Sciency Thoughts

Uragasaurus kalasinensis: A new species of Mamenchisaurid Sauropod from the Late Jurassic of northeastern Thailand.

2026-07-12T15:40:38.782+01:00

The Mamenchisaurids were a group of non-Neosauropod Sauropods (i.e. outside the largest grouping of Sauropods) which formed a significant part of the fauna of East Asia during the Middle and Late Jurassic. They can be distinguished by highly pneumatised and elongated cervical vertebrae, as well as procoelous vertebrae on the front part of the caudal spine (procoelous vertebrae have a convex forward disk and a concave rear disk), which were distinctive during the Jurassic, but evolved convergently in several Neosauropod groups during the Cretaceous.

Most known Mamenchisaurids come from China, and for a long time they were thought to be restricted to that country. However, in 2005 fragmentary remains attributed to the group were recovered from the Middle to Late Jurassic Khlong Min Formation of Krabi Province in southern Thailand. In 2013, further fragmentary remains were found in the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous Phu Kradung Formation of northeastern Thailand, and in 2019 a new species of Mamenchisaurid, Wamweracaudia keranjei, was described on the basis of a partial skeleton from the Late Jurassic Tendaguru Formation of southeastern Tanzania, establishing the presence of the group in Africa.

In a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports on 8 July 2026, Apirut Nilpanapan of the Department of Biology at Mahasarakham University, Sita Manitkoon of the Palaeontological Research and Education Centre and Vertebrate Palaeontology and Evolution Research Unit at Mahasarakham University, Varavudh Suteethorn of the Khon Kaen Geopark Association, and Komsorn Lauprasert also of the Department of Biology and Evolution Research Unit at Mahasarakham University, describe a new species of Mamenchisaurid Sauropod from the Phu Kradung Formation of northeastern Thailand.

The new species is named on the basis of material collected from the Phu Noi Locality, which is in the village of Ban Din Chi in the Kham Muang District of Kalasin Province, in the northeast of Thailand. Here an outcrop of the Phu Kradung Formation has produced one of the most diverse non-marine Vertebrate fossil assemblages in Southeast Asia. The Phu Kradung Formation comprises a series of sandstones, siltstones, and mudstones laid down in a fluvial environment, within a continental basin.

Locality map and section diagram of Phu Noi Locality. (a) Map of Thailand; (b) location of Phu Noi Locality and the distribution of Phu Kradung Formation, the northeastern region with the outline of Kalasin Province; (c) diagrammatic section of Phu Noi. Nilpanapan et al. (2026).

The precise age of the Phu Kradung Formation is unknown, as it lacks any radiometrically datable horizons. However, regional stratigraphic correlations, Vertebrate assemblages, and detrital zircon data suggest that it is of Late Cretaceous origin, possibly with the uppermost part of the formation extending into the earliest Cretaceous.

The Phu Noi outcrop comprises numerous channel horizons formed within a braided river, rather than horizontal layers extending across the whole site. It has three fossil-bearing horizons. The lowest of these is a grey conglomeratic sandstone laid down in a channel bottom. About 10 m above this, the middle horizon is a brownish-purple and greenish-grey sandy siltstone and mudstone. At the same level as this, but about 400 m to the southwest, the upper horizon is a greyish siltstones within proximal floodplain deposit.

The specimen from which Nilpanpan et al. describe the new species comes from the middle horizon, which is particularly rich in Vertebrate remains, having previously yielded Hybodont Sharks, Ginglymodian Fish, Lungfish, Eucryptodiran Turtles, Teleosaurid Crocodyliformes, and Neornithischian Dinosaurs, and with Brachyopid Temnospondyl, Rhamphorynchoidea Pterosaur, Tyrannosauroid and Metriacanthosaurid Theropod specimens currently being studied. This faunal assemblage shows a strong affinity to the Late Jurassic and earliest Cretaceous faunas of the Junggar, Turpan, and Sichuan basins of China.

The new species is named Uragasaurus kalasinensis, where 'Uragasaurus' derives from 'Uraga' (उरग) the Sanskrit word for Snake, in reference to the long, serpentine, neck of Sauropod Dinosaurs, plus '-saurus' (σαύρος), the Greek for Lizard, a common suffix in Dinosaur names, and 'kalasinensis' means 'from Kalasin' in reference to the province where the specimen was discovered.

Uragasaurus kalasinensis is described from a single isolated anterior dorsal vertebra (PRC 460), from the Phu Noi locality, which is housed in the collection of the Palaeontological Research and Education Centre at Mahasarakham University. A number of other Sauropod elements were found close to this specimen in the same level, which Nilpanpan et al. refer to Uragasaurus kalasinensis. However, because these elements cannot be assigned to the same original Animal with 100% confidence, and they do not have overlapping diagnostic features, they are not included in the formal description of the species. This material includes two anterior dorsal neural arches (KS 34-581 & KS 34-586), a left coracoid (KS 34-587), a left fibula (KS 34-588), a middle cervical vertebra (KS 34-602a), a right cervical rib (KS 34-602b), a middle-to-posterior dorsal vertebra (KS 34-692), and a posterior dorsal vertebra (PN 13-23).

Holotype of Uragasaurus kalasinensis (PRC 460) and associated materials in the quarry map. PRC 460 Anterior dorsal vertebra in anterior view (a), KS 34-581 anterior dorsal neural arch in anterior view (b), KS 34-602a middle cervical vertebra in ventral view (c), KS 34-586 anterior dorsal neural arch in anterior view, attached by KS 34-588 fibula (d), KS 34-587 coracoid in lateral view (e), KS 34-602b right cervical rib in lateral view (f). Quarry map showing the spatial distribution of the holotype and associated materials from the Phu Noi Locality (g). PRC 460, representing the new taxon Uragasaurus kalasinensis, is indicated in red. Associated Sauropod elements include KS 34-586, KS 34-587, KS 34-588, and KS 34-602a–b, highlighted in yellow, green, blue, purple, and pink, respectively. The inset shows a close-up of the excavation grid highlighting the relative positions of the holotype and nearby associated materials. Each grid square represents 0.75 × 0.75 m. Nilpanpan et al. (2026).

The anterior dorsal vertebra assigned to Uragasaurus kalasinensis has a prominent, elongated teardrop-shaped pneumatic fossae on the distal portion of the transverse processes, intraprezygapophyseal laminae meeting ventromedially to form a Y-shaped configuration in anterior view, incorporating a single vertical intraprezygapophyseal lamina, and a shallow, subtriangular pleurocoel lacking an internal septum.

The holotype anterior dorsal vertebra of Uragasaurus kalasinensis (PRC 460) in anterior (a) and posterior (b) views. Digital rendering of the specimen in anterior (c), posterior (d), right lateral (e), left lateral (f), dorsal (g), and ventral (h) views. Asterisk refers to an autapomorphic character. The blue highlight indicates the pneumatic fossa and pleurocoel. Abbreviations: Cpol, centropostzygapophyseal lamina; cprl, centroprezygapophyseal lamina; di, diapophysis; ns, neural spine; pa, parapophysis; pcdl, posterior centrodiapophyseal lamina; pl, pleurocoel; pnfo, pneumatic fossa; po, postzygapophysis; podl, postzygodiapophyseal lamina; ppdl, paradiapophyseal lamina; prdl, prezygodiapophyseal lamina; posl, postspinal lamina; prsl, prespinal lamina; spof, spinopostzygapophyseal fossa; spol, spinopostzygapophyseal lamina; sprf, spinoprezygapophyseal fossa; sprl, spinoprezygapophyseal lamina; stprl, single interprezygapophyseal lamina; tp, transverse process; tpol, intrapostzygapophyseal lamina; tprl, intraprezygapophyseal lamina. Nilpanpan et al. (2026).

A computed tomography of specimen PRC 460 showed that its centrum has a camellate internal pneumatic structure composed of numerous small, irregular chambers separated by thin bony septa, although it was not possible to accurately measure the dimensions of these cavities due to mineral infilling. This is a structure unique to advanced Mamenchisaurids, which differs from the procamerate internal structure seen in certain Neosauropods and the camerate condition found in Macronarians and Diplodocoids.

Computed tomography scan of the anterior dorsal vertebra of Uragasaurus kalasinensis (holotype PRC 460). Threedimensional reconstructions of the vertebra in anterior view (a) and right lateral view (c). Corresponding computed tomography sections in anterior view (b) and right lateral view (d). The section plane corresponds to the dashed line separating the grey (anterior) and blue (posterior) regions in the 3D reconstructions. White boxes highlight camellate pneumatic cavities within the centrum. Red arrows indicate polygonal camellae within the camellate internal structure of the centrum. Black-and-white arrows indicate anatomical orientation in each panel. Nilpanpan et al. (2026).

Phylogenetic analysis of the taxonomic affinities of Uragasaurus kalasinensis consistently recovered the species as a basal Mamenchisaurid, although its precise placement within this group was hard to determine, which is unsurprising given the limited nature of the material. However, the same analysis consistently found Rhomaleopakhus turpanensis, a species formerly classified as being a member of the Mamenchisauridae, as being outside the group, which Nilpanpan et al. suggest may indicate the need to re-evaluate the taxonomic status of a number of Late Jurassic Asian Sauropods.

A previous Mamenchisaurid specimen, KS26-4, was described from the Phu Dan Ma locality in 2013. This specimen comprises a nearly complete posterior cervical vertebra and two fragmentary ribs. Since this material did not contain any elements considered reliably diagnostic within the Mamenchisauridae, it was not formally described as a new species. This lack of diagnostic features, combined with a lack of shared elements with the material assigned to Uragasaurus kalasinensis leads Nilpanpan et al. to refrain from assessing whether it belongs to the same species.

Posterior cervical vertebra of Mamenchisaurus sp. from Phu Dan Ma, Kalasin Province,Thailand,Phu Kradung Formation, Late Jurassic–Early Cretaceous. Vertebra (SM KS26−4), right rib (SMKS26−2), and left rib (SMKS26−3) in anterior (A; A₂, close−up view of neural spine showing attachment scar for interspinal elastic ligament), left lateral (B), posterior (C), right lateral (D; D₂, close−up view of articular condyle showing a cancellous internal structure), and dorsal (E) views. Suteethorn et al. (2013).

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Three dead and five missing following landslide at construction site in Kerala.

2026-07-08T13:37:16.896+01:00

Three people have died and another five are missing following a landslide at a construction site in Wayanad District, Kerala, at about 1.00 pm local time on Tuesday 7 July 2026. The three dead men have been identified as labourers Anmol Gorai from Jharkhand, Vikas Kumar Singh from Bihar and Chandrabhan Pal from Madhya Pradesh. The incident happened amid heavy rainfall associated with the summer monsoon, which appears to have triggered the collapse of a large pile of earth produced by the construction of a road tunnel intended to connect the town of Meppadi in Wayanad District to the village of Anakkampoyil in the neighbouring Kozhikode District. Landslides are a common problem after severe weather, as excess pore water pressure can overcome cohesion in soil and sediments, allowing them to flow like liquids. Approximately 90% of all landslides are caused by heavy rainfall.

An ongoing rescue operation at the site of a landslide in Kerala State, India. Press Trust of India.

The landslide swept across the construction site, over a nearby road where it swept several vehicles away, then over a temporary labour camp for workers at the site, then a local church and house. All work at the site, other than searching for the missing persons, has stopped pending an investigation into the incident.

Managers at the site, which is being operated by Dilip Buildcon Limited, have claimed that the landslide started on land above the construction site, and was therefore not their fault. However, local authorities have observed that the company appears to have been in breach of at least two directives issued to by the Kerala Public Works Department, one of which was to remove the spoil heap, which was perceived as dangerously large, while the other was not to allow work on the site to be carried out on the site during heavy rainfall, due to the possibility of landslides.

CCTV footage of the landslide sweeping vehicles from a road. India Today.

The tunnel project was approved in 2020, and is intended to relieve pressure on the Thamarassery Ghat Road, which is prone to closures due to landslides during the monsoon season. However, from the outset it has been opposed by environmental groups in Kerala, who were worried that it would affect areas which form a key part of the Western Ghats Biodiversity Hotspot, in particular forests used by wild Elephants, and that there was a danger of tunnelling activities making the hillsides more prone to landslides.

A bus swept into a ravine by the 7 July 2026 Wayanad landslide. Press Trust of India.

These concerns form part of a wider dispute between the Indian Government, which considers large infrastructure projects to be a vital part of its mission to raise millions of Indian citizens out of poverty, and environmentalists, who consider many of these projects to be poorly thought out, and not to take into account the special environmental needs of places such the Western Ghats, nor the current or projected future climate of the region. While such objections are often depicted by India's politicians as being anti-development sentiments which will condemn future generations to poverty, environmentalists worry that large projects which do not take into account the environment and climate risk failure, leaving the areas affected without any meaningful improvement to infrastructure and potentially significant environmental degradation, leaving local communities worse off than they are now.

Monsoons are tropical sea breezes triggered by heating of the land during the warmer part of the year (summer). Both the land and sea are warmed by the Sun, but the land has a lower ability to absorb heat, radiating it back so that the air above landmasses becomes significantly warmer than that over the sea, causing the air above the land to rise and drawing in water from over the sea; since this has also been warmed it carries a high evaporated water content, and brings with it heavy rainfall. In the tropical dry season the situation is reversed, as the air over the land cools more rapidly with the seasons, leading to warmer air over the sea, and thus breezes moving from the shore to the sea (where air is rising more rapidly) and a drying of the climate.

Diagrammatic representation of wind and rainfall patterns in a tropical monsoon climate. Geosciences/University of Arizona.

Kerala has a complex seasonal cycle, driven by the presence of the Western Ghats mountain range, which largely block the dry northerly winds which dominate the climate of much of India, and its proximity to the equator, which leads to a double monsoon system. Such a double Monsoon Season is common close to the equator, where the Sun is highest overhead around the equinoxes and lowest on the horizons around the solstices, making the solstices the coolest part of the year and the equinoxes the hottest. In Kerala this results in a Southwest Monsoon, which lasts from May to September, and is driven by winds from the southern Arabian Sea dumping water onto the Western Ghats, followed by a Northwest Monsoon, which lasts from October to December, where winds from the Bay of Bengal do the same. Of the two monsoons, the southwest is the wetter, due to the proximity of the sea, with June typically being the wettest month, with an average of 341 mm of rain falling in the month.

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Six 'space balls' found on Queensland beach.

2026-07-07T17:35:11.102+01:00

Local authorities in Forest Beach, Queensland, have set up a 50 m exclusion zone around a group of six spherical objects that washed up on beaches on Friday 3, Saturday 4, and Sunday 5 July 2026. The objects have been identified by the Australian Space Agency as most probably being propellant tanks from a recent space launch. These tanks would have contained pressurised fuel before it was released, during the launch process, and have warned people not to approach them due to the possibility of residual amounts of flammable or reactive chemicals being present.

One of six spherical metal objects which washed up on beaches around Forest Beach, Queensland, in the first week of July 2026. Queensland Fire Department.

Spacecraft tend to contain a lot of thick-walled spherical tanks, which is the most stable shape for a tank containing liquids under pressure in a changing gravity field. Unfortunately this is also a good shape for surviving re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, so as the amount of space junk orbiting the Earth increases, so does the number of metal spheres falling from the sky. As yet there have been no reported cases of death or serious injury caused by space junk, but it does seem to be an increasing hazard on Earth as well as in orbit, with several reports of damage to property now coming in each year.

The basic design of a hydrazine bladder tank, thought to be the type object found on a Queensland beach this week. The tank comprises a tough, protective, outer shell, typically made of titanium, with a flexible bladder inside, which shrinks as the gas inside is expelled, maintaining a constant pressure. Ariane Orbital Propulsion Centre.

Because the debris are thought to have come from a non-Australian rocket, they are covered by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which enables countries to reclaim any portion of a space vehicle which fell onto another country's territory, in order to investigate any problems with a launch or re-entry procedure. The Australian Space Agency have therefore contacted the country they believe to have carried out the launch from which the tanks came in order to give them the chance to reclaim their parts. They do not, however, expect them to act upon this, as the launch was successful and such tanks are often recovered intact. In the modern world it is unusual for countries to exercise their rights under the Outer Space Treaty, which comes from a time when space travel was a newer and more experimental technology.

A spherical metal object which washed up on a beach near Forest Beach, Queensland, in the first week of July 2026. Queensland Fire Department.

Although not generally considered one of the world's leading environmental problems, the increasing amount of space traffic and man-made objects in orbit, means that the space industry is beginning to have a serious environmental impact. There were 324 space launches in 2025, and have been 154 so far in 2026, with the largest rockets (which are becoming more common, as they can carry multiple satellites at a time) releasing around 76 000 tons of carbon dioxide in a launch. Other environmental impacts are large pieces of debris from launches, such as those found in Queensland this week, but also particulate matter from the breakup of larger pieces of launch stage rockets and satellites re-entering the atmosphere, as well as combustion products of metal and plastics burned during these processes.

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Five-year-old girl swallowed by sinkhole in Cape Town, South Africa.

2026-07-05T15:52:55.963+01:00

A five-year-old girl has been rescued after being swallowed by a sinkhole at Wetland in the Khayelitsha Township of Cape Town, South Africa, on Friday 3 July 2006. The girl, who has not been named, was reportedly visiting her aunt in the area, when a section of road collapsed beneath her, leading her to fall into the hole and be covered over with sand. Local residents acted quickly, and were able to dig her out with handtools before serious harm occurred.

A sinkhole which opened up in the Wetlands area of Khayelitsha on Friday 3 July 2026, swallowing a five-year-old girl. Siyavuya Khaya/Cape Argus.

Sinkholes are generally caused by water eroding soft limestone or unconsolidated deposits from beneath, causing a hole that works its way upwards and eventually opening spectacularly at the surface. Where there are unconsolidated deposits at the surface they can infill from the sides, apparently swallowing objects at the surface, including people, without trace.

However, on this occasion the problem is thought to have been caused by a bulk sewer pipeline which lies beneath the area. The informal settlement at Wetland has been built over this pipeline, which is in a poor state of maintenance, in need of upgrading, and has suffered a number of sinkhole-related problems as sections of the pipeline have collapsed. Officials from the City of Cape Town, which is responsible for the pipeline, report that they expect more collapses on the pipeline, which they struggle to access because of the presence of the settlement.

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The Earth approaches aphelion.

2026-07-04T14:38:27.795+01:00

The Earth will reach its aphelion, the furthest point in its orbit from the Sun, a distance of 1.017 AU (1.017 times the average distance between the Earth and the Sun) or 152 141 035 km, at 5.30 pm GMT on Monday 6 July 2026. The Earth's orbit is slightly eccentric and slightly variable, leading to the distance between the Earth and the Sun varying by about 3.4% over time, reaching aphelion early in July each year and perihelion (the closest point on its orbit to the Sun) early in January. The exact distance at aphelion and perihelion each year varies, with this year's aphelion being slightly further from the Sun than last year (2025), when the Earth reached 152 087 733 km from the Sun on Thursday 3 July, or next year, when it will only reach a distance of 152 100 479 km on Tuesday 6 July.

The difference between the Earth's perihelion (closest point to the Sun) and aphelion (furthest point from the Sun). Time and Date.

This is counter intuitive to inhabitants of the Earth's Northern Hemisphere, who often assume that the Earth is closest to the Sun in midsummer, when in fact it is at its furthest away. This is because the tilt of the Earth plays a far greater role in our seasons than the distance from the Sun, and the Northern Hemisphere has just passed its Summer Solstice, i.e. the point at which the North Pole was pointing as close to the Sun as it ever gets, so that the Northern Hemisphere is currently getting much more sunlight than the Southern. The Earth's surface receives about 7% less sunlight at aphelion to at perihelion, but this is far less than the seasonal variation caused by the tilt of the Earth (23% in each hemisphere).

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Manis pentadactyla: The Chinese Pangolin confirmed to be living in Pakyong District, Sikkim.

2026-07-03T20:22:46.554+01:00

Pangolins are solitary, nocturnal, and generally cryptic Mammals, found across Africa and Asia. They feed on Ants and Termites, and have a covering of scales, made from fused hairs, which are their main defence against predators, rolling into a ball with these forming the outer covering. There are eight recognised species of Pangolin, four in Africa and four in Asia, two of which are listed as Vulnerable under the terms of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species, three as Endangered, and three as Critically Endangered. One of these Critically Endangered species is the Chinese Pangolin, Manis pentadactyla, which is found across parts of Nepal, Bhutan, northern India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, China, and Taiwan. In India it is known to be present in Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura, Mizoram, and Assam, with occasional reports of its presence in Sikkim and West Bengal, although none of these have been confirmed.

In a paper published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa on 26 June 2026, Prashanti Pradhan of the Sikkim Alpine University, and the Assam Downtown University, Jampal Dorjee Bhutia, also of the Sikkim Alpine University, and Prem Kumar Chhetri and Bharat Kumar Pradhan of the Forest & Environment Department of the Government of Sikkim, document the first confirmed sighting of the Chinese Pangolin in Pakyong District, Sikkim, and provide photographic evidence to support this.

Pradhan et al.'s report is based upon a Pangolin which was found in Barapathing Village in Pakyong District on 31 March 2024. Barapathing Village is located at an altitude of between 1150 and 1700 m in an area where subtropical to temperate broad-leaved forests are being encroached upon by agricultural land and Human settlements, with anthropogenic pressures increasing due to the construction of the 717B National Highway, and associated infrastructure.

The Pangolin was found by a local villager wandering within their backyard, and apparently lost and looking for food. The villager, who was unfamiliar with the species, attempted to drive the Pangolin away, though it was unperturbed by this, and apparently tolerant of Humans, potentially indicating that it had been living in a Human-dominated environment for some time. The Pangolin was eventually allowed to settle in a room, while the resident called the Barapathing Territorial Range Forest & Environment Department, who collected the Animal and relocated it to a subtropical forest downstream of the village.

Chinese Pangolin, Manis pentadactyla, inside the home of a villager in Barapathing, where it remained until the arrival of the rescue unit of the Barapathing Territorial Range Forest & Environment Department. Sangita Ruchal in Pradhan et al. (2026).

The rescued Animal was identified as a Chinese Pangolin, Manis pentodactyla, on the basis of its distinct morphological characteristics, such as overlapping keratinous scales, an elongated snout, and robust body form. The photographic evidence collected by Pradhan et al. constitutes evidence that this species is present in the Pakyong District of Sikkim. Local people were able to identify the Animal as a Pangolin using the Nepali word 'Saalak', but reported that they had never seen one so close to a Human habitation before.

The photographs and a description of the Animal were later sent to Vikram Aditya, the principal scientist at the Centre for Wildlife Studies in Bengaluru, Karnataka State, and a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Pangolin Specialist Group, who confirmed the diagnosis of this being a Chinese Pangolin.

The Chinese Pangolin after being rehabilitated into the forest. Prem Kumar Chettri in Pradhan et al. (2026).

Pangolins are threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation, driven by deforestation, forest fires, and road development, across their range. Sikkim has had one of the greatest expansions of its road network of any state in India during the last decade, with a major road upgrading project close to the village of Barapathing, which is likely to have contributed to both habitat destruction and a greater rate of Human encounters for Pangolins in the area.

Animals can sometimes survive in altered landscapes by adapting their behaviour, however, this can lead them vulnerable to additional hazards, such as increased hunting. The hunting and trafficking of Pangolins is known to be a hazard for Pangolins in Sikkim, in 2021 a group of five people was arrested trying to smuggle a dead Pangolin from Sikkim into Bhutan, and when questioned they confessed the Animal had been killed in a wildlife sactuary in Sikkim. They also hinted at there being an international wildlife trafficking network operating across the eastern Himalayan region.

Pradhan et al. suggest that there is an urgent need for a baseline ecological study on Chinese Pangolins in Sikkim, in order to better understand the threats linked to development-related habitat fragmentation, illegal hunting and transboundary trafficking, and to enable the development of a conservation plan for the species in the state,

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Hyksos settlement discovered in the Eastern Nile Delta.

2026-07-02T20:34:14.078+01:00

Egyptian archaeologists working at a site called Tell El-Koua in the Ismailia Governorate have uncovered an ancient settlement dating to the Second Intermediate Period (between 1782 and 1550 BC), according to a press release issued by the Egyptian ‎Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (وزارة السياحة والآثار) on 29 June 2026. At this time the northern part of Egypt, as far south as Cusae, was ruled by a Semitic People called the Hyksos, recorded as the Fifteenth Dynasty, while the southern part of the country was ruled by two successive Egyptian dynasties, the Sixteenth and Seventeenth. This was the first time that a substantial part of Egypt was ruled by a foreign group, and Egyptian chroniclers had a low opinion of them, yet they introduced a number of innovations to Egyptian culture, including Horses, chariots, a sickle-shaped sword called the khopesh, and the compound bow, all of which contributed to the military success of the Eighteenth Dynasty, who reunited Egypt and formed the New Kingdom, which built an expanded Empire including much of the Middle East and Sudan.

The site uncovered includes a residential area, a group of tombs, and several kilns and grain silos. The site is clearly divided into residential areas, working areas, and burial grounds. The residential area covers an area of about 30 m by 60 m and is surrounded by a mud brick wall about 1.5 m thick, and is internally divided into rooms and corridors of various sizes, with ovens and grain silos located on its eastern side.

The area interpreted as a residential block at the Tell El-Koua site. Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

The site included ten mud brick tombs, some of which were in the typical 'mustaba' style, while others had a variety of architectural facades and decorative elements. These tombs varied in size and orientation, and some of the individuals within them were buried in a crouched position, rather than laid out flat in typical Egyptian style. Several individuals had also been buried outside of tombs. All of the Human remains found are estimated to have come from individuals aged between 25 and 40. The mixture of burial styles suggests a people who had adopted some Egyptian customs, but to varying degrees and with an admixture of their own traditions.

An individual buried in a crouched position in a tomb at Tell El-Koua. Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

A number of artefacts were found at the site, including scarabs, bronze tools, pottery vessels, alabaster kohl containers, and a number of Tell el-Yahudiyeh ware flasks, which are considered typical of the Hyksos Period in Lower Egypt, but have also been found at sites across the Middle East, particularly those associated with the Canaanite People and on the island of Cyprus. A large number of Animal bones were also discovered, which appear to relate to both meat consumption and funerary rights.

A Tell el-Yahudiyeh ware flask from the Tell El-Koua site. Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

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At least thirteen deaths amid flooding in Accra, Ghana.

2026-07-01T16:44:32.395+01:00

At least thirteen people have died and a further seven are missing following flooding in the Ghanaian capitol, Accra, following a heavy rainstorm overnight between Sunday 28 and Monday 29 June 2026, with over 38 800 people from more than 7750 households displaced by floodwaters. The worst affected areas of the city is Ga East, where five people are known to have died, and another 2000 people have been displaced from their homes, and Ayawaso Central three people have died and one is missing, while about 3020 people have been displaced. Another three people have died in Tema West, where about 3450 have been displaced. In Ledzokuku one person has died and around 1200 have been displaced by the flooding.

In Ga Central over 1800 people have been displaced, but there are no reports of any fatalities of missing persons, while in Ga West about 2300 people have been displaced, again with no reports of fatalities or missing persons. About 1850 people have been displaced from their homes in Adentan, while about 6500 have been displaced from Korle Klottey. About 2620 people have been displaced by flooding in Okaikwei North, while in Okaikwei South the figure is about 3450 people. In Tema Metropolis about 3600 people were displaced, but no casualties have been reported. About 2200 people have been displaced by flooding in La Dadekotopon, and about 1100 in Krowor.

Officials from the Ghanaian National Disaster Management Organisation and soldiers from the 48 Engineer Regiment of the Ghana Armed Forces rescue people trapped by floodwaters in Accra, Ghana. National Disaster Management Organisation.

Outside of Accra, twenty houses are reported to have collapsed due to flooding in the Cape Coast Metropolis, with five people killed inside one of these buildings when it collapsed, and a sixth person drowning in a separate incident. Two people were killed in another building collapse in Mfantsiman, with another person drowning separately, and in Gomoa Central one person was killed in a building collapse and another drowned. Altogether, 58 houses are reported to have been destroyed in Central Region, with flooding also reported in the Volta and Western North regions.

June falls in the middle of the rainy season in Accra, with the city receiving an average of 175 mm of rain during the month. West Africa has a distinct two season climatic cycle, with a cool dry season during the northern winter when prevalent winds blow from the Sahara to the northeast, and a warm rainy season during the northern summer when prevalent winds blow from the Atlantic Ocean to the southwest. These warm winds from the Atlantic are laden with moisture, which can be lost rapidly when the air encounters cooler conditions.

Rainfall and prevalent winds during the West African dry and rainy seasons. Encyclopedia Britanica.

However, this year's rains have been far heavier than usual, with 169.2 mm of rain falling in 24 hours on Sunday 28 March, the fourth highest level of rainfall in a single day ever recorded in Ghana, and 593.2 mm of rain falling in June, the wettest month ever recorded in the city. The previous record-holding year was 2002, when 420.6 mm of rain fell in Accra during June, a figure which this year has exceeded by more than the average rainfall for the month. These rising rain levels are linked to greater sea surface temperatures over the Atlantic Ocean as the global climate warms, which leads to greater levels of evaporation from the sea, followed by increased precipitation on land.

Nevertheless, the high rainfall levels are not thought to be the main cause of the flooding which Accra has been suffering this week. Instead, local authorities are blaming the city's lax building controls, which have led to buildings and settlements spreading over and covering up drainage systems, as well as covering areas that were formally open soil with concrete, preventing water from soaking away. This has led to orders fir several illegally built properties to be demolished in the wake of the floods, though local community groups are asking for more consultation before any such plans are implemented, as in the past authorities have demolished properties without any plan to resettle their occupants, resulting in the rebuilding of properties once the authorities have left.

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Kissing Elephants Archway on the Maltese Island of Comino collapses.

2026-06-30T19:47:42.939+01:00

The Kissing Elephants Archway, a famous sea arch on the island of Comino, Malta, collapsed into the Mediterranean Sea at about 7.30 local time on Saturday 27 June 2006. The archway collapsed after a tourist, described as a 32-year-old American man, jumped from it into the sea, although this is unlikely to have been the cause of the collapse. Tragically, a couple were passing under the archway on a jet ski at the time of the collapse, with one of them, described as a 26-year-old Chinese man being killed and the other, a 27-year-old Chinese woman, being severely injured.

The Kissing Elephants Archway before it fell. Malta Boat Trips.

Sea arches are dramatic features, and long-lived by Human standards, but are formed by coastal erosion and have a finite lifetime. Sea arches are formed when an exposed headland has a softer rock at its base than above (in this case a soft clay limestone beneath a harder coralline limestone), which causes the arch to be hollowed out as the underlying stone is washed away. Obviously this is an unstable situation, and eventually the arch becomes so undermined that it collapses into the sea.

Archway collapses are usually associated with storm events, which can batter already weakened structures and cause them to collapse. However, the Kissing Elephants Archway collapsed during a period of calm, but extremely hot, weather, during an unprecedented heatwave which has affected much of western Europe, and which has been associated with more than 1300 deaths so far. Though less obvious than storms or even frosts (which can crack rocks when water in crevices freezes and expands), extreme heat can also fracture rocks as the different minerals from which rock is made up expand and contract at different rates as they are heated and cooled. This is something which Humans have exploited since the palaeolithic, with rocks often being placed into fires to make them easier to crack.

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Trachischium lalremsangai: A new species of Worm-eating Snake from Mizoram State, India, and Chin State, Myanmar.

2026-06-29T10:05:24.476+01:00

Members of the Natricid Snake genus Trachischium are commonly known as Slender Snakes or Worm-eating Snakes. They are fossorial in nature (live underground in burrows) and are distributed in the montane forests of India, Nepal, Bhutan, China, Myanmar, and Bangladesh, typically at altitudes of between 800 and 2500 m above sealevel. Their lifestyle and habitat makes studying (or indeed finding) them difficult, and they are subsequently one of the least well known groups of Snakes. The genus Trachischium currently contains ten species, including two which were previously assigned to the genus Blythia; the two genera having been merged in 2024 on the basis that their defining criteria overlapped.

In a paper published in the journal Herpetozoa on 19 May 2026, Virender Bhardwaj, Amit Bal, and Chhangte Tluanga of the Developmental Biology and Herpetology Laboratory at Mizoram University, and Zeeshan Mirza of the Max Planck Institute for Biology, describe a new species of Trachischium from Mizoram State, India, and Chin State, Myanmar.

The new species is described on the basis of a specimen collected by Bhardwaj et al. in the Murlen National Park in 2025. A second specimen, which was collected in Chin State, Myanmar, in 2003, and now sits in the collection of the California Academy of Sciences, where it has been classified as Blythia reticulata (a species currently reassigned to Trachischium as Trachischium reticulata) on the basis of a scale pattern and colouration which matches the new species, but is atypical for Trachischium reticulata.

Bhardwaj et al. name the new species Trachischium lalremsanga, in honour of Hmar Tlawmte Lalremsanga of Mizoram University for his contributions to herpetology in Northeast India, his guidance to numerous students, and his facilitation of research throughout the region and the Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot. The species is described from two specimens, both male, one 409 mm in length and the other 506 mm, which makes it one of the larger species of Worm-eating Snakes. The dorsal surface of these Snakes is dark brown with a lustrous blue iridescence throughout, the front quarter of the ventral surface is a creamy white, the remainder brown with white speckles.

Trachischium lalremsangai, holotype male, MZMU 3757, in life. Bhardwaj et al. (2026).

The specimen Bhardwaj et al. collected was found moving along a road, close to the village of Murlen on the fringe of the Murlen National Park, 1560 m above sealevel, at about 9.30 in the evening, and shortly before a period of rain. This area forms part of the India-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot, and contains a mixture of tropical, semi-evergreen, and montane forests, with a dense canopy cover. Annual rainfall varies between about 2500 mm and about 3000 m, and the temperature varies between about 5°C in the winter and about 35°C in the winter. The area where the Snake was found has a diverse vegetation, including Oaks, Quercus spp., Needlewood, Schima wallichii, Birches, Betula spp., Champak, Michelia champaca, Khasi Pines, Pinus khasiana, Cherries, Prunus spp., Bayberry, Myrica spp., Rhododendrons, Rhododendron spp., dense stands of Thorny Bamboo, Arundinaria callosa, Cane Grasses, and a rich array of Orchids. The specimen collected in Myanmar was found at a site about 90 km away in a straight line, with a similar environment. Based upon this, Bhardwaj et al. estimate that the species may be present across northeast Mizoram and adjoining Manipur in India, as well as within the similar elevation realms of the Chin Hills.

The phylogeny of the genus Trachischium is still somewhat uncertain, and in need of thorough revision. Many species are described from single specimens, with only vague locations recorded. The genus is found from Jammu and Kashmir in the west to Arunachal Pradesh in the east, south as far as northern Myanmar and north as far as Tibet. At least one widely distributed species, Trachischium fuscum, is likely to be a species complex (group of closely related, yet reproductively isolated, and similar-appearing species). The genus Blythia was incorporated into the genus Trachischium as a junior synonym in 2024, yet this group of Snakes remain distinctive in appearance and this may be revised again; it is to this Blythia-group that the new species, Trachischium lalremsanga, belongs. Genetic data is available for only a single specimen of many species.

With this in mind, Bhardwaj et al. carried out a phylogenetic analysis for Trachischium lalremsanga using the mitochondrial 16S rRNA and cytochrome b genes and the nuclear oocyte maturation factor mos and recombination activating gene 1 genes, and comparing these to publicly available sequences from the GenBank database.

This analysis found that the genus Trachischium can be split into three distinct subgroupings, which Bhardwaj et al. refer to as Clade 1, Clade 2 (which corresponds to the Blythia-group), and Clade 3. Clade 2 and Clade 3 are more closely related to one-another than either is to Clade 1, which forms an outgroup, so while Clade 2 could potentially be taken out of the genus Trachischium and returned to its original name, this would also require the renaming of Clade 3, with the designation Trachischium limited to Clade 1, which contains the type species for the genus, Trachischium fuscum (a type species is the species which defines a genus; other species are determined to belong or not belong to the genus on the basis of how closely they are related to that genus).

Maximum likelihood phylogeny based on concatenated two nuclear (c-mos and RAG-1) and two mitochondrial (16S and cyt b) genes of selected Natricine Snakes showing relationships within the genera Trachischium and Blythia. Numbers at nodes show maximum likelihood clade support. The new species from Murlen National Park is highlighted in red text. Bhardwaj et al. (2026).

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Three dead and two missing following flash flood in Arunachal Pradesh.

2026-06-28T12:23:56.751+01:00

Three people have been confirmed dead and another two are missing following a flash flood in the Keyi Panyor District of Arunachal Pradesh State, India, on Wednesday 24 June 2026. A further 54 families have been displaced by the incident, in which waters from the Rangandani River Dam Lake over-topped a wall surrounding a residential camp for employees of the North Eastern Electric Power Corporation working on the Panyor Lower Hydroelectric Project (also known as the Rangandani Dam), following days of heavy rain associated with the Summer Monsoon.

Damage caused by a flash flood which swept through a residential block for workers at a hydroelectric dam in Arunachal Pradesh, India, on 24 June 2026. ANI.

About thirty houses were destroyed at the dam workers colony, with another ten houses destroyed and fourteen damaged in related incidents in neighbouring communities, which have also been hit by flooding and landslide events caused by heavy rains in the area. Landslides are a common problem after severe weather, as excess pore water pressure can overcome cohesion in soil and sediments, allowing them to flow like liquids. Approximately 90% of all landslides are caused by heavy rainfall. Several major roads in the area have also been damaged, and the heavy rains are making air transport difficult, hampering the efforts of rescue workers.

Arunchal Pradesh has a monsoon season that begins around the end of April or beginning of May and ends around September, bringing 2-4000 mm of rain to the region each year. In the twenty four hours prior to the incident, 74 mm of rainfall had fallen in the area, which is high, but should not have been sufficient to cause flooding at a camp with flood defences on a dam lake where the water level can be controlled to some extent by releasing water from the dam. This has led to speculation that an earlier incident, such as a landslide, may have temporarily blocked the flow of the river upstream of the dam lake, and that when this temporary blockage failed, a large amount of water surged downstream overcoming the colony's flood defences.

Diagrammatic representation of wind and rainfall patterns in a tropical monsoon climate. Geosciences/University of Arizona.

This situation is particularly intense in South Asia, due to the presence of the Himalayas. High mountain ranges tend to force winds hitting them upwards, which amplifies the South Asian Summer Monsoon, with higher winds leading to more upward air movement, thus drawing in further air from the sea. However, despite the incidents in Arunachal Pradesh this week, the Indian Monsoon is predicted to be be week this year, due to a developing el Niño system over the southern Pacific Ocean, leading to concerns that the country could suffer widespread droughts and famine this year.

The el Niño is the warm phase of a long-term climatic oscillation affecting the southern Pacific, which can influence the climate around the world. The onset of el Niño conditions is marked by a sharp rise in temperature and pressure over the southern Indian Ocean, which then moves eastward over the southern Pacific. This pulls rainfall with it, leading to higher rainfall over the Pacific and lower rainfall over South Asia. This reduced rainfall during the already hot and dry summer leads to soaring temperatures in southern Asia, followed by a rise in rainfall that often causes flooding in the Americas and sometimes Africa. Worryingly climatic predictions for the next century suggest that global warming could lead to more frequent and severe el Niño conditions, extreme weather conditions a common occurrence.

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Are all known specimens of Homo naledi female?

2026-06-27T17:14:50.794+01:00

In 2013 a large number of skeletons belonging to a previously unknown Hominin species were discovered in a newly discovered chamber within the Rising Star Cave System in the Cradle of Humankind at Maropeng, South Africa. This new chamber was named the Dinaledi Chamber (Chamber of the Stars in Sotho), and the new Hominin species was given the name Homo naledi ('naledi' meaning 'star'). A number of subsequent specimens assigned to the same species have been found in nearby chambers. Some of the specimens have been dated to between 335 000 and 236 000 years before the present, although it is possible that the total chronological range of all the specimens is longer.

Homo naledi is an unusual species, with a mosaic of modern and archaic traits. It has a small brain size, more comparable to that of an Australopithecene than an Archaic Human. The bones of the trunk and shoulders of Homo naledi also resemble those of Australopithecenes, yet the hands, lower limbs, and face of the species are far more Human.

A recent study of the teeth of Homo naledi found that they showed remarkably little variation, and concluded that this might indicate that all known specimens might belong to a single sex. However, estimating the sex of a specimen on bone-or-tooth morphology is a remarkably difficult process, particularly where there isn't a dimorphism (i.e. two consistently different forms) within the known specimens of that species.

Sex determination can also sometimes be achieved using ancient DNA recovered from specimens. However, DNA, while this has been used on some ancient Hominins from cool climates, DNA tends to degrade rapidly in warmer environments, such as South Africa.

In a paper published in the journal Cell on 24 June 2026, a team of scientists led by Palesa Madupe of the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen, the Human Evolution Research Institute at the University of Cape Town, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, present the results of a study in which they assessed the sexes of all known specimens of Homo naledi using palaeoproteomic analysis of dental enamel.

The study focuses on amelogenins, a type of protein which helps to direct the mineralisation of tooth enamel. This the DNA which is used to make this protein is principally found on the X-chromosome, however, unlike many other genes, this has not been lost from the Y-chromosome, with the effect that there are two distinct forms of amelogenin, Amelogenin X, which drives from the version of the gene on the X-chromosome, and which is produced by all Humans, and Amelogenin Y, which is derived from the version of the gene on the Y-chromosome, and which is found only in males (albeit only making up about 10% of the total. This tool has previously been used to determine the sexes of other Pleistocene Hominins, making it a realistic choice for establishing the same in Homo naledi.

Madupe et al. began by taking surface etchings from four teeth, then processing them. All of the samples yielded the Amelogenin X variant, but none produced Amelogenin Y, indicating that all four were female. The samples were then subjected to a more destructive round of testing, crushing the teeth completely and then analysing the whole sample. This yielded identical results, indicating that the less destructive test was sufficiently reliable.

Location and layout of the Rising Star cave system. (A) Map of South Africa zoomed in (insert), showing the position of the area known as the Cradle of Humankind, approximately 50 km northwest of Johannesburg, where the Rising Star cave system is located. (B) The Rising Star cave system within the Cradle of Humankind. (C) Layout of the Rising Star System and the Dinaledi subsystem and Lesedi Chamber, where all the specimens were recovered, and the photos of the four Homo naledi specimens initially micro-destructively sampled by acid etching, then sectioned for enamel growth analysis and subsequently sampled destructively. Madupe et al. (2026).

Following this success, Madupe et al. carried out an analysis of another nineteen Homo naledi teeth, using the non-destructive method (i.e. using surface etchings, not whole teeth). This included all 20 known Homo naledi specimens within the experiment. The Amelogenin X variant was again found in seventeen specimens, while the Amelogenin Y variant was again not detected. Two specimens yielded such low protein levels that they were excluded from the study, although these specimens also yeilded Amelogenin X variant at low levels and no Amelogenin Y variant. The Amelogenin Y variant was detected in all the controls used for the study, which comprised fifteen male Homo sapiens, two male Paranthropus robustus, a male Australopithecus africanus, a male Denisovan, and a male Homo antecessor.

The Amelogenin X protein found in Homo naledi showed no variation, something which would be considered extra-ordinary in a modern Human population, suggesting that either the species Homo naledi was remarkably genetically homogeneous, or that all of the individuals were very closely related. The individuals come from locations up to 145 m from one another within a complex cave system, and are not thought to have been deposited at the same time, making the former diagnosis more likely.

Madupe et al. identify eighteen confidently identified informative single amino acid polymorphisms on the Hominid Amelogenin X protein, two of which are notably different in Homo naledi and Modern Humans. One of these, a phenylalanine amino acid molecule at position 141 on the protein, is the same as that seen in present day Strepsirrhini (Lemurs, Galagos, Pottos, and Lorises) and Cercopithecidae (Old World Monkeys), but differs from the position in Modern Humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans, all of which have a tyrosine amino acid at this point. The second, a proline amino acid at position 635, is the same character state as in all living non-Human Primates, but differs from the situation in Modern Humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans, all of which have an alanine amino acid at this point. This location has not been recovered in any Homo antecessor, Homo erectus, or Australopithecus africanus specimen to date, but has been identified in two Paranthropus robustus specimens, both of which both had a proline amino acid in this position.

Analysis of the Amelogenin protein has previously been shown to be a useful way to identify the sex of a variety of Pliocene and Pleistocene Hominins. Application of this test to Homo naledi failed to identify any males among the 20 individuals currently known, nor any intra-specific variation on the protein, both highly unusual states. Notably, the study included individual UW 102a, popularly known as 'Neo' (pronounced ney-oh), the most complete Homo naledi specimen known, who has previously identified as male on the basis of a relatively robust skeleton (fortunately, the name Neo, which is Sotho and means 'gift', can be applied to either sex).

The cranium of Homo naledi specimen popularly known as 'Neo'. Nutcracker Man.

Since the method has previously been applied to individuals from South Africa as much as two million years old, and all of the male controls used within the study were identified as such, Madupe et al. do not believe there was anything wrong with the methodology being used. On this basis, they conclude that the Amelogenin Y variant was not present in any of the specimens, either because they were all female, or because of a mutation which prevented the expression of this protein in male Homo naledi. However, if the previous study on the dentition of Homo naledi is taken into account, it does raise the likelihood of all specimens being female.

Mutations which lead to the deletion or non-expression of the Amelogenin Y protein are known. They are more common in some Human populations than others (in one population in Pakistan, 8% of men did not produce this protein), and has been observed in a Neanderthal individual from Siberia. However, such mutations are typically extremely rare.

Since there is no reason to believe the sex ratio in living Homo naledi populations was anything other than 1:1, a random accumulation of 20 female specimens is incredibly unlikely. However, such a ratio is not inconsistent with the previously-made suggestion that the presence of Homo naledi specimens in the Rising Star Cave System may have been the result of deliberate mortuary practices rather than a random accumulation.

The Dinaledi Chamber is notoriously hard to access, to the extent that following its discovery, lead scientist Lee Berger assembled a team of physically small female palaeontologists and archaeologists with caving experience in order to carry our excavation work there. In theory, the cave could have been equally inaccessible to male Homo naledi, leading to a bias in the preservation of individuals there. However, ten of the known individuals are juveniles who died before their second molar erupted, an age at which it is unlikely that sex-related size-differences would have been sufficient to prevent males entering the site.

Exclusively female funerary sites are not known from any Modern Human population. The closest we have are the Neolithic Panoría site in Spain and Edcoural Cave site in Portugal, where females make up 70% and 67% of the population respectively, something which has been thought to reflect the greater importance of females in a matrilineal society. However, the Neolithic inhabitants of Iberia were still Modern Humans, very different to Homo neledi, a Pleistocene Hominin not interpreted to have been closely related to us, and the two groups cannot be expected to have had similar funerary practices (if Homo naledi indeed had these at all).

The expression of archaic amino acid variants in Homo naledi further supports the idea that this species was not closely related to Modern Humans, although the absence of data from archaic Homo species, such as Homo erectus or Homo antecessor, makes it hard to work out how distant a relationship this implies. Gathering such data for more Human and Australopithecene species may help to resolve the phylogentic position of Homo naledi. The less destructive sampling method used by Madupe et al. in this study should make such sampling easier that the earlier form of this technique, which required the destruction of whole teeth, a highly precious resource for extinct Hominins.

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Northern Venezeula hit by pair of major Earthquakes, leaving at least 164 dead.

2026-06-25T20:53:55.493+01:00

The United States Geological Survey recorded a Magnitude 7.2 Earthquake at a depth of 20.3 km, roughly 23 km to the southeast of the town of Yumare in Yaracuy State on the north coast of Venezuela, slightly before 6.05 pm local (slightly before 10.05 pm GMT) time on Wednesday 24 June 2026. This was followed after 39 seconds by a Magnitude 7.5 Earthquake 4 km to the southeast of the original event, at a depth of 10 km.

The approximate location of the second 24 June 2026 Yaracuy Earthquake. USGS.

At least 164 people are known to have died as a result of this event, with another 971 injured. However, more than a hundred buildings have collapsed as a result of the Earthquakes, it is thought likely that many thousands more people may be trapped or dead beneath the rubble. The worst of the damage occurred in the State of La Guaira, to the east of the epicentres of the events.

A partially collapsed apartment building in the city of Catia La Mar in the State of La Guaira, Venezuela. Federico Parra/AFP/Getty Images.

The northern coast of Venezuela forms the boundary between the South American Plate, which is being pushed to the west by the expansion of the Atlantic, and the Caribbean Plate, which is also being pushed westward, but at a slower rate due to a collision with the Cocos Plate (which lies to the west of Central America). This means that the two plates are moving past one-another, creating a transform plate margin. This is not a smooth process, rather the plates constantly stick together, causing pressure to build up, then break apart in often spectacular earthquakes.

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The June Bootid Meteor Shower.

2026-06-23T08:03:21.547+01:00

The June Bootid Meteor Shower is visible each year between 26 June and 2 July, typically peaking on 27 June. This meteor shower if highly unpredictable in nature, with most years producing very few meteors, but the shower occasionally having peak years, in which hundreds of meteors are visible each hour; the most recent major peak year happened in 1998 (a smaller peak was recorded in 2004), with the three peaks prior to that happening in 1927, 1921, and 1916. The shower has a radiant point (point from which the meteors appear to radiate) in the constellation of Boötes, close to the North Pole, making the shower possible to spot from anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, but hard to see in the Southern Hemisphere. Unfortunately, this year's peak activity comes only two days before the Full Moon on 29 June, which means that good observation of the meteors may be hampered by the brightness of the Moon.

The radiant point of the June Bootid Meteor Shower. Space Weather.

Meteor showers are thought to be largely composed of material from the tails of comets. Comets are composed largely of ice (mostly water and carbon dioxide), and when they fall into the inner Solar System the outer layers of this boil away, forming a visible tail (which always points away from the Sun, not in the direction the comet is coming from, as our Earth-bound experience would lead us to expect). Particles of rock and dust from within the comet are freed by this melting (strictly sublimation, transforming directly from a solid to a gas due to the low pressure on it's surface) of the comet into the tail and continue to orbit in the same path as the comet, falling behind over time.

The Earth passing through a stream of comet dust, resulting in a meteor shower. Not to scale. Astro Bob.

The June Bootids Meteor Shower is caused by the Earth passing through the trail of comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke, where it encounters thousands of tiny dust particles shed from the comet as its icy surface is melted (strictly sublimated) by the heat of the Sun. 7P/Pons-Winnecke visits the Inner Solar System every 6.37 years, most recently in May 2021, and last came close to the Earth in 1939.

How the passage of the Earth through a meteor shower creates a radiant point from which they can be observed. In The Sky.

7P/Pons-Winnecke was discovered on 12 June 1819 by French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons, then based at Marseilles Observatory, and rediscovered by Friedrich August Theodor Winnecke at Pulkovo Observatory near Saint Petersburg. The designation 7P/Pons-Winnecke implies that it was the seventh comet discovered (7/ - strictly speaking people had been observing comets for thousands of years, but it was not until the mid-eighteenth century that it was realised that they were predictable objects that returned cyclically), that it is a periodic comet (P - again, most comets are periodic, but the term 'periodic comet' is reserved for those with periods of less than 200 years, since these can be reliably predicted), and that it was discovered by Pons and Winnecke.

7P/Pons-Winnecke immaged on 23 September 2015 from Kiev, Ukraine. The image is a single 300 second exposure, with the slightly elongate objects being stars that have moved over the course of the exposure. Alexander Baransky/Kiev Comet Station/Fachgruppe Kometen.

Comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke currently completes one orbit every 2326 days (6.37 years) on an eccentric orbit tilted at 22.3° to the plane of the Solar System, that takes it from 1.26 AU from the Sun (126% of the average distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun) to 5.61 AU from the Sun (5.61 times as far from the Sun as the Earth, and slightly outside the orbit of Jupiter). As a comet with a period of less than 20 years with an orbit angled at less than 30° to the plane of the Solar System, 7P/Pons-Winnecke is considered to be a Jupiter Family Comet.

The orbit and current position of 7P/Pons-Winnecke. JPL Small Body Database.

This orbit means that 7P/Pons-Winnecke occasionally comes close to the Earth, with the last close approach having happened on 1 July 1939, when it reached a distance of 0.11 AU from the Earth (11% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun, or 16 052 000 km). The comet will next come close to us in June 2062, when it will reach a distance of 0.17 AU from the Earth.

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Microeledone galapagensis: A new species of Incirrate Octopus from the Galápagos Islands.

2026-06-22T20:29:21.317+01:00

Incirrate, or Finless, Octopuses are one of the two major divisions of the Octopoda, and the one most familiar to most people. Whilst many species living on coastal shelves and the upper part of the water column have been studied extensively, they are also a major part of the deep-sea fauna, although these are much less well known. The Family Megaleledonidae comprises large Incirrate Octopuses with a single sucker-row. These were originally described from the deep waters of the Southern Ocean, and for a long time were assumed to be restricted to the Antarctic, but recently have been found living as far north as Iceland, suggesting a much wider distribution.

In a paper published in the journal Zootaxa on 25 May 2026, Janet Voight and Stephanie Smith of the Negaunee Integrative Research Center of the Field Museum of Natural History, Salome Buglass of the Charles Darwin Fundación and the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia, and Alexander Ziegler of the Bonner Institut für Organismische Biologie at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, describe a new species of Megaleledonid Octopus from a seamount in the Galápagos Islands.

The species is described from a single female specimen which was recovered by the Remote Operated Vehicle Hercules from a seamount 25 km to the northwest of Isla Darwin, during a ten day voyage of the Research Vessel Nautilus to the Galápagos Marine Reserve. While this specimen was the only one directly examined, two other Octopus apparently belonging to the same species were observed within 1-2 km of the site where the specimen was caught.

The new species is placed in the Genus Microeledone, the first new species added to the genus since it was first described in 2004, and given the specific name galapagensis, meaning 'from the Galápagos'. As the name suggests, members of this genus are smaller than is typical for members of the Megaleledonida, with the single known specimen of Microeledone galapagensis having a mantle-length of only 31.5 mm. It is squat in form, with a head narrower with than the mantle and eyes which do not meet at the midline, and short arms, reaching only 1.4 times the length of the mantle, each of which has up to 30 suckers arranged in a single row. These suckers are tall and straight, with an approximately similar diameter along the tentacle, although they are sightly larger close to the body and slightly smaller at the tip.

Microeledone galapagensis in its natural environment. Voight et al. (2026).

Microeledone galapagensis lacks colouring on its outer mantle, but is heavily pigmented on the inner lining of the dorsal mantle muscles. This is thought to be an adaptation to its habitat and diet. In shallow-water Octopuses, pigment cells on the outer mantle allow the Octopus to change colour in order to blend in with its environment to avoid predators. All known specimens of Microeledone galapagensis were found living at depths of between 1770 and 1800 m beneath the sea surface. At these depths, there is no natural light, and therefore no need for Octopuses to camouflage themselves in this way. However, many available food species bioluminess when threatened, potentially giving away the location of anything consuming them to larger predators. The thick pigmentation on the inner lining of the dorsal mantle should hide such luminescence, thus protecting the Octopus from predation.

Interestingly, the only other known species of Microeledone, Microeledone mangoldi, lacks pigmentation on the inner lining of the dorsal mantle muscles, but has pigmented sheaths over its internal organs, apparently another way to deal with the problem of bioluminescent prey. This implies that the two species independently evolved different solutions to the same problem, which in turn suggests that their last common ancestor did not face this problem, and therefore must have lived in a different environment, presumably a more shallow one.

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Unusual Corded Ware Culture burial discovered in Germany.

2026-06-19T22:21:23.024+01:00

Archaeologists from the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology in Saxony-Anhalt, working on sites ahead of the planned construction of a power line project, have uncovered a burial associated with the Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Corded Ware Culture near Gerstewitz in Burgenland district, according to a press release issued on 15 June 2026.

The burial, that of a man of about 25, was typical of the Corded Ware Culture in that he was placed in a crouched position lying on his left hand side and facing to the south (everyone was buried in this position and facing the same way, although women were always placed on their right sides while men were always placed on their left).

The remains of a male individual excavated from a Chacolithic Corded Ware Culture burial near Gerstewitz in Saxony-Anhalt State, Germany. Christian Pabst/State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology.

However, unlike other burials from the period, he was buried within a former kiln-pit, rather than beaneath a burial mound, as was typical of the Corded Ware Culture. Furthermore, his body seems to have slipped slightly from the original position in which he was placed, possibly due to his being placed on a layer of organic material which has since decayed.

This has led to suspicions that there may have been something irregular about the burial. The man appeared to have died as a result of damage to his skull, something which could indicate that he was a murder victim, or had been killed in battle (a group of chalcolithic tribesmen, having lost a battle, might conceivably feel the need to leave the area, leading to a burial being carried out in a hurry).

There is also another possibility. While Human remains have never been found associated with a Corded Ware Culture kiln pit in the past, the remains of Horses and Dogs have been found in these settings. The assumption in those cases was that the Animals had been ritually sacrificed before being buried, raising the question as to whether the man buried in the Gerstewitz kiln pit had met the same fate.

An archaeologist examines the Gerstewitz kiln pit burial. Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

The Corded Ware Culture gains its name from the distinctive pottery which it produced, in which rope cords were used to mark the surface of pots. The Culture first appeared in Eastern Europe around 3000 BC, and may have migrated there from the Eurasian Steppes. Genetic studies of Corded Ware individuals have concluded that they were closely related to, if not directly descended from the Yamnaya people of that area. The Corded Ware people are thought to have been one of the first Indo-European groups to move into Europe, and at there peak they occupied much of north, central, and eastern Europe, as well as parts of Scandinavia and northern Italy, as well as parts of the Caucasus and Iran.

Corded Ware pottery in the collection of the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte in Berlin. Einsamer Schütze/Wikimedia Commons.

Like the Yamnaya people, the Corded Ware people kept both horses and cattle, consumed dairy products, and used wheeled vehicles, the first people in Europe to have done so. However, they were in many was culturally contiguous with the peoples who had lived in the area before, suggesting that they spread by intermixing with the local population as they introduced new technologies, rather than by conquest and driving the former occupants off the land. The Corded Ware people were never really a single culture, but a series of linked cultures spread across a wide area. Over time these linked cultures evolved in different directions, and by about 2300 BC, had become distinctive enough that they are no longer referred to as Corded Ware Culture by archaeologists.

See also...

The Northern Solstice.

2026-06-18T20:52:59.751+01:00

The Northern Solstice will fall on Sunday 21 June this year (2026), the day on which the Sun rises highest in the sky and the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere (where it is the Summer Solstice) and the day on which the Sun rises lowest in the sky and the shortest day in the Southern Hemisphere (where it is the Winter Solstice). Up until this date the days have been growing shorter in the Northern Hemisphere and longer in the Southern Hemisphere since the Southern Solstice in December last year (which is the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and Winter Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere), but after it the situation will be reversed, with days growing steadily longer in the Northern Hemisphere and shorter in the Southern Hemisphere until the next Southern Solstice in December.

The solstices are entirely a product of variation in the Earth's rotation on its axis, which is at an angle of 23.5° to the plain of the Earth's orbit about the Sun. This means that in December the Earth's Southern Pole is tilted towards the Sun, while the Northern Pole is tilted away from it. This means that around the Southern Solstice the Southern Hemisphere is receiving radiation from the Sun over a longer part of the than the Northern, and at a steeper angle (so that it to pass through less atmosphere to reach the planet), creating the southern summer and northern winter.

The tilt of the Earth at the Northern Solstice. Wikimedia Commons.

The solstices are fairly noticeable astronomical events, and tied to the seasons which govern the life cycles of life on Earth, and they have been celebrated under different names by cultures across the globe, but most notably by those at higher latitudes, who are more profoundly affected by the changes of the seasons.

See also...

An alternative hypothesis on the origin of Hominins and African Apes.

2026-06-18T11:27:33.350+01:00

The ancestors of Humans are commonly thought to have evolved on the savannas of Africa, a theory which was originally proposed by Charles Darwin. This original proposition was based upon the fact that our closest ancestors, the African Apes, lived in the forests of Africa, and that our upright walking behaviour seemed like an adaption to open grasslands, rather than any fossil evidence available at the time. This is a plausible hypothesis, and much subsequent palaeoarchaeological evidence uncovered in Africa has appeared to support it. However, a number of recent discoveries have been hard to reconcile with this scenario, leading to the emergence of alternative ideas on Human origins.

There are a number of things about Human anatomy which appear to be inconsistent with an origin on the African Savannas. We have a furless body, a layer of subcutaneous white fat, feet much flatter than other primates, run slowly, and sweat heavily when hot or exercising, leading to the loss of fluids and minerals (our water consumption needs are high compared to other Primates even when not doing this).

For a long time it was hypothesised that knuckle-walking African forest Apes migrated onto the open grasslands, where they evolved into upright Australophithecenes, and subsequently into Humans. Over time, this theory has been modified as we have come to understand more about the environments favoured by Australopithecenes, they are now seen as inhabitants of mosaic woodlands who moved from a partially bipedal lifestyle to an obligate bipedal one to facilitate crossing more open areas, although why this should be the case remains unclear.

Another puzzle is the apparent absence of fossils ascribed to either the genera Pan (Chimpanzees) or Gorilla, despite the long lineage of fossil Human-ancestors dating back into the Pliocene. The genera Australopithecus, Paranthropus, Sahelanthropus, Orrorin, and Ardipithecus, have all been classified as Hominins, more closely related to modern Humans than either Pan or Gorilla. This is in contradiction to what would be expected, as genetic studies suggest modern Chimpanzee and Gorilla populations have diverged from large ancestral populations, while Humans apparently descend from a lineage with consistently small population sizes and repeated genetic bottlenecks. It has been suggested that this has come about because the ancestors of Chimpanzees and Gorillas lived in acidic forests, where there is lower potential for remains to become fossilised. However, this environment is more favoured by Orangutans, which do have a fossil record, than it is by Chimpanzees, which do not.

'Mrs Ples' a 2.1 million-year-old skull assigned to the species Australopithecus africanus in the collection of the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History. José Braga/Didier Descouens/Wikimedia Commons.

In a review article published in the journal Academia Biology on 10 June 2026, Marc Verhaegen of the Anthropology Study Center in Putte, Belgium, Stephen Munro of the National Museum of Australia, Kathelijne Bonne of GondwanaTalks in Madrid, Spain, Frances Mansfield, an independent researcher from Volos in Greece, and Mario Vaneechoutte of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Ghent University, present a new hypothesis on the origins of both Humans and African Apes, in which they argue that the Australopithecenes were not, in fact the ancestors of Humans but rather of modern Gorillas and Chimpanzees.

Verhaegen et al. not that genomic studies have found that the ancestors of modern Gorillas and Chimpanzees were infected with the Endoretroviruses PtERV1 (CERV1) and PtERV2 (CERV2) between 3 and 4 million years ago (Endoretroviruses are fragments of ancient viral DNA which have been inserted into the hosts genome), but Humans and Asian Apes show no signs of any such infections in their past. Since Humans are not immune to the effects of these Viruses, the most likely explanation is that our ancestors were geographically isolated from the epidemic. It has been suggested that Human ancestors may have moved out of Africa during much of the Miocene Epoch, when the Viruses were circulating, but Verhaegen et al. suggest that a more likely scenario is that they did not arrive in Africa at all until the Early Pleistocene. Few, if any, Animals are thought to have migrated from Africa to Europe during the Pliocene, while a range of European Animals migrated into Africa, driven by the hyper-arid climate that emerged in southern Europe at this time.

Furthermore, Verhaegen et al. consider that the Australopithecines found in Africa during the Pliocene were not closely related to modern Humans, but rather that their smaller brains, short legs, and long arms indicate that they were related, or even ancestral, to modern African Apes. The evolution of Australopithecenes has often been seen as confusing, as earlier species often have more Human-like traits, seen as 'advanced', while later forms are often more Ape-like, or 'primitive', leading to speculation about undiscovered ghost lineages connecting earlier species to Humans.

This distinction vanishes if Australopithecines are considered to be the ancestors of African Apes. For example, the Miocene Ardipithecus ramidus, which lived about 4.4 million years ago, had small canine teeth, similar to those seen in modern Humans, whereas the Pliocene Australopithecus africanus had much larger canines, comparable to a modern Ape. Other examples are the Miocene Orrorin tugenensis, which lived about 6 million years ago, had femurs more closely resembling those of Humans that any Pliocene Australopithecene, and the Early Pliocene Australopithecus anamensis, which lived about 4.2 million years ago, had a modified talar trochlea which would have enabled it to swing its leg forward during upright locomotion, something which is absent in subsequent members of the genus. Furthermore, later Austalopithecenes such as the Early Pleistocene Australopithecus sediba, which lived about 1.8 million years ago, appear better adapted to an arboreal lifestyle than earlier members of the group.

A cast of a skull of Ardipithecus ramidus from the Miocene of Ethiopia, in the collection of the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Chris Woodrich/Wikimedia Commons.

Other than an early adaptation to bipedalism, Verhaegen et al. see Australopithecenes as consistently more Ape-like than they are Human-like, in particular noting that Australopithecus afarensis appears more Gorilla-like and Australopithecus africanus appears more Chimpanzee-like.

Verhaegen et al. do not see Homo habilis, the smallest and earliest member of the genus Homo, which appeared in the Early Pleistocene, about 2.58 million years ago, to be a true member of the genus Homo, noting that the species shares a small brain, short leg, and long arm morphology with Australopithecenes and Apes, and in particular that the morphology of the enamel–dentine junction in this species is also more Australopithecene-like. The later, but equally small, Homo naledi is also considered to be an Australopithecene.

In Verhaegen et al.'s view, the last common ancestor of all Australopithecenes, living Apes, and Humans, would have been an upright Miocene Ape, capable of bipedal locomotion, climbing trees, and wading in shallow water. They describe a scenario in which these Apes led a lifestyle they describe as 'aquaborealism', living in forests which were at least seasonally flooded, with a lifestyle which involved wading in waters on the forest floor, climbing trees in a vertical position, and swinging beneath branches (branchiating). From this ancestral state the Hyobatids (Gibbons and Siamangs) evolved into small, fast branchiating Apes living in the tree canopy, Orangutans into larger, slower, branchiating forms, Gorillas and Chimpanzees (separately) into knuckle-walking forms, and Humans into bipedal walkers.

They give two potential scenarios from which modern African Apes could descend from Australopithecenes; either Chimpanzees descended directly from earlier, more gracile Australopithecenes, such as Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus africanus, while Gorillas arose from later, more robust forms such as Paranthropus boisei and Paranthropus robustus, or they went through separate but parallel evolutionary paths, running something like Australopithecus africanus-Paranthropus robustus-Chimpanzees and Australopithecus afarensis-Paranthropus boisei-Gorillas, in response to similar environmental changes.

A skull reconstruction assigned to Paranthropus robustus in the collection of the National Natural History Museum of China. Erlend Bjørtvedt/Wikimedia Commons.

Verhaegen et al. believe that the view of the common ancestor of Apes and Humans as being Ape-like, and Apes therefore as the 'primitive' state, has distorted our view of Hominid evolution for over a century. They argue that while Australopithecenes do have some Human-like traits, these are indicators that Australopithecenes are ancestral to Humans, but rather that they share some traits derived from a mutual common ancestor that frequently adopted an upright bipedal posture as an adaptation to life in flooded forests.

The analysis presented by Verhaegen et al. suggests two distinct phases of Human evolution associated with wet environments; an initial aquaboreal phase in flooded Miocene forests, followed by a littoral (beach dwelling) phase, which may have involved frequent shallow diving to access food, which probably continued into the Early Pleistocene.

Apes differ from Old World Monkeys in a number of ways, the most obvious of which is their much larger size. This appears likely to have been a trait found in the last common ancestor of all Apes; even the relatively small Hylobatids are thought to have evolved from a larger ancestor, due to their long gestation period, which is unusual in such a small Primate, and is thought to be a hangover from a larger ancestor. Another notable trait is the absence of a tail in Apes. This has become much reduced, and forms a part of the 'pelvic cup'; a modification of the pelvis which helps to support the intestines when in an upright position. There is no comparable tail loss in any other Primate to which this can be compared, but the idea that this was an adaptation to an upright posture while engaged in vertical climbing and branchiating seems reasonable. Furthermore, if these ancestral Apes were spending a lot of time in wading in water, then a tail might have been disadvantageous, prone to heat loss, adding to the friction of the Apes when moving through the water, and prone to infections or attacks by predators.

Verhaegen et al. note that quadruped Animals returning to the water tend to evolve in one of two ways. Those that use spinal flexation as the main means of propulsion and the tail as the driving organ, such as Whales and Sirenians, tend to lose their hind limbs, whereas those that use their limbs for propulsion, such as Seals, Bears, Penguins, and Hippos, tend to lose their tails. An exception can be seen in Animals such as Otters and Beavers, which use their tails for propulsion but make extensive use of their limbs for foraging and movement on land. Apes, which use their limbs to swim when they enter the water, have lost their tails.

The lumbar spine of Apes is stiffer and further from their dorsal surface than is the case in most Mammals, and their forelimbs (arms) are notably long, adaptations which seems favourable to climbing in an upright position and hanging below branches. They also have wide hips compared to other Primates, and a flatter pelvis, facilitating lateral leg movements, as well as a broader sternum and thorax, which pushes their scapulas into a more dorsal position, facilitating lateral and upward arm movements.

Fossils of Miocene Apes are often found in what have been interpreted as warm, wet, forest environments, which has led to the suggestion that they may have been aquaborreal in nature, spending their time wading through flooded forests or climbing in the branches above with their arms. Such behaviour is known in extant Apes, for example Gorillas have been observed entering forest swamps to forage for Sedges, Bonobos will wade through water to obtain Waterlilies, and Orangutans have been observed wading in shallow water in Borneo.

Bipedal Gorilla, wading. Female Gorilla with a walking stick, while crossing bipedally an Elephant pool at Mbeli Bai, Republic of Congo. Thomas Breuer & Emma Stokes in Verhaegen et al. (2011).

Verhaegen et al. propose that all modern Apes derived from this initial aquaboreal Miocene Ape, with Gibbons adopting a fast branchiating motion, Orangutans a slower branchiating movement combined with knuckle walking, Gorillas and Chimpanzees separately developing a knuckle walking gait, and the ancestors of Humans going through a distinct litoral (coast dwelling) phase.

A number of lines of evidence have pointed towards Early Pleistocene members of the genus Homo may have engaged in regular wading, swimming, and even diving. Homo erectus has been observed to have a pachyosteoscletotic skeleton (i.e. unusually dense bones), something associated with slow-moving, shallow-diving Tetrapods such as Sireneans, as well as the earliest Whales and Seals. The dense skeleton can help such Animals maintain their position in the water, particularly in saltwater environments (where the body is more buoyant). The occipital bones of Homo erectus are roughly twice as thick as those of comparably sized Apes, making the interpretation of the species as a swift bipedal predator chasing down prey hard to sustain.

Furthermore, the low positioning of the braincase, receding forehead, absence of a chin, and forward projecting face of Homo eructus appear to be an adaptation to frequent shallow water diving, and possibly floating on their backs. The forward pointing face and paranasal sinuses of Homo eructus may indicate a habit of surfacing nose first, with the nostrils above water and the heavy occipital area at the back of the head beneath the water, something which would have worked well in a back-floating position. The basicranial flexation of modern Humans holds our face in a ventral, forward facing position. In contrast, Homo erectus would have tended to look upwards, in what would be a forward position when swimming or diving (Neanderthals are somewhere between these positions). This has been suggested to be an adaptation to foraging in coastal waters, where the easy availability of coastal food sources would compensate for the lack of stability associated with a bipedal gait on land.

Several skulls of Homo erectus have been shown to have bony growths in the inner ear called aural exotoses (or surfer's ear) which is caused by chronic exposure to cold water. This has also been observed in about half of all Neanderthals. Verhaegen et al. observe that this directly contradicts the frequent claim that there is no direct palaeontological support for the coastal Ape hypothesis.

At the same time, Human-ancestors underwent both an increase in both overall body size, and relative brain size. This is a common adaptation to moving from a terrestrial to an aquatic lifestyle, seen for example in Whales and Dolphins, but is not typical when non-aquatic Mammals increase in size; for example, the largest Apes, Gorillas, do not have relatively large brains. Homo erectus underwent a significant increase in brain size, with later specimens had a brain twice as large as that of an equivalent-sized Ape. This may have benefited from the higher proportion of nutrients such as docosahexaenoic acid, folic acid, selenium, taurine, and iodine, in aquatic-derived foods, all of which are needed for brain-growth. Such disproportionate brain growth is not seen in terrestrial carnivores, and therefore seems unlikely in a Hominin chasing prey in open grassland. Notably, Australopithicenes never showed any notable increase in brain size over their two-million-year history. Verhaegen et al. take this as evidence that early Homo did not evolve from such ancestors on the African grasslands, since there seems no good reason that our brains should have started to grow rapidly while remaining in the same environment.

There is also considerable evidence that Homo erectus did consume aquatic foods. Fossils of Homo erectus from Mojokerto on Java were found in association with numerous marine Bivalve shells, while those at Trinil on the same island, were found with the shells of freshwater Bivalves, such as Pseudodon and Elongaria, including specimens engraved with geometric patterns. Furthermore, palaeoarchaeological remains from the Koobi Fora Formation in the Turkana Basin of northern Kenya have yielded stone tools from a Oldowan technology alongside the remains of aquatic Animals including Fish, Turtles, and even Crocodiles. Early Homo specimens from a variety of locations have dental wear associated with grit and the oral processing of marine Molluscs. Archaic members of the genus Homo are known to have reached Sulawesi by one million years ago, despite this island never being connected to the Eurasian mainland, suggesting an early ability to cross open water.

A Pseudodon shell with geometric engravings from the Trinil archaeological site in East Java, dated to about 500 000 years ago. The shell was excavated by Dutch palaeoarchaeologist Eugène Dubois in the 1880s and taken to the Netherlands. It was returned to Indonesia by the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in 2025. Naturalis Biodiversity Center/Wikimedia Commons.

The genus Homo first appeared around the beginning of the Pleistocene, with the first evidence of the consumption of aquatic foodstuffs appearing about two million years ago, across the tropical and temperate regions of the Old World. This has led to the suggestion that Homo was able to spread across this area rapidly by following coasts and rivers, wading and diving for food. There is also increasing evidence for the consumption of aquatic foods by Neanderthals across their range, as well as Modern Humans across the world, and from their earliest appearance.

Humans differentiate from the standard morphology and physiology of Primates, and indeed terrestrial Mammals in general, in several ways. We have fleshy outward lips, a small oral opening, a closed tooth row, a more globular tongue, a descended larynx, and an external nose that still today some individuals can partially close, using nasal muscles. We also have a distinct 'Cupid's bow' to our upper lips (technically the philtrum) to our upper lips, another feature which some modern individuals can use to close their nasal airway. All of these are adaptations which enable us to regulate breathing and seal our airways better, and which may have been more pronounced in Homo erectus.

Feeding on shellfish would also have required adaptations which required improved abilities to control the sucking and swallowing of food, particularly if this was done in the water. Adaptations which improved fine control over the lips, jaw, tongue, glottis, and larynx, would also have acted as pre-adaptations for the later evolution of speech. Hunting for foodstuffs underwater, particularly if we were doing this blind (by touch alone) is also likely to have improved both our manual dexterity and the sense of touch in our fingers, something also seen in Raccoons and Otters.

In Humans, the connective tissues, tendons, ligaments, and muscles of the human foot are aligned with the hallux to form a longitudinal arch. This is unlike the foot of any other Primate, and is a good adaption to walking, and acts as a shock-absorber when running. However, it is also a particularly good adaptation to swimming, particularly as our feet are relatively larger and more paddle-shaped, and makes us particularly sure-footed on wet or infirm terrain, where other Mammals often struggle. Humans are able to swim using axial undulation, a coordinated wave of motion from trunk to hips to legs, something other Primates are unable to do. Our feet can be seen as a trade-off between something useful for swimming and something useful on land. Notably, we are less efficient runners than most other Mammals, which directly contradicts the idea that we evolved to chase large prey across grasslands.

Notably, Humans have a layer of white fat beneath our skins (the adipose layer) considerably thicker than found in any other Primate, as well as an overall fat content which is also distinctively high. In a healthy male Human, between 12% and 23% of the body mass is fat, while in a female it is between 25% and 35%. In Chimpanzees and Bonobos body fat typically makes up less than 5% of the body mass of males, and less than 8% of the bodymass of females. Thus even the leanest of Humans have a significantly higher proportion of fat than healthy Chimpanzees. This suggests that Humans have undergone a significant ecological shift after our ancestors split from those of Chimpanzees, and one which decoupled the fat content of our bodies from the its use as an energy store. Such a change is again typical of aquatic and semi-aquatic Mammals, where fat has an important role both as an insulator and as a buoyancy aid. Such a layer provides no particular role during activities such as sustained running, and may be disadvantageous, as it can hamper the dissipation of heat.

Verhaegen et al. believe that plate tectonics played an important role in the evolution of Hominoids, Hominids, and Hominins, and in particular the formation of the Red Sea and the African Rift. Until about 30 million years ago (Early Oligocene), Africa and Arabia were a single island continent, separated from Eurasia by the Tethys Ocean. Over time, this continent drifted northward, the Tethys Ocean narrowed, and a series of islands and archipelagos formed between the two continents.

Between about 30 million years ago and about 20 million years ago (during the Oligocene and Early Miocene), an episode of plume volcanism beneath the Afar Triangle led to uplift, basalt volcanism, and the formation of a triple junction rift system. The three branches of this rift would go on to form the Gulf of Aden to the east, the Red Sea to the northwest, and the Ethiopian Rift to the south. At this time Eurasia and Africa-Arabia were still separated, although the Mesopotamian Seaway, which separated Arabia from what would become Mesopotamia and Persia, was becoming increasingly narrow.

Between about 20 million years ago and about 14 million years ago (Early-Middle Miocene) the Mesopotamian Seaway slowly closed, leading to the formation of a connection called the Gomphotherium Landbridge (Gomphotherium being a type of early Elephant that migrated out of Africa across this landbridge), leading to faunal exchange between Africa-Arabia to the south and Eurasia to the north. forming the first wave of the 'Great Old World Biotic Interchange', while the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean became isolated from one-another. This also led to uplift and mountain formation along the Bitlis-Zagros Suture Zone, and the development of the Dead Sea Transform and Aqaba faults in response to the added tectonic stress. At this time the Red Sea had opened, and was connected to the Mediterranean by by the Gulf of Suez, but a land bridge at Bab-al-Mandeb, connecting Arabia to Africa, separated it from the Gulf of Aden.

Between about 14 million years ago and about six million years ago (Late Miocene), movement on the Dead Sea Transform Fault, combined with the mass of sediments around the Nile Delta, closed off the connection between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean at the Gulf of Suez. Following this, the Red Sea underwent a desiccation crisis, drying up and leaving vast salt deposits, albeit with occasional marine incursions.

Between about 5.9 and 5.33 million years ago (latest Miocene), the Gulf of Gibraltar also closed, cutting off the inflow of water from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, and triggering the Messinian Salinity Crisis, in which the Mediterranean largely dried up, leaving a vast and inhospitable salt plain.

After about 5.33 million years ago (Pliocene), the straits of Bab-al-Mandeb opened up allowing the Red Sea to flood from the Gulf of Aden, and the Strait of Gibraltar reopened, allowing the Mediterranean to refill from the Atlantic (the Zanclean Megaflood). Around this time the Gulf of Suez reconnected to the Mediterranean, cutting off Africa from the Red Sea until the beginning of the Pleistocene, when a land bridge formed across the Sinai again.

Simplified tectonic and palaeogeographic evolution of the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian Peninsula, with key marine connections between Africa, Arabia, and Eurasia (details of European and Paratethys geographies not given). (1) Before 30 million years ago (until the Rupelian, Oligocene); (2) 30–20 million years ago (Rupelian–Burdigalian); (3) 20–14 million years ago (Burdigalian–Langhian); (4) 14–6 million years ago; (5) From about 5.9 to 5.33 million years ago: the Strait of Gibraltar closed due to plate tectonics; (6) From 5.33 million years ago onwards. Red circle in (2): Afar plume basalt eruptions; brown line in (3): uplifting mountain front at the Bitlis-Zagros Suture Zone; red line in (3) and (4): active Dead Sea Transform Fault; pale orange in (4) and (5): desiccated marine domains; blue arrows in (6): marine gateways and direction of filling of basins. Verhaegen et al. (2026).

Verhaegen et al. suggest two alternative scenarios for the emergence of the first Apes. One scenario sees a group of Early Miocene Primates living in coastal forests and islands along the Mesopotamian Seaway, which gave rise to both the Apes and the Old World Monkeys. The other sees these ancestors living in coastal forests in East Africa, which migrated northward along the Red Sea Rift as it opened, migrating into the Arabian Peninsula and then eventually into Eurasia. This latter scenario is supported by the presence of the possible Ape Morotopithecus in Uganda about 20.6 million years ago, although the exact status of this fossil is unclear.

In either scenario, Early Apes increased in size rapidly after splitting from the Old World Monkeys, at the same time developing a very broad and strong sternum in a broad thorax, a somewhat shorter lumbar spine with only five lower and more centrally placed lumbar vertebrae (indicative of a vertical body posture), an enlarged sacrum equipped with a coccyx in a broad pelvis (cup form, supporting the intestines), external tail loss, relatively longer legs (indicative of wading), and longer arms (indicative of below-branch hanging). These early Apes are thought to have lived in (probably coastal) swamp forests, hanging beneath branches, practising aquarbourism, and developing to an upright bipedal stance.

These early Apes probably spread along the northern coast of the Tethys Ocean, with different groups splitting off and going their own way, beginning with the Gibbons. Between 22.4 and 16 million years ago the ancestors of the Orangutans had split from those of the African Apes, moving eastward towards the coastal forests of Southeast Asia, while the proto-African Apes colonised forests along the Western Tethys (what would become the Mediterranean).

There is a surprising absence of Ape or Hominid fossils from the Middle Miocene of Africa (between about 13 and 10 million years ago). At the same time, Eurasia has an abundance of both, particularly in southern Europe and Anatolia, with many forms looking like plausible ancestors for African Apes. Verhaegen et al. cite this as support for the idea that the ancestors of modern Humans and African Apes were not in Africa during this time, but instead in southwestern Eurasia. At this time much of southern Europe was covered by inland seas, mega-lakes, swamps, and coastal forests, and home to Dryopithecine Apes such as Dryopithecus, Pierolapithecus, Danuvius, and Rudapithecus, which are potentially ancestral to modern Gorillas, Chimpanzees, and Humans.

A partial skull of Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, a Dryopithecine Ape from the Middle Miocene of Spain. Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont.

During the Vallesian Crisis (between about 11.6 and 8.7 million years ago) the climate of southern Europe became much drier and the extensive forests shrank, being replaced by open grasslands. Many of the Apes there died out, while surviving forms, such as Ouranopithecus and Graecopithecus adapted to the new environment by becoming more bipedal, and foraging in mixed woodlands and river valleys. These Apes could potentially be ancestral to later Australopithecenes and African Ape (one Turkish Ape from this period, Anadoluvius turkae, has been suggested as an offshoot from the line which led to Gorillas).

The scenario envisaged by Verhaegen et al. has a group of Dryopithecine Apes taking advantage of the closure of the Mesopotamian Sea, and migrating to the swamp forests surrounding the early Red Sea. The ancestors of Orangutans must have split from these western Apes before 14 million years ago, when the Badenian Transgression would have blocked migration between Europe and East Asia. The lineage which led to Gorillas probably split off next, migrating from Europe, where taxa such as Ouranopithecus remained, while closer ancestors such as Anadoluvius turkae migrated through Anatolia, and on to Africa, where they gave rise to Gorilla-like African Apes such as Chororapithecus and Sahelanthropus, then eventually the East African Australopithecenes and modern Gorillas.

At the same time, Graecopithecus and similar species around the Mediterranean could provide plausible ancestors for Chimpanzees and Humans, explaining the Hominid-like footprints seen at Trachilos on Crete about six millions of years ago (long before the earliest such footprints in Africa). The lineage which led to Humans and Chimpanzees must also have migrated southward, at latest during the onset of the Messinian Salinity Crisis about 5.9 million years ago, which would have made the Mediterranean Basin uninhabitable. The route from Europe into Africa across the Sinai Peninsula would have been cut off during the Zanclean Megaflood (5.33 million years ago), which filled the Mediterranean and over-spilled into the Red Sea, filling that too. The final connection between Arabia and Africa was lost about 5 million years ago, when the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait opened, connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.

Verhaegen et al. suggest that some of these Apes crossed into Africa before 5 million years ago, giving rise to the Southern African Australopithecines and eventually modern Chimpanzees. Another group remained on the southern shore of Arabia, where they were forced to turn increasingly to the littoral environment for survival, as the land became increasingly arid and hostile.

Around 2.8 million years ago the Earth's climate cooled sharply, leading sealevels to drop abruptly. At this time early Homo migrated from Arabia into Africa and Eurasia, leading to the sudden appearance of Homo erectus across the Old World.

A reconstruction of the skull of Homo erectus in the collection of the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History. Thomas Roche/Wikimedia Commons.

Under this scenario, the genus Homo is absent from Africa until the Early Pleistocene appearance of Homo erectus/Homo eregastor, with the Pliocene Australopithecines not being ancestral to Modern Humans, but instead relatives of Chimpanzees and Gorillas. This view is broadly in-line with several recent cladistic analyses of Human origins, which suggest African Apes and Humans are derived from Eurasian Apes, and that there were multiple crossings from Eurasia into Africa.

Verhaegen et al. take the view that East and Southern African Australopitecines largely evolved in parallel, in response to similar ecological pressures. Thus the gracile forms, Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus africanus, appeared in the Pliocene, when they were able to live in forest, and in particular swamp forest, environments, whereas the more robust Early Pleistocene forms, Paranthropus boisei and Paranthropus robustus, evolved in response to cooler, drier conditions, although generally sticking close to large bodies of water, such as Papyrus swamps. Eventually the modern African Apes adopted to a life on dry forest floors.

It is possible that the Southern African Australopithecines were more omnivorous, whereas the East African forms adapted to the processing of tougher plant materials, something which is reflected in the diets of modern Chimpanzees and Gorillas.

This later arrival of Human-ancestors into Africa provides an explanation for the absence of any trace of the Endoretroviruses PtERV1 (CERV1) and PtERV2 (CERV2) in our genomes, while the ancestors of Gorillas and Chimpanzees were affected. The potential littoral phase also explains the many morphological adaptations which set Humans apart from other Apes, as well as behavioural traits such as a fondness for water and sea coasts.

Verhaegen et al. believe that the earliest members of the genus Homo were shelfish divers, something which would have provided them with the resources for accelerated brain growth, as well as adaptions such as an external nose and pachyosteosclerotic skeleton. As supporting evidence for this, they cite the frequent occurrence of ear exostoses (surfer's ear) in early Homo, as well as tooth wear associated with a shellfish diet, the early arrival of Homo on remote islands such as Flores and Sulawesi, and the co-occurrence of their fossils and tools with shells, and even engraved shells.

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Bison which killed woman in South Dakota to be relocated.

2026-06-15T21:12:08.519+01:00

A Bison which killed a 70-year-old Canadian woman in Custer State Park, South Dakota, is to be relocated to another area. The incident happened on 18 May, when the woman and her husband encountered a group of five Bison bulls on the Grace Coolidge Trail, which runs through the park. At this time the bulls were about 500 m ahead of the couple, who allowed them to move off before following. A little while later the couple encountered the Bison again, though this time they were only about 15 m away. The couple waited for them to move before starting to follow, but this time moved while the Animals were still in site, causing one of the bulls to turn and charge.

Bison in Custer State Park, South Dakota. Wikimedia Commons.

The initial charge resulted in the woman being thrown about two metres in the air, sustaining serious injuries to the leg and abdomen. The Bison then stood over the injured woman for about 15 minutes while her husband hid behind a tree and called the local sheriff's office. During this time the woman remained conscious, and was able to talk to her husband. The bull eventually wandered off, after which the husband approached the woman, but this caused the Animal to turn and charge again, this time throwing her about three meters into the air and causing fatal injuries. After this the Bison walked off, and the husband attempted to perform CPR, being joined shortly after by first aid-trained park staff, but it was impossible to save her. The death was the first Bison-related fatality in the park for 21 years.

Following the incident, rumours began to circulate that the park authorities planned to euthanize the Bison, leading to a public outcry, and many people contacting the South Dakota Governor’s Office, the South Dakota Game, Fish, and Parks and Custer State Park, asking for the Animal to be spared. On Wednesday 10 June the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Game, Fish and Parks announced that they were willing to rehome the bull and take care of its welfare.

Bison are large animals, the American Bison can reach 1.8 m in length and weigh around 900 kg, and have notoriously unpredictable tempers, often appearing placid and indifferent to their surroundings, and then charging without warning. They can reach speeds of 35 km per hour, and both sexes have horns, which can make unexpected charging highly dangerous.

North America is thought to have been home to about 50 million Bison at the beginning of the nineteenth century, a number that fell to less than a thousand individuals by the middle of the twentieth century due to over-hunting, not just for the purpose of food, but as part of a conscious effort to change the landscape from one amenable to traditional, Native American, lifestyles to a landscape suitable to European-style farming. However since the mid-twentieth century conservation efforts and breeding programs have reversed this decline, with the population now about 530 000 across the continent, including around 40 000 in South Dakota.

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Comet C/2023 R1 (PANSTARRS) makes its closest approach to Earth.

2026-06-13T14:04:09.268+01:00

Comet C/2023 R1 (PANSTARRS) will make its closest approach to the Earth today (Saturday 13 June 2026), when it will reach a distance of 2.63 AU (i.e 2.63 times the average distance between the Earth and the Sun), or 392 873 130 km from us. At this time it will be in the constellation of Ophiuchus, and have an apparent optical magnitude of 12, meaning it will be hard to spot without a fairly good telescope to observe it. Nevertheless, this closest approach falls the day before the New Moon on 14 June, so observers with appropriate equipment may be able to see it in the late evening (the comet will set before midnight).

The approximate positions and orbits of the C/2023 R1 (PANSTARRS), the Earth, and the planets of the Inner Solar System on 13 June 2026. Gideon van Buitenen.

Comet C/2023 R1 (PANSTARRS) was discovered on 7 September 2023 by the PANSTARRS sky survey, located at Haleakala Observatory, Hawaii. The name C/2023 R1 (PANSTARRS) implies that it is a Comet (C/), that it was the 1st comet (1) discovered in the first half of September 2021 (period 2023 R), and that it was discovered by the PANSTARRS sky survey.

Image of C/2023 R1 (PANSTARRS) taken on 25 July 2025. The comet is the point between the yellow cross hairs, the elongate objects are stars, with the elongation being caused by the tracking of the comet over the length of the exposure. Toshihiko Ikemura/Hirohisa Sato/Seiichi Yoshida.

Comet C/2023 R1 (PANSTARRS) is a Parabolic Comet, which is to say a comet that was disrupted from an orbit in the Oort Cloud, and is passing through the Inner Solar System on a parabolic orbit that will probably not bring it back again. This parabolic trajectory is tilted at an angle of 149.3° to the plain of the Solar System.

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Thirty five confirmed deaths following Magnitude 7.8 Earthquake off the southern coast of Mindanao Island, Philippines.

2026-06-12T19:37:11.001+01:00

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology recorded a Magnitude 7.8 Earthquake at a depth of 33 km off the south coast of Mindanao Island, Philippines, slightly after 7.35 am on Monday 8 June 2026 local time (slightly after 11.35 pm on Sunday 7 June GMT).

The location of the 8 June 2026 Mindanao Earthquake. USGS.

Thirty five people have been confirmed dead following this event, with another 134 injured, and a large number of buildings damaged or destroyed, with about 10 000 families displaced as a result of this Earthquake. People reported feeling tremors as far away as Manilla and northern Borneo. Countries around the Pacific Rim issued tsunami warnings after the event, although the largest wave recorded was about 1.4 m. Mindanao has subsequently been hit by a number of large aftershocks.

A collapsed building in the city of General Santos on Mindanao Island, the Philippines. Department of Social Welfare and Development/Wikimedia Commons.

The geology of the central Philippines is Complex. The west of Mindanao Island is located on the Banda (or Sunda) Microplate, and the east on the Philippine Plate, which is being subducted beneath the Sunda (or Banda) Microplate along the central part of the island. Immediately to the east of the Island the Pacific Plate is being subducted along the Philippine Trench, and passes beneath eastern Mindanao as it sinks into the Earth. This is not a smooth process, an the plates constantly stick together then break apart again as the pressure builds up, resulting in Earthquakes.

Subduction beneath the Philippines. Yves Descatoire/Singapore Earth Observatory.

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Woman killed by Elephant in Kerala State, India.

2026-06-10T17:34:42.787+01:00

A woman has died after being trampled by an Elephant on Monday 8 June 2026 in the village of Sinkukandam near the town of Suryanelli in the Idukki District of Kerala State, India. The woman, identified as Mari, a 36-year-old widow, mother of two, and day-labourer, encountered a mother Elephant with a calf while escorting her 11-year-old son to catch a school bus, at about 8.30 am local time. Both were attacked by the Animal, and subsequently rushed to a local hospital by a passing auto-rickshaw driver. Here Mari was pronounced dead, while her son, Dakshan, was transferred to the Kottayam Government Medical College Hospital for further treatment.

The funeral of a woman killed by an Elephant in the Idukki District of Kerala State on 8 June 2026. The Hindu.

The village is close to the Chinnakanal Reserve, which is home to a population of 18 Elephants. About 50 people are thought to have been killed by Elephants in and around Chinnakanal since 1990, ten of them by a single male known as 'Arikomban' who was eventually relocated away from the area by the Kerala Forest Department in 2023. This has placed considerable strain on the local Human population, and their ability to live alongside the area's Elephants.

The major problem appears to be that the Chinnakanal Reserve covers an area of about 4 km², although only about half of this is utilised by the Elephants, who instead spill out into nearby farms and villages, often stealing food from Humans and coming into conflict with them. In an attempt to manage this conflict the Forest Department has set up a system alerts on social media and messaging platforms, which message people warning them that Elephants are in their area. However, local people have complained that they are not simply able to simply stop going about their daily business whenever Elephants wander into the area. On the day of the latest incident an alert had been put out, but visibility was very low due to rains and fog, apparently causing the victims to come close to the Elephants without realising the danger they were in until too late.

In 2022 Raju Francis of the Kerala Forest Development Corporation produced a report recommending the construction of a series of solar-powered electric fences to protect farmland and residential areas from Elephants emerging from the forest. Despite agreeing to this proposal, four years on the Forest Department has yet to install a single stretch of fencing, and is unable to confirm when this will begin, something which local people have described as grossly negligent, leaving their property and families vulnerable to Elephant attacks.

A group of Asian Elephants in Kerala State. Wikimedia Commons.

Asian Elephants, Elephas maximus, are classified as Endangered under the terms of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species, as the population has declined by more than 50% over the last three generations (about 75 years for Elephants). There are currently about 50 000 Asian Elephants (although Elephants are notoriously difficult to count, despite being such large Animals) scattered across Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam. However, this population is now highly fragmented, with most Elephants living in small groups, reproductively isolated from other groups, and often coming into conflict with local Human populations as the land allocated to Elephants shrinks.

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Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, inundated with pumice following eruption of Titan Ridge submarine volcano.

2026-06-09T19:25:06.203+01:00

A series of eruptions from the Titan Ridge submarine volcano, beneath the Bismarck Sea in the southwest Pacific Ocean, has produced a large volume of pumice (a light volcanic rock, produced by the rapid cooling of gas rich lava from submarine eruptions, which can float on the sea), much of which has washed up onto the shores of Manus Island, the largest of the Admiralty Islands and a province of Papua New Guinea. This has caused serious problems for the local population, as it has formed a barrier between them and the sea, too dense to push a boat through, but too quicksand-like to walk across. This in turn has prevented them from harvesting fish and other seafood, the main staples of the island, as well as forcing them to become entirely dependent on the islands limited supply of freshwater for washing and hygiene, rather than bathing in the sea. The large accumulations of pumice are also likely to have smothered local coral reef ecosystems, harming longer-term fishing prospects in the region.

Residents of Manus Island on a beach covered by pumice. ABC.

Pumice forms when hot lava from submarine volcanic eruptions encounters seawater and cools rapidly, simultaneously crystalising and degassing to form a lightweight volcanic rock with many gas filled vesicles (bubbles) within it, which often floats on the sea surface. Big submarine eruptions can produce large volumes of pumice, forming rafts of pumice that cover hundreds of square kilometres, and drift on the ocean surface for months before dissipating or washing ashore.

Titan Ridge, also known as the Central Bismarck Sea Volcano, is located about 125 km to the southeast of Manus, on the northern edge of the South Bismarck Plate. It is located on the boundary between the Willaumez Transform Fault and an unnamed section of area of seafloor spreading, where the South Bismarck and Pacific plates are being pulled apart, while at the same time the Pacific Plate is moving to the west and the South Bismarck Plate to the east. Here fresh material from the upper mantle is rising up through the fault and being erupted from the volcano as volcanic material, primarily pumice caused by the rapid cooling of a liquid melt containing dissolved gasses.

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The Daytime Arietid Meteor Shower.

2026-06-08T21:24:45.190+01:00

The Arietid Meteor Shower lasts from mid April till late June each year, and is expected to peak before dawn on Wednesday 10 June this year, and originating (appearing to come from) the constellation of Aries. Meteors from this shower can be very bright, leading to the label 'Daytime' Meteors (i.e. meteors that can be seen during the day), although the majority are quite dim, and can be hard to spot. At its peak, the shower can produce about 50 meteors per hour. This year that peak will coincide with a Waning Crescent Moon, which would not normally present a great deal of interference. However, the Moon is also in the constellation of Aries at this time, which may hamper viewing.

The origin point for the Aried Meteors seen from the Northern Hemisphere in early June. Spaceweather.

Meteor streams are thought to come from dust shed by comets as they come close to the Sun and their icy surfaces begin to evaporate away. Although the dust is separated from the comet, it continues to orbit the Sun on roughly the same orbital path, creating a visible meteor shower when the Earth crosses that path, and flecks of dust burn in the upper atmosphere, due to friction with the atmosphere.

The Earth passing through a stream of comet dust, resulting in a meteor shower. Not to scale. Astro Bob.

The origin of the Arietid Meteors is unclear. No body has been confidently identified as the source of the Arietid Meteors, though both the asteroid 1566 Icarus and the comet 96P/Machholz have been suggested.

How the passage of the Earth through a meteor shower creates a radiant point from which they can be observed. In The Sky.

Though the Arietid Meteors can be hard to see, it may be possible to 'hear' them using an FM radio. In order to do this it will be necessary to find a frequency between 88.0 and 108.0 MHz without any transmissions or significant static (this may not be possible in urban areas). Meteors passing though the atmosphere generate radio waves at these frequencies, which can be heard as 'bumps' or 'chirps'. More detailed observations can be used if the radio set-up has a directional antenna, allowing the observer to concentrate on a particular part of the sky (this is essentially how radio telescopes work).

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Magnitude 5.6 Earthquake in Bhutan.

2026-06-08T06:37:41.127+01:00

The United States Geological Survey recorded a Magnitude 5.6 Earthquake at a depth of 10.0 km, about 15 km to the northwest of the city of Punākha, in Punākha District, Bhutan, slightly after 11.35 pm local time (slightly after 5.35 pm GMT) on Sunday 7 June 2026. There are no reports of any damage or casualties arising from this quake, but people have reported feeling it as far away as Tibet, India, and Bangladesh.

The approximate location of the 7 June 2026 Bhutan Earthquake. USGS.

Earthquake activity in the area is caused by the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau, due to the impact of India into Eurasia to the south. he Indian Plate is moving northwards at a rate of 5 cm per year, causing it to impact into Eurasia, which is also moving northward, but only at a rate of 2 cm per year. The collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates has lead to the formation of the Himalayan Mountains, the Tibetan Plateau, and the mountains of southwest China, Central Asia and the Hindu Kush.

Block diagram showing how the impact of the Indian Plate into Eurasia is causing uplift on the Tibetan Plateau. Jayne Doucette/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Much of northern India and neighbouring areas of Central Asia and the Himalayas, are prone to Earthquakes caused by the impact of the Indian Plate into Eurasia from the south. When two tectonic plates collide in this way and one or both are oceanic then one will be subducted beneath the other (if one of the plates is continental then the other will be subducted), but if both plates are continental then subduction will not fully occur, but instead the plates will crumple, leading to folding and uplift (and quite a lot of Earthquakes).

The movement of India into Eurasia over the last 71 million years. USGS.

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