Column: Hoping for the best isn’t enough for our future

Salmon Arm took on a orange-yellow-brown hue due to the smoke and ash in the air from nearby wildfires on Sunday, Aug. 15, 2021. (Lachlan Labere-Salmon Arm Observer)

In Plain View by Lachlan Labere

• LACHLAN LABERE   
• Aug. 19, 2021   
• COLUMNISTS

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

I’m hearing this a lot as we try to get through one of the hottest, driest, smoke-filled wildfire seasons (aka summer) in recent memory.

Amid this, we’ve learned we’re being thrown into another federal election.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he’s seeking a new mandate from Canadians.

Whoever is elected to lead the country, let’s hope they give more weight to preparing for the worst.

As I write this column, the wildfire smoke-filled sky has turned a discomforting orange-yellow-brown hue. It’s 30 C and the outside air quality index (AQI) rating is 203. Good air quality has an AQI rating from 0 to 50.

I expect, for many, concern around air quality is secondary to the cause: the 270 wildfires burning in the province (as of Aug. 15). A priority for the BC Wildfire Service (BCWS) was the 62,273-hectare White Rock Lake wildfire.

Mark Healey, the BCWS incident commander for the White Rock Lake fire, recently said this has been the most volatile season he’s ever seen, calling it not a wildfire season, but a catastrophic event.

Let that set in. He’s not talking about one specific incident, one particular fire. He’s talking about the summer as a whole, no doubt starting with the “heat dome” in late June that shattered temperature records and was linked to the death of more than 700 people in B.C. Other wildfire related tragedies have occurred since, including the losses at Lytton and destruction at Monte Lake.

Wildfires are currently ravaging other parts of the country and the world. The fire situation in Greece has been referred to as a “natural disaster of unprecedented proportion.” In total, wildfires burning in Siberia are said to be greater in size than all the other wildfires currently burning on the earth combined.

Though wildfires have occurred historically, this year’s in particular are said to have been exacerbated by human-caused global warming. In a recent report, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) paints a bleak picture, warning extreme weather will be more frequent. In addition to taking immediate action to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the IPCC said we also need to invest in climate adaptation. You know, prepare for the worst.

I don’t expect going to the polls ranks high right now among British Columbians. But it is an opportunity to make sure politicians know what needs to be done. Taking action as recommended by the IPCC likely won’t stop wildfires from happening in coming years, but it’s better to do something with hope for the future, than do nothing and hope for the best.

Loggers free to fight fires

 

Photo: Jordan Neufeld

The White Rock Lake fire

The B.C. forestry sector has been fighting wildfires since early July, according to both industry and the BC Wildfire Service, despite what a leaked document circulating online suggests.

The provincial government is responding to leaked meeting minutes, detailing a call on July 12 between BCWS and several forestry companies that suggests B.C. was in desperate need of resources to fight fires at the time.

“Need every available resource. All BCWS people are working,” said the minutes, which first surfaced in an independent documentary on those who disobeyed evacuation orders in Paxton Valley to fight the White Rock Lake fire.

“Will rent fire equipment from industry if you are not using it,” the minutes continue. “Very limited air support available.”

At the meeting, BCWS discussed with forestry companies that there were no additional resources available in neighbouring jurisdictions due to severe fire seasons elsewhere, so industry help was needed.

What isn’t mentioned in the meeting minutes — which have sparked outrage among those who allege bureaucracy is strangling the wildfire service — is forestry companies had already been actively fighting fires for at least a week at that time.

BCWS director of fire centre operations Rob Schweitzer told Castanet Thursday the meeting was a routine one held every few months between the province and forest industry. He says he told industry at the meeting that provincial resources would be focused on protecting communities and infrastructure, and B.C. could use help fighting backcountry blazes impacting timber.

Schweitzer said forestry companies had been fighting fires since the “beginning of July.” That is corroborated by Tolko, which told Castanet News Wednesday night they have been actively fighting fires since July 5.

“I'm happy to say this group of either major licensees or independent contractors across the province have literally stopped their operations for the last six, seven weeks, and have come to support the wildfire effort both in the backcountry, as well as in and around the communities that they live and work,” Schweitzer said, adding some companies have lost equipment on the fire lines.

Since the Chapman review of the 2017 fire season, Schweitzer says BCWS has relied heavily on forestry companies to fight fires, particularly in the early stages of a wildfire when industry will attempt to hold the blaze prior to provincial resources arriving.

Schweitzer said logging companies manage those fires under “limited supervision,” which means “having our staff coming out there from time to time, just helping provide the objectives, making sure everything is being done safely.”

Schweitzer also pushed aside suggestions that the meeting minutes from July 12, which were generated by a forestry group, meant outside resources should have been requested sooner. The request for federal assistance went out on July 5, he said, and discussions were underway internally for a provincial state of emergency that would eventually be declared on July 20.

“What we felt leading up to the decision by government to actually declare [the state of emergency] was we were getting access to all available resources. The state of emergency wasn't going to give us any necessarily increase or benefit because of the partnerships that we had already formed with the forest industry, with fire departments and local governments across the province and with the federal government in getting that military assistance. So we were satisfied that we were seeing those resources coming, the resources that were available,” Schweitzer said.

Forestry companies free to fight fires

The White Rock Lake wildfire was discovered on July 13, the day after the meeting between Schweitzer and the forest industry. There have been allegations that BCWS told forest crews and ranchers to stand down and not fight the fire at its outbreak. Schweitzer says that is simply not true, and nobody was ever told to stand down.

“And in fact, as we've seen throughout this season, myself personally has worked with the cattlemen to actually lean on and utilize the ranching community for their local knowledge, their local equipment to actually assist us in some of the wildfires, the same thing with the forest industry,” he said.

BCWS has previously said their initial attack team was on site 30 minutes after the fire was started.

Schweitzer explained that forestry companies do not need to get approval from the provincial government to fight a new wildfire start, and in fact, they are legally required to attempt to suppress any new starts within one kilometre of their logging operations.

Tolko told Castanet this week their crews have been involved in fighting the White Rock Lake, Sugar, Morgan, Mabel, McKinley, Big Stick, Deka and Canim fires.

“Along with coordinating activities for contractors and providing services like danger tree assessments, Woodlands staff have provided equipment like dozers, excavators, bunchers, and skidders,” Tolko said in a statement.

In a separate statement, the BC Council of Forest Industries said its members have been working closely with the government to suppress fires.

Schweitzer, meanwhile, is asking residents in fire ravaged regions to look out for each other.

"There has been a lot of impact, the fire season’s not over, and really we do want to see that level of empathy across the province for one another and our crews that are doing their best on the fire line.”

WILDFIRE MEMO
‘This memo is damning’: Kamloops MLA outraged over lack of firefighting resources


The Newcomb brothers stayed behind and have been putting out 

hot spots around the White Rock Lake wildfire near Monte Lake

 (Image Credit: Dan Newcomb)

By Chad Klassen

Aug 19, 2021 | 11:04 AM

KAMLOOPS — The provincial government is facing some serious questions after a leaked memo pointed to an extreme fire season and a lack of resources that wouldn’t be able to keep up.

It forced residents Dan Newcomb and his brother David to feel they needed to stay behind and work tirelessly to put out hot spots. They are working near Monte Lake on the White Rock Lake wildfire.

“We are running around doing spot fires. It’s really good today. After the rain, it really settled things down, but after [the B.C. Wildfire Service] did the backburn — we’re on the northeast end of the guard up Ivor Road — there was a lot more spot fires. We’ve had a lot of guys running around with totes putting things out,” said Newcomb.


They’ve been there basically since the fire ignited July 13. They felt they had no choice but to stay behind with what they felt was a lack of firefighting resources.


“There was no support to begin with. It’s been said many times, but in Paxton Valley there was no structural support. No one came through,” Dan noted.

So it’s no surprise to the Newcomb brothers that a memo sounded the alarm bells about a shortage of personnel and a warning about an extreme fire season.

The memo is dated July 12 — a day before the White Rock Lake fire started. It was written by a member of the forest industry after a conference call that included the B.C. Wildfire Service.


Kamloops-South Thompson MLA Todd Stone feels it contradicts what the provincial government has been saying about being prepared for the fire season.

“The government has been spreading misinformation about the level of resources that have been made available to the B.C. Wildfire Service,” said Stone. “This memo is damning. It clearly states that the B.C. Wildfire Service does not have the firefighters they need, the equipment they need, the air support they need.”

Stone says it proves that Monte Lake and Paxton Valley residents were right to stay behind to fight the fire.

“People up there impacted have been made to feel like they’ve been irresponsible, that they don’t know what they’re talking about, that they’ve been making up stuff,” said Stone. “And it turns out that it’s actually the government — the Premier [John Horgan] and the Minister [Mike Farnworth] in particular — who have been doing exactly that.”

Stone says he hears from local contractors every week who have the equipment and are ready to help.

“Whether those are fire suppression systems, structural protection units, water curtain systems, similar to what saved, in part, Logan Lake,” said Stone.

Farnworth responded, “Over 1,000 contractors working on the fires in British Columbia, and to suggest the wildfire service has been leaving resouces idle in other provinces is simply false and not true.”

Meantime, the Newcomb brothers would love to be compensated for the equipment and water they’re using to keep the White Rock Lake fire from reigniting around Monte Lake.

BCWS has responded to the memo. We have reported on their response here.

Big Oil’s Foray Into Renewables Has Completely Changed The Market

By Irina Slav - Aug 19, 2021

That the oil and gas industry is problematic is perhaps too mild a way to put it. Fossil fuel producers have recently become the singular target of accusations and lawsuits from parties arguing that they are the only industry responsible for the effects of a changing climate. And now those same fossil fuel producers are coming after renewables. Big Oil is trying to green itself up, so it is bidding for wind farm construction tenders and buying other renewables assets. And in doing this, it is undermining the profit margins of renewable energy companies, Bloomberg’s Will Mathis recently wrote in an article.

There is a certain irony in the situation. Thanks to a surprisingly strong rebound in oil demand, Big Oil can afford to be generous with its wind and solar purchases and bids. On the other hand, devastating supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic have prompted price increases in a lot of commodities, including raw materials for solar panels, making the panels costlier as well.

Neither of these trends is Big Oil’s fault, and yet it is the industry benefiting from them. According to Mathis, however, it is Big Oil’s fault that Ørsted, for instance, reported lower financial results for the first half of the year.

According to the Danish turbine maker itself, however, the lower results were related to a 4-percent decline in electricity output, which was the result of lower average wind speeds in the period.

“Earnings from our offshore and onshore wind farms in operation were DKK 0.3 billion lower compared to the same period last year,” Ørsted said in its first-half report, released earlier this month. “The increased generation capacity from new wind farms in operation was more than offset by significantly lower wind speeds across our portfolio.”

Mathis also cited the other big Danish name in wind turbines, Vestas, as suffering from Big Oil’s foray into its turf. Vestas, however, blamed the effects of Covid-19 on its lower first-quarter results and then reported stronger results for the second quarter as demand for wind generation capacity continued strong.

Another company mentioned in the article that laments the entry of Big Oil into renewables is Siemens Gamesa. The company itself attributed its weaker performance earlier this year to “The sharp increase of raw material prices” as well as to “Increased estimates of ramp-up costs for the Siemens Gamesa 5.X platform, especially in Brazil.”

Related: JP Morgan: Don’t Expect A ‘Shock’ Transition In Energy Markets

Now, there seems to be nothing easier than dumping the blame for everything that goes wrong in renewable energy onto Big Oil. When oil—and gas—is cheap, it is to blame for the lower uptake of EV and an overall feeling of discouragement in the adoption of wind and solar. When oil is expensive, it is expensive because of demand, and fills Big Oil’s coffers with cash that they can then use to encroach on renewable’s territory.

One would imagine that this is a reason for celebration—after all, with all that cash, Big Oil could do a lot to help the fast expansion of wind and solar generation capacity that the world is believed to need in order to avoid the worst of the climate change fallout. Yet, as Bloomberg’s Mathis notes, this intensifies competition in the space.

Competition should be the natural order of things, and rather than a reason for worry, it should be welcomed as a motivational push. This should be all the truer if the assertion Mathis makes—that “Green energy is now the cheapest source of electricity in most of the world”—reflects reality. Consumers are attracted to cheap things and willing to pay for a lot of them. This should be good for margins all around, even with Big Oil in the game.

Unfortunately, the “cheapest source of electricity” adage does not reflect reality to the extent that the authors who use it would like. It is a fact that the costs of wind and solar farms have declined dramatically over the last decade or so as technology improved and raw material costs fell due to abundant supply.

However, it is worth noting that both technologies are strongly reliant on government subsidies. China didn’t cancel wind and solar subsidies because it felt like it a couple of years ago. It canceled them because it could no longer afford to support those projects.

Shell, BP, and TotalEnergies, on the other hand, can afford to pay millions upon millions to beat competitors for new renewable energy projects. They are highly motivated, with shareholders, governments, and environmentalists looking over their shoulders at how they are tackling their carbon footprints. And however blasphemous it may sound to the ideologically inclined, they are partnering with renewables companies.

The thing about business is that it is not driven by ideology. Business is driven by the need to turn in a profit. Orsed, Vestas, and Siemens Gamesa know this, as do BP, Shell, and TotalEnergies. The influx of competitors in the wind and solar space is bound to sooner or later result in partnerships of mutual benefit. This would help Big Oil morph into Big Energy. Like it or not, it would be the natural way.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

Geologists dig into Grand Canyon's mysterious gap in time

by University of Colorado at Boulder

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder reveals the complex history behind one of the Grand Canyon's most well-known geologic features: A mysterious and missing gap of time in the canyon's rock record that covers hundreds of millions of years.

The research comes closer to solving a puzzle, called the "Great Unconformity," that has perplexed geologists since it was first described nearly 150 years ago.

Think of the red bluffs and cliffs of the Grand Canyon as Earth's history textbook, explained Barra Peak, lead author of the new study and a graduate student in geological sciences at CU Boulder. If you scale down the canyon's rock faces, you can jump back almost 2 billion years into the planet's past. But that textbook is also missing pages: In some areas, more than 1 billion years' worth of rocks have disappeared from the Grand Canyon without a trace.

Geologists want to know why.

"The Great Unconformity is one of the first well-documented geologic features in North America," Peak said. "But until recently, we didn't have a lot of constraints on when or how it occurred."

Now, she and her colleagues think they may be narrowing in on an answer in a paper published this month in the journal Geology. The team reports that a series of small yet violent faulting events may have rocked the region during the breakup of an ancient supercontinent called Rodinia. The resulting havoc likely tore up the earth around the canyon, causing rocks and sediment to wash away and into the ocean.

The team's findings could help scientists fill in missing pieces of what happened during this critical period for the Grand Canyon—today one of North America's foremost natural wonders.

"We have new analytical methods in our lab that allow us to decipher the history in the missing window of time across the Great Unconformity," said Rebecca Flowers, coauthor of the new study and a professor of geological sciences. "We are doing this in the Grand Canyon and at other Great Unconformity localities across North America."

Beautiful lines

It's a mystery that goes back a long way. John Wesley Powell, the namesake of today's Lake Powell, first saw the Great Unconformity during his famed 1869 expedition by boat down the rapids of the Colorado River.

Peak, who completed a similar research rafting trip through the Grand Canyon in spring 2021, said that the feature is stark enough that you can see it from the river.

"There are beautiful lines," Peak said. "At the bottom, you can see very clearly that there are rocks that have been pushed together. Their layers are vertical. Then there there's a cutoff, and above that you have these beautiful horizontal layers that form the buttes and peaks that you associate with the Grand Canyon."

The difference between those two types of rocks is significant. In the western part of the canyon toward Lake Mead, the basement stone is 1.4 to 1.8 billion years old. The rocks sitting on top, however, are just 520 million years old. Since Powell's voyage, scientists have seen evidence of similar periods of lost time at sites around North America.

"There's more than a billion years that's gone," Peak said. "It's also a billion years during an interesting part of Earth's history where the planet is transitioning from an older setting to the modern Earth we know today."

A continent splits

To explore the transition, Peak and her colleagues employed a method called "thermochronology," which tracks the history of heat in stone. Peak explained that, when geologic formations are buried deep underground, the pressure building on top of them can cause them to get toasty. That heat, in turn, leaves a trace in the chemistry of minerals in those formations.

Using this approach, the researchers conducted a survey of samples of rock collected from throughout the Grand Canyon. They discovered that the history of this feature may be more convoluted than scientists have assumed. In particular, the western half of the canyon and its eastern portion (the part that tourists are most familiar with) may have undergone different geologic contortions throughout time.

"It's not a single block with the same temperature history," Peak said.

Roughly 700 million years ago, basement rock in the west seems to have risen to the surface. In the eastern half, however, that same stone was under kilometers of sediment.

The difference likely came down to the breakup of Rodinia, a gigantic land mass that began to pull apart at about the same time, Peak said. The researchers results suggest that this major upheaval may have torn at the eastern and western halves of the Grand Canyon in different ways and at slightly different times—producing the Great Unconformity in the process.

Peak and her colleagues are now looking at other sites of the Great Unconformity in North America to see how general this picture might be. For now, she's excited to watch geologic history play out in one of the country's most picturesque landscapes.

"There are just so many things there that aren't present anywhere else," she said. "It's a really amazing natural lab."

Researchers dig into case of geologic amnesia

More information: B.A. Peak et al, Zircon (U-Th)/He thermochronology reveals pre-Great Unconformity paleotopography in the Grand Canyon region, USA, Geology (2021). DOI: 10.1130/G49116.1

Journal information: Geology 

Provided by University of Colorado at Boulder 

Judge throws out Trump-era approvals for Alaska oil project

Mark Thiessen and Becky Bohrer
The Associated PressStaff
Thursday, August 19, 2021 

Drilling operations at the Doyon Rig 19 at the Conoco-Phillips Carbon location in the National Petroleum Reserve, Alaska. (Judy Patrick / AP)

ANCHORAGE, ALASKA -- A federal judge on Wednesday threw out Trump administration approvals for a large planned oil project on Alaska's North Slope, saying the federal review was flawed and didn't include mitigation measures for polar bears.

U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason in Anchorage vacated permits for ConocoPhillips' Willow Project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska in a 110-page ruling.

The Trump administration approved the project in late 2020, and the Biden administration defended the project in court.

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Rebecca Boys, a ConocoPhillips' spokesperson, said the company would review Gleason's decision "and evaluate the options available regarding this project."

Spokespersons for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the Interior Department said their agencies had no comment. The Bureau of Land Management conducted the environmental review of the project that Gleason found flawed.

Conservation groups and Sovereign Inupiat for a Living Arctic, described as a grassroots organization, had challenged the adequacy of the review process.

Karlin Itchoak, Alaska director for The Wilderness Society, in a statement called the ruling "a step toward protecting public lands and the people who would be most negatively impacted by the BLM's haphazard greenlighting of the Willow project."

In October 2020, then-U.S. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt signed the government's record of decision that called for allowing ConocoPhillips to establish up to three drill sites, associated processing facilities and gravel roads and pipelines on the North Slope.

Two more drill sites and additional roads and pipelines proposed by ConocoPhillips could be considered later, the Interior Department said at the time.

Bernhardt had said the decision would make a "significant contribution to keeping oil flowing" through the trans-Alaska pipeline system "decades into the future" and provide revenues. The Bureau of Land Management said the project could produce up to 160,000 barrels of oil a day with about 590 million barrels over 30 years.

More than 1,000 jobs were expected during peak construction and more than 400 jobs during operations, the agency's then-state director said.

Gleason said the land management agency's exclusion of foreign greenhouse gas emissions in its environment review was "arbitrary and capricious."

She also ruled the agency acted contrary to law to the extent it developed its "alternatives analysis based on the view that ConocoPhillips has the right to extract all possible oil and gas on its leases."

Gleason voided a report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for lacking specifics around mitigation measures for polar bears. The agency had concluded that the project "was not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of polar bears and not likely to result in the adverse modification of polar bear critical habitat," according to the ruling.

The Bureau of Land Management's reliance on that report was also flawed, Gleason said in sending the case back to the appropriate agencies for further action.

Nicole Whittington-Evans, Alaska program director for the Defenders of Wildlife, called the decision "a win for our climate, for imperiled species like polar bears, and for the local residents whose concerns have been ignored." She urged the Biden administration to examine alternatives to the project.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy, in a statement, said the ruling "from a federal judge trying to shelve a major oil project on American soil does one thing: outsources production to dictatorships & terrorist organizations."

He called the decision "horrible."

New Scans of Tyrannosaur Skulls Reveal Echoes of Dino Brains

Paleontologists examined the braincases of two daspletosaurs and were surprised to find significant differences between them.

By
Isaac Schultz
Today 2:30PM

A mounted daspletosaur at the Canadian Museum of Nature.

Photo: Tetsuto Miyashita © Canadian Museum of Nature

Not much is known about Daspletosaurus, a late Cretaceous theropod that thrived in the forests of North America 75 million years ago. Now, paleontologists have shined a literal light on one of the animal’s mysteries, by taking CT scans of two of dinosaur braincases to digitally reconstruct the brains and adjacent structures.

Daspletosaurus was a meat-eating dinosaur first described in 1970; it is a tyrannosaur, meaning it’s part of the family Tyrannosauridae, the group that includes Tarbosaurus, Albertosaurus, and of course Tyrannosaurus rex, among other similarly terrifying predators. The research team looked at two Daspletosaurus skulls—one found near Alberta, Canada’s Red Deer river in 1921 and another dug up near the province’s Milk River at the turn of the millennium.

The two specimens are about 2 million years apart, a blink of the eye in terms of dinosaur evolution. At over 70 million years old, they’re far too ancient for any soft tissue to remain intact. But CT scans aren’t just great for peering non-invasively into complex structures like the brain—they can even be useful when the brain is long gone. In this case, the research team was able to map out some otherwise hidden structures in the two skulls that offer glimpses at how the dinosaurs made sense of their environment. Their work, published today in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, found differences between the animals’ braincases, suggesting that tyrannosaur skulls may have had more variation than previously thought.

Compared to other anatomical structures influenced by natural selection, “the brain is a very conservative organ … the bones surrounding it are also considered to change little,” said Tetsuto Miyashita, a paleontologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature and the study’s lead author, in an email.

“This was thought true to dinosaurs, but because we used to have access to so few braincases, we are only finding out recently in tyrannosaurs that the braincase actually varies a lot from species to species, or even within a species,” Miyashita expalined.

That’s a big takeaway from the recent study: that, based on the shapes of the two skulls and their respective ear structures, braincases, and dimensions, the animals may represent two distinct species, which would be a first for daspletosaurs. (The braincase is the specific part of the skull that holds the brain; it therefore offers unique insights on how dinosaurs’ nerves and senses worked.)

A diagram of some internal structures in one daspletosaur’s braincase.

Graphic: Tetsuto Miyasita © Canadian Museum of Nature.

In the paper, the researchers describe Daspletosaurus (specifically Daspletosaurus torosus) as a bit of a fallback classification for tyrannosaurs from western North America that aren’t clearly an animal like Albertosaurus or T. rex. As a result, daspletosaurs crop up over an “unusually broad” swath of the continent, the researchers wrote in the paper, though more recent work has begun to sift through these mislabeled creatures.

The new work follows up on studies clarifying the species of Daspletosaurus; Miyashita and his colleagues spent hundreds of hours scanning the internal spaces within the two fossils, which belonged to animals that lived in the late Cretaceous. With a unique view into their heads, the team found canals that hosted nerve bundles connected to the dinosaurs’ eyes. They also spotted air sacs—a common feature in theropods and modern birds—in many of the braincase bones.

“Cavities within the bones not only make the huge skull lighter but also are related to the middle region of the ear. The cavities probably helped to amplify sound and assist the system that communicates to the left and right ears, allowing the brain to determine where a sound is coming from,” said Ariana Paulina Carabajal, a paleontologist specializing in dinosaur braincases at the National University of Comahue in Argentina and a co-author of the paper, in a press release.


Though both fossils had these features, they varied, with one of the specimens having unique-looking sinuses and some internal characteristics more evocative of other tyrannosaur species, like Gorgosaurus and Bistahieversor. Miyashita said the work was just the first step in teasing apart the specimens long thought to be a single species, Daspletosaurus torosus. Next, the team will check out the rest of the body of the more recently discovered Daspletosaurus. We could have a new meat-eating dinosaur on our hands quite soon.

More: Utah Mass Death Site Bolsters Theory That Tyrannosaurs Hunted in Packs

Study of tyrannosaur braincases shows more variation than previously thought

by Canadian Museum of Nature

The mounted skeleton of Daspletosaurus torosus on view at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, Canada. The skull is a cast for display. The original skull, including the braincase, is preserved for study in the museum's collections. Credit: Tetsuto Miyashita Canadian Museum of Nature.

Among the fierce carnivores that lived during the late Cretaceous was a predator named Daspletosaurus. The massive tyrannosaur, about nine meters long, lived in the coastal forest of what is now Alberta around 75 million years ago—-preceding the more famous T. rex by about 10 million years.

For the first time, scientists in Canada and Argentina have used CT scans to digitally reconstruct the brain, inner ear, and surrounding bones (known as the braincase) of two well-preserved Daspletosaurus specimens.

Their results, published online today in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, counter a prevailing view that dinosaur brains and the bones enclosing and protecting them varied little within species, or among closely related species, especially when compared with changes observed in other parts of the skeleton. "Our study with the two Daspletosaurus specimens suggests otherwise," explains Dr. Tetsuto Miyashita, paleontologist with the Canadian Museum of Nature and senior author of the study.

"We know that tyrannosaurs had relatively good-sized brains for a dinosaur, and this study shows that this pattern holds for Daspletosaurus. Furthermore, based on the shapes of the brain, ear structure, and braincase, we suggest that these two specimens represent distinct species of daspletosaurs."

Access to a braincase, the internal part of the skull that surrounds and protects the brain, helps unlock one of the most complex parts of dinosaur anatomy. This requires advanced medical technology such as a CT scanner to image the internal spaces hidden underneath thick bones, with the resulting hundreds of hours of work to reconstruct the brain and other fleshy parts slice by slice. Therefore, most studies on dinosaur brains have each focused on one specimen from a representative species of the group. As an exception, Tyrannosaurus rex has several such reconstructions of their brains. Now, this new study investigates two remarkably well-preserved skulls of Daspletosaurus, a much rarer tyrannosaur than T. rex.

The braincase of Daspletosaurus torosus in the Canadian Museum of Nature's collections. This was part of one of two rare Daspletosaurus specimens studied by the researchers. Credit: Tetsuto Miyasita, Canadian Museum of Nature.

One belongs to the original specimen of Daspletosaurus, which is prominently displayed at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. Unearthed in 1921 along the banks of Alberta's Red Deer River, its description in 1970 as Daspletosaurus torosus ("muscular frightful lizard)" by Dr. Dale Russell ushered in the modern era of research on tyrannosaurids. The second specimen, uncovered in 2001, is with the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta. Miyashita is continuing to study it with Dr. Philip Currie of the University of Alberta, another author of the study.

Study of the braincase structure and its endocranial cavity provides insights on the brain itself, as well as characteristics such as the layout of cranial nerves, and some aspects of the sensory biology such as auditory and visual anatomy that drove the life of the dinosaur.

View of the Daspletosaurus torosus braincase, showing the reconstructed brain, inner ear, and air sacs as determined by CT scanning. Credit: Tetsuto Miyasita, Canadian Museum of Nature.

Dr. Ariana Paulina Carabajal, a dinosaur braincase expert in Argentina and study co-author at the Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente (CONICET-Universidad Nacional del Comahue), provided the detailed models of the brain and inner ear anatomy and related structures. Among the findings were the presence of large bony canals that would have transmitted thick nerve bundles that moved the eyeballs. The researchers also describe large air sacs that filled up most of the braincase bones, which is in line with the limited studies known of other tyrannosaurs.

"These cavities within the bones not only make the huge skull lighter, but also are related to the middle region of the ear," explains Paulina Carabajal. "The cavities probably helped to amplify sound and assist the system that communicates to the left and right ears, allowing the brain to determine where a sound is coming from."

A cast of the skull of Daspletosaurus torosus in the Canadian Museum of Nature's collections. The original skull, including the braincase, is available for study. Credit: Tetsuto Miyasita, Canadian Museum of Nature.

Yet, even within the two braincases of Daspletosaurus, there were differences. "It was surprising to see so many variations in the braincases even though the skeletons are similar," says Miyashita, who offers that their study provides a good reason to look at more braincases within similar groups of dinosaurs, or even within species.

"Researchers have looked inside so few braincases in dinosaurs, typically one each for whatever species they studied, that this reinforced the assumption that these structures don't change much within and among species. We just haven't looked inside enough skulls to document variation."

New evidence for combat and cannibalism in tyrannosaurs

More information: Ariana Paulina Carabajal et al, Two braincases of Daspletosaurus (Theropoda: Tyrannosauridae): anatomy and comparison, Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1139/cjes-2020-0185

Journal information: Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences 

Provided by Canadian Museum of Nature

Mega-clouds of traveling 

smoke are harming people's 

health thousands of miles 

away from wildfires

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

Thu, August 19, 2021

A resident watches from his porch as the Cameron Peak Fire, the largest wildfire in Colorado's history, burns outside Estes Park, Colorado, October 16, 2020. Jim Urquhart/Reuters

• Wildfire smoke is traveling thousands of miles, polluting air on distant coasts and even in the North Pole.

• The smoke can damage lungs and exacerbate disease even a continent away from a fire.

• World-traveling clouds of wildfire smoke may be annual events now.

• See more stories on Insider's business page.

For the second year in a row, enormous wildfires are creating clouds of smoke big enough to generate their own weather, blanket entire continents, and turn faraway skies orange or grey.

Smoke is billowing from blazes in the western US, Canada, Greece, Turkey, Italy, Spain, Algeria, and Siberia - so much, in fact, that astronauts on the space station can see it. The wildfires in California and Oregon have darkened skies and led to air-quality warnings in New York City and Boston, as they did last summer. The Siberian fires, meanwhile, have sent clouds of smoke and ash to the North Pole, nearly 2,000 miles away, then down to Canada and Greenland.

The Dixie fire's thick smoke plume, as seen from the International Space Station on August 4, 2021. NASA/JSC

Each time a big fire burns, its smoke can rise high in the atmosphere, where winds can catch it and carry it for thousands of miles until it hits a weather system that pushes it back towards the ground. That's when it poses a health risk. Many people see wildfires as a local problem - a danger to people in Greece or California, say, but not for them personally. That's incorrect, according to environmental epidemiologist Jesse Berman.

"Every one of these wildfire events is an opportunity for that smoke to travel long distances and affect not only the people nearby, but also those very far away," Berman told Insider. "People who live in areas that have relatively good air quality are going to be all of a sudden subjected to levels of pollution that are many times higher than what's normally seen, and at levels that are very harmful to health."

These mega-clouds of world-traveling smoke may become a regular, annual occurrence, according to Berman - "if not multiple times every single year," he said.

Climate change is expected to lead to more frequent, larger, more intense wildfires in the coming decades. A new report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that "fire weather" will probably increase through 2050 in North America, Central America, parts of South America, the Mediterranean, southern Africa, north Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. That means more days where conditions are warm, dry, and windy enough to trigger and sustain wildfires.

Wildfire smoke shrouds the Statue of Liberty, as seen from Brooklyn, New York, July 21, 2021. Brendan McDermid/Reuters

The amount of fuel available to burn in those places - dry vegetation - is also likely to increase as rising temperatures cause the air to absorb more moisture and bring about more droughts.

"When these events cover hundreds or thousands of miles, everybody is at risk," Berman said. "It doesn't matter where you're living. You can be affected by these events the same as anyone else."

Particles in wildfire smoke can strain your lungs, heart, and immune system

Smoke from the Bootleg Fire rises behind the town of Bonanza, Oregon, July 15, 2021. Bootleg Fire Incident Command via AP

Wherever it goes, wildfire smoke fills the air with microscopic particles from the material that has burned and the resulting chemical reactions.

Known as PM2.5, these particles measure no more than 2.5 micrometers across (that's about 30 times smaller than a human hair), allowing them to penetrate deep into your lungs and enter your bloodstream. When you inhale these particles - as millions of people have in the last year - they can damage the lining of your lungs and cause inflammation.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that smoke can "make you more prone to lung infections" including COVID-19, since any breach in the lungs' lining offers more opportunities for a virus to infiltrate.

Satellite imagery shows smoke spreading over the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in eastern Russia on August 8, 2021. NASA Earth Observatory/Joshua Stevens

Indeed, a recent study linked about 19,000 cases of COVID-19 on the West Coast to wildfire smoke last summer. The paper, published last week, found a correlation between high levels of PM2.5 pollution and spikes in coronavirus cases in counties across California, Oregon, and Washington.

Experts suspected as much. Previous research had already shown that wildfire smoke leaves people more vulnerable to disease. In the short term, smoke can irritate the eyes and lungs and cause wheezing, coughs, or difficulty breathing, even in healthy people. Longer-term studies have connected PM2.5 pollution to an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, heart failure, and premature death. PM2.5 particles can also impair the immune system, possibly by disabling immune cells in the lungs.

Wildfire smoke can have the most severe effects on people who are already highly vulnerable to COVID-19: the elderly, children (many of whom are unvaccinated against the coronavirus), and people with asthma or chronic lung disease.