New geosciences study shows Triassic fossils that reveal origins of living amphibians

A team of Virginia Tech paleontologists, led by doctoral candidate Ben Kligman, have discovered the first Triassic-era caecilian fossils, the oldest-known of their kind, in Arizona.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

VIRGINIA TECH

 

IMAGE: MICROSCOPIC PHOTOGRAPH OF A LOWER JAW FROM FUNCUSVERMIS GILMOREI SOON AFTER IT WAS RECOVERED DURING MICROSCOPIC SORTING OF SEDIMENT FROM THE THUNDERSTORM RIDGE FOSSIL SITE IN THE PETRIFIED FOREST NATIONAL PARK PALEONTOLOGY LAB. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY BEN KLIGMAN FOR VIRGINIA TECH

The smallest of newly found fossils can upend what paleontologists know about our history.

A team of paleontologists from Virginia Tech and the U.S. Petrified Forest National Park, among others, have discovered the first “unmistakable” Triassic-era caecilian fossil — the oldest-known caecilian fossils — thus extending the record of this small, burrowing mammal by roughly 35 million years. The find also fills a gap of at least 87 million years in the known historical fossil record of the amphibian-like creature.

The fossil was first co-discovered by Ben Kligman, a doctoral student in the Department of Geosciences, part of the Virginia Tech College of Science, at Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park during a dig in 2019. Named by Kligman as Funcusvermis gilmorei, the fossil extends the history of caecilians 35 million years back to Triassic Period, roughly 250 million to 200 million years ago.

Prior to this new study, published today in the journal Nature, only 10 fossil caecilian occurrences were known, dating back to the Early Jurassic Period, about 183 million years ago. However, previous DNA studies estimated evolutionary origins of caecilians back to the Carboniferous or Permian eras, some 370 million to 270 million years ago, according to Kligman, marking that 87-million-year gap. However, no such fossils had been found.

“The discovery of the oldest caecilian fossils highlights the crucial nature of new fossil evidence. Many of the biggest outstanding questions in paleontology and evolution cannot be resolved without fossils like this,” said Kligman, who previously discovered a 220-million-year-old species of cynodont or stem-mammal, a precursor of modern-day mammals. “Fossil caecilians are extraordinarily rare, and they are found accidentally when paleontologists are searching for the fossils of other more common animals. Our discovery of one was totally unexpected, and it transformed the trajectory of my scientific interests.”

The discovery of the fossils was made in 2019 by Kligman and Petrified Forest National Park student intern Xavier Jenkins, now a Ph.D. student at Idaho State University, while the duo was processing fossiliferous sediment from the park’s nicknamed Thunderstorm Ridge via a microscope. Funcusvermis was found in a layer of the Chinle Formation dated to approximately 220 million years ago, when Arizona was positioned near the equator at the central part of the supercontinent Pangaea, Kligman said. This region at the time was subject to a hot, humid climate. Today, Arizona is still hot, but has low humidity.

“Seeing the first jaw under the microscope, with its distinctive double row of teeth, sent chills down my back,” Kligman said. “We immediately knew it was a caecilian, the oldest caecilian fossil ever found, and a once-in-a-lifetime discovery.”

Previous to this find, the 87-million-year gap in the fossil record hid the early evolutionary history of caecilians, leading to a decades-long debate amongst scientists over the relationships of caecilians to their amphibian relatives, frogs and salamanders.

“Funcusvermis extends the humid equatorial pattern of occurrence seen in all known fossil and living caecilians, suggesting that the biogeographic history of caecilians has been guided by restriction to these ecological settings, likely due to physiological constraints linked to humidity, and constrained by the drift of continental plates into and out of the humid-equatorial zone after the fragmentation of Pangaea,” Kligman said.

Modern caecilians are limbless amphibians with cylindrical bodies with a compact, bullet-shaped skull that helps them burrow underground. Now exclusively home to South and Central America, Africa, and southern Asia, caecilians spend their lives burrowing in leaf-litter or soil searching for prey such as worms and insects. This underground existence has made studying caecilians difficult for scientists. Kligman, tongue in cheek, describes modern caecilians as an “eyeless sock puppet with the body of a worm.”

Funcusvermis actually shares skeletal features related more with early frog and salamander fossils, strengthening evidence for a shared origin and close evolutionary relationship between caecilians and these two groups. Funcusvermis also shares skeletal features with an ancient group of amphibians known to paleontologists as dissorophoid temnospondyls. Kligman adds, “Unlike living caecilians, Funcusvermis lacks many adaptations associated with burrowing underground, indicating a slower acquisition of features associated with an underground lifestyle in the early stages of caecilian evolution.”

Name that tune

Now, here’s the fun part: The genus name ‘Funcusvermis’ was inspired by the Ohio Players’ 1972 song “Funky Worm” from their album Pleasure, a favorite song of the authors that was often played while excavating fossils at Thunderstorm Ridge. ‘Funcus’ is derived from the Latinized form of the English word Funky for the upbeat, rhythmic form of dance music, while ‘vermis’ is derived from the Latin word for worm. (It’s an excellent song, by the way. Instant earworm, so to speak.)

The species name, gilmorei, honors Ned Gilmore, the collections manager at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia’s Drexel University. (Kligman is from Philadelphia and volunteered with Gilmore’s herpetology wet collection as an undergraduate student. “He was an important mentor who helped inspire my interest in fossils and amphibians,” Kligman said.)

Co-authors on the study include Michelle Stocker, an assistant professor, and Sterling Nesbitt, an associate professor, in the Virginia Tech Department of Geosciences and members of the Global Change Center that is part of the Fralin Life Sciences Institute. Other authors include Adam Marsh, lead paleontologist; Matthew Smith, museum curator; and William Parker, chief of science and resource management, all at the Petrified Forest National Park; and Bryan Gee, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum and Department of Biology.

“As the eponymous song says, it's the funkiest worm in the world,” Marsh quipped.

Stocker added, “What we collect really determines what we can say about which animals that were present, how many of them there were, and what they looked like. Without using these methods for fossil collection and analysis we would be missing out on knowing so many important aspects of this Triassic ecosystem. Now that we have a search image of what bones to look for and how to look for them, it will be exciting to see what other fossil localities preserve these early lissamphibians.”

Nesbitt said finds such as this can reset the game board on paleontology, in the best sense of the phrase. “This find clearly demonstrates that some fossils that you can barely see can greatly change our understanding of entire groups that you can see today,” he said.

What’s happened since 2019

At the Petrified Forest National Park, where the initial discovery was found in 2019, the lower jaws of at least 70 individuals of Funcusvermis have been recovered as of summer 2022, making the area “the most abundant fossil caecilian-producing bonebed ever discovered,” Kligman said.

Only a handful of bones of Funcusvermis have been found, including upper and lower jaws, a vertebra, and part of a hind-limb, Kligman said. All of the found bones were disarticulated, not as complete skeletons. Without complete skeletons, Kligman and his fellow researchers cannot exactly determine the body length of Funcusvermis, but inferences from isolated elements, such as the lower jaw being less than a quarter of an inch long, indicate that Funcusvermis was a tiny animal.

“Since its discovery in 2017, the Thunderstorm Ridge site has produced a diverse assemblage of over 60 animals ranging from freshwater sharks to dinosaurs,” Kligman said. “Several other new species discovered at this site have been recently described. Many other new species from this site are currently under study and will be published in upcoming years.”

In other words, fully expect more upending of what paleontologists know about the history of fossils.

---

JOURNAL

Nature

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

25-Jan-2023

Ben Kligman at the Thunderstorm Ridge fossil site at the National Petrified Forest in Arizona.

CREDIT   Photo courtesy by Adam Marsh

Virginia Tech and Petrified Forest National Park Paleontologists digging at Thunderstorm Ridge in the summer of 2018.

CREDIT Photo by Ben Kligman.

What crocodile DNA reveals about the Ice Age

Environmental drivers such as sea level affect genetic evolution and point to where conservation efforts may be focused

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MCGILL UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: AMERICAN CROCODILE (CROCODYLUS ACUTUS). view more 

CREDIT: HANS LARSSON

What drives crocodile evolution? Is climate a major factor or changes in sea levels? Determined to find answers to these questions, researchers from McGill University discovered that while changing temperatures and rainfall had little impact on the crocodiles’ gene flow over the past three million years, changes to sea levels during the Ice Age had a different effect.

“The American crocodile tolerates huge variations in temperature and rainfall. But about 20,000 years ago – when much of the world's water was frozen, forming the vast ice sheets of the last glacial maximum – sea levels dropped by more than 100 metres. This created a geographical barrier that separated the gene flow of crocodiles in Panama,” says postdoctoral fellow José Avila-Cervantes, working under the supervision of McGill professor Hans Larsson.

The researchers point out that the crocodiles are good swimmers, but they can’t travel long distances on land. As a result, the Caribbean and Pacific crocodile populations were isolated from each other, and consequently have undergone different genetic mutations.

The team compared the climate tolerance of living populations of American crocodiles (Crocodylus acutus) to the paleoclimate estimates for the region over the past 3 million years – the time span of extreme climate variation during the Ice Age.

“This is one of the first times Ice Age effects have been found in a tropical species. It’s exciting to discover effects of the last Ice Age glaciation still resonate in the genomes of Pacific and Caribbean American crocodiles today,” says Larsson, Professor of Biology at the Redpath Museum of McGill University.

“Discovering that these animals would have easily tolerated the climate swings of the Ice Age speaks to their resilience over geological time. Only humans in recent decades of hunting and land development seem to really affect crocodiles,” he says. The findings offer new insight into how environmental drivers affect genetic evolution and where conservation efforts of particular crocodile populations in Panama should be focused.

About the study

"Ice Age effects on genetic divergence of the American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus) in Panama: reconstructing limits of gene flow and environmental ranges: A reply to O’Dea et al.” by José Avila-Cervantes and Hans Larsson was published in Evolution.

---

JOURNAL

Evolution

DOI

10.1093/evolut/qpac006 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Ice Age effects on genetic divergence of the American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus) in Panama: reconstructing limits of gene flow and environmental ranges: a reply to O’Dea et al.

American Crocodile (Crocodylus acutus) on the Pacific coast of Panama.

CREDIT  José Avila-Cervantes

McGill University postdoctoral fellow José Avila-Cervantes with an American Crocodile (Crocodylus acutus).

CREDIT  Hans Larsson

40,000-year-old cave full of animal skulls might be first known site of human rituals

Moira Ritter
Thu, January 26, 2023 

Click on the Facebook page of someone who hunts, and you might find a picture of them dressed in camo with black face paint streaked under their eyes, grinning while holding up the head of a buck.

New evidence shows that humans’ earliest ancestors might have had a similar idea.

A team of Spanish archaeologists recently unearthed a trove of large animal skulls in a 40,000-year-old cave, according to a Jan. 26 news release from the Community of Madrid. Experts say the findings could be the first evidence of ancient human rituals.

The skulls belonged to large ungulates — mammals with hooves, including horses, bison, deer and elk — and were found in Cueva Des-Cubierta, a known Neanderthal site that was originally discovered in 2009, the community said.

Unlike other, similar discoveries, archaeologists said the remains they found within the cave were not consistent with subsistence activities, but instead appeared to be symbolic.

Evidence at the site indicates that the mammals were killed and consumed outside of the cave, according to a study from the team released Jan. 26 in Nature Human Behavior. The skulls that were recovered all had appendages but were missing their teeth and jaws, leading experts to believe that they were used as hunting trophies.

Two rhinoceros skulls were found in the cave, archaeologists said.

Some of the smaller bones also showed signs of being cooked or burned on a hearth, the study said.

The evidence at Cueva Des-Cubierta is the first of its kind, indicating that Neanderthals may have had symbolic capacity, which means they held more intellectual capacity than previously known, the community said.

The team also identified more than 1,000 ancient tools, including anvils, hammerstones, cores, flakes and other shaped tools, they said in the study.

The cave is about 55 miles north of Madrid.

Google Translate was used to translate the release from the Community of Madrid.

An ancient Roman city is unearthed in Egypt. Take a look inside the city streets


Irene Wright
Wed, January 25, 2023 

Egyptian archaeologists working on the east bank of the Nile River have discovered what they believe to be a complete residential city from the Roman era, according to a Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities release.

The ruins were found in the city of Luxor in southern Egypt. The city was once the site of the pharaoh capital Thebes during the height of their power from the 16th to 11th centuries B.C., according to Britannica.

The ministry said the discovery was the oldest, and most important, residential city found so far in Luxor. The findings included residential buildings and bathroom towers, dated to the second and third centuries A.D.

Residential buildings and bathroom towers were dated to the second and third centuries A.D.

The archaeologists also found industrial and metal-working workshops and the things created in them. These include pots, water bottles, pottery, grinding tools and Roman coins, both copper and bronze.

Findings included pots, water bottles, grinding tools and Roman coins.

Director general of archaeology Fathi Yassin said in the release that they also found pigeon towers, once used to house birds. There were also pots that may have been used for pigeon nests, a practice that was likely started during the Roman era.

Excavation began on the site in September as part of a series of projects.

Mustafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council for Archaeology, said in the release that he was happy about the result of the excavation so far, but that more work was needed on the site to unlock more secrets hidden in the ruins.

Google Translate was used to translate the release from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

Cryptic rock paintings — all over 6,000 years old — rediscovered in China. Take a look


Aspen Pflughoeft
Thu, January 26, 2023 

Scattered across the hills of China, numerous rock paintings have been rediscovered. The meticulously crafted designs have become cryptic messages from millennia ago.

Archaeologists in Nanyang have identified several more petroglyphs, or ancient rock paintings, with a variety of designs, the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said in a Friday, Jan. 6, news release via China News Network.

The petroglyphs were hammered into granite and quartz sandstone, researchers said. Photos show the rock paintings with two distinct design styles: a linear carving style and a dotted carving style.

One of the rock paintings with a looping line design.

A smaller rock painting made of carved dots.

Rock paintings are common across Nanyang and tens of thousands of petroglyphs have been identified, according to the release. The diverse petroglyphs are all considered part of the Central Plains rock painting system.

A large rock painting with an abstract dot design.

Petroglyphs in Nanyang were carved from the Neolithic Age to the Bronze Age, according to a 2012 study by Tang Huisheng published in the Rock Art Research journal. The paintings are anywhere from 6,000 years old to 11,000 years old.

A rock carving with a design of dense dots.

Unfortunately, the “purpose, function (and) cultural meaning” of the seemingly “randomly executed” rock art has become harder to interpret over time, Huisheng said.

A rock painting with groups of double dot rows.

Researchers have speculated that the petroglyphs may be part of an early human writing system, a sort of astronomical calendar or an expression of ancient human ideology, per the news release.


Nanyang is in Henan province and about 580 miles southwest of Beijing.

Google Translate and Baidu Translate were used to translate the news release from the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

4,700-year-old ‘tavern’ — complete with fridge, oven and food — unearthed in Iraq

Pink sarcophagus — weighing over 22,000 pounds — found at family burial site in Egypt

Unearthed mummy may be ‘most complete’ one ever found in Egypt, archaeologists say

How California's ambitious new climate plan could help speed energy transformation around the world

Daniel Sperling, Distinguished Blue Planet Prize Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

 Founding Director, Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis

THE CONVERSATION
Thu, January 26, 2023 

Electrifying trucks and cars and shifting to renewable energy are crucial for California's zero-emissions future. 

Sergio Pitamitz / VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

California is embarking on an audacious new climate plan that aims to eliminate the state’s greenhouse gas footprint by 2045, and in the process, slash emissions far beyond its borders. The blueprint calls for massive transformations in industry, energy and transportation, as well as changes in institutions and human behaviors.

These transformations won’t be easy. Two years of developing the plan have exposed myriad challenges and tensions, including environmental justice, affordability and local rule.

For example, the San Francisco Fire Commission had prohibited batteries with more than 20 kilowatt-hours of power storage in homes, severely limiting the ability to store solar electricity from rooftop solar panels for all those times when the sun isn’t shining. More broadly, local opposition to new transmission lines, large-scale solar and wind facilities, substations for truck charging, and oil refinery conversions to produce renewable diesel will slow the transition.

I had a front row seat while the plan was prepared and vetted as a longtime board member of the California Air Resources Board, the state agency that oversees air pollution and climate control. And my chief contributor to this article, Rajinder Sahota, is deputy executive officer of the board, responsible for preparing the plan and navigating political land mines.

We believe California has a chance of succeeding, and in the process, showing the way for the rest of the world. In fact, most of the needed policies are already in place.
What happens in California has global reach

What California does matters far beyond state lines.

California is close to being the world’s fourth-largest economy and has a history of adopting environmental requirements that are imitated across the United States and the world. California has the most ambitious zero-emission requirements in the world for cars, trucks and buses; the most ambitious low-carbon fuel requirements; one of the largest carbon cap-and-trade programs; and the most aggressive requirements for renewable electricity.

In the U.S., through peculiarities in national air pollution law, other states have replicated many of California’s regulations and programs so they can race ahead of national policies. States can either follow federal vehicle emissions standards or California’s stricter rules. There is no third option. An increasing number of states now follow California.

So, even though California contributes less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, if it sets a high bar, its many technical, institutional and behavioral innovations will likely spread and be transformative.

What’s in the California blueprint

The new Scoping Plan lays out in considerable detail how California intends to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 48% below 1990 levels by 2030 and then achieve carbon neutrality by 2045.

It calls for a 94% reduction in petroleum use between 2022 and 2045 and an 86% reduction in total fossil fuel use. Overall, it would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 85% by 2045 relative to 1990 levels. The remaining 15% reduction would come from capturing carbon from the air and fossil fuel plants, and sequestering it below ground or in forests, vegetation and soils.

To achieve these goals, the plan calls for a 37-fold increase in on-road zero-emission vehicles, a sixfold increase in electrical appliances in residences, a fourfold increase in installed wind and solar generation capacity, and doubling total electricity generation to run it all. It also calls for ramping up hydrogen power and altering agriculture and forest management to reduce wildfires, sequester carbon dioxide and reduce fertilizer demand.

This is a massive undertaking, and it implies a massive transformation of many industries and activities.
Transportation: California’s No. 1 emitter

Transportation accounts for about half of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, including upstream oil refinery emissions. This is where the path forward is perhaps most settled.

The state has already adopted regulations requiring almost all new cars, trucks and buses to have zero emissions – new transit buses by 2029 and most truck sales and light-duty vehicle sales by 2035.

In addition, California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard requires oil companies to steadily reduce the carbon intensity of transportation fuels. This regulation aims to ensure that the liquid fuels needed for legacy cars and trucks still on the road after 2045 will be low-carbon biofuels.

The Port of Long Beach opened the nation’s first publicly accessible charging station for heavy-duty electric trucks in November 2022. 

Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images

But regulations can be modified and even rescinded if opposition swells. If battery costs do not resume their downward slide, if electric utilities and others lag in providing charging infrastructure, and if local opposition blocks new charging sites and grid upgrades, the state could be forced to slow its zero-emission vehicle requirements.

The plan also relies on changes in human behavior. For example, it calls for a 25% reduction in vehicle miles traveled in 2030 compared with 2019, which has far dimmer prospects. The only strategies likely to significantly reduce vehicle use are steep charges for road use and parking, a move few politicians or voters in the U.S. would support, and a massive increase in shared-ride automated vehicles, which are not likely to scale up for at least another 10 years. Additional charges for driving and parking raise concerns about affordability for low-income commuters.
Electricity and electrifying buildings

The key to cutting emissions in almost every sector is electricity powered by renewable energy.

Electrifying most everything means not just replacing most of the state’s natural gas power plants, but also expanding total electricity production – in this case doubling total generation and quadrupling renewable generation, in just 22 years.

That amount of expansion and investment is mind-boggling – and it is the single most important change for reaching net zero, since electric vehicles and appliances depend on the availability of renewable electricity to count as zero emissions.

Electrification of buildings is in the early stages in California, with requirements in place for new homes to have rooftop solar, and incentives and regulations adopted to replace natural gas use with heat pumps and electric appliances.

Two microgrid communities being developed in Menifee, Calif., feature all-electric homes equipped with solar panels, heat pumps and batteries. 

Watchara Phomicinda/MediaNews Group/The Press-Enterprise via Getty Images

The biggest and most important challenge is accelerating renewable electricity generation – mostly wind and utility-scale solar. The state has laws in place requiring electricity to be 100% zero emissions by 2045 – up from 52% in 2021.

The plan to get there includes offshore wind power, which will require new technology – floating wind turbines. The federal government in December 2022 leased the first Pacific sites for offshore wind farms, with plans to power over 1.5 million homes. However, years of technical and regulatory work are still ahead.

For solar power, the plan focuses on large solar farms, which can scale up faster and at less cost than rooftop solar. The same week the new scoping plan was announced, California’s Public Utility Commission voted to significantly scale back how much homeowners are reimbursed for solar power they send to the grid, a policy known as net metering. The Public Utility Commission argues that because of how electricity rates are set, generous rooftop solar reimbursements have primarily benefited wealthier households while imposing higher electricity bills on others. It believes this new policy will be more equitable and create a more sustainable model.
Industry and the carbon capture challenge

Industry plays a smaller role, and the policies and strategies here are less refined.

The state’s carbon cap-and-trade program, designed to ratchet down total emissions while allowing individual companies some flexibility, will tighten its emissions limits.

But while cap-and-trade has been effective to date, in part by generating billions of dollars for programs and incentives to reduce emissions, its role may change as energy efficiency improves and additional rules and regulations are put in place to replace fossil fuels.

One of the greatest controversies throughout the Scoping Plan process is its reliance on carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS. The controversy is rooted in concern that CCS allows fossil fuel facilities to continue releasing pollution while only capturing the carbon dioxide emissions. These facilities are often in or near disadvantaged communities.

California’s chances of success

Will California make it? The state has a track record of exceeding its goals, but getting to net zero by 2045 requires a sharper downward trajectory than even California has seen before, and there are still many hurdles.

Environmental justice concerns about carbon capture and new industrial facilities, coupled with NIMBYism, could block many needed investments. And the possibility of sluggish economic growth could led to spending cuts and might exacerbate concerns about economic disruption and affordability.

There are also questions about prices and geopolitics. Will the upturn in battery costs in 2022 – due to geopolitical flare-ups, a lag in expanding the supply of critical materials, and the war in Ukraine – turn out to be a hiccup or a trend? Will electric utilities move fast enough in building the infrastructure and grid capacity needed to accommodate the projected growth in zero-emission cars and trucks?

It is encouraging that the state has already created just about all the needed policy infrastructure. Additional tightening of emissions limits and targets will be needed, but the framework and policy mechanisms are largely in place.

Rajinder Sahota, deputy executive officer of the California Air Resources Board, contributed to this article.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. 

It was written by: Daniel Sperling, University of California, Davis.

Read more:

First solar canal project is a win for water, energy, air and climate in California

How do floating wind turbines work? 5 companies just won the first US leases for building them off California’s coast

Daniel Sperling receives funding from several foundations and government agencies, is a board member of the California Air Resources Board, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, an NGO.

US moves to protect Minnesota wilderness from planned mine


- Supporters of the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters drive past the residence of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as part of an Earth Day drive-in rally to Protect the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness on April 22, 2020, in St. Paul, Minn. The Biden administration moved Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023, to protect the pristine Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northeastern Minnesota from future mining, dealing a potentially fatal blow to the proposed Twin Metals copper-nickel project. 

(AP Photo/Jim Mone, File)

STEVE KARNOWSKI
Thu, January 26, 2023 

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — The Biden administration moved Thursday to protect northeastern Minnesota's pristine Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness from future mining, dealing a potentially fatal blow to a copper-nickel project.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland signed an order closing over 350 square miles (900 square kilometers) of the Superior National Forest, in the Rainy River Watershed around the town of Ely, to mineral and geothermal leasing for 20 years, the longest period the department can sequester the land without congressional approval.

The order is “subject to existing valid rights,” but the Biden administration contends that Twin Metals Minnesota lost its rights last year, when the department rescinded a Trump administration decision to reinstate federal mineral rights leases that were critical to the project. Twin Metals, which is owned by the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta, filed suit in August to try to reclaim those rights, and reaffirmed Tuesday that it's not giving up despite its latest setback.

“Protecting a place like Boundary Waters is key to supporting the health of the watershed and its surrounding wildlife, upholding our Tribal trust and treaty responsibilities, and boosting the local recreation economy,” Haaland said in a statement. "With an eye toward protecting this special place for future generations, I have made this decision using the best available science and extensive public input.”

Critics of the project hailed the decision as a massive victory and called for permanent protections for the wilderness. But supporters of Twin Metals said the order runs counter to the administration's stated goal of increasing domestic supplies of metals that are critical to the clean energy economy.

“The Boundary Waters is a paradise of woods and water. It is an ecological marvel, a world-class outdoor destination, and an economic engine for hundreds of businesses and many thousands of people,” Becky Rom, national chair of the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters, said in a statement.

The proposed underground mine would be built southeast of Ely, near Birch Lake, which flows into the Boundary Waters. The project has been battered by shifting political winds. The Obama administration, in its final weeks, chose not to renew the two leases, which had dated back more than 50 years. The Trump administration reversed that decision and reinstated the leases. But the Biden administration canceled the leases last January after the U.S. Forest Service in October 2021 relaunched the review and public engagement process for the 20-year mining moratorium.

While the Biden administration last year committed itself to expanding domestic sources of critical minerals and metals needed for electric vehicles and renewable energy, it made clear Thursday that it considers Boundary Waters to be a unique area worthy of special protections. A day ago, the administration said it would reinstate restrictions on road-building and logging in the country’s largest national forest, the Tongass National Forest in Alaska.

Twin Metals said it was “deeply disappointed and stunned” over the moratorium.

“This region sits on top of one of the world’s largest deposits of critical minerals that are vital in meeting our nation’s goals to transition to a clean energy future, to create American jobs, to strengthen our national security and to bolster domestic supply chains," the company said in a statement. "We believe our project plays a critical role in addressing all of these priorities, and we remain committed to enforcing Twin Metals’ rights.”

Twin Metals says it can mine safely without generating acid mine drainage that the Biden administration and environmentalists say makes the $1.7 billion project an unacceptable risk to the wilderness. Twin Metals says its design would limit the exposure of the sulfide-bearing ore to the effects of air and water. And it says the mine would create more than 750 high-wage mining jobs plus 1,500 spinoff jobs in the region.

Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, who represents northeastern Minnesota, condemned the decision as “an attack on our way of life” that will benefit only foreign suppliers such as China that have fewer labor and environmental protections. “America needs to develop our vast mineral wealth, right here at home, with high-wage, union protected jobs,” he said in a statement.

“Ultimately, this sends a chilling message to hardworking Minnesotans who need the widespread economic benefits of mining in our state and sends an even harsher message to the business community that they cannot expect fair treatment in Minnesota or the United States,” the Jobs for Minnesotans coalition of business and labor groups said in a statement.

While Democratic U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, who represents the St. Paul area, applauded the order, she also warned in a statement that a future administration could reverse the decision.

The 1,700 square mile (4,400 square kilometer) Boundary Waters Canoe Area is the most-visited federally designated wilderness area in the U.S. It draws more than 150,000 visitors from around the world who paddle its more than 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) of canoe routes and over 1,100 lakes. According to the Interior Department, it contributes over $17 million annually to the outdoor recreation and tourism economy in northeastern Minnesota. Three Ojibwe tribes exercise treaty rights in the area covered by the moratorium.

The order does not affect two other proposed copper-nickel projects in northeastern Minnesota — the PolyMet mine near Babbitt and Hoyt Lakes and the Talon Metals mine near Tamarack — which lie in different watersheds.

Biden admin issues 20-year mining ban as it turns to foreign supply chain amid genergy push

Thomas Catenacci

FOX NEWS
Thu, January 26, 2023 

The Biden administration on Thursday announced that it would complete a 20-year withdrawal of 225,504 acres in a northern Minnesota forest area that is home to some of the largest domestic critical mineral reserves.

The action announced by the Department of the Interior (DOI) effectively prohibits mining activity from taking place in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Duluth, Minnesota, and surrounding area for the next two decades. The agency said it took the action in an effort to protect the local environment and watershed, which environmentalists worried would be contaminated by mining activity.

"The Department of the Interior takes seriously our obligations to steward public lands and waters on behalf of all Americans. Protecting a place like Boundary Waters is key to supporting the health of the watershed and its surrounding wildlife, upholding our Tribal trust and treaty responsibilities, and boosting the local recreation economy," DOI Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.

"With an eye toward protecting this special place for future generations, I have made this decision using the best-available science and extensive public input," she continued.

Last year, the DOI canceled two mineral leases held by the firm Twin Metals Minnesota, which had been located in the Superior National Forest located outside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. As a result of that decision and the action Thursday, domestic mining companies will effectively be banned from operating in the region for the foreseeable future and the forest's vast critical mineral resources will be left untapped.

However, Twin Metals' mining project contained about 88% of the nation's cobalt reserves in addition to vast copper, nickel and platinum-group elements. Such critical minerals are vital for various green energy technologies like electric vehicle batteries, battery storage facilities, solar panels and wind turbines, which the Biden administration has aggressively pushed.

For example, an electric vehicle requires 500% more mineral resources than a traditional gas-powered car, while a single onshore wind turbine plant requires 800% more minerals than a typical fossil fuel plant, according to the International Energy Agency.

However, China, other hostile nations and countries with severe human rights concerns dominate the global mineral supply chain.

President Biden has prioritized the green energy push as part of his climate agenda. Critical minerals are vital for green energy technology.

The State Department recently signed an agreement that opens the door to financing mining projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which mined more than 70% of the global supply of cobalt in 2021 and is home to 3.5 million metric tons of cobalt reserves. But independent investigations conducted in recent years have found that cobalt mines in the DRC employ child laborers.

"If Democrats were serious about developing renewable energy sources and breaking China's stranglehold on the global market, they would be flinging open the doors to responsible mineral development here in the U.S.," House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., said Thursday in a statement. "We cannot have a future of renewable energy without minerals, period — not to mention their necessity to our defense systems, satellites, cellphones and virtually every other advanced technology."

"While Democrats play political ping pong with American industries, China and Russia are laughing straight to the bank," he continued. "The administration's decision to withdraw this mineral-rich area — blatantly targeting one of our country’s most promising mines — is short-sighted, foolish and completely unscientific.

"Unfortunately, President Biden doesn't seem to mind if Minnesota mining communities and the entire American economy pay the price."

Artisanal miners work at a cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Oct. 12, 2022.

In addition, the mining projects in the Superior National Forest had a project labor agreement in place for the site to be unionized.

"It’s difficult to square the announcement of this significant land withdrawal with the Biden administration’s stated goals on electrification, the energy transition and supply chain security," said National Mining Association President and CEO Rich Nolan in a statement. "At a time when demand for minerals such as copper, nickel and cobalt are skyrocketing for use in electric vehicles and solar and wind infrastructure, the administration is withdrawing hundreds of thousands of acres of land that could provide U.S. manufacturers with plentiful sources of these same minerals."

"In the end, by closing off more and more U.S. land to responsible domestic mining instead of producing minerals here at home, creating high-paying American jobs and mining operations that will be conducted in accordance with the world's most stringent environmental, labor and safety regulations, the administration is looking to stand up operations in the Congo and Zambia," he added.

"It’s nonsensical when you look at where the U.S. wants to be globally as a leader in manufacturing, innovation and climate."

ALL VIOLENCE IS STATE VIOLENCE
Israeli forces kill 2 Palestinians during new violence




Israeli security forces are deployed in the village of Anata in east Jerusalem, the hometown of Palestinian gunman Uday Tamimi, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2023. Israeli forces on Wednesday demolished the home of Tamimi who allegedly killed a female Israeli soldier in an attack last year that sparked a manhunt and clampdown on the east Jerusalem neighborhood where he lived. 

(AP Photo/ Mahmoud Illean)

Wed, January 25, 2023 

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian who allegedly tried to stab a soldier in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, while a Palestinian teenager was shot dead after brandishing what Israeli police said was a fake pistol during an operation in east Jerusalem, according to Palestinian officials.

They were the latest deaths in a surge of violence that shows no signs of slowing. The violence comes at a time of tensions over Israel's new government, the most right wing in Israel's history.

On Wednesday, ultranationalist Cabinet minister Itamar Ben-Gvir promised to continue visits to a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site, despite pleas from neighboring Jordan that Israel maintain a delicate status quo at the site.

The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the man killed as Aref Abdel Nasser Lahlouh, 20. The Israeli military said the man was carrying a knife and was shot after he attempted to attack a soldier at a military post.

Video on social media showed a man getting out of a car, running toward soldiers while holding an object in his right hand, and then falling to the ground.

Earlier Wednesday, Israeli forces demolished the home of a Palestinian gunman who allegedly killed a female Israeli soldier at an east Jerusalem checkpoint last year. Israel says such demolitions deter future attacks, while Palestinians and rights groups say they unfairly punish people who were not involved in violence.

Police said some 300 officers and troops entered the Shuafat refugee camp to demolish the home of Uday Tamimi. Police said they opened fire on a Palestinian who they suspected was armed and aiming at forces, but the weapon turned out to be fake.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said 17-year-old Mohammed Ali was killed.

Footage released by police showed the teen, his face covered and wearing a hood, among a crowd of masked youths and aiming what appears to be a pistol. The video shows him running off, dropping the weapon and then falling to the ground.

Wednesday's deaths brought to 20 the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire this year. Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed last year, making it the deadliest since 2004, according to figures by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem.

Tensions have been high for months as Israel has been conducting nightly arrest raids in the West Bank, which were prompted by a spate of Palestinian attacks against Israelis last spring. Some 30 people were killed in Israel by Palestinians in 2022.

Israel says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But others including stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions or people not involved in the violence have also been killed.

After the shooting attack last year that killed the 19-year-old soldier, the attacker fled, sparking a weeklong manhunt and tight restrictions around Shuafat. As part of the search, Israeli security forces choked off the camp’s entry and exit points, bringing life to a standstill for its estimated 60,000 residents.

Tamimi was eventually killed after opening fire at security guards at the entrance to a West Bank settlement near Jerusalem.

Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist who oversees the police as Israel's new national security minister, welcomed Wednesday's demolition.

“This step is very important, but not enough at all. We must destroy all terrorists' homes and deport the terrorists themselves from the country,” he said.

He also said Wednesday he would continue visits to a sensitive sacred compound a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jordanian King Abdullah II met and discussed the political sensitivities at the site, which Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary and Jews call the Temple Mount.

“I manage my own policy concerning the Temple Mount, not that of the Jordanian government," Ben-Gvir told Israeli public broadcaster Kan. “I went up to the Temple Mount, I will continue to go up to the Temple Mount.”

Days after taking office, Ben-Gvir made a visit to the site, drawing condemnations from Jordan and across the Arab world. The visit was seen as a provocation, due to Ben-Gvir's past calls to change longstanding arrangements at the site.

Under an arrangement that has prevailed for decades under Jordan’s custodianship, Jews are permitted visits during certain hours but may not pray there. But Jewish religious nationalists, including Ben-Gvir, have increasingly visited the site and demanded equal prayer rights for Jews there. The Palestinians fear this is a step toward taking over the site.

The site, the emotional heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has frequently been the scene of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police. It is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam. Jews call it the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism.

Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem, along with the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state.

Why Kyrsten Sinema is in deep trouble

Broadly unpopular with Arizonans, the independent lawmaker faces the biggest challenge of her political career.


Andrew Romano and Christopher Wilson
Wed, January 25, 2023 

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema on Capitol Hill last August. (Michael Reynolds/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

There’s no shortage of Democratic senators in danger of losing their seats in 2024. Joe Manchin in ruby-red West Virginia. Jon Tester in solidly Republican Montana. Sherrod Brown in ever-more-conservative Ohio. And their colleagues in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Michigan — four of the purplest places on the map.

But if the latest polls are to be believed, no Senate incumbent is in as much trouble as Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema.

On Monday, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego of Phoenix launched his own bid for Sinema’s seat, setting up what could become the most fascinating and dramatic Senate brawl of 2024.


“I have been deeply humbled by the encouragement I have received from the people of Arizona, and today I am answering the call to serve,” he said in a statement.

The following day, his team announced that it had already raised over $1 million from more than 27,000 donations, surpassing in eight hours the Arizona record for the most individual donations in a campaign’s first day.

Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz. (Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/Shutterstock)

On paper, someone like Sinema, a trailblazing centrist in a closely divided state, might seem relatively safe. Yet after years spent alienating progressives and blocking major parts of President Biden’s agenda, Sinema quit the Democratic Party in December and reregistered as an independent.

By doing so, she has now put herself at dire risk of losing reelection next year. That’s because while someone like Manchin could very well lose in West Virginia, he’ll still get 40% of the vote at the very least. Sinema, meanwhile, has a much lower floor and could theoretically limp across the finish line with less than half that.

It was clear to Arizona political observers when Sinema announced her switch that she was doing it (at least in part) to avoid a nomination challenge from the far more liberal Gallego, a longtime critic who led her by a staggering 58 percentage points (74% to 16%) among Democratic primary voters in a Data for Progress survey conducted last year.

By campaigning as an independent instead of a Democrat, Sinema would avoid a head-to-head primary contest with Gallego or another progressive, proceeding automatically to the general election.

The bet Sinema was making, analysts said, was that state and national Democrats would treat her like Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine — the other independent senators who caucus with the party on Capitol Hill — and discourage any of their own from running to her left so as not to risk dividing the Democratic vote and “throwing” the race to a Republican.

Gallego’s entrance into the contest, however, makes it all but impossible for Democrats to rally around Sinema as they have with Sanders and King. And the likely result — a three-way contest with a Republican in the mix — is going to test Sinema like never before.

In December, Public Policy Polling released a survey conducted on Gallego’s behalf showing the Democratic congressman (40%) statistically tied with former GOP gubernatorial nominee (and possible future Senate candidate) Kari Lake (41%) — while Sinema (13%) trailed both Gallego and Lake by nearly 30 points.

Former Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake in Phoenix in December. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters)

An even more recent survey by Blueprint Polling again found Lake (36%) and Gallego (32%) locked in a close battle, with Sinema (14%) far behind.

Such paltry numbers suggest that rather than uniting moderates behind her, Sinema’s prized independence may have left her without a natural constituency heading into 2024.

“Right now, the polls reflect our natural tendency towards party identification,” Robert Robb, a longtime columnist for the Arizona Republic and a former GOP political consultant, told Yahoo News. “And that’s a barrier that Sinema will have to overcome.”

A September AARP survey found that not only do Arizona Democrats now see their senator more unfavorably (57%) than favorably (37%), but so do clear majorities of every other imaginable demographic group — including Arizona Republicans, women, Latinos and independents.

Sinema’s best hope to stay in office, then, might be to use her seat in the Senate as a platform to rebrand herself not as a centrist Democrat but rather as a “truly independent voice for Arizona” and the real heir to “maverick” Arizona Sen. John McCain. Her latest gambit — a compromise package of both Republican and Democratic immigration reforms negotiated with GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina — could help burnish that brand (in the unlikely event it survives Congress).

“Two years is a long time, and Sinema might be the most important senator in the country right now,” Arizona pollster and political consultant Paul Bentz told Yahoo News. “She’s getting a lot of attention because of that, and that gives her a lot of opportunity — opportunity to focus on getting things done in Washington, D.C., building a coalition and coming back to the state with excellent talking points to run on.”

Sinema speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 17. (Markus Schreiber/AP)

If the far-right Arizona GOP continues its self-defeating strategy of nominating divisive, radical figures (such as losing 2022 Senate candidate Blake Masters) and Gallego veers too far left on issues like immigration, Sinema would — in theory — have a chance to win over the bulk of voters who live somewhere in the middle.

“The conventional wisdom is that Sinema has no chance, and the only question is whether she takes more votes away from the Democrat or the Republican,” Robb said. “But if you look at her approval numbers, they’re in the 35% to 38% range, which is a pretty good base in a three-way race where 40% will probably win the seat. The challenge is keeping those people from defaulting back to partisan identification on Election Day.”

Meanwhile, the goal for Gallego — a Harvard-educated Marine combat veteran who was first elected in 2014 — is to splinter whatever centrist coalition Sinema tries to assemble.

“You already see Ruben in his announcement video using his humble beginnings and his military background to try to appeal to independent, unaffiliated voters,” explained Bentz. “The more he cuts into that vote while defending the Democratic base, the better his chances. He doesn’t even mention that he’s a Democrat.”

A member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Gallego had been attacking Sinema for months in advance of formally announcing his campaign. And his preferred line of attack — that Sinema isn’t insufficiently progressive but rather insufficiently populist — is designed to resonate even with Arizonans who don’t feel loyal to Democrats.

Gallego at a campaign event in Phoenix on Nov. 2, 2022. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

“The problem isn’t that Sen. Sinema abandoned the Democratic Party, it’s that she’s abandoned Arizona,” Gallego said in Monday’s statement. “She’s repeatedly broken her promises and fought for the interests of Big Pharma and Wall Street at our expense.”

Going forward, Gallego will have no shortage of fodder for such attacks. Last year, for instance, Sinema single-handedly forced Democrats to alter the Inflation Reduction Act and strip out taxes on hedge funds and private equity firms in order to earn her critical vote, saving those companies an estimated $14 billion.

From 2017 to 2022, Sinema’s campaign received more than $6 million from the finance, insurance and real estate industries, according to the nonprofit research group OpenSecrets. She also raked in more money from payday lenders during the 2022 cycle than any other senator.

None of which is to say that Gallego, who represents the single bluest congressional district in Arizona, is the new frontrunner. “Except on some military and foreign policy issues, he’s a standard-issue strong liberal candidate,” said Robb. “And they do not fare well in Arizona in statewide elections. He fits his district. He does not fit the state.”

But the problem for Sinema is that she doesn’t just have to beat Gallego; she has to beat a Republican too. And it isn’t hard to imagine a MAGA candidate such as Lake joining with Gallego to slam Sinema for, say, hobnobbing with global elites at Davos in a white fur vest (which Sinema did last week).

The irony of Sinema’s plight is that Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, her fellow Arizonan, has seemingly found a way to appeal to swing voters without offending the base at every turn — and last November he comfortably won reelection as a result.

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)

Although Kelly has been a more reliable vote for Biden’s agenda than Sinema, several of his 2022 campaign ads described him as “working with Republicans” and “stand[ing] up to the left”; at one debate, he went so far as to describe some of Biden’s immigration decisions as “dumb.” Kelly also “helped sink one of Joe Biden’s labor nominees, pushed the president to open new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and hammered the administration over lifting pandemic-era restrictions on the southern border,” according to Politico.

To be sure, Kelly’s Republican rival, Blake Masters, did himself no favors by touting the Unabomber’s political writings and blaming “Black people, frankly” for gun violence. But typically, the president’s party loses independents by double digits in midterm years. In contrast, the 2022 exit polls showed Kelly trouncing Masters among independents — who, at 40%, made up a larger share of Arizona’s electorate than Democrats (27%) or Republicans (33%) — by a remarkable 55% to 39% margin.

In 2024, Sinema will somehow have to perform even better than Kelly among independents, because Gallego’s bid will leave her with far less support on the left.

“Republicans are more likely to be solidified behind the Republican nominee, whereas we’ll see both Gallego and Sinema competing for Democrats and a lot of the independent audience,” Bentz told Yahoo News. “In fact, we did the math, and Sinema would need to win about 25% of Republicans, about 25% of Democrats and at least 60% of independents and unaffiliated voters to have a chance.”

In truth, Sinema would probably struggle to turn out progressives even if Gallego had passed on the race. The more she has refused to support ending — or even reforming — the 60-vote threshold created by the Senate’s legislative filibuster, the more Democrats have raged against her.

In January 2022, the Arizona Democratic Party voted to formally censure Sinema over her refusal to adjust the filibuster to pass new voting rights legislation. Polling that month showed her with a 19% approval rating among Arizona Democratic primary voters, versus 83% for Kelly and 80% for Biden.

Sinema in the Capitol on Dec. 13, 2022. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

“We appreciate Senator Sinema’s leadership in passing the American Rescue Plan and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,” state party chair Raquel Terán said in a written statement at the time. “However, we are also here to advocate for our constituents and the ramifications of failing to pass federal legislation that protects their right to vote are too large and far-reaching.”

Emily’s List, an organization that supports female candidates who favor reproductive rights, released a statement the same month criticizing the senator for her pro-filibuster position. Previously the group had been Sinema’s biggest supporter, donating more than $400,000 to her successful 2018 Senate bid.

“Right now, Senator Sinema’s decision to reject the voices of allies, partners and constituents who believe the importance of voting rights outweighs that of an arcane process means she will find herself standing alone in the next election,” Laphonza Butler, the group’s president, said in a statement.

But regardless of whether Democrats officially abandon Sinema for Gallego — so far, national party leaders seem intent on neutrality — the risk of mutually assured destruction remains very real.

“Having a three-way race benefits Republicans in the state of Arizona,” Bentz said. “So while we saw Republicans struggle in the last statewide election — particularly those who were prone to denying the 2020 results, pledging fealty to Trump and on the extreme end of the abortion discussion — those problems will be less impactful in a contest against both Sinema and Gallego.

“We don’t know who the GOP will nominate, but I expect a spirited and very crowded primary,” he added. “This is going to be one of the best chances for Republicans to start winning again — if they can get their act together.”