Oldest Dinosaur Tracksite In Northeast Asia Discovered: Evidence Shows Large Dinosaurs Ranges As Far As Northern Mongolia 120 Million Years Ago

 Two parallel trackways of large sauropods overlap and extend toward the upper left of the image, forming a series of large, oval-shaped depressions. The overlapping pattern indicates that one individual followed the exact path of another. Also visible on the same bedding surface are five trackways of large theropods, preserved as distinct three-toed footprints. The co-occurrence of both herbivorous sauropod and carnivorous theropod tracks on a single surface provides clear evidence of a shared habitat in northern Mongolia during the Early Cretaceous. CREDIT: Okayama University of Science

 April 26, 2026 

By Eurasia Review

An international research team consisting of scientists from the Institute of Paleontology, Mongolian Academy of Sciences (IP-MAS), the National University of Mongolia (NUM), and Okayama University of Science (OUS) has rediscovered a dinosaur tracksite in the Saizhurakh area of northern Mongolia. The site was originally reported about 70 years ago but had since been lost due to a lack of detailed documentation and follow-up investigation. The team conducted the first comprehensive study of the site.

Their findings revealed that footprints of both large herbivorous dinosaurs (sauropods) and large carnivorous dinosaurs (theropods) are preserved on the same bedding surface. This provides clear evidence that large dinosaurs inhabited regions as far north as northern Mongolia.

On April 2, Dr. Shinobu Ishigaki, Honorable Director of the Museum of Dinosaur Research at OUS, and Masato Fujita, Professor in the Department of Dinosaur Paleontology, announced the findings at a press conference held at the university.

Mongolia is one of the world’s top five countries for dinosaur fossil discoveries. However, most fossils come from the Late Cretaceous period (approximately 70–90 million years ago). Fossils from the Early Cretaceous (around 100–120 million years ago) are relatively scarce and consist mainly of small- to medium-sized dinosaurs such as Harpymimus, Psittacosaurus,Zavacephale, and Choyrodon. Furthermore, no definitive dinosaur tracksites from the Early Cretaceous had previously been confirmed in Mongolia.

Even at the Saijrakh site, a Mongolian geographer reported the “discovery of dinosaur footprints” in a brief two-page account about 70 years ago. However, the report lacked detailed descriptions and precise locality, and the site remained uninvestigated and effectively lost.

In 2024, a joint expedition by IP-MAS and OUS set out to relocate the site and conduct a detailed scientific investigation. With the assistance of local residents, the team successfully identified the location and discovered footprints of large theropods and sauropods. A more detailed paleontological and geological study was carried out in 2025.

The site is underlain by the Shinekhudag Formation, consisting of sediments deposited in a large lake during the Early Cretaceous (approximately 120 million years ago). Thin sand layers are occasionally interbedded within fine black clay deposited on the lake floor. These sand layers are thought to have formed during periods when the lake level dropped. The dinosaur tracks were likely made when such sandy surfaces were exposed above the water, allowing dinosaurs living in the area to walk across them.

Around 120 million years ago, Earth experienced a warm climate, and the rapid diversification of flowering plants was transforming ecosystems. During this time, dinosaurs from Asia were dispersing into North America. Mongolia represents a key region for comparing faunal assemblages between East Asia and North America; however, the scarcity of Early Cretaceous fossils has long posed a challenge for reconstructing ecological transitions between these regions. This new discovery demonstrates that large sauropods and theropods inhabited Mongolia during the Early Cretaceous and will significantly contribute to studies of ecosystem evolution linking Far Eastern Russia, North America, and East Asia—including China, South Korea, and Japan

A total of 31 dinosaur footprints were identified at the site. These include trackways from two large, long-necked and long-tailed sauropods (herbivorous dinosaurs exceeding 15 meters in length) and five large theropods (carnivorous dinosaurs exceeding 8 meters in length).

The two sauropods were similar in size, with hind footprints measuring approximately 70 cm in length. Their trackways largely overlap, indicating that one individual walked first and another followed along nearly the same path at a slightly slower pace. This type of behavior—where one animal follows the tracks of another—is also observed in modern elephants.

The forelimb impressions preserve both a primitive feature—a medially projecting first digit (thumb) claw—and a derived feature in the form of soft tissue pads. The trackways show a wide gauge, indicating a broad, outward stance during locomotion. These characteristics suggest that the tracks were made by titanosauriform sauropods.

The largest theropod footprint measures up to 57 cm in length. The toes are widely splayed, and the directions of 5 trackways appear random, with no evidence of gregarious behavior. While evidence of large predators from this period has been found in China, South Korea, and Japan, such evidence has been lacking in Mongolia and eastern Russia. This discovery therefore demonstrates that large theropods had expanded their range into northern Mongolia.

The body lengths of the sauropods and theropods are estimated to exceed 15 meters and 8 meters, respectively.

Near the tracksite, gravel-bearing sand layers have also been identified. Future investigations may lead to the discovery of skeletal remains of the track-making dinosaurs. The research team plans to continue exploring such fossils and to conduct detailed surveys of surrounding outcrops in search of additional tracksites.

How Papayas Benefit Cocoa Cultivation

 April 26, 2026

By Eurasia Review

Cocoa cultivation in so-called agroforestry systems is widespread in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest. There, cocoa plants grow alongside other trees in the same area. The problem is that leaf-cutter ants also like to build their nests there. Cocoa farmers often consider these insects pests because they cut off leaves, flowers and fruits, thereby reducing crop yields. Farmers, therefore, frequently use pesticides to control leaf-cutter ants.

A research team at Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg (JMU) has now investigated the impact of leaf-cutter ants on cocoa cultivation in agroforests and how best to respond to it. The key finding: ants are not necessarily harmful; they can also provide additional benefits to the cacao agroforest. What’s more, the damage they cause can be reduced using simple methods that also have a positive effect on biodiversity.

The tension between damage and benefit

Blanca Iváñez Ballesteros, postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology – Zoology III at JMU, was responsible for this study. The results are part of her dissertation in the DFG-funded project EcoCacao led by Prof. Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter with colleagues from Göttingen, Vienna and Lima, and have been published in the latest issue of the Journal of Applied Ecology.

‘Leaf-cutter ants are not just pests. As “ecosystem engineers”, they significantly alter the soil structure and nutrient dynamics of their environment. For sustainable agriculture, it is therefore crucial to understand the trade-offs between the damage caused by leaf-cutter ants and the ecological services they provide,’ says the scientist, describing the background to her work.

The key findings of the study can be summarised in five points:

• Where do leaf-cutter ants build their nests? Blanca Iváñez Ballesteros found that there are more ant nests when the canopy above the cocoa trees is denser. This probably provides the ants a suitable habitat with additional resources.
• How much damage do they really do to the cocoa? Trees right next to a nest can lose up to 90% of their leaves. But the impact drops quickly with distance: just 15 metres away, herbivory falls below 10%. So overall, the total damage across the whole plantation is often less than you’d think.
• Ants have a ‘favourite food’: In experiments, the researcher found that the ants have a clear ranking. They much prefer papaya, oranges and the native timber tree Capirona to cocoa. Differences in leaf chemistry, including compounds such as caffeine in cacao leaves, may help explain this pattern.
• The role of the forest: When the plantation is located in a landscape where there is still a lot of forest (approx. 80 per cent tree cover), the damage to cocoa is significantly lower. The reason for this could be that there are more natural enemies for the leaf-cutter ants in the forest, which control their activity.
• Ants as ‘engineers’: Leafcutter ants alter the soil with their huge tunnels and waste piles. Surprisingly, the study found lower nutrient levels in the surface soil close to nest entrances. This suggests that nutrients may accumulate deeper in the soil, creating small-scale differences in soil conditions around the nests.

Overall, the study advocates biodiversity-friendly farming that utilises both local tree diversity and the preservation of adjacent forests to create productive and resilient cropping systems. And for agriculture, the conclusion is clear: instead of combating ant nests with poison, farmers should focus on a clever mix of trees. By planting trees such as papaya as a ‘distraction’ and protecting the surrounding forest, they can produce good cocoa while preserving biodiversity.

Our Pee Is Underutilized: Human Urine Could Help Tackle Global Fertilizer And Wastewater Challenges

 April 26, 2026

By Eurasia Review

Human urine – often flushed away without thought – could be key to making agriculture and wastewater treatment more sustainable and energy efficient, according to new research from the University of Surrey. 

Although urine only makes up around one per cent of wastewater, it contains the majority of essential nutrients for plants, including nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.  

In a study published in the Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering, researchers looked into how these nutrients can be recovered and reused by concentrating urine into a fertiliser-rich stream. Using a low-energy process known as forward osmosis, the team were able to remove water and retain high levels of nutrients without the energy demands of conventional wastewater treatment technologies. The approach could reduce the burden on treatment plants while supporting more sustainable fertiliser production. 

Dr Siddharth Gadkari, Lecturer in Chemical Process Engineering at the University of Surrey and lead author of the study, said: 

“It is strange to say, but it has the added benefit of being true – our pee is an underutilised resource. Even though it contains the key nutrients we need for agriculture, we currently treat it as waste. Our research shows that with the right treatment approach, we can recover these nutrients efficiently while reducing the energy demands of wastewater treatment.” 

A major challenge for membrane-based systems is membrane fouling – where biological and organic material builds up on the surface over time and reduces performance. The study provides one of the first detailed insights into how human urine behaves under repeated operation, showing how different conditions affect fouling, system efficiency and cleaning. 

The research team found that simple pre-treatment steps, such as filtration, can significantly improve performance, while most fouling can be reversed through cleaning – making the system more viable for long-term use.  

Dr Gadkari added: 

“What is particularly exciting is that we have demonstrated how this system behaves under realistic conditions using real human urine. If we can effectively manage fouling, this technology can move much closer to practical, long-term use.” 

The work was carried out in collaboration with the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, where source-separated urine systems are already being explored at scale.  

Researchers believe that their work could help reduce reliance on energy-intensive fertiliser production, lower carbon emissions and support more sustainable water and nutrient management worldwide. 

South Pacific Islanders Strive To Rescue Their Home From Toxic Legacy

 April 26, 2026 

By UN News

By Daniel Johnson 

More than 80 years after World War Two, the Solomon Islands remain one of the most heavily mine-contaminated places in the Pacific.

Today, the UN is supporting the process of making the land safe to walk and build on again, but the risk to public health from corroding munitions is growing.

For many years, islanders have suspected that this toxic legacy has been harming them and their children, and now a UN-partnered study has found strong evidence to back this up, by confirming the presence of heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, cadmium and explosive residues.

Leading the study – funded by the Government of Japan and supported by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) – Dr. Stacey Pizzino from the University of Queensland explained that the risk for islanders is growing as unexploded ordnance – known as UXO – is part of daily life there.

“You can see UXO in the reefs when you’re travelling, when you look down off a boat,” she told journalists in Geneva. “Unexploded ordnance are used as anchors in the canoes and children are interacting with devices on a regular basis. 

“In one area that we were in, we were hearing explosions on a fairly regular basis and the children were playing with the devices and harvesting the explosives out of them to create bangers, to blow up coconuts.” 

Dr. Pizzino noted reports of sore eyes, rashes and breastfeeding babies developing mouth ulcers, boils and rashes, after their mothers had eaten suspected contaminated seafoods.

Lethal discovery

In another case, she described how a mother brought a bag of munitions confiscated from children that they had found under water, on a reef. 

Testing of the dust in the bag containing the devices showed “incredibly high levels of lead…There’s no safe level of lead for children,” said Dr Pizzino. “It has health impacts in terms of brain development.”

The UN study’s findings are the first of their kind in the Pacific.

Food chain threat

At Lever’s Point and other sites, soil samples revealed elevated levels of heavy metals. The highly explosive compounds TNT and PETN were also detected. In some locations, traces were found in marine life, including shellfish.

The episode highlights the long-term consequences of unexploded ordinance and the need to protect public health, urgently.

Making areas safe is a slow and complex operation because the contamination threat is vast

But it changes everything.

“The Explosive Ordnance Device unit comes and blasts lots of bombs,” said Fred, a farmer from Gavatu island. “When we know the area is clear, we can relax. We can plant crops. We don’t worry for the children.”

For UNDP, making the land and reefs safe is central to development.

“Unexploded ordnance had always been an important issue,” says UNDP Deputy Resident Representative Raluca Eddon. “Time is running out as more hazardous chemicals leak into the environment, harming reefs, sea life and coastal communities.” 

Another islander, Billy, who’s a farmer and fisherman, agrees. “Now we understand there might be an even greater risk,” he says. “We want the bombs to be removed. We want to live in safety.”

While UNDP’s research does not claim to represent the entire country nor establish a definitive causal link, the combined environmental evidence, community reports and observed health patterns point to a “credible and growing risk”, the agency says.

The Perils Of Goal‑Free War – OpEd

 April 26, 2026 

By Ivan Eland

The military strategist Carl von Clausewitz famously said, “War is a continuation of politics [policy] by other means.” What he meant was that war is a tool in the statesman’s quiver that is to be used to achieve a higher policy goal. In other words, when going to war, one should have a clear policy purpose.  

A corollary might be: war for war’s sake, primarily out of an emotional hatred for the enemy, should probably be put on the shelf. Along this more restrained vein, British politician Tony Benn presciently concluded, “War is the ultimate failure of diplomacy.” These thoughts lead to the conclusion that war should be used as a last resort, when all other alternative policy options—such as diplomacy, economic action, or even more modest, secretive covert action—are either impossible or have failed.

Of course, pre-planned symbolic restraint might be undertaken just to make the eventual resort to war more palatable in the psyche of its initiators or adopted first for domestic political consumption in democracies (for example, George H. W. Bush imposing economic sanctions against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the early 1990s but then not giving them enough time to work before going to war). However, if the goal of the war is immoral or inadvisable, war may still be a bad choice.

Shifting Goalposts

Donald Trump’s war with Iran in 2026 flouted all these laudably prudent premises. He originally asserted that the U.S. unprovoked attack on Iran, executed along with Israel, was in support of Iranian protesters and urged them to go to the streets to oppose the theocratic regime. As with a similar callout during the Hungarian revolt of 1956 against the Soviet occupation in 1956 and during a post-Persian Gulf War rising by the Kurds and Shi’ites against Saddam, the United States provided only limited help to the political opposition. 

In the case of Iran, the cause of the protesters ultimately may have been harmed by the attacks. Trump then moved on to more (ultimately unsuccessful) direct regime change as the goal of the Iran War through decapitation of the regime’s top leaders. After regime change failed, he touted achieving the goal of destroying the regular Iranian navy and significantly reducing Iran’s missile arsenal. Trump has finally moved back to the goal of terminating the Iranian nuclear program, which he had earlier claimed to be obliterated after the June 2025 joint U.S.-Israeli bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities. And sometimes goals need to be added in the midst of war: getting Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, which wasn’t closed to oil tankers and other maritime traffic before hostilities started, and to permanently stop striking Israel and U.S. Persian Gulf allies with drones and missiles, both of which were very predictable possible Iranian retaliatory measures before the war began.

So we can conclude that Trump didn’t have an overriding goal for his military campaign. Marco Rubio, his secretary of state, let slip that Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, whose goal was to get the United States to help him degrade the power of Israel’s main regional foe, apparently convinced Trump to join his planned unprovoked attack.

When the goal of a war is not clear, it makes any negotiation for achieving a face-saving solution very difficult, especially when the opponent has the strategic advantage. The history of American war has always involved starting and stopping them with an eye toward the election calendar. Unfortunately, the sophisticated Iranians are aware of this fact. They have every incentive to appear reasonable in any negotiations, but stall in an American election year. They understand that Trump and the Republicans will get ever more desperate and be willing to make ever greater concessions to get rid of the martial tar baby as an election nears, in which the Trump administration has already made Republican prospects dim. 

As is already obvious, without allied help, the U.S. does not have enough warships to make its naval counterblockade air-tight or have a robust capability to clear any mines Iran chooses to dump in the water (clearing them is much slower and more arduous than laying them from the air or from small boats). For a blockade, the United States needs to control the seas, but Iran only has to deny the use of them to maritime traffic. Even using a complicated naval quarantine to pressure Iran to open the strait, as long as Iran has enough mines, missiles, and aerial and underwater drones to threaten commercial ships going through the waterway, shipping companies and maritime insurers will not allow their expensive ships to traverse the dangerous strait.

Remaining Off-Ramps

About the only viable option Trump has at this point is to try to negotiate a limit on Iran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for Iranian relief from economic sanctions—similar to the deal Barack Obama negotiated in 2015 and Trump tore up during his first term—and to create some sort of international body or commission, which includes Iran, to govern the strait in the future.

Any such agreement might be dressed up as a victory for the Trump administration, but it would hardly be so. After two unprovoked attacks on Iran, Trump would get only what Obama got without a shambolic and expensive (in lives and money) war. Also, an international arrangement for governing the strait—itself an erosion of open navigation for all—would not necessarily prevent Iran from using its newfound leverage over commerce in the strait to threaten it in the future. Thus, Donald Trump may eventually get rid of his disastrous war in time for the election, but it will likely not be in victory.

• This article was published at the Independent Institute

‘No Hope Left’ As Chinese Trawlers Plunder Senegalese Waters

 File photo of Chinese fishing fleet. Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency

April 26, 2026  

By Africa Defense Forum

Artisanal fishing had sustained Ibrahima Mar’s family for generations. But Mar, a resident of Rufisque, a suburb of Dakar, has seen the country’s fish stocks reduced gradually but drastically over the last 15 years.

This is due to foreign industrial trawlers, particularly those from China, that are robbing Senegalese waters of a critical food source while threatening the jobs of more than 1.3 million people who work in the country’s fisheries sector. Mar’s heart aches for the loss of fish, his livelihood and one of his sons, who tried to travel to Europe several years ago in a desperate bid to find work but has not been heard from since.

Now 55, Mar told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that the country’s fish, especially small pelagic species such as sardinella and horse mackerel, were “taken from our path. So, there’s no hope left.”

Many of the foreign vessels engage in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. China commands the world’s largest distant-water fishing fleet and is the world’s worst illegal fishing offender, according to the IUU Fishing Risk Index. Of the top 10 companies engaged in illegal fishing globally, eight are from China.

In Senegal and around West Africa, foreign trawlers employ an array of illegal tactics, including fishing with explosives, using illegally sized nets, fishing with lights and committing “saiko,” the illegal transshipment at sea. They also engage in bottom trawling, dragging a huge net along the ocean floor, indiscriminately scooping up all manner of marine life. The practice kills juvenile fish, leading to declining fish stocks, and destroys ecosystems critical to the survival of marine life.

Foreign fishing boats are also notorious for abusing local rules to file a foreign-owned and operated fishing vessel onto an African registry and fish in local waters. This is known as “flagging in” or flying a “flag of convenience.” It helps a vessel’s owners dodge financial charges and other regulations.

Illegal fishing costs Senegal nearly $300 million annually, while West Africa loses an estimated $10 billion per year. The Financial Transparency Coalition found that the region attracts 40% of the world’s illegal trawlers. In Senegal, 57% of exploited fish populations are in a state of collapse, according to the Environmental Justice Foundation.

“What a [local] pirogue used to catch in two months, now that same pirogue can fish for six or seven months to catch the same amount, which is a problem,” Mamadou Diouf Sene, president of the Fishing Wharf Revenue Commission of Rufisque, told AFP.

Due to the lack of local fish, Aissatou Wade is one of the remaining small-scale fish processors left in Joal-Fadiouth, a coastal town in central Senegal, where the trade is all but dead.

“Without fish, we have no money to send our children to school, buy food or get help if we fall ill,” Wade told The Guardian.

Even with help from Senegal’s military, surveilling the country’s waters is “very difficult,” Cheikh Salla Ndiaye of Senegal’s directorate of fisheries protection and surveillance told AFP, while Sophie Cooke, a fishing vessel analyst with Greenpeace, said the high seas were once considered “like the Wild West because there was no way to see what was happening out there.”

However, technologies such as tracking devices, satellite radar and smartphones, which fishermen can use to take pictures and pinpoint trawlers’ locations, are improving surveillance capacity. Mar, who recently spent time on a Greenpeace ship with other local fishermen, said he intended to take these tools back to Rufisque.

Senegal’s government has taken steps to fight illegal fishing. In 2022, the country launched a program to promote transparency in the nation’s fisheries sector by publishing up-to-date license lists and vessel registries online. Two years later, Dakar began publishing a list of vessels authorized to fish in the nation’s waters. However, in November 2024, the European Union elected not to renew its fisheries agreement with Senegal after it was flagged for as a non-cooperating country in the fight against illegal fishing, due to weaknesses in monitoring and traceability systems.

In March 2026, Senegal and Spain signed a memorandum of understanding on maritime fisheries cooperation and the fight against illegal fishing. The partnership will focus on resource sustainability, training, research and governance in the fisheries sector. It also includes Spanish support to strengthen Senegal’s capacity in monitoring, inspection, traceability and enforcement of IUU fishing rules, according to Ecofin Agency.