#extinction-events

#extinction-events

"There's been a consensus for a long time that the wildlife trade is a risk to human health, but a lot of what we know is from anecdotes."

When scientists applied a new model of human survivability that takes into account the body's ability to function and stay cool depending on age, they found all six events had seen non-survivable periods for older people who could not find shade.

Hundreds of fossils uncovered in southern China's province of Yunnan reveal that at least some of the life-forms scientists had thought arose in the Cambrian period were alive and thriving millions of years earlier, in an era known as the Ediacaran period.

Four protrusions appear to be arranged in pairs, each consisting of two connected branches surrounding a central depression. We really don't understand what any of these features represent anatomically.

'Our results show that the next 20 years are critical,' lead author Dr Rob Cooke told the Daily Mail. 'By around 2050, we reach a point where the choices we make on emissions and land use will largely determine whether Britain moves towards a much more degraded or a much more nature‑positive future.'

At a young age, I learned quickly how oil wealth and power could burn the land while people struggled. I saw heat rise off the streets, the Nile strained, and the air thickened with injustice. In my teenage years, through Aotearoa, being on the edge of the Pacific, I felt the ocean breathing heavy, swallowing the shores of islands that have done the least to cause this harm.

As the rust expands, it weakens the rock and helps break it apart. It's a very red part of the country, it's got that rusty hue, so you get that color getting whipped up with the strong winds.

Although there are many amber stones containing a single creature, there are fewer that include two or more, as is the case with a pair of mosquitoes trapped in amber 130 million years ago which tell us that, back then, males also sucked blood. Even more extraordinary is when several organisms can be seen interacting, either eating the other, acting as a parasite, or cooperating.

From the beginning, we knew these bones were exceptional because of their minute size. It is equally impressive how the study of this animal overturns global ideas on ornithopod dinosaur evolution,

Dinosaur fever gripped the Western world during the early 1900s, fueled by the discovery of new, ever larger and more spectacular dinosaurs in Europe and especially in North America. Interest in these fossils was not merely driven by academic curiosity. Dinosaur skeletons and research had become a status symbol for museums and their financiers, whether government or private, and colonial powers turned to their areas of influence to find new remains.

Wooden objects carrying the marks of carving and use could be the oldest wooden tools ever found. Researchers dated the artefacts, found in what is now Greece, to 430,000 years ago - and suggest they might have been made by early Neanderthals or their ancestors, Homo heidelbergensis. A separate study describes 480,000-old flint-knapping tools made from antler and elephant bone, from what is now the United Kingdom.

At first glance, it looked like Wooller and his colleagues might have found evidence that mammoths lived in central Alaska just 2,000 years ago. But ancient DNA revealed that two "mammoth" bones actually belonged to a North Pacific right whale and a minke whale-which raised a whole new set of questions. The team's hunt for Alaska's last mammoth had turned into an epic case of mistaken identity, starring two whale species and a mid-century fossil hunter.

On French Island in Victoria's Western Port Bay, koalas are dropping from trees. Eucalypts have been eaten bare by the marsupials, with local reports of some found starving and dead. Multiple koalas usually solitary animals can often be seen on a single gum. Koalas were first introduced to French Island from the mainland in the 1880s, a move that protected the species from extinction in the decades they were extensively hunted for their pelts.