'It honestly blows my mind': U of A student part of team that found baby tyrannosaurus fossil

A baby tyrannosaurus fossil found in central Alberta is helping the scientific community get a better understanding of how the dinosaur species developed at an early age.

© Provided by Edmonton Journal A University of Alberta student is part of a team of researchers who have just published an in-depth study of the first tyrannosaur embryo fossils ever discovered. The results shed new light on how the iconic dinosaurs grew and developed. Illustration by Julius Csotonyi.

University of Alberta PhD student Mark Powers was a part of the research team that found a claw from an embryo near the village of Morrin, about 270 kilometres southeast of Edmonton, a few years ago. The fossil, which dated back roughly 71.5 million years ago, was notable as it captured the dinosaur while still in early development.

The claw, about a centimetre long, was paired with another fossil, a jawbone, which was discovered in the ’80s in the United States.

Powers said researchers have a good grasp of tyrannosaurus during its teenage to adult years but there are few records of what they were like while very young. He said the smallest identifiable tyrannosaur on record is usually already three to four years old.

“We didn’t know anything about them hatching or their first year,” Powers said. “Finding these two specimens shows that they are around, and it gives us a search image to search for more babies. It helps to fill in the entire sequence of growing for a tyrannosaurus. We had a good idea of teenagers and later, but we had no idea about the babies.”

Powers said he spent a lot of time with co-author Greg Funston checking every possible option when considering what species the fossils came from. The claw was from an Albertosaurus sarcophagus, also known as an Alberta lizard, and the lower jawbone was from a Daspletosaurus horneri, also known as a frightful lizard.

One of the final steps to confirm the fossil’s identities came when Powers travelled to Saskatchewan to use a specialized scanner to obtain high-resolution images. He said it was very exciting when they were able to finally confirm the bones did come from tyrannosaurus.

“It honestly blows my mind,” Powers said. “It’s really hard to convey the excitement from the moment because when you’re in the moment, it’s just mind-blowing. We segmented the jaw and then we blew it up because it is very small. The whole jaw is less than three centimetres. When you scan it and blow it up as a 3D model and it looks the size of an adult tyrannosaurus jaw …t o see something be so reliable to the adult for at such a small size was quite shocking.”

Powers said as far as he’s aware, this is the smallest tyrannosaurus that’s been discovered so far.

jlabine@postmedia.com

Fossilized skull reveals how crested dinosaur got its fancy headgear

First discovered in 1922 and best known for its distinctive crest, Parasaurolophus is one of the most recognizable dinosaurs -- a staple of childhood books and a background player in the Jurassic Park movie franchise.

© Andrey Atuchin/Denver Museum of Nature & Science An illustration of a group of Parasaurolophus dinosaurs being confronted by a tyrannosaurid in the subtropical forests of New Mexico 75 million years ago.

An exceptionally well-preserved fossilized skull found in New Mexico in 2017 -- the first to be found in 97 years -- has revealed new details about its bizarre Elvis-style pompadour. Its analysis has allowed paleontologists to definitively identify how such a structure grew on this dinosaur.

"Imagine your nose growing up your face, three feet behind your head, then turning around to attach above your eyes. Parasaurolophus breathed through eight feet of pipe before oxygen ever reached its head," said Terry Gates, a paleontologist from North Carolina State University's department of biological sciences, in a news statement.

The hollow tube on its head contained an internal network of airways and acted a bit like a trumpet.

"Over the past 100 years, ideas for the purpose of the exaggerated tube crest have ranged from snorkels to super sniffers," said David Evans, the Temerty chair in vertebrate palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada.

"But after decades of study, we now think these crests functioned primarily as sound resonators and visual displays used to communicate within their own species."

The animal would have lived about 75 million years ago -- a time when North America was divided by a shallow sea and many duck-billed dinosaurs, horned dinosaurs and early tyrannosaurs would have roamed the land.

"The preservation of this new skull is spectacular, finally revealing in detail the bones that make up the crest of this amazing dinosaur known by nearly every dinosaur-obsessed kid," said Joe Sertich, curator of dinosaurs at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and the leader of the team who discovered the specimen.

Sertich and his team discovered the partial skull in 2017 while exploring the badlands of northwestern New Mexico. Only a tiny portion of the skull was visible on a steep sandstone slope, and the volunteers were surprised to find the crest intact. Bone fragments found at the site indicated that much of the skeleton may have once been preserved on an ancient sand bar, but only the partial skull, part of the lower jaw, and a handful of ribs survived erosion.

The skull belonged to Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus, previously known from a single specimen collected in the same region of New Mexico in 1923 by legendary fossil hunter Charles H. Sternberg. It has a shorter, more curved crest than other species of this dinosaur -- although this may be related to its age at death. There are three species of Parasaurolophus currently recognized, with fossils found in New Mexico and Alberta and dating between 77 million and 73.5 million years ago.

"It has answered long-standing questions about how the crest is constructed and about the validity of this particular species. For me, this fossil is very exciting," said Evans, who has also worked on unraveling the mysteries of this dinosaur for almost two decades.

The research was published in the journal PeerJ on Monday.

© Andrey Atuchin An illustration of the head of Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus based on newly discovered remains.

© Doug Shore/Denver Museum of Nature & Science New skull of Parasaurolophus as originally exposed in the badlands of New Mexico

The First People to Settle in The Americas Brought Their Dogs With Them

How far back can the story of humans and dogs be told? When and where did this ancient relationship begin? New DNA evidence suggests our connection with canines can be traced much further into prehistory than has ever been conclusively shown.

© Ettore Mazza

According to scientists, analyses of ancient dog DNA suggests dogs were domesticated from Eurasian wolves as far back as approximately 23,000 years ago. Much later, they spread alongside humans as they migrated throughout the world – including entering the Americas by the way of Beringia, the long-lost land bridge that once connected Russia and Canada.

"The only thing we knew for sure is that dog domestication did not take place in the Americas," says geneticist Laurent Frantz from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany.

"From the genetic signatures of ancient dogs, we now know that they must have been present somewhere in Siberia before people migrated to the Americas."

While dogs are thought to have been the first domesticated animal, emerging during the Pleistocene from an extinct wolf population in Eurasia, much has remained unknown about the particulars of the animal's entry into the world, with some claiming the domesticated dog debuted as far back as 100,000 years ago.

Determining the truth isn't always easy, since it can be hard for scientists to authoritatively differentiate the discovered remains of ancient wolves and early domesticated dogs, whether through archaeological observation, or chemical tests using isotopes.

"The challenge for all claims of late Pleistocene dogs has been to show conclusively, across several lines of evidence, that the specimen(s) in question can be clearly distinguished from contemporaneous wolves," researchers explain in a new study led by archaeologist Angela Perri from Durham University in the UK.

"Here, we take a conservative approach and only include those canids whose taxonomic status is unambiguously domestic."

Disregarding the less substantiated claims of ancient dogs, the researchers say the earliest generally accepted domestic dog remains in the archaeological record appeared about 15,000 years ago in Germany and other contemporaneous sites across Europe and in Israel.

But what about outside the archaeological record? After all, genetic evidence suggests the earliest known dog lineages predate the archaeological remains by several thousand years, including a haplogroup (a genetic population with a single ancestor) estimated to date to about 22.8 thousand years ago.

By comparing that population with successive haplogroup lineages that split off from their common ancestor – including lineages that appeared in the Americas at about the same time as human settlers did about 15,000 years ago – the researchers constructed a timeline charting how dogs and their genes dispersed around the globe.

Ultimately, the analysis suggests human travellers likely brought their domesticated dogs with them as they journeyed into new lands, including the Americas, with the introduced dog lineage – haplogroup A2b – having genetic ties all the way back to Eurasia some 7,000 years earlier.

"We have long known that the first Americans must have possessed well-honed hunting skills, the geological know-how to find stone and other necessary materials and been ready for new challenges," says archaeologist David Meltzer from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

"The dogs that accompanied them as they entered this completely new world may have been as much a part of their cultural repertoire as the stone tools they carried."

While the circumstances of dog domestication in Eurasia several thousands of years earlier still aren't entirely clear, the researchers say it's possible the extreme, unforgiving cold of the Last Glacial Maximum in Siberia may have triggered the early beginnings of what, with time, would become a beautiful friendship.

"Climatic conditions may have brought human and wolf populations into close proximity within refugial areas, given their attraction to the same prey species," the researchers write.

"Increasing interactions between the two, perhaps resulting from the mutual scavenging of kills, or from wolves drawn to the detritus of human campsites, may have initiated a shift in the relationship between the species, eventually leading to dog domestication."

The findings are reported in PNAS.

Lost' Indigenous fort built to repel Russia rediscovered in Alaska

Archaeologists have discovered traces of a 200-year-old wooden fort in southeastern Alaska built by Indigenous people to resist an invasion by Imperial Russia.

© Provided by NBC News

The discovery confirms the events of the 1804 invasion by Russia, which went on to govern parts of Alaska as a colony for 60 years until 1867, when it was purchased by the United States.

It’s also of cultural importance to the indigenous Tlingit people, and especially to those of the Kiks.adi, or Frog clan, whose ancestors defended the fort near the town of Sitka on Baranof Island in what's known as the Alaskan Panhandle, and who now regard it as a symbol of their resistance to colonialism.

“The fort’s definitive physical location had eluded investigators for a century,” said Cornell University archaeologist Thomas Urban, a co-author of a study published Monday in the journal Antiquity that detailed the discovery.

Decades of searching had turned up only clues, and archaeologists debated whether the fort was really sited near a forest clearing in the Sitka National Historical Park said to approximate its location, he said.

A detailed archaeological survey by Urban, however, has revealed electromagnetic anomalies and ground-penetrating radar signals around the clearing show the distinctive shape of the “sapling fort” – "Shiskinoow" in the Tlingit language – but not at proposed alternative sites

© National Park Service 

“The area of the fort was larger than the area of the clearing,” he said. “As such, the detected fort perimeter is in the forest that surrounds the clearing.”

The discovery matches both Tlingit and Russian accounts of the Battle of Sitka in 1804, said co-author Brinnen Carter, an archaeologist at the U.S. National Park Service who was stationed at Sitka during the survey.

Although the Tlingit had occupied the region for about 11,000 years, Russia established a settlement in 1799 at Old Sitka, about seven miles north of the modern town, to profit from a lucrative trade in sea-otter pelts, he said.

In 1802, following disputes with the Tlingit, that settlement was destroyed and the Russians were repelled.

They returned in 1804 to invade the region with up to 1,500 attackers – some of them Russian sailors, and some warriors from the Aleutian Islands – but found the Kiks.adihad built the “sapling fort” to resist them beside a river mouth, Carter said.

The fort was strategically situated behind tidal flats and out of range of the Russian naval guns; it was surrounded by thick walls of alder saplings in a trapezoidal shape about 240 feet long and 165 feet wide.

The invading Russians estimated the fort was defended by at least 800 men, and Tlingit histories record that Kiks.adi women fought there, as well. The defenders were armed with guns and cannons they had purchased from British and American traders.

© Courtesy Thomas Urban Electromagnetic anomalies, in color, and ground-penetrating radar signals, inset in gray, match the distinctive shape of the

According to Tlingit accounts, the Kiks.adi suffered an early loss when a canoe bringing their reserves of gunpowder to the fort was hit by a Russian gun and exploded, killing many of their leading warriors.

But they nevertheless held out against the fierce Russian attacks on Shiskinoow for several days, in part, thanks to the strength of their fortifications.

“It was constructed of wood so thick and strong the shot from my guns could not penetrate at the short distance of a cable’s length [between 600 and 720 feet],” Yuri Lisyansky, the captain of the Russian warship Neva, recorded at the time.

Ultimately, running short of gunpowder, the Kiks.adi decided they could not continue to defend the fort; so they abandoned it and embarked on a “survival march” across the island – a grueling trek fatal for many and still recalled in oral histories, Sitka Tribal Council member Louise Brady said.

The Kiks.adi later returned to the area and made a treaty with the Russians, allowing them to trade at Sitka but restricting them to settlements along the coast, she said.

The agreement influenced the subsequent indigenous legal claims against the United States, which purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. The Tlingit argued that the whole of Alaska was not Russia’s to sell, but only their coastal settlements, Brady said.

© Louis S. Glanzman The Kiks.adi defenders 

Those claims culminated in a $1 billion settlement by the government in favor of indigenous people under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, which remains the largest land claims settlement in U.S. history.

Brady, a member of the Kiks.adi clan and the lead ranger at the Sitka National Historical Park, said the story of Shiskinoow remained an important part of local oral histories, while the fort site itself in the foreshore forest is a place of remembrance – a status confirmed by the latest scientific finding.

“It’s a very sacred place,” she said. “You have the river there, there are lots of eagles, there are ravens … it is incredibly beautiful.”

Scientists Found the Oldest Known Grizzly Bear in Yellowstone

Scientists found a 34-year-old grizzly bear in southwest Wyoming, identifying him by a mark on his lip made by biologists in 1989. That’s the oldest grizzly ever known in the Yellowstone region that includes parts of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Respect your elders.

© Photo: Jim Urquhart, File (AP) A grizzly bear roams near Yellowstone National Park.

There’s no telling if there are older grizzly bears currently roaming Yellowstone, since hundreds of the creatures are completely unmarked by scientists. But this one is by far the oldest one on whom there is scientific documentation.

Sadly, though, biologists had to put the bear down. He was captured last summer after he got caught preying on calves on nearby ranches. After euthanizing the creature last July, biologists found an identifying tattoo on its lip that read 168—a mark given to the creature in 1989.

This Is Alex, the First Antarctic Penguin Born in Mexico

The bear was a male, which is notable, as female grizzlies generally live longer than males. Previously, the oldest known grizzly in Yellowstone was bear 399, a female who died at 27.

When caught, 168 had just three teeth left, and they were ground down to nubs—a sure sign of old age, and an explanation for why the animal was going after easy prey like calves. He was also quite emaciated, weighing in at just 170 pounds (77 kilograms), which is nothing for a grizzly. When he was captured in the Shoshone National Forest in August 1991, records show he weighed 450 pounds (204 kilograms). 

© Photo: Zach Turnbull/Wyoming Game and Fish Department (AP) This 2020 photo provided by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department shows the worn, mostly toothless jaw of Grizzly 168. The grizzly was the oldest documented in the Yellowstone region. Bear biologists euthanized the 34-year-old grizzly due to its poor health.

Yellowstone biologists consider grizzlies’ bodily health based on a 1-to-5 scale, with 1 being in the worst shape and 5 being the worst. When he was captured, 168 was rated a zero. Because of his failing physical condition, Fish and Wildlife Service biologists made the call to euthanize the animal last July instead of relocating him to a more remote part of Yellowstone.

“It was sad that we had to put him down, but ethically there was nothing else that could be done, Dan Thompson, a biologist with Wyoming Game and Fish told the Jackson Hole News and Guide. Pour one out.

Researchers know quite a bit about the bear from past records. Grizzly 168 was first captured when he was three years old—that’s when scientists gave him his identifying tattoo—and then captured again in Fremont County, Wyoming in spring 1996. Over the next year, he lost his radio collar, so scientists aren’t totally sure what he was up to, but DNA tests show that he likely fathered three kids in the mid-2000s, and may have had some more kids in later years when he was 23 and again when he was 31.

Conditions are hard for grizzlies, which makes 168's life all the more remarkable. There are only 1,800 grizzlies left in the contiguous U.S., including roughly 700 in Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. That’s just a small fraction of the 50,000 who roamed the land before Anglo-Americans colonized the West in the 1800s. The bears have faced pressure due to threats including hunting and habitat degradation. Climate change has increasingly played a role since the bears rely on seeds and berries for nutrition and fattening up for winter hibernation as well as reproduction season. Rising temperatures have increased the likelihood of droughts that can curtail fall seed crops. Research on Alberta grizzlies also found that certain berry crops could pop up earlier in the year, creating a what’s called a “phenological mismatch” for bears need the nutrients the most.

Despite the risks, it’s not all bad news for grizzlies. The creatures’ numbers have been increasing since they were given federal protection in the 1970s, with the Yellowstone population rebounding from just over 100 in the 1970s. Fish and Wildlife Service removed Yellowstone grizzlies from the Endangered Species List in 2017, but they were placed back under the federal protections after a court ruling last year. So hopefully, 168's kids will have a shot at a bright future.

Monarch butterfly numbers plunge from millions to thousands

© Provided by Daily Mail 

The number of monarch butterflies wintering on the California coast has plummeted to a record low, according to entomologists.

Fewer than 2,000 monarchs were recorded in November and December, compared to 200,000 barely three years ago.

In the 1980s, the monarch butterflies migrating south to groves from Marin County to San Diego was estimated at 4.5 million.

By 1997, when volunteer counts began, that number dwindled to about 1.2 million.

The overwintering population plummeted from 200,000 in 2017 to less than 30,000 in 2018, representing a single year decline of 86 percent.

Climate change, habitat destruction and pesticides have all helped pushed the iconic orange-and-black butterfly to the brink of extinction, experts say.

Scroll down for video© Provided by Daily Mail Fewer than 2,000 monarch butterflies were recorded in coastal California in November and December, compared to 200,000 barely three years ago

Starting in early November, western monarchs fly thousands of mile from the Pacific Northwest to central and southern California—returning to the same site, and often even the same tree, to ride out the winter.

No individual butterfly completes the entire cycle, though: Females lay eggs on the return trip north and it can take up to five generations to complete the trek back to Canada.

Since 1997, groups of butterflies, known as flutters, have been tallied every fall by the nonprofit Xerces Society as part of the Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count.

Between November 14 and December 6, 2020, volunteers surveying tree groves on the California and Northern Baja coast counted just 1,194 insects at 246 sites.

© Provided by Daily Mail The Xerces Society, which began volunteer counts of monarch populations in 1997, has charted the insect's devastating decline

  

© Provided by Daily Mail Scientists at Washington State University predicted once the western monarch population dipped below 30,000, their numbers would drop even more precipitously. That threshold was crossed in 2019. The following year the monarch experienced a 93 percent drop

That represents the lowest number in the count's 23-year history, and a massive 93 percent decline from the 29,000 reported in 2019.

Traditional monarch meccas like Pismo Beach and Natural Bridges reported only a few hundred butterflies, the society said.

Pacific Grove, nicknamed 'Butterfly Town, USA' because of the thousands of monarchs that usually gather in the Monterey pine and eucalyptus trees there, had no monarchs at all.

THE AMAZING MIGRATION OF THE MONARCH BUTTERFLY

The 3,000-mile mass migration of monarch butterflies in North America is one of the insect world's fantastic feats.

Millions embarking on the arduous journey from as far north as Canada down into Mexico and the California coast each autumn.

The number of migrating monarchs has plummeted in recentyears.

Researchers said while an estimated one billion monarchbutterflies migrated to Mexico in 1996, that number stood atabout 35 million this past winter.

Threats to them includehabitat loss due to human activities, pesticides that killmilkweed and climate change, experts say.

Monarch butterflies living east of the Rocky Mountains spend their winters in Mexico to escape the cold weather while those west of the Rockies spend winters on the California coast before returning home in the spring.

Scientists say their orange color tells potential predatorsthey taste awful and are toxic to eat thanks to chemicals fromthe milkweed plants that nourish them in their larval state.

'Their absence this year was heartbreaking for volunteers and visitors flocking to these locales hoping to catch a glimpse of the awe-inspiring clusters of monarch butterflies,' said Sarina Jepsen, the Xerces Society's director of endangered species.

As recently as 2017, monarch populations in the region were still in the hundreds of thousands.

But a population viability model developed by researchers at Washington State University predicted the western monarch would quickly head toward extinction once its population dipped to 30,000 butterflies.

That threshold was crossed in 2018 and 2019, the society said, and now 'It seems that, unfortunately, this prediction was right.'

'We may be witnessing the collapse of the western migration of monarch butterflies,' the group added. 'A migration of millions of monarchs reduced to two thousand in a few decades.'

In all, the numbers recorded in the 2020 count represent a 99 percent decline since the 1980s.

Monarchs have been in decline elsewhere: The eastern migratory population —which travels from southern Canada to central Mexico—has dropped 80 percent since monitoring began.

Two workers at a monarch butterfly sanctuary in Michoacán, Mexico, were murdered just days apart in 2020. Authorities haven't announced a motive but illegal logging is common in the area, despite a ban to protect the butterflies, The Guardian reports.

In December 2020, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to add the monarch butterfly to the Endangered Species Act, claiming it was 'warranted but precluded by higher priority actions.'

A month earlier, a California court ruled the state didn't have the authority to put insects on its own endangered species list.

Entomologists point to a number of human factors threatening the majestic insect, including increased pesticides, massive wildfires, the clearing out of groves for housing developments, and the loss of milkweed, the monarch caterpillar's sole host plant.

Climate change has also disrupted the monarch's migration patterns, researchers say, which are synched to season changes and the blossoming of wildflowers.

Bank of England told to stop buying 'high carbon' bonds

By David Milliken

© Reuters/John Sibley FILE PHOTO: 

A general view shows The Bank of England in the City of London financial district in London

LONDON (Reuters) - A group of British members of parliament said on Monday that the Bank of England should stop buying bonds from businesses whose activities accelerate global warming.

Britain's central bank doubled its holdings of corporate bonds to 20 billion pounds ($27 billion) last year as part of efforts to support the economy through the coronavirus pandemic.

The House of Commons' Environmental Audit Committee - which looks at public bodies' impact on global warming - said buying bonds from firms such as energy companies with high carbon emissions contravened government goals to reduce global warming.

"The Bank must begin a process of aligning its corporate bond purchasing programme with Paris Agreement goals as a matter of urgency," the committee's chairman, Philip Dunne, wrote in a letter to BoE Governor Andrew Bailey.

The parliament committee has no formal power over the BoE, which is operationally independent, but finance minister Rishi Sunak could potentially change the BoE's remit to require a greater focus on environmental issues.

Britain will host the global COP26 climate summit in September and Dunne said the BoE should set a good example.

Bailey said in July that the central bank would review its corporate bond holdings once the coronavirus pandemic was over, but said the BoE was right to provide financial support to a wide range of businesses in an economic emergency.

The BoE holds sterling corporate bonds roughly in proportion to the amount issued on markets.

This means 19% of bonds it holds were issued by electricity companies, 6% by gas companies and 3% by other energy companies, while 11% were issued by industrial and transport businesses that are often energy-intensive too.

Bailey has said financial institutions such as insurers need to pay greater attention to environmental risks and said a green 'stress test' of their business models to take place in June.

($1 = 0.7317 pounds)

(Reporting by David Milliken, editing by Andy Bruce)

#ENDFURFARMING

Utah Officials Allegedly Failed to Disclose Mink Farm Worker Died of COVID After Outbreak

Amid ongoing debate over the threat posed by COVID-19 outbreaks on mink farms, state authorities in Utah allegedly failed to disclose the COVID-19 death of a mink farm worker linked to a coronavirus outbreak at a mink farm in the state.

© Ole Jensen/Getty Images Mink at the Knud Vest estate in Jyllinge, Denmark, pictured on November 14, 2020. State authorities in Utah allegedly failed to disclose the COVID-19 death of a mink farm worker linked to a mink farm coronavirus outbreak in the state.

The Utah Department of Agriculture and Food (UDAF) has also allegedly not been transparent about COVID-19 transmission in the wild and downplayed the threat mink farm COVID-19 outbreaks pose to humans, animal rights groups claim.

Scientists have previously warned the diseased mink could create a new uncontrollable store and vector for the transmission of coronavirus to humans and potentially pose a risk to future COVID-19 vaccines.

The mink farm outbreaks in Utah, which marked the country's first confirmed cases of COVID-19 infection in mink, were announced in statements released by the UDAF as well as the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA APHIS) on August 17, 2020.

According to an email shared with Newsweek, which was among several documents obtained by an open records request made by the Utah Animal Rights Coalition (UARC) who shared the files with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), an animal rights network based in the San Francisco Bay Area, "one farm manager has died from SARS-CoV-2 infection" following the coronavirus outbreaks at two mink farms in Utah back in August.

Neither of the August statements released by the UDAF and USDA APHIS mentioned the death of the mink farm manager noted in the aforementioned email, which was sent on August 10, 2020, a week before the statements were released by the UDAF and USDA.

Speaking to Newsweek, Wayne Hsiung, an attorney and investigator for DxE, which he co-founded, said: "The document [the email] was obtained through the state of Washington because the lab that did the testing for Utah mink farms was a public university in Washington. The state of Utah itself has refused to make these disclosures, citing the risk of break-ins by animal rights activists (including specifically DxE), and has never disclosed the site of any outbreaks, much less that an employee died."

In a blog post on the DxE website where the documents obtained by the open records request were published on Monday, Hsiung explained: "Given Utah's stonewalling, our partner groups submitted an open records act request to Washington State University [WSU], a public institution that is home to the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Library (WADDL), which carries out laboratory testing for the USDA and other agencies."

WSU released a set of documents including an email from Tom Baldwin, the director of the Utah Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (UVDL) at Utah State University who was the veterinarian investigating the COVID-19 outbreaks on the Utah mink farms at the time, according to Hsiung.

UVDL is "a cooperative effort by Utah State University (USU) and Utah Department of Agriculture and Food (UDAF)," according to its website.

Baldwin's email, which was sent to WADDL Executive Director Timothy Baszler and WADDL Director of Operations Kevin Snekvik, stated: "We have a number of mink farms in which adult mink are dying at concerning rates. Moreover, farm personnel are experiencing upper respiratory infections and one farm manager has died from SARS-CoV-2 infection."

As indicated in the email, Utah State Veterinarian Dr. Dean Taylor, who works for the UDAF, was copied in Baldwin's email.

Hsiung told Newsweek: "The state veterinarian of the UDAF is cc'd [copied] in the correspondence. Given his role in protecting public health, one can assume that he knew about this death—and has chosen to not disclose it in the various public communications."
What Utah state health department and CDC say

Asked whether the Utah Department of Health (UDOH) was aware of the death of the Utah mink farm manager, as well as several other questions relating to that death, a public information officer at the UDOH told Newsweek that the department has been involved in an "on-going, collaborative response and investigation" of the Utah mink farm COVID-19 outbreaks with the UDAF, CDC and USDA APHIS.

"This investigation resulted in the link of an individual who recently passed from COVID-19 and who happened to be employed at the mink farm. At the time the person became ill, community spread had been increasing rapidly in the surrounding area. No additional deaths associated with mink farms have been reported. Currently, there is no evidence of mink-to-human transmission in the United States.

"All human lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases are routinely reported to UDOH through normal channels. Confirmed COVID-19 cases are interviewed by a contact tracer and appropriate quarantines are recommended. When a person in Utah dies and has tested positive for COVID-19, the death is investigated and the cause is determined by the Office of the Medical Examiner. All of these normal reporting and response steps occurred in this particular instance.

"In August of 2020, the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food (UDAF) notified the UDOH of an unusually high rate of mink mortality on a Utah farm, along with the suspicion that the mink deaths might be related to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 in humans. Our federal partners were immediately notified and Utah invited CDC to deploy a team of One Health experts to assist with on farm investigations of SARS-CoV-2 in people, mink, and other animals on affected Utah mink farms. Our federal partners have continued to support UDAF and UDOH in this on-going investigation and response.

"In response to these outbreaks, UDOH conducted epidemiologic investigations on any mink farm with a confirmed case of SARS-CoV-2 among their herds. From these investigations, it is suspected that infected workers introduced SARS-CoV-2 to the farms, and the virus then spread between mink. All epidemiologic evidence and test results indicate human-to-mink transmission with a person with COVID-19 infection introducing the virus onto each farm," the UDOH public information officer said.

Asked the same questions about the farm employee death, as well as why the manager's death was not mentioned in the August 17 USDA statement, a spokesperson for USDA APHIS told Newsweek: "USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has worked closely with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and individual states, including Utah, throughout the COVID-19 outbreak to identify animals that should be tested, develop and recommend guidance for contact with animals, and to determine how to handle cases when they are confirmed in animals.

"APHIS' focus is on the health of animals in the United States, and our primary role is testing samples from animals and reporting confirmed cases to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE). While we work closely with these partners on the overall response, it would be inappropriate for APHIS to maintain information about or comment on cases of COVID-19 in people. Your questions would be better directed to CDC [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] or the Utah Department of Health," Cole added.

When the CDC was asked the same questions relating to the mink farm worker death, including whether the UDOH had reported that death in the state's COVID-19 death totals and shared any information about that death with the CDC, a spokesperson for the federal health body told Newsweek: "CDC defers to the Utah Department of Health to provide details on human COVID-19 cases linked with mink farms in their state. CDC has been collaborating with human and animal health officials in Utah and USDA regarding mink farms with SARS-CoV-2 since August 2020.

"Currently, there is no evidence of mink-to-human spread in the United States, however investigations are ongoing. Although, human cases have been identified in connection with all affected U.S. mink farms. It is suspected that infected workers introduced SARS-CoV-2 to mink on the farms, and the virus then began to spread among the mink and from mink to other animals like cats and dogs on the farm. Although for most people in the United States the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection from animals is low, there is a higher risk for people working on mink farms," the spokesperson added.

Newsweek has contacted the UDAF, Taylor and Baldwin for comment.

Asked whether there was any further information available about the death of the Utah mink farm manager, including how the employee got infected, Hsiung told Newsweek: "No. And unless public health authorities were conducting prospective genomic surveillance among the mink and the workers, we will likely never be able to definitively answer this question.

Hsiung explained in Monday's DxE blog post: "We cannot be sure the farm manager at issue died from mink transmission, given that the state of Utah has not disclosed any genomic testing at this site or any other site.

"But it appears that those investigating the outbreak were alarmed at the rate of infection among workers on these farms, and this is supported by peer-reviewed research from the Netherlands showing that 68 percent of mink farm workers and their close contacts had evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection, a far higher rate of infection than the general population," he told Newsweek.
COVID-19 transmission in the wild and threat to humans

Last April, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to report COVID-19 cases among mink.

In a statement on May 19, 2020, the Dutch government said: "New research findings in the ongoing investigation into COVID-19 at mink farms suggest there has been a transmission of new coronavirus from mink to human."

Hsiung noted in the Monday DxE blog post: "Even Fur Europe, an umbrella organization representing the European fur industry, circulated an alert acknowledging this new development, writing on May 26 to its members that the coronavirus is 'transmissible from human to mink, and likely transmissible back to humans again.'"

But the UDAF has allegedly downplayed the threat mink farm outbreaks pose to humans and claimed there was no COVID-19 transmission in the wild, according to the UARC and DxE.

Speaking to Newsweek, UARC Executive Director Jeremy Beckham, who made the aforementioned open records request to WSU, said: "Last month [December], I had a hearing in front of the Utah State Records Committee trying to pry more records from the Utah Department of Agriculture. During that hearing, they made the claim that no serious threat existed to workers or wild animals.

"In fact, at the time they made these claims to the committee, the agency already had evidence that wild mink had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 and that farm workers had been infected, including a manager on a Utah County mink farm had died of COVID," Beckham said.

During the aforementioned hearing, held on December 8, 2020, the UDAF claimed "that wild transmission has not occurred (and repeated this at a hearing on Dec. 10) to justify the lack of disclosure about mink farm outbreaks," Hsiung told Newsweek.

"Their [UDAF] argument is: We don't need to tell anyone about this because we have it contained. Subsequently, on Dec. 11, it was revealed [in an international public health mailing list published on ProMED] that wild transmission [in wild mink] has occurred—and from testing done sometime from August through October. This shows the state's brief was false. Whether that falsehood was intentional, I cannot say.

"The state of Utah apparently knew about this positive test, yet continued to falsely state that no wild animal transmission had occurred," he said.

Hsiung noted in the Monday DxE blog post: "The release of COVID-19 to the wild was apparently important enough for USDA scientists to warn international disease experts about—making global headlines—but not important enough for Utah to tell its own citizens."

Hsiung also told Newsweek: "Utah also strangely argues in the same filing on Dec. 8 that, while the risk from mink farms is low, the risk from animal rights activists is very high—citing a number of articles about DxE.

"They're on a razor's edge here because, on the one hand, they want to say daily operations at mink farms are not dangerous enough for people to know about but, on the other, dangerous enough that we can't let animal rights advocates know where they are. This is a contradiction. Either mink farms are dangerous or they're not. They can't only be dangerous for animal rights activists, but not for employees or surrounding community members," Hsiung argued.

Speaking to Newsweek, the former chief veterinarian at the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, noted: "If someone is looking for the exact locations of the affected mink farms to be identified, this is rather complicated as this would be under the State jurisdiction and not USDA/APHIS.

"That is because the regulations governing the actions APHIS can take as the federal branch of the government is limited by several factors, including whether or not the disease in causing illness in animals (as APHIS has no authority to address zoonotic infections), whether or not disease has spread outside the state boundaries and if the disease is located within the state borders, have they requested APHIS assistance; etc.

"With no mandatory animal ID laws, APHIS is quite often unable to confirm or share the exact farm location. APHIS has limited staff and relies on the local (state) 'certified' veterinarians to do their trace-backs. That also creates a problem when there is industry pressure on the state not to cooperate," Basu added.
COVID-19 outbreaks at Utah mink farms 'greatly worsened'

Beckham told Newsweek "the problem [COVID-19 outbreaks on Utah mink farms] has greatly worsened since August. We are up to at least 12 mink farms in Utah that have experienced COVID-19 outbreaks, as of early Dec 2020, which is the latest information I have. That's out of 36 farms total in the state. So one-third of Utah mink farms have been hit with COVID outbreaks.

"The latest statement that the Utah Department of Agriculture released is a press statement boasting that COVID-19 cases have been declining on Utah mink farms based on data collected in October and then December," Beckham added.

In a statement released on December 28, 2020, the UDAF stated: "UDOH and CDC began testing mink and other domestic animals on the farms, including dogs, cats and mice. Sampling also included farm workers and a small number of their household contacts. Initial testing showed positive results in mink, dogs, and feral cats on the farms.

"While the results and analysis are still underway for the third round of testing, there is encouraging evidence suggesting that the levels of virus are going down in the mink, cats and dogs living on the farm.

"Additional community sequencing is needed to fully understand the potential for transmission between people and different animal species in this area; however, at this time, based on extensive epidemiologic investigations, there has been no evidence to date of spread from mink to people in Utah," the statement said at the time.

However, Beckham told Newsweek: "This statement neglects to mention why it's impossible to draw any conclusions based on these data points: mink farms begin their 'pelting season' in November, where the overwhelming majority of their animals are killed and skinned, leaving only the breeding stock behind.

"Of course there are fewer COVID cases in mink—there are fewer mink. And the mink that do remain can be spaced in the sheds, making it more difficult for a respiratory virus to be transmitted. Breeding season starts in March and I fully expect to see these numbers rapidly climb again because the underlying problem has not been addressed," he added.

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This Giant Ice Cube Represents How Much Ice We're Losing Every Year

We talk about ice a lot here on Earther—or more specifically, the growing absence of it. A new study puts what’s happening to the planet in striking perspective. While I can tell you the results show 1.2 trillion tons of ice disappeared every year since 1994, it’s a lot easier to grasp as a visual.

© Graphic: Planetary Visions That’s one big cube.

That cube of ice up there towers 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) into the sky like a sunshade over Manhattan and stretches over a huge swath of New Jersey, from Newark Airport to Jersey City. That’s how much we’ve lost to burning fossil fuels on average per year over the past two decades. The skyscrapers of the Financial District and Midtown are toothpicks. More ominously, the cube is getting bigger as ice loss accelerates.

The ice cube illustration is tied to a study published in the Cryosphere on Monday that looks at, uh, the state of the cryosphere. A team of scientists from across the UK used satellite measurements and climate models to explore what’s happening to every nook and cranny of ice around the globe. While most studies focus on either sea ice or ice on land, the new paper looks at both to give us a better understanding of how much ice has melted due to climate change.

A Third of American Rivers Have Changed Color Since 1984

“There has been a huge international effort to study individual regions, such as glaciers spread around the planet, the polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, the ice shelves floating around Antarctica, and sea ice drifting in the Arctic and Southern oceans,” Tom Slater, the study’s lead author and ice researcher at the University of Leeds, said in an email. “We felt that there was now enough data to be able to combine these efforts and examine all the ice being lost from the planet.”

The results show Arctic sea ice is the fastest-disappearing ice on the planet. A staggering 7.6 trillion tons have turned to liquid from 1994 to 2017, the period for which the study had data. That was followed by Antarctic ice shelves, which have seen 6.5 trillion tons of ice vanish, sometimes in catastrophic fashion. The most recent example is Iceberg A68, a Delaware-size piece of ice that ripped off the Larsen C ice shelf in 2017 and has since wandered the Southern and Atlantic oceans. It most recently had a near run-in with an ecologically sensitive island.

But other, more insidious forms of ice shelf drama are afoot. The study doesn’t just look at ice area; it also looks at ice volume. And the most shocking impacts on ice shelves are happening beneath the surface. Ice shelves jut out over the ocean, holding back glaciers on ice sheets on land. But in West Antarctica, satellite and direct observations show warm water has been eating away at ice shelves and could eventually cause them to collapse. If that happens, sea level rise will accelerate and won’t stop for centuries; the ice in West Antarctica could raise seas by more than 10 feet (3 meters).

Glaciers on land in Alaska, the Himalayas, and elsewhere are also major drivers of sea level rise, as are the glaciers and ice sheets of Greenland. They’re all disappearing at an alarming rate. The threat of water loss in regions that rely on glacier and snowmelt is certainly an acute concern. So, too, is the disappearance of sea ice and its impact on traditional ways of life in the Arctic. And incremental but quickening sea level rise can play out in dramatic fashion when hurricanes roar ashore, pushing storm surge farther inland thanks to the climate change-driven boost. Perhaps most ominously, the melt is just a tiny aspect of the changes happening.

“We found that it took only about 3% of the excess heat created by greenhouse gas emissions to melt all this ice, a surprisingly small amount of energy to melt such a large amount of ice, which has a disproportionately large effect on our environment,” Slater said.

In that light, the giant ice cube from hell is showing just a tiny portion of the impact of human activities on the planet.

Shell buys European electric car charging firm ubitricity


BERLIN — Oil and gas giant Shell is buying ubitricity, a major provider of electric vehicle charging points in Europe.

Shell said Monday that it would buy a 100% stake in the Berlin-based startup, without disclosing the price.

“The move represents a further step in Shell’s efforts to support drivers as they switch to lower-carbon transport,” the company said.

The deal, which is subject to regulatory approval, will give Shell ownership of the biggest public EV charging network in Britain with more than 2,700 charge points.

Ubitricity also has smaller public networks in Germany and France, and has installed over 1,500 charge points for fleet customers across Europe.

The company's focus has been to integrate charge points into existing street infrastructure such as lamp posts, to reduce the cost of laying new power lines down streets.

Experts say easier access to charging facilities is key to the successful rollout of electric vehicles.

Shell has said it wants to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 or sooner.