the nationalist, militarist version of Holocaust memory on display at the March of the Living. This year, however, we were doubly concerned when headlines briefly declared that prominent Christian Zionist leader and antisemite Mike Evans would be leading the march."

"Within hours, March organizers clarified that although Evans would be attending, “he has no official role in the planned events.” But why would Evans have the chutzpah to jubilantly make such a patently false declaration to the press? And what does this tell us about the contemporary Christian Zionist movement? Among other things it tells us that in spite of (or rather, in line with) the movement’s support for an expansionist, reactionary, and exclusively Jewish Israel, Christian Zionism is one of the largest antisemitic movements in the world today," they wrote.

In 2017, Evans visited the White House to present Trump a Friends of Zion Award.

"Evans’ brand of antisemitism, masked as philosemitism and enthusiastic support for Israel, is common amongst Christian Zionist leaders. These leaders tend to believe Jewish ingathering in Israel is key to hastening the End Times, in which Jesus will return to Earth to bring salvation to Christians while non-Christians, including Muslims and Jews, will either accept Jesus as their Savior or face eternal damnation and physical annihilation," they wrote. "Many right-wing Israeli outlets celebrated the false news that Evans would lead the march, reinforcing the close relationship between Christian Zionist leaders and the Israeli Right in the post-Trump era."

Read the full analysis here.

Special Message Battle for the Soul of America Dr Mike Evans

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Blasting out Earth’s location with the hope of reaching aliens is a controversial idea – two teams of scientists are doing it anyway

The Conversation
April 30, 2022

Planets in space and a spiral galaxy (Shutterstock.com)

If a person is lost in the wilderness, they have two options. They can search for civilization, or they could make themselves easy to spot by building a fire or writing HELP in big letters. For scientists interested in the question of whether intelligent aliens exist, the options are much the same.

For over 70 years, astronomers have been scanning for radio or optical signals from other civilizations in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, called SETI. Most scientists are confident that life exists on many of the 300 million potentially habitable worlds in the Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers also think there is a decent chance some life forms have developed intelligence and technology. But no signals from another civilization have ever been detected, a mystery that is called “The Great Silence.”

While SETI has long been a part of mainstream science, METI, or messaging extraterrestrial intelligence, has been less common.

I’m a professor of astronomy who has written extensively about the search for life in the universe. I also serve on the advisory council for a nonprofit research organization that’s designing messages to send to extraterrestrial civilizations.

In the coming months, two teams of astronomers are going to send messages into space in an attempt to communicate with any intelligent aliens who may be out there listening.

These efforts are like building a big bonfire in the woods and hoping someone finds you. But some people question whether it is wise to do this at all.
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The Pioneer 10 spacecraft carries this plaque, which describes some basic information about humans and the Earth.
Carl Sagan, Frank Drake, Linda Salzman Sagan, NASA Ames Research Center via WikimediaCommons

The history of METI

Early attempts to contact life off Earth were quixotic messages in a bottle.

In 1972, NASA launched the Pioneer 10 spacecraft toward Jupiter carrying a plaque with a line drawing of a man and a woman and symbols to show where the craft originated. In 1977, NASA followed this up with the famous Golden Record attached to the Voyager 1 spacecraft.

These spacecraft – as well as their twins, Pioneer 11 and Voyager 2 – have now all left the solar system. But in the immensity of space, the odds that these or any other physical objects will be found are fantastically minuscule.

Electromagnetic radiation is a much more effective beacon.

Astronomers beamed the first radio message designed for alien ears from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in 1974. The series of 1s and 0s was designed to convey simple information about humanity and biology and was sent toward the globular cluster M13. Since M13 is 25,000 light-years away, you shouldn’t hold your breath for a reply.

In addition to these purposeful attempts at sending a message to aliens, wayward signals from television and radio broadcasts have been leaking into space for nearly a century. This ever-expanding bubble of earthly babble has already reached millions of stars. But there is a big difference between a focused blast of radio waves from a giant telescope and diffuse leakage – the weak signal from a show like “I Love Lucy” fades below the hum of radiation left over from the Big Bang soon after it leaves the solar system.


The new FAST telescope in China is the largest radio telescope ever built and will be used to send a message toward the center of the galaxy.
Ou Dongqu/Xinhua via Getty Images

Sending new messages

Nearly half a century after the Arecibo message, two international teams of astronomers are planning new attempts at alien communication. One is using a giant new radio telescope, and the other is choosing a compelling new target.

One of these new messages will be sent from the world’s largest radio telescope, in China, sometime in 2023. The telescope, with a 1,640-foot (500-meter) diameter, will beam a series of radio pulses over a broad swath of sky. These on-off pulses are like the 1s and 0s of digital information.

The message is called “The Beacon in the Galaxy” and includes prime numbers and mathematical operators, the biochemistry of life, human forms, the Earth’s location and a time stamp. The team is sending the message toward a group of millions of stars near the center of the Milky Way galaxy, about 10,000 to 20,000 light-years from Earth. While this maximizes the pool of potential aliens, it means it will be tens of thousands of years before Earth may get a reply.

The other attempt is targeting only a single star, but with the potential for a much quicker reply. On Oct. 4, 2022, a team from the Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station in England will beam a message toward the star TRAPPIST-1. This star has seven planets, three of which are Earth-like worlds in the so-called “Goldilocks zone” – meaning they could be home to liquid and potentially life, too. TRAPPIST-1 is just 39 light-years away, so it could take as few as 78 years for intelligent life to receive the message and Earth to get the reply.


The center of the Milky Way galaxy may be home to intelligent life, but some researchers think contacting aliens is a bad idea.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/CXC/STScI

Ethical questions

The prospect of alien contact is ripe with ethical questions, and METI is no exception.

The first is: Who speaks for Earth? In the absence of any international consultation with the public, decisions about what message to send and where to send it are in the hands of a small group of interested scientists.

But there is also a much deeper question. If you are lost in the woods, getting found is obviously a good thing. When it comes to whether humanity should be broadcasting a message to aliens, the answer is much less clear-cut.

Before he died, iconic physicist Stephen Hawking was outspoken about the danger of contacting aliens with superior technology. He argued that they could be malign and if given Earth’s location, might destroy humanity. Others see no extra risk, since a truly advanced civilization would already know of our existence. And there is interest. Russian-Israeli billionaire Yuri Milner has offered $1 million for the best design of a new message and an effective way to transmit it.

To date, no international regulations govern METI, so the experiments will continue, despite concerns.

For now, intelligent aliens remain in the realm of science fiction. Books like “The Three-Body Problem” by Cixin Liu offer somber and thought-provoking perspectives on what the success of METI efforts might look like. It doesn’t end well for humanity in the books. If humans ever do make contact in real life, I hope the aliens come in peace.

Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona

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

Does this dinosaur ‘graveyard’ reveal their final day on Earth? An expert explores the evidence

The Conversation
May 01, 2022

David Attenborough presents the BBC’s groundbreaking documentary, Dinosaurs: The Final Day. 

BBC Studios / Ali Pares / Sam Barker / Chris Lavington-Woods / Lola Post Production

Buried in the rocks in North Dakota lies evidence of the exact day the dinosaurs were obliterated from the planet, some 66 million years ago. That’s the claim of palaeontologist Robert DePalma and colleagues, whose work was captured by the BBC in its recent landmark documentary Dinosaurs: The Final Day with David Attenborough

For the last ten years, DePalma has focused his work on a fossil rich site – which he has named “Tanis” – in North Dakota’s Hell Creek Formation. And since 2019, he and his colleagues have put forward some very strong claims about what Tanis tells us about the end of the Cretaceous period.

DePalma believes that Tanis is a mass graveyard of creatures killed during the asteroid strike.

There is no doubt that an asteroid led to the mass extinction of non-avian dinosaurs – and at least 50% of other species – 66 million years ago. But there has been some controversy around DePalma’s claim that the site documents the very day that the asteroid struck – and reveals direct evidence of the very last dinosaurs on Earth.

So, let’s take a look at what we know about this most important time in our planet’s history – and what remains uncertain.

The huge asteroid collision

When the asteroid impact theory was first proposed in 1980, there was no crater. The only evidence was two sites with substantial enrichment of iridium – an element that arrives on the Earth’s surface from outer space – in the rocks exactly at the level of the end of the Cretaceous.

Now there are hundreds of places worldwide showing the iridium spike, at what is known as the K-Pg (Cretaceous-Paleogene) boundary, a geological signature in the sediment.

And then in 1991 came the huge breakthrough - the Chicxulub crater was found in what is now the Yucatán Peninsula in southern Mexico.

At 180km (110 miles) wide, and 20km (12 miles) deep, the crater shows that a huge 10km (six mile) wide asteroid crashed into the sea. Its force was so great, that it unleashed huge tsunami waves, as well as massive amounts of rock debris and dust containing iridium into the atmosphere – and also triggered a powerful heat wave.

Most experts agree that all life within around 1,700km (1,000 miles) of the collision would have been wiped out instantly.

But Tanis was more than 2,800km (or 1,800 miles) away. And up until now, there was no evidence of the very last dinosaurs. So, what’s the basis for DePalma’s groundbreaking revelation that Tanis finally provides the elusive evidence of the dinosaurs’ last day?

Asteroid evidence at Tanis

There is little doubt that the Tanis site lies close to the end of the Cretaceous Period, because DePalma has identified the iridium layer immediately above the fossil bed, which places it at the K-Pg boundary.

He has also presented some compelling pieces of evidence that the site marks the exact day the asteroid struck.

First, there are the ancient channels in the sedimentary rocks at Tanis – these are evidence of the huge standing water (or “seiche”) waves which engulfed Tanis. At that time North America was divided by a great seaway that passed close to the Tanis site: the seiche waves would have run up the creeks, and out again, several times, mixing fresh and sea waters to create the waves.

The ground-borne shock waves from the asteriod impact – which caused the devastating water surges – could readily travel through the Earth’s crust from the impact site to Tanis.

When the asteroid crashed into Earth, tiny ejector spherules, glassy beads about 1mm wide, were formed from melted molten rock – and were able to travel up to around 3,200km (2,000 miles) through the atmosphere because they were so light.

Astonishingly, DePalma found these glassy spherules at the site, and also in the gills of sturgeon fossils which occupied the Tanis streams. He believes the spherules were produced by the Chicxulub impact because of their shared chemistry, with some even encapsulating “fragments of the asteroid” itself. If this is true, their occurrence at Tanis would indeed confirm that they mark the actual day of impact, because the spherules would have fallen to the ground within hours of the impact.

Tanis fossil findings

From decades of study of the rocks and fossils at Hell Creek Formation, we know that Tanis was a warm and wet forest environment, with a thriving ecosystem full of dinosaurs, pterosaurs (flying reptiles), turtles and early mammals. Although they are yet to be described in detail, DePalma and colleagues reveal some incredible new fossils of animals – and he believes they could well have died on the day of the impact itself, due to their location in the doomed Tanis sandbank.

First, there’s an exceptionally preserved leg of the herbivorous dinosaur Thescelosaurus, which shows not only the bones, but also skin and other soft tissues.

But that’s not all. There is a pterosaur baby, just about to hatch from its egg – and, some incredibly well preserved Triceratops skin, which is an extremely unusual find.

Even more astonishingly, there is a turtle impaled by a stick, which DePalma believes could be evidence of a tragic death in the turbulent seiche waves set off by the impact.

DePalma’s final claim is that the impact, and final day, occurred in May, based on microscopic and geochemical analysis of growth rings in the fin spines of the fossil sturgeon. The bones show seasonal banding – where bone grows rapidly when food is abundant and slowly when conditions are poorer, so often summers are shown by a wide pale band and winters by a narrow dark band. The last banding cycle in the sturgeon confirms it died in May. And a further study this year has confirmed this.

So, why the uncertainty?

There is no doubt that DePalma’s claims have been controversial since they were first presented to the world in 2019 – probably because the announcement was in the New Yorker magazine rather than a peer-reviewed journal.

But the findings about seiche waves were then published in an academic paper only a month later, and most geologists were convinced.

It is true that the fossils, which were revealed for the first time in the BBC documentary – along with the evidence that the glass spherules at Tanis are linked to the Chicxulub impact – have yet to be published in scientific journals, where they would be subject to peer review.

But, experience shows that most of what DePalma has revealed in the past has been backed up subsequently by peer-reviewed papers.

Over the past two years I worked as one of the independent scientific consultants to the BBC, verifying the claims, as they made the documentary. Both I and my colleagues, and many other experts, are satisfied that the Tanis site probably does reveal the very last day of the non-avian dinosaurs.

And of course, as we all know, the impact of the asteriod went far beyond that one day. It led to a freezing dark planet, on a global scale, lasting for days or maybe weeks – and, from this mass extinction worldwide, the age of the mammals emerged.

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.