The far-right is crazy — like a fox: The code behind the far-right’s success

John Feffer, AlterNet
December 20, 2022

Ex-US President Donald Trump embraces Arizona Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake at a campaign rally at Legacy Sports USA on October 9, 2022 in Mesa, Arizona, US. 

© Mario Tama, Getty Images, AFP

Arizona is ground zero for the wackiest theories and craziest political candidates.

Exhibit A: Kari Lake, the Republican who ran for governor in the recent midterm elections. Though she lost in November, she's still campaigning — on social media, in the courts, and in her own beclouded imagination. She refuses to accept that Katie Hobbs, her Democratic opponent, won by 0.6% of the vote. It's a delusion she shares with Donald Trump who tweeted that Lake should be "installed" in the position anyway, like a triumphant coup leader. Lake, Trump, and all-too-many Americans now believe that any election in which a MAGA extremist doesn't achieve a pre-ordained victory is, by definition, "stolen."

Then there's Blake Masters, the losing Arizona Republican Senate candidate, who accused the Biden administration of encouraging millions of immigrants to enter the United States "to change the demographics of our country." That's a clear reference to the "great replacement" theory according to which outsiders (foreigners, non-Whites, Muslims), abetted by liberals and globalists, are using immigration and higher birthrates to replace "indigenous" White majorities. It has become ever more popular among White nationalists, alt-right activists, and mass murderers from El Paso to New Zealand who cite it in their manifestos.

Perhaps the craziest of that crew is Ron Watkins, the leading proponent of the QAnon cult of misinformation, who moved to Arizona to run for Congress. According to QAnon, an international cabal of Satanic pedophiles extract and consume a mysterious substance found in the bodies of trafficked children. Oh, and these well-connected devil-worshippers also control the United Nations, the global economy, and even the Oscars.

Watkins never made it out of the primaries, but Lake and Masters ran very close races, while other conspiracy theorists did win seats in the Arizona state senate, including election-denier Wendy Rogers, January 6th insurrection attendee Anthony Kern, and QAnon supporter David Farnsworth. Don't be fooled by their campaign literature. Those Arizona Republicans and others like them across the country are not conservatives. Rather than preserve the status quo, they want to overturn democratic institutions, as well as elections.

Their success should come as no surprise. A large number of Arizonans believe that the government lies about everything from the Covid pandemic to the availability of water, and paramilitary groups like the Patriot movement have made inroads into that state's politics. The three most widespread and demonstrably false far-right narratives — globalist-Satanists control the economy, elections are being "stolen," and foreigners are out to "replace" Whites — flourish in a state that, long, long ago, gave the world Barry Goldwater, the original radical right-wing politician.

But it's a mistake to attribute the strong showing of those far-right candidates solely to such crazy talk. Exit poll data from the last election suggests that Arizona Republican voters prioritized very real bread-and-butter issues like inflation, which was causing them significant hardship. No matter what you think of rising prices, they're real, unlike the macabre fictions of QAnon. And it wasn't only White nationalists who supported such candidates. Kari Lake, for instance, picked up 47% of the Latino vote.

Sure, the far right attracts plenty of "deplorables" from outright racists and homophobes to QAnon crackpots. But far more of those who support candidates like Kari Lake and her global counterparts — Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Narendra Modi in India, among others — are actually "persuadables," voting in their perceived self-interest based on perfectly real economic and political needs. By courting such voters, the far right has managed to pivot from the fringe to the mainstream.

And those same persuadables may now hold the key to the future of democracy.

What motivates far-right voters

Not so long ago, Sweden would have been considered the un-Arizona. In the post-World War II era, that Scandinavian state became the symbol of democratic socialism. Yet even there, the far right has gained ground, precisely by reaching those persuadables.

For one thing, though Sweden is still far more equitable than the United States, it's no longer quite so socially democratic. In the 1980s and 1990s, a series of center-left governments cut back on barriers to the free flow of capital and trade, helping to globalize that country's economy, and paving the way, in 2006, for a center-right government that implemented neoliberal tax cuts and rolled back welfare programs.

The result: a marked increase in economic inequality. From 1980 to 2019, the transfer of wealth to the richest one percent of Swedes was on a par with Thatcherite England and so, by 2017, that country had a greater per-capita concentration of billionaires than any other in Europe, except Switzerland. In 2019, The Economist reported approvingly on the sheer number of Swedish super-rich and also their apparent popularity.

But not with all Swedes, it turns out. The neoliberal globalization of that economy also produced lots of "losers," who now support the Swedish Democrats. Founded in 1988 and led by neo-Nazis, that party held early meetings that, according to Le Monde, featured "brown shirts and party members performing the Nazi salute, and their security was provided by skinheads." After new leaders jettisoned the Nazi trappings and focused instead on the immigrant "threat," the party began to climb in the polls, coming in second in last September's elections with 20.5% of the vote and so helping a new right-wing government take over.

To break into the mainstream, that previously marginal party increasingly relied on its populist economic platform, offering to increase government handouts and cut some taxes to appeal to working-class voters and the unemployed. Racism and Islamophobia have certainly played a role in boosting support for it, but the party has benefited most from a surge of anger at the economic austerity policies that have made Sweden one of the least equal countries in Europe.

Across that continent, the far-right has relied on anti-globalization messages, effectively raising a middle finger to both the European Union and world financial institutions. In the east, such parties have won power in both Poland and Hungary, while, in the west, they have siphoned off votes from Communist parties in France, Italy, and elsewhere.

If opposition to austerity politics has been the meat and potatoes of such far-right parties, the special sauce has been social messaging, especially about immigration. When it comes to ginning up fear and resentment, border-crossers are the perfect scapegoats. The Sweden Democrats, for instance, have promised to deport immigrants who have committed crimes or are simply "asocial" and they don't want to accept more migrants unless they come from neighboring (in other words, White) countries.

The far right is obsessed with those who cross not just territorial borders, but also the more conceptual borders of gender, sex, and race. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán changed the constitution to define marriage as solely between a man and a woman, while effectively banning adoption by same-sex couples. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni declared that her party says "yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology." Jair Bolsonaro spent his term as Brazilian president denying the existence of racism in his country while undermining the rights of indigenous communities.

At the heart of such far-right social policies is an effort to assuage the anxieties of dominant groups — Whites, men, heterosexuals, Christians — over the erosion of their economic status and reassure them that they won't suffer a decline in social position as well. In the process, left and liberal parties, which might once have appealed to voters left behind by globalization and neoliberalism, have lost out on what should have been "their" issues.

Crafted to appeal to voter interests, the far-right agenda can often seem far indeed from the universe of conspiracy theories in which Jews control the world through financier George Soros or leaders of the Democratic Party run a child trafficking ring out of the basement of a pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C. Still, a major reason for the far right's success has been its ability to toggle between pragmatic policies and extremist messaging.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

A month before the Italian elections, Giorgia Meloni released a curious six-minute video in which she managed to effortlessly switch from English to French to Spanish. In the process, she denounced Nazism and anti-Semitism, while pledging her support for NATO and Ukraine.

In those six minutes, Meloni introduced herself to the rest of Europe as a multilingual cosmopolitan who rejects the fascist roots of her own party. Inside Italy, the video appealed to those appalled by the far right's flirtation with Vladimir Putin and concerned that its rise to power might jeopardize the European Union's financial support. Precisely because Meloni didn't deliver those remarks in Italian, the speech was less likely to alienate her core nationalist supporters.

The Meloni video is a perfect case of code-switching: speaking in different ways to different audiences. Far-right politicians around the world are often remarkably adept at switching the crazy on and off, depending on their audience. Viktor Orbán has typically been careful to keep his anti-immigration views couched in race-neutral terms. Only when talking to ethnic Hungarians in Romania did he frankly admit that Hungarians don't want to become a "mixed race." Pauline Hansen, leader of a far-right Australian party, thought she was addressing a gun lobbyist when she floated the outlandish notion that the country's worst mass shooting in 1996 was a false-flag operation to boost gun control. Running for the Senate in Ohio, J.D. Vance typically voiced many conspiracy-laden views — the 2020 election was stolen, discredited radio host Alex Jones was "a far more reputable source of information than Rachel Maddow" — that he would never have defended before more liberal audiences.

"Dog-whistling" is just another version of this phenomenon, where politicians embed coded language in their speeches to address different audiences simultaneously. References to "law and order," "family values," or "globalists" can mean different things to different people. Only the in-crowd will understand the Pepe the Frog image in a right-wing politician's tweet. Attendees at a Trump rally might hear a catchy tune without realizing that it sounds a lot like the QAnon anthem.

What makes this code-switching and dog-whistling so dangerous is the proximity of the crazy and sane parts of the far right's discourse. In fact, the three most prominent false narratives just happen to map neatly onto the far right's three most prominent mainstream appeals.

So, for instance, the economic policies of globalization and neoliberalism have indeed created hardships for certain communities like blue-collar workers, rural residents, and older voters. And while such policies are pushed by powerful institutions like transnational corporations and banks, they are not the result of a Jewish conspiracy, a cabal of Satanists, or a group of globalists with a shadowy "great reset" plan to use Covid to destroy the sovereignty of nations.

Mainstream parties the world over are indeed full of corrupt politicians who often do their damnedest to game the system. Still, the notion that liberals and leftists have "stolen" elections in the United States or Brazil by hacking electronic voting systems or fabricating thousands of ballots has been debunked over and over again.

War, civil unrest, and climate change have indeed created one of the largest waves of refugees and immigrants since World War II. Those poor souls are desperate to find shelter and safety in other countries. But they have no plan to "replace" the majority White populations of Europe, the United States, or Australia. In truth, many would return home if only it were possible.

By their very proximity, the illegitimate arguments borrow a veneer of credibility from the legitimate ones, while the latter derive some raw power from the former. It's just one short step, for instance, from acknowledging the corruption of political parties to believing they've stolen elections. Ironically enough, if anyone's trying to rig elections, it's far-right parties — Republicans using voter suppression tactics or Hungary's Fidesz party controlling the media landscape to reduce the public voice of the opposition. The far-right frequently projects onto its adversaries the very sins it routinely commits behind the scenes.

Worst case, best case

In his September 30th speech announcing the annexation of four provinces of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin engaged in his now-familiar uber-nationalism to justify the abrogation of international law. But he also took several bizarre detours. Western countries, he argued, were advancing toward "outright Satanism." Moreover, the West "is ready to step over everything in order to preserve the neo-colonial system that allows it to parasitize, in fact, to plunder the world." Finally, he decried all those who tell children "that there are various supposed genders besides women and men" and offer them "a sex-change operation."

These were odd assertions in what should have been a speech focused on geopolitics, but Putin was dog-whistling like crazy. He was sending a message to his far-right supporters at home and abroad that he, too, believed Satanic liberals controlled the world and were indeed "grooming" children to change their sexuality and gender.

Unlike Giorgia Meloni, Putin doesn't need to move to the center to reassure European allies or win over independent voters. The invasion of Ukraine severed his ties to Europe — even to the European far right — and he's rigged elections in his own favor for years. His unfettered use of false narratives offers a nightmarish look at what would likely happen if far-right politicians around the world were to win ever more elections, rewire democracies to ensure their future dominance, and begin to take over international institutions like the European Union or even the World Bank. Untethered from the compromises of electoral politics, the far right will forget about those persuadables and, like Putin, let its freak flag fly.

It's still possible to head off the next set of Putins, Melonis, and Trumps at the pass. But that means avoiding the false temptation to promote comparably crazy stuff or appealing to true deplorables. Instead, a coalition of the sane must try to understand the real political and economic reasons why those persuadables vote for Kari Lake and her brethren — and then craft arguments and policies to win them over.

It can be done. Even as Italy turned to the far right, just enough voters rejected Kari Lake and Jair Bolsonaro at the polls. Despite Trump-driven Republican politics and an Elon Musk-driven Twitter, the crazy can be constrained and the radical right rolled back. But that means engaging citizens where it matters most: their heads, their hearts, and above all their pocketbooks.

A Look Back on Life in Permacrisis

#AnthropoceneNow
12.20.2022

WORDS BY ALEXANDRIA HERR
ART BY NICO KRIJNO

Permacrisis, defined as “an extended period of instability and insecurity,” was named word of 2022 by Collins Dictionary. But within every crisis lies the potential for a better future.


In the fall of 2020, amid the highest death rates yet in that point of the pandemic and an environment of dread in advance of the presidential election, I was the teaching assistant for a class focused on environmental politics. At the end of the course, I received an email from a student, who said that learning about these issues made her feel depressed and disheartened, and asked how I coped emotionally with such heavy topics. At first, I didn’t know what to say. Did I really have a way of coping?

Two years later, and much of what made 2020 so overwhelming lingers. 2022 has been another year marked by crisis; the mounting death toll of the pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine, the flooding that devastated Pakistan, the tightening grip of inflation, the steady creep of carbon emissions and warming temperatures. Among the mounting list of tragedies, it’s no wonder that the word “permacrisis” has been named the word of the year by Collins Dictionary (among a list that includes “vibe shift” and “quiet quitting”). The term, which is defined as “an extended period of instability and insecurity,” was coined in a 1975 essay by Stephen Cohen, and has slowly gained in popularity over the last decade. After all, permacrisis “sums up just how truly awful 2022 has been for so many people,” Alex Beecroft, head of Collins Learning, told the BBC.

If the rising popularity of words like permacrisis reflects their social and political contexts, perhaps another layer might emerge when we grab them by the root. Earlier this year, in what was perhaps an optimistic assessment of my time, I enrolled in a workshop taught by poet Bernard Ferguson. In one of the first sessions, they put the words “climate crisis” on the main slide of the Zoom presentation. What can we learn about the climate crisis, they asked, by understanding the origins of these words?

“Permacrisis sums up just how truly awful 2022 has been for so many people.”

ALEX BEECROFT

HEAD OF COLLINS LEARNING

Geographer Mike Hulme, in Why We Disagree about Climate Change, notes that the word “climate” can be traced back as far as the sixth century BC, to the Greek word κλίμα– literally meaning “slope, ” when philosophers like Parmenides used the term to denote different zones of the globe at different latitudes. Hulme notes that this was one of the first attempts to describe not just the Earth’s weather, but its climate. And though it’s far from today’s satellite imagery and supercomputer models, it reveals that understanding the climate has always been in some sense a philosophical endeavor: an attempt to make the unruly Earth intelligible through the measurements and equations of mankind.

If we turn to “crisis,” things get even more interesting. The term “crisis” is rooted in the ancient Greek word κρίσις and the Latin term crisis, meaning to decide. In the 16th century, the word took on meanings in pathology. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, crisis referred to the tipping point of a disease that can lead to either recovery or death. In the 17th century, the word was used in the context of astrology: the Oxford English Dictionary notes that it denoted the “conjunction of the planets which determines the issue of a disease or critical point in the course of events.” The latter feels particularly relevant when describing 2022. With climate change, alongside other ongoing crises, we are at a critical point.

This critical point carries the question: will we continue to normalize death—from COVID-19, extreme heat, hurricanes—or will we choose recovery? Within every disaster, there is a decision to be made. And within every crisis, Ferguson noted, there lies the potential for a better and a different future.

Within every disaster, there is a decision to be made. And within every crisis there lies the potential for a better and a different future.

ALEXANDRIA HERR

The answers to our overlapping crises don’t rest in any conjunction of the planets, but in ourselves. We can, at any point, decide to forge a new path. Just as the origins of the words “climate” and “crisis” stretch back through our history, the climate crisis itself is rooted deeper than just in modern emissions—its origins lie in the systems of extraction, colonization, and racism that created the conditions for catastrophe. The permacrises that we face today are much the same: many heads of the same dragon that lurks just beneath the surface.

The roots of “perma-” in “permacrisis” are also revealing. The prefix “perma-” is rooted in Latin’s permanent, according to the Oxford English Dictionary: meaning stable, unchanging. But it can also be traced to the present participle, permanere—to go on, persist, survive. Indeed, that is what so many are doing in the face of this year’s turbulence: enduring, deciding every day to plant the seeds of a better future. This year, activists in St. James, a parish located within a stretch of the Mississippi River commonly referred to as “Cancer Alley,” succeeded in blocking a massive petrochemical facility that would have brought carbon emissions and pollution to a community already overburdened by environmental justice issues. In California, decades of grassroots organizing finally paid off when the California state Senate passed a bill instituting a setback between oil wells and communities. In the wake of Hurricane Fiona, communities kept each other fed through mutual aid networks formed in the aftermath of Maria. Across the U.S. and around the world, communities put their freedom on the line to stop fossil fuel development.

Permanere: persisting, surviving in an age of permacrisis requires us to remember what helps us carry on. I think of the question my student sent me two years ago often, never really sure if I would have had a better answer. These days, when I revisit the idea, I think of one of my favorite movies, Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke. I’ve watched it at least a dozen times, coming back to it every time the world feels overwhelming. The film takes place against a backdrop of destruction—the characters dodge deforestation, war, and finally the killing of the guardian spirit that serves as a protector of the forest. But amidst chaos, the protagonists travel through a lush and beautiful landscape, come to trust each other, and fall in love. It’s filled with tragedy, but also tenderness and joy. In the proposal for the film, Miyazaki writes: “even in the midst of hatred and killings, there are things worth living for. A wonderful meeting, or a beautiful thing can exist.” Ultimately, in the film and in our world, that beauty is what allows us to dream of different futures—to live on.

Mystery fossil site ‘could be ancient maternity ward’

19 December 2022, 

Ichthyosaur. Picture: PA

Since the ichthyosaur bones in Nevada were excavated in the 1950s, paleontologists have investigated how all the creatures could have died together.

Scientists have uncovered new clues about a curious fossil site in Nevada, a graveyard for dozens of giant marine reptiles.

Instead of the site of a massive die-off as suspected, it might have been an ancient maternity ward where the creatures came to give birth.

The site is famous for its fossils from giant ichthyosaurs — reptiles that dominated the ancient seas and could grow up to the size of a bus. The creatures — the name means fish lizard — were underwater predators with large paddle-shaped flippers and long jaws full of teeth.

Since the ichthyosaur bones in Nevada were excavated in the 1950s, many paleontologists have investigated how all these creatures could have died together. Now, researchers have proposed a different theory in a study published on Monday in the journal Current Biology.

“Several lines of evidence all kind of point towards one argument here: That this was a place where giant ichthyosaurs came to give birth,” said co-author Nicholas Pyenson, curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Nevada’s Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park (Alamy/PA)

Once a tropical sea, the site — part of Nevada’s Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park — now sits in a dry, dusty landscape near an abandoned mining town, said lead author Randy Irmis, a paleontologist at the University of Utah.

To get a better look at the massive skeletons, which boast vertebrae the size of dinner plates and bones from their flippers as thick as boulders, researchers used 3D scanning to create a detailed digital model, Mr Irmis said.

They identified fossils from at least 37 ichthyosaurs scattered around the area, dating back about 230 million years. The bones were preserved in different rock layers, suggesting the creatures could have died hundreds of thousands of years apart rather than all at once, Pyenson said.

A major break came when the researchers spotted some tiny bones among the massive adult fossils, and realised they belonged to embryos and newborns, Pyenson said.

The researchers concluded that the creatures travelled to the site in groups for protection as they gave birth, like today’s marine giants. The fossils are believed to be from the mothers and offspring that died there over the years.

“Finding a place to give birth separated from a place where you might feed is really common in the modern world — among whales, among sharks,” Mr Pyenson said.

Other clues helped rule out some previous explanations.

Testing the chemicals in the dirt did not turn up any signs of volcanic eruptions or huge shifts to the local environment. And the geology showed that the reptiles were preserved on the ocean floor far from the shore — meaning they probably did not die in a mass beaching event, Mr Irmis said.

The new study offers a plausible explanation for a site that has baffled paleontologists for decades, said Dean Lomax, an ichthyosaur specialist at the University of Manchester who was not involved with the research.

The case may not be fully closed yet but the study “really helps to unlock a little bit more about this fascinating site”, Mr Lomax said.

By Press Association

Fossil CSI: Analysis of giant extinct marine reptile graveyard suggests mysterious site was ancient birthing grounds

Nevada site has been studied for decades, but explanations for why so many ichthyosaurs died there some 230 million years ago have eluded researchers

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SMITHSONIAN

 

IMAGE: TODAY’S MARINE GIANTS—SUCH AS BLUE AND HUMPBACK WHALES—ROUTINELY MAKE MASSIVE MIGRATIONS ACROSS THE OCEAN TO BREED AND GIVE BIRTH IN WATERS WHERE PREDATORS ARE SCARCE, WITH MANY CONGREGATING YEAR AFTER YEAR ALONG THE SAME STRETCHES OF COASTLINE. NOW, NEW RESEARCH FROM A TEAM OF SCIENTISTS SUGGESTS THAT NEARLY 200 MILLION YEARS BEFORE GIANT WHALES EVOLVED, SCHOOL BUS-SIZED MARINE REPTILES CALLED ICHTHYOSAURS MAY HAVE BEEN MAKING SIMILAR MIGRATIONS TO BREED AND GIVE BIRTH TOGETHER IN RELATIVE SAFETY. THE FINDINGS, PUBLISHED TODAY IN THE JOURNAL CURRENT BIOLOGY, EXAMINE A RICH FOSSIL BED IN THE RENOWNED BERLIN-ICHTHYOSAUR STATE PARK IN NEVADA’S HUMBOLDT-TOIYABE NATIONAL FOREST, WHERE MANY 50-FOOT-LONG ICHTHYOSAURS (SHONISAURUS POPULARIS) LAY PETRIFIED IN STONE. THE STUDY OFFERS A PLAUSIBLE EXPLANATION AS TO HOW AT LEAST 37 OF THESE MARINE REPTILES CAME TO MEET THEIR ENDS IN THE SAME LOCALITY—A QUESTION THAT HAS VEXED PALEONTOLOGISTS FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY. THE RESEARCH PRESENTS EVIDENCE THAT THESE ICHTHYOSAURS DIED AT THE SITE IN LARGE NUMBERS BECAUSE THEY WERE MIGRATING TO THIS AREA TO GIVE BIRTH FOR MANY GENERATIONS ACROSS HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS. view more 

CREDIT: GABRIEL UGUETO

Today’s marine giants—such as blue and humpback whales—routinely make massive migrations across the ocean to breed and give birth in waters where predators are scarce, with many congregating year after year along the same stretches of coastline. Now, new research from a team of scientists—including researchers with the Smithsonian Institution, Vanderbilt University, the Natural History Museum of Utah, the University of Utah, University of Nevada, Reno, University of Edinburgh, University of Texas at Austin, Vrije Universiteit Brussels and University of Oxford—suggests that nearly 200 million years before giant whales evolved, school bus-sized marine reptiles called ichthyosaurs may have been making similar migrations to breed and give birth together in relative safety.

The findings, published today in the journal Current Biology, examine a rich fossil bed in the renowned Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park (BISP) in Nevada’s Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, where many 50-foot-long ichthyosaurs (Shonisaurus popularis) lay petrified in stone. Led by Neil Kelley, Vanderbilt University scientist and former Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History Peter Buck postdoctoral fellow, and co-authored by the museum’s curator of fossil marine mammals Nicholas Pyenson, the study offers a plausible explanation as to how at least 37 of these marine reptiles came to meet their ends in the same locality—a question that has vexed paleontologists for more than half a century.

“We present evidence that these ichthyosaurs died here in large numbers because they were migrating to this area to give birth for many generations across hundreds of thousands of years,” Pyenson said. “That means this type of behavior we observe today in whales has been around for more than 200 million years.”

Over the years, some paleontologists have proposed that BISP’s ichthyosaurs—predators resembling oversized chunky dolphins that have been adopted as Nevada’s state fossil—died in a mass stranding event such as those that sometimes afflicts modern whales, or that the creatures were poisoned by toxins from a nearby harmful algal bloom. The problem is that these hypotheses lack strong lines of scientific evidence to support them.

To try to solve this prehistoric mystery, the team combined newer paleontological techniques such as 3D scanning and geochemistry with traditional paleontological perseverance by poring over archival materials, photographs, maps, field notes and drawer after drawer of museum collections for shreds of evidence that could be reanalyzed.

Although most well-studied paleontological sites excavate fossils so they can be more closely studied by scientists at research institutions, the main attraction for visitors to the Nevada State Park-run BISP is a barn-like building that houses what researchers call Quarry 2, an array of ichthyosaurs that have been left embedded in the rock for the public to see and appreciate. Quarry 2 has partial skeletons from an estimated seven individual ichthyosaurs that all appear to have died around the same time.

“When I first visited the site in 2014, my first thought was that the best way to study it would be to create a full-color, high-resolution 3D model,” Kelley said. “A 3D model would allow us to study the way these large fossils were arranged in relation to one another without losing the ability to go bone by bone.”

To do this, Kelley, Pyenson and the research team collaborated with Jon Blundell, a member of the Smithsonian Digitization Program Office’s 3D Program team, and Holly Little, a long-time collaborator with Pyenson and the 3D Program’s team and currently the informatics manager in the museum’s Department of Paleobiology. While Pyenson and Kelley were physically measuring bones and studying the site using traditional paleontological techniques, Little and Blundell used digital cameras and a spherical laser scanner to take hundreds of photographs and millions of point measurements that were then stitched together using specialized software to create a 3D model of the fossil bed.

To further home in on what might have befallen these extinct marine reptiles, the team collected tiny samples of the rock surrounding the fossils and performed a series of geochemical tests to look for signs of environmental disturbance.

One test measured mercury, which often accompanies large-scale volcanic activity, and found no significantly increased levels. Other tests examined different types of carbon and determined that there was no evidence of sudden increases in organic matter in the marine sediments that would result in a dearth of oxygen in the surrounding waters (though, like whales, the ichthyosaurs breathed air).

These geochemical tests revealed no signs that these ichthyosaurs perished because of some cataclysm that would have seriously disturbed the ecosystem in which they died. Kelley, Pyenson and other colleagues on the research team continued to look beyond Quarry 2 to the surrounding geology and all the fossils that had previously been excavated from the area.

The geologic evidence indicates that when the ichthyosaurs died, their bones eventually sank to the bottom of the sea, rather than along a shoreline shallow enough to suggest stranding, ruling out another hypothesis. Even more telling, though the area’s limestone was chockfull of large adult Shonisaurus specimens, other marine vertebrates were scarce. The bulk of the other fossils at BISP come from small invertebrates such as clams and ammonites (spiral-shelled relatives of today’s squid).

“There are so many large, adult skeletons from this one species at this site and almost nothing else,” Pyenson said. “There are virtually no remains of things like fish or other marine reptiles for these ichthyosaurs to feed on, and there are also no juvenile Shonisaurus skeletons.”

The researchers’ paleontological dragnet had eliminated some of the potential causes of death and started to provide intriguing clues about the type of ecosystem these marine predators were swimming in, but the evidence still did not clearly point to an alternative explanation.

The research team found a key piece of the puzzle when they discovered tiny ichthyosaur remains among new fossils collected at BISP and hiding within older museum collections. Careful comparison of the bones and teeth using micro-CT X-ray scans at Vanderbilt University revealed that these small bones were in fact embryonic and newborn Shonisaurus.

“Once it became clear that there was nothing for them to eat here, and there were large adult Shonisaurus along with embryos and newborns but no juveniles, we started to seriously consider whether this might have been a birthing ground,” Kelley said.

Further analysis of the various strata in which the different clusters of ichthyosaur bones were found also revealed that the ages of the many fossil beds of BISP were separated by at least hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions.

“Finding these different spots with the same species spread across geologic time with the same demographic pattern tells us that this was a preferred habitat that these large oceangoing predators returned to for generations,” Pyenson said. “This is a clear ecological signal, we argue, that this was a place that Shonisaurus used to give birth, very similar to today’s whales. Now we have evidence that this sort of behavior is 230 million years old.”

Kelley said the next step for this line of research is to investigate other ichthyosaur and Shonisaurus sites in North America with these new findings in mind to begin to recreate their ancient world—perhaps by looking for other breeding sites or for places with greater diversity of other species that could have been rich feeding grounds for this extinct apex predator.

The 3D scans of the site are now available for other researchers to study and for the public to explore via the open-source Smithsonian’s Voyager platform, which is developed and maintained by Blundell’s team members at the Digitization Program Office. An interactive digital experience about the research team’s study, including a 3D model of ichthyosaur sites analyzed, is also available on the Digitization Program Office’s website.

“Our work is public,” Blundell said. “We aren’t just scanning sites and objects and locking them up. We create these scans to open up the collection to other researchers and members of the public who can’t physically get to the Smithsonian.”

This research was conducted under research permits issued by the U.S. Forest Service and Nevada State Parks, and it was supported by funding from the Smithsonian, University of Nevada, Reno, Vanderbilt University and University of Utah.

Findings published today in the journal Current Biology examine a rich fossil bed in the renowned Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada’s Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, where many 50-foot-long ichthyosaurs (Shonisaurus popularis) lay petrified in stone. The study suggests that nearly 200 million years before giant whales evolved, school bus-sized marine reptiles called ichthyosaurs may have been making migrations to breed and give birth together in relative safety. To try to solve the prehistoric mystery of how these ichthyosaurs met their end, the team combined newer paleontological techniques such as 3D scanning and geochemistry with traditional paleontological perseverance by poring over archival materials, photographs, maps, field notes and drawer after drawer of museum collections for shreds of evidence that could be reanalyzed. Although most well-studied paleontological sites excavate fossils so they can be more closely studied by scientists at research institutions, the main attraction for visitors to the Nevada State Park-run Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park is a barn-like building that houses what researchers call Quarry 2, an array of ichthyosaurs that have been left embedded in the rock for the public to see and appreciate. Quarry 2 has partial skeletons from an estimated seven individual ichthyosaurs that all appear to have died around the same time.

CREDIT

Neil Kelley / Vanderbilt University

Fossilized bones, representing at least seven separate ichthyosaur skeletons, have been color-coded where each color corresponds to a different skeleton. Findings published today in the journal Current Biology examine a rich fossil bed in the renowned Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada’s Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, where many ichthyosaurs (Shonisaurus popularis) lay petrified in stone. The study suggests that nearly 200 million years before giant whales evolved, these marine reptiles may have been making migrations to breed and give birth together in relative safety. The research team collaborated with the Smithsonian Digitization Program Office’s 3D Program team and staff at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History to create a 3D model of the site at Quarry 2. They used digital cameras and a spherical laser scanner to take hundreds of photographs and millions of point measurements that were then stitched together using specialized software to create a 3D model of the fossil bed. The 3D scans of the site are now available for other researchers to study and for the public to explore via the open-source Smithsonian’s Voyager platform. An interactive digital experience about the research team’s study, including a 3D model of ichthyosaur site analyzed, is also available on the Digitization Program Office’s website. Although most well-studied paleontological sites excavate fossils so they can be more closely studied by scientists at research institutions, the main attraction for visitors to the Nevada State Park-run Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park is a barn-like building that houses what researchers call Quarry 2, an array of ichthyosaurs that have been left embedded in the rock for the public to see and appreciate. Quarry 2 has partial skeletons from an estimated seven individual ichthyosaurs that all appear to have died around the same time.

CREDIT

Smithsonian.

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JOURNAL

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2022.11.005 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Grouping behavior in a Triassic marine apex predator

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

19-Dec-2022

Monsanto to Pay Oregon $698 Million for Decades-Long Toxic Chemical Use

By Kos Temenes

December 20, 2022News

The Monsanto logo at the firm Manufacturing Site and Operations Center in Lillo near Antwerp, Belgium, on May 24, 2016. (John Thys/AFP via Getty Images)

Oregon announced a $698 million settlement with Bio-Tech company Monsanto over its use of dangerous chemicals known as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls).

The lawsuit, headed by Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, saw a settlement for Monsanto’s role in polluting the state for almost a century, said a release from the Oregon Department of Justice.

The company was the sole manufacturer and distributor of PCBs, which are mainly used in coolants and electrical equipment. PCBs are toxic compounds that can be found in fluorescent lighting fixtures but have also previously been used in other products, such as paint, sealants, and copy paper.

“This is a huge win for our state. PCBs are still present throughout Oregon — especially in our landfills and riverbeds — and they are exceedingly difficult to remove because they ‘bioaccumulate’ in fish and wildlife,” said Rosenblum.

She added that cleaning up the state of PCBs will be a “costly and time-consuming” effort. The settlement means, however, that resources are now available to help tackle the issue, she said.

Monsanto is owned by German pharmaceutical and biotechnology giant Bayer AG which issued a statement saying that the settlement “fully resolves all Oregon’s claims and releases the company from any future liability.” The statement, however, doesn’t mention any admission of wrongdoing or liability by the company, reported Fox.

Aware of PCB Toxicity

The lawsuit was first filed by Rosenblum in 2018. It sought to cover damages caused to the environment and clean-up costs.

It later emerged that Monsanto had been aware of the toxicity of PCBs since at least 1937 but continued production, endorsement, and distribution until 1977 when they were finally banned.

“Monsanto’s toxic legacy unfortunately lives on in our lands, rivers and other waterways – and poses ongoing risks to the health of our people and our environment,” Rosenblum said.

Authorities, including the Oregon Justice Department and Governor Kate Brown, will now cooperate in a joint effort to utilize the funds accordingly across the state.

“This settlement is a major step in beginning to reverse the harmful effects of PCBs on Oregon’s environment. I’d like to thank the DOJ staff and attorneys who worked diligently to get us to this point. While it will take some time, I am pleased we can now move forward toward a healthier Oregon,” Brown said.

Oregon is the latest U.S. state to secure a settlement from the company. It is by far the largest settlement ever to be received by the state, as well as compared with other states, Fox reported.

Other states where settlements have been reached include Washington, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Ohio, and the District of Columbia, with a combined figure of $275 million.    

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