Matching dinosaur footprints found on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean

Tracks show the last place dinosaurs could travel between Africa and South America before the two continents split

Southern Methodist University

 

image: 

A long ornithopod trackway at Passagem das Pedra, Sousa
Basin preserved in floodplain deposits of Lower Cretaceous. 

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Credit: Ismar de Souza Carvalho

DALLAS (SMU) – An international team of researchers led by SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs has found matching sets of Early Cretaceous dinosaur footprints on what are now two different continents. 

More than 260 footprints were discovered in Brazil and in Cameroon, showing where land-dwelling dinosaurs were last able to freely cross between South America and Africa millions of years ago before the two continents split apart.

“We determined that in terms of age, these footprints were similar,” Jacobs said. “In their geological and plate tectonic contexts, they were also similar. In terms of their shapes, they are almost identical.”

The footprints, impressed into mud and silt along ancient rivers and lakes, were found more than 3,700 miles, or 6,000 kilometers, away from each other. Dinosaurs made the tracks 120 million years ago on a single supercontinent known as Gondwana – which broke off from the larger landmass of Pangea, Jacobs said.

“One of the youngest and narrowest geological connections between Africa and South America was the elbow of northeastern Brazil nestled against what is now the coast of Cameroon along the Gulf of Guinea,” Jacobs explained. “The two continents were continuous along that narrow stretch, so that animals on either side of that connection could potentially move across it.”

Most of the dinosaur fossils were created by three-toed theropod dinosaurs.. A few were also likely made by sauropods or ornithischians, said Diana P. Vineyard, who is a research associate at SMU and co-author of the study.

Other co-authors of the study were Lawrence J. Flynn in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, Christopher R. Scotese in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Northwestern University and Ismar de Souza Carvalho at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro and Centro de Geociências.

The study was published by New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science in a tribute to the late paleontologist Martin Lockley, who spent much of his career studying dinosaurs tracks and footprints. 

Dinosaur footprints tell the whole story 

Africa and South America started to split around 140 million years ago, causing gashes in Earth's crust called rifts to open up along pre-existing weaknesses. As the tectonic plates beneath South America and Africa moved apart, magma from the Earth's mantle rose to the surface, creating new oceanic crust as the continents moved away from each other. And eventually, the South Atlantic Ocean filled the void between these two newly-shaped continents.

Signs of some of those major events were evident between both locations where the dinosaur footprints were found – at the Borborema region in the northeast part of Brazil and the Koum Basin in northern Cameroon. Half-graben basins -- geologic structures formed during rifting as the Earth’s crust pulls apart and faults form -- are found in both areas and contain ancient river and lake sediments. Along with dinosaur tracks, these sediments contain fossil pollen that indicate an age of 120 million years.

Before the continental connection between Africa and South America was severed, “rivers flowed and lakes formed in the basins” Jacobs said. “Plants fed the herbivores and supported a food chain. Muddy sediments left by the rivers and lakes contain dinosaur footprints, including those of meat-eaters, documenting that these river valleys could provide specific avenues for life to travel across the continents 120 million years ago.”

 

Theropod footprint from Sousa Basin, Lower Cretaceous of
Northeastern Brazil.  

Credit

Ismar de Souza Carvalho

Two representative theropod tracks from the Koum Basin in Cameroon. 

Credit

SMU

About SMU

SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas. SMU’s alumni, faculty and more than 12,000 students in eight degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, communities and the world.

---

Method of Research

Meta-analysis

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Vertebrate Paleoichnology: A Tribute to Martin Lockley

Article Publication Date

23-Aug-2024

 

Shortage of calves threatens Wales’ beef industry

25 Aug 2024 2 minute read

Welsh cattle

The future stability of the Welsh beef industry could be in jeopardy after new data revealed a serious decline in the number of calves.

There were 213,200 calf birth registrations in Wales during the first six months of 2024, a fall of over 10,000 calves year-on-year and down four per cent compared to last year.

British Cattle Movement Service (BCMS) data reveals the number of calves that could be available for beef production has fallen to 173,600, its lowest level in several years.

Glesni Phillips, Hybu Cig Cymru-Meat Promotion Wales (HCC) Intelligence, Analysis & Business Insight Executive said: “This marks the lowest number of half-year calf registrations recorded in Wales in several years, well below the peak of nearly 230,000 head in 2021.”

She added: “This decline also mirrors trends across the rest of Britain, with English registrations also four per cent down and Scottish two per cent down.

“As cattle numbers in key age brackets fall, there are serious concerns around the critical mass needed to promote and maintain industry stability, which presents an overall concerning outlook for beef production.”

“Although some of the beef females will be retained as suckler replacements in the herd, this figure is four per cent lower- that’s 7,400 head- than the number available during the first half of 2023 and it’s likely to have significant implications for the future of beef supply in Wales.”

Decline

Female dairy calf registrations in Wales between January and June decreased by six per cent compared to the same period in 2023. Male dairy calf numbers were down by 14 per cent, resulting in an overall decline of eight per cent, or nearly 5,100 head in the number of dairy calf registrations.

Beef calf registrations were down three per cent -or 4,600 head- to nearly 158,100 head in this half-year period, some two per cent lower than 2022 and the lowest figure since 2019.

Ms Phillips said: “Both beef female and male calf registrations saw similar year-on-year declines of three per cent, while the gender distribution remained relatively stable.

“Beef registrations made up 74 per cent of total calf registrations in Wales, up from 70 per cent in 2021. This shift in the balance between dairy and beef within the Welsh herd could change the future supply of beef if this trend continues.”

UK

Franki Raffles: Photography, Activism, Campaign Works; Hannah Perry: Manual Labour – review

Laura Cumming

Sun, 25 August 2024 

THE GUARDIAN

‘A collective smile slowly breaking towards the youngest at the back’: Farm workers, USSR, 1989 by Franki Raffles.Photograph: © Franki Raffles Estate, all rights reserved. Image courtesy of University of St Andrews Library and Edinburgh Napier University

The British photographer Franki Raffles (1955-94) died shockingly young, as a result of complications following the birth of twin daughters. But by then she had already amassed almost 40,000 images of women at work the world over. Her photographs are as strong as their subjects. Raffles photographed women in the Philippines, Israel and China, the Orkneys, Mexico and Ukraine. She portrayed harvesters at dawn and cleaners at midnight, seasonal onion pickers, part-time teachers and lifelong factory workers. She was a tireless activist of the camera.

Her photographs amounted to campaigns – look and learn, see what is going on, what it is like for these women, then do what you can – sometimes with a specific end in mind. Anyone who waited at the bus stops of Edinburgh in the 80s, for instance, as I did, will remember Raffles’s devastating photographic protests against male violence.

I have never forgotten her image of an elegant woman in a New Town flat, leafing through a magazine before a working Georgian fireplace. Above runs the caption: “She lives with a successful businessman”. Below runs the punchline, so to speak: “Last week he hospitalised her”. Some of the images from this campaign could, alas, be run all over again at British bus stops today.

Teachers, typists, nurses, dinner ladies, across several continents, all share their conversation and their humour with her camera

After a philosophy degree at St Andrews University, Raffles moved to the remote village of Callanish on the Isle of Lewis in the 1970s. There she worked as a self-employed weaver for the Harris tweed industry to support her first child, and her fledgling photography. What she knows informs what she sees.

A young woman in an anorak toils over a handloom in a cold, bare room, the light so poor she has to bend right down, close to her work. Others are stacking products in a nameless stone barn. There are weatherworn farmers out in the fields, some of them cutting ancient peat from the land in overalls and specs, or wrangling the local sheep.

A sequence of sheep shearers is especially moving for the sight of elderly women in what must once have been their good hats and coats kneeling on the ground, practically eye to eye with the wriggling animals. Later, one of them looks straight out of a closeup portrait indoors. Bill Brandt-like in its grainy darkness, it is by no means as dour, for the Lewis woman is beaming straight back at Raffles.

That smile is almost a characteristic of the 300 images on show at Baltic. Two – or is it perhaps even three – generations of Russian women in overalls have paused, momentarily, from their haymaking for Raffles’s camera. They recede towards misty mountains, a collective smile slowly breaking towards the youngest at the back. Teachers, typists, nurses, dinner ladies, across several continents, all share their conversation and their humour with her camera.

Her photographs are almost all in black and white, without staging or hyperbole. Raffles worked mainly in long-shot, avoiding character studies, her eye always on situation and context. Lot’s Wife, funded by a Wingate Trust scholarship in the early 1990s, shows the bitterly hard lives of Jewish women emigrating to Israel after the collapse of the USSR. Nearly all had significant jobs but are now unemployed, marooned at home with small children; in accompanying texts, nearly all speak of losing their sense of community.

And that is perhaps what strikes the viewer today, before these dense walls of Raffles’s photographs: that they are about what they show, which is collective experience. They were meant to enlighten – shown as much in libraries, public halls and the media, as in art galleries – and so they still do, except that this intense portrait of women worldwide now presents a spirit of community that feels like disappearing history.

Hannah Perry (born 1984) is an ideal partner to Raffles, with her multimedia exhibition upstairs at Baltic. Manual Labour concerns the intersection between women’s experiences of class, work and childbirth, and the heavy industry of Perry’s native north of England. It runs from the sublime to the brutal.

A very beautiful choral work of women’s voices in roundelay, almost ecstatic, echoes through the high gallery as a gigantic bronze pelvis, mounted on scaffolding, gradually starts to shift. Anyone familiar with childbirth will know that the great structure – somewhere between a Henry Moore and a muckle seafaring propeller – is about to separate in two. But Perry goes further, producing an abrupt and startling surprise.

On a vast cinema screen, girls push prams through shopping centres, visit clinics, are rebuked by overworked doctors. A pregnant woman turns among mirrors in nightclub darkness (the artist herself), intercut with the pelvic motions of a pole dancer in an actual club. Molten metal, concrete, furious industrial sound and light are intercut with these young women’s lives in complex film collage.

Sheets of taut metal, stretched on poles through the gallery, vibrate ever more anxiously to the sound of nameless rumbling, as clocks chime and bells ring. At times, the film on the screen seems to quiver and pulsate like the sheet metal. The world of toxic industry (or is it masculinity) streams in and out of these evocations of women’s experiences to an alarming degree, at times too rough to behold.

But when the elements – hydraulic, sculptural, harmonic, cinematic – do come together, Manual Labour mobilises a sharp polarity between men and women’s work. And at the same time, it appears to be drawing parallels between them – between the intense physicality of both kinds of labour.

Star ratings (out of five)
Franki Raffles: Photography, Activism, Campaign Works ★★★★
Hannah Perry: Manual Labour ★★★

• Franki Raffles: Photography, Activism, Campaign Works and Hannah Perry: Manual Labour are both at Baltic, Gateshead, until 16 March 2025

New Delhi faces the gravest geopolitical fallout from Sheikh Hasina’s exit

Sunday 25 August 2024, by Kamal Ahmed


In the hours before Sheikh Hasina fled Gonobhaban, her official residence in Dhaka, on 5 August, Bangladeshi security forces killed scores of protesters who had joined a huge march to the capital demanding an end to her autocratic rule. Around the same time, it has since been reported, Hasina had pressured the army chief to enforce a curfew using deadly force, which would have meant the military joining the bloodbath. The army chief refused.

The prime minister’s desperate hold on power finally slipped when security chiefs warned that the advancing protesters would reach Gonobhaban within an hour and they doubted their ability to contain the crowd. Speculation that India, her strongest international ally, would intervene in her favour proved unfounded, and Hasina was left at the mercy of the military, which ultimately facilitated her escape across the border. She wound up at a safe house in Delhi, trying but failing to gain asylum in the United Kingdom. All told, the weeks of protests against her government, which started on university campuses and escalated in reaction to brutal state repression, left at least five hundred dead, including more than thirty children.

The hasty exit deprived Hasina of the chance to address her supporters and her country, as she had planned on doing that day. A week or so later, reports emerged of her describing the speech to her associates and blaming the United States for orchestrating her fall, apparently because she refused to surrender control over St Martin’s Island in the Bay of Bengal. Hasina’s son denied all of this, but it could not have helped her already rocky relationship with Washington DC, which months ago had criticised the sham election that gave Hasina a fourth consecutive term in power.

Friendless in the United States, rebuffed by the United Kingdom – and, reportedly, also Europe and the United Arab Emirates – Hasina is finding few places to turn to. China and Russia, earlier her vocal supporters, also appear too distant or too reluctant to help. For now at least, the deposed despot remains moored in Delhi, her presence there a daily reminder to the people of Bangladesh of New Delhi’s role in enabling her reign. Unsurprisingly, the Bangladeshi public’s ire against India is only growing.

India likes to think of itself as the big brother in Southasia, and in New Delhi, too, Hasina’s exit created shockwaves – in this case for the Indian big brother’s failure to protect his little sister in her time of need. New Delhi struggled to issue a coherent response to the developments in Bangladesh for nearly 24 hours after Hasina fled. This delay was especially notable as India had previously been quick to label the growing protests against Hasina’s rule, and her repression of them, Bangladesh’s “internal matter”. Now, even as thousands of Indian citizens returned home due to deteriorating security in Bangladesh, New Delhi remained silent until the Indian government convened an emergency all-party meeting.

The fact that New Delhi called an all-party meeting – something typically reserved for national-security emergencies – highlighted India’s concerns over a potential influx of refugees from Bangladesh, which it has allegedly faced during past periods of turmoil. No such influx arrived this time, but India also has other security concerns in the country – not least that rebel groups from its restive Northeast could find safe havens across the border. That worry, to some extent, explains New Delhi’s heavy investment in keeping Hasina in power and on its side, but acting as cheerleader to the despot has clearly now given New Delhi exactly the kind of instability it wants to avoid.

Since returning to power in 2009, after first holding office from 1996 to 2001, Hasina managed a delicate balancing act in Bangladesh’s foreign policy, drawing praise for navigating the geopolitical rivalry between China and India. Over time, the balance increasingly favoured India and the bilateral relationship deepened to an unprecedented level. Beneath the surface, however, widespread public discontent built up against what many perceived as India’s exploitative relationship with Bangladesh – encapsulated, for example, by a highly controversial and skewed deal to buy power from the Adani Group, a conglomerate intimately tied to the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi. This discontent erupted into a non-political “India Out” campaign following India’s overt backing of the questionable re-election of Hasina and her Awami League party in January 2024.

As New Delhi got closer to Hasina, it successfully thwarted China’s attempt to establish a deep-sea port in the Bay of Bengal, despite Bangladesh previously adding two Chinese submarines to its naval fleet. China’s efforts to gain access to existing maritime ports in Chittagong and Mongla were similarly frustrated, while India secured concessions to use these ports and reportedly obtained management rights in Mongla. Hasina also agreed to India’s proposal to establish a radar surveillance network along Bangladesh’s coastline, and opened up new areas of cooperation, including defence procurement and collaboration on space technology.

One of Hasina’s most controversial concessions was granting India corridor facilities for transporting goods through Bangladesh via road, rail and riverine routes. While bilateral trade quadrupled during Hasina’s 15-year rule, it remained lopsided, with Indian exports to Bangladesh valued manyfold higher than Bangladesh’s meagre USD 2 billion in exports to India. Following the “India Out” campaign, Indian exports to Bangladesh and tourism earnings from the country saw steep declines, reflecting popular resentment towards India’s unwavering support for Hasina’s authoritarian regime.

While the “India Out” campaign, driven primarily by social-media influencers, gained momentum after the Modi government’s strong backing of Hasina’s re-election, the ground for anti-India sentiment had already been laid by decades of grievances. These included the frequent killing of civilians along the two countries’ border by India’s Border Security Force, the lack of reciprocity in the sharing of waters from common rivers like the Teesta, regular derogatory comments in Indian politics about Bangladeshis regarding alleged illegal migration, and a perceived hypocrisy in India’s stance over the rights of religious minorities.

Hasina’s disgraceful exit has necessitated a re-evaluation of India’s policy towards Bangladesh. There is a clear divide among Indian politicians and analysts, with some still denying that the uprising was a popular reaction to a brutal dictator and instead blaming it on Islamist forces or various international conspiracies. The more perceptive observers are noting Bangladeshis’ growing resentment against India’s perceived attempts to subvert their desire for democracy, justice and the rule of law through such things as spreading misinformation, stoking communal tensions and sheltering Hasina.

In fact, Bangladesh’s latest election was not the first non-democratic vote in Hasina’s favour that received New Delhi’s full approval; in 2014 and in 2018, India had backed Hasina through unfree elections that returned her to office. This record has drawn lots of criticism within Bangladesh, including from Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate and chief adviser of the interim administration installed in Hasina’s wake. “If there is a fire in the brother’s house, how can I say it is an internal affair?” he asked, expressing disappointment with India’s stance. On another occasion, he warned that destabilising Bangladesh would have repercussions throughout the surrounding region, including Myanmar and the seven states of the Indian Northeast.

The fallout of India’s deep-rooted support for Hasina and the Awami League is that it now requires an urgent recalibration of its policy towards Bangladesh. The United States, too, must reconsider whether allowing India a free hand in its “backyard”, as Washington DC did, was a wise decision. While some US State Department officials, including a former ambassador to Dhaka, advocated for stronger measures to ensure a free and fair election in Bangladesh earlier this year, their efforts were stymied by intense lobbying from security advisers in alignment with the Indian view. The recent insurrection in Bangladesh may force a reassessment of this approach, with an understanding that concessions to autocratic regimes in pursuit of the United States’s larger Indo-Pacific strategy carry the risk of further unrest.

By going so deep with Hasina, New Delhi has painted itself into a corner. In contrast, China’s swift response, expressing willingness to work with the new interim government, underscored its adaptability. Beijing had been eager to elevate its relationship with Hasina, and even invited her for an official visit following her dubious election victory. But India’s diplomatic manoeuvring made New Delhi Hasina’s first official overseas destination after regaining power, and her subsequent trip to Beijing yielded little in terms of the economic relief Bangladesh desperately needs as its economy continues to struggle. China will now have to navigate its relationship with Bangladesh’s new leadership, particularly where it concerns the Belt and Road Initiative that has brought capital investment to the country at the cost of heavy debt.

Russia, another staunch supporter of Hasina’s regime, now faces its own challenges in Bangladesh. For years, it accused the United States of interfering in Bangladesh’s domestic politics, and dismissed calls for transparent and inclusive elections as disguised attempts at regime change. Here again, Hasina’s downfall may prompt a re-evaluation of Russia’s interests in Bangladesh, particularly in light of its investments in a nuclear power plant that has seen costs balloon to over USD 12 billion. As Bangladesh’s new leadership will be scrutinising these projects, Russia may need to reconsider its approach.

And similar scrutiny could await Indian investments as well. The Hasina government’s power deal with the Adani Group had already raised major red flags over its pricing, which heavily favours the Indian conglomerate. A closer look into its workings and how it came to be may bring out especially embarrassing revelations for the current Indian government, whose closeness to Adani is an open secret. The storm for New Delhi in Bangladesh could then get even worse.

Himalmag

P.S.

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Attached documents

• new-delhi-faces-the-gravest-geopolitical-fallout-from_a8646.pdf (PDF - 915.4 KiB)
  Extraction PDF [->article8646]

India

• Indian coalition government: a defeat For Hindu nationalism
• On the raging student movement in Bangladesh
• On the elections in India
• Defeat the BJP, rely on the strength of workers, poor peasants, and all the oppressed social , ethnic, regional groups of people
• The domestic and geopolitical challenges in India - an overview

Bangladesh

• After Hasina’s resignation, struggle continues
• Protesters in Bangladesh Want an End to State Repression
• Bangladesh and the BKF, an overview: history, political situation, peasant struggles...
• Call for donations for ESSF Solidarity Fund 2022 - Getting ready for a new exceptional year!
• Condemnation and protest after reactionary fundamentalist forces attacked Hindu religious people in Comilla

• Kamal Ahmed

  Kamal Ahmed is an independent journalist who has worked as a reporter and in editorial roles at the BBC World Service and Prothom Alo.

International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.

ROBIN HOOD TAX

Major union tells Labour to implement ’emergency 1% wealth tax’ on super-rich

Unite claim their 'emergency wealth tax' policy would raise £25 billion, and only apply to assets starting from over £4 million.

 by Tom Head
2024-08-25 



One of the biggest trade unions in the UK is set to press the Labour government into adopting an emergency wealth tax, in order to properly fund crumbling public services and to pay for tens of thousands of new employees needed within the NHS.

ALSO READ: ‘Most wealthy people support a wealth tax’ – Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

Can an emergency 1% wealth tax fix broken Britain?

Unite, who will also be attending the Trades Union Congress in Brighton next month, have suggested taxing 1% of all assets worth over £4 million. So for every pound earned over that threshold, a penny will go towards the public pot.

The second-largest union in the country estimates that roughly £25 billion could be raised by this policy, which would only target the UK’s super-rich citizens. The RMT, led by Mick Lynch, is also in favour of implementing an emergency wealth tax.
Unite to target ‘super-rich’ in upcoming TUC speech

Sharon Graham is the general secretary of Unite. She has hinted at frustrations with Labour’s position on public finances, arguing that no-one can simply wait around for the economy to grow and hope for the best. Graham and her colleagues want direct, swift action.

“The idea behind a wealth tax is that we need serious investment in our crippled public services and in industry to ensure a prosperous future for Britain’s workers and their communities. We won’t get the money needed for that just by waiting for growth.” | Sharon Graham

Wealth tax proposals welcomed – and championed – by Green Party

The TUC will likely test the uneasy relationship between trade unions and Keir Starmer, who reached something resembling a pact heading into the General Election. But, with Sir Keir hoping to play it safe and sensible with non-left voters, calls for a wealth tax will probably go unheeded.

Zack Polanski, deputy leader of the Green Party, has welcomed the 1% emergency tax proposed by Unite. Speaking on social media, the politician reminder the public that his party – who now have four MPs in Parliament – have been ‘pushing wealth taxation for years’.