Beautiful new cat species is first to be named in a century

 

The tilcayo (Leopardus tilcayo) in an animal refuge in La Paz, Bolivia. Image courtesy of Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz

Joel Kontinen

Some evolutionist say that animal species die all the time.  Contrast to this a tiger cat recently found in Bolivia.    

The tiger cat is one of the creatures they describe as Lazarus animals.

Tiger cats, which are about the size of a house cat are found in Costa Rica in Central America, and across a vast swathe of South America including Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Historically, there have been many local and scientific names for them, but they all got subsumed into a single species, Leopardus tigrinus.

Eduardo Eizirik at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and his colleagues have analysed the complete genomes of 38 individuals from the Leopardus genus, including 26 tiger cats from across their known range.

L. tilcayo has a combined head and body length of between about 42 and 50 centimetres and weighs between 1.5 and 2 kilograms. The genomes revealed that it diverged from the lineage containing L. tigrinus and L. pardinoides nearly 1.4 million years ago.

Source:  

Chris Simms 2026 Beautiful new cat species is first to be named in a century | New Scientist 17 September 

Asteroid hit the moon and flung rocks 120 kilometres from the crater

 

The crater site, before and after impact  Image courtesy of NASA/Mark S. Robinson et al. 2026

Joel Kontinen 

An asteroid hit the moon. The area was  222 metres across.

A newly formed crater on the moon is teaching us about our nearest neighbour’s complex geology. The crater, formed by an asteroid impact in 2024, is the largest that we’ve ever watched form in real time.

It was first spotted last year, when researchers compared sets of images taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in both 2024 and 2025, and was named McGetchin crater. According to models of how often impacts occur on the moon, one this big – about 222 metres across – is only expected to occur about once every 132 years.

Thus gives us an opportunity to learn about the lunar surface and its geology. “Cratering is probably the most common process that happens in the solar system, so we spend a lot of time trying to understand how a new crater will modify a surface and watching that degrade over time,” says Tyler Powell at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.

Some evolutionist think that this  incident will help us to understand what happened on the moon tens or thousands of years ago.

 Source: 

Leah Crane 2026 Asteroid hit the moon and flung rocks 120 kilometres from the crater | New Scientist 16 September

Exquisite 66-million-year-old bird feather preserved in dinosaur dropping

 

Image courtesy of O'Connor et al.

Joel Kontinen

A bird that was eaten and partially excreted by a dinosaur 66 million years ago has left behind the best-preserved feathers ever recovered by scientists from dinosaur-age rock.

“This is the best feather we’ve ever seen in a Mesozoic [252 million to 66 million years ago] deposit,” says Jingmai O’Connor at the Field Museum in Chicago. “[It’s] like a feather you could pick up off the ground.”

Further analyses showed that the 9.3-millimetre-long primary feather had a water-repellent structure, similar to that of modern pelicans, says O’Connor. Both this and a second, smaller wing feather also had lightweight, spongy cores surrounded by a harder outer layer. This combination makes them both light and stiff, which is typical of modern feathers.

According to evolution, millions of years have gone by. So where is the evolution?

“These are the feathers that are responsible for keeping the body warm, right?” says O’Connor. “So maybe these primitive feathers were good enough to keep them warm during the greenhouse world of the Mesozoic, but not good enough to keep them warm during this environmental catastrophe that was triggered by this impact event.”

Source:

Christa Lesté-Lasserre 2026 Exquisite 66-million-year-old bird feather preserved in dinosaur dropping | New Scientist 10 September

Gamma ray burst may have been two supernovae in one

 

Image courtesy of Stocktrek Images, Inc./Alamy

Joel Kontinen

Some researchers are guesting whether a black hole and a pulser  were born at the same time, but others say that the conclusion is premature.

On New Year’s Day in 2022, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory detected a massive burst of gamma rays from a distant galaxy. After four years of analysis, a group of astronomers has proposed a dramatic story for the burst of light – known as GRB 220101A – in which a collapsing star triggered the formation of both a pulsar and a black hole.

The event began, according to a team led by Remo Ruffini, an astronomer at the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics Network in Italy, with the collapse of the core of a massive older star, which had earlier been transformed via nuclear reactions into a mix of carbon and oxygen.

Yes, space is wonderful. We never think what may happen next.

 Source:

Matt von Hippel 2026 Gamma ray burst may have been two supernovae in one | New Scientist 10 September

25 years of the Twin Towers catastrophe

 

Atheists do not like this cross-shaped object. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Joel Kontinen

I write this after the catastrophe of 2001:

"A group of American atheists are attempting to stop the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York from displaying a cross-shaped beam.

They see it as a religious symbol and as they are intolerant of all other ideologies except their own godless one, they are resorting to a lawsuit to get the offending beam from disturbing their peace of mind.

The beam was found by Frank Silecchia, who took part in clearing the rubble after 9/11, and it has been a symbol of hope.

However, atheists do not see the cross as a sign of hope. For them, it is foolishness – just like the apostle Paul wrote:

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.”

It’s an entirely different story for us:

“But to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18, NIV)."

Source:

Merica, Dan. 2012. Atheists continue battle against World Trade Center cross at memorial. CNN. (September 10th).

NASA’s next major telescope might see alien oceans and rainbows

 

Image courtesy of Aaron Alien/Shutterstock

Joel Kontinen

A NASA telescope in early development should be able to detect light bouncing off the surface of oceans on alien planets, vital information in the hunt for alien life.

The Habitable Worlds Observatory is currently earmarked for launch in the 2040s. It will sport an advanced coronagraph, a device that can block out much of the light emanating from other stars. This will allow us to take images of potentially habitable Earth-like wsorlds outside our solar system for the first time.

Some researchers think that in the 2040 we will see oceans and rainbows on habitable exoplanets.

Source: 

Jonathan O’Callaghans 2026 NASA’s next major telescope might see alien oceans and rainbows | New Scientist 9 September

Pygmy raccoons teach each other to make toys out of paper and sand

 

Image cour.tesy of Nessie O'Neil

Joel Kontinen

Young pygmy raccoons on a Mexican island have been seen teaching each other to make toy balls out of rubbish, in a rare example of animals crafting objects purely to play with.

“My first reaction was, oh my gosh, that’s absolutely adorable!” says Nessie O’Neil at Miami University in Ohio, who is researching the impact of tourism on the critically endangered pygmy raccoons (Procyon pygmaeus) of Cozumel Island.

O’Neil filmed as one of the younger raccoons fished paper out of a rubbish bin, dipped it in a bowl of water and rolled it in sand, making a ball.

Over days of observation, she recorded the animals as they made more balls and used them to play “football” with other raccoons and dwarf coatis (Nasua narica nelsoni), another raccoon-like animal. Siblings taught each other the ball-making procedure, and even tried to get their mother involved, though she couldn’t quite figure it out – her coordination seemed to have been impaired after drinking a margarita she found at a beach bar earlier that day.

“The observations show how complex animal play behaviour can be,” says Marek Špinka at the Institute of Animal Science in the Czech Republic. “It will be intriguing to see whether the behaviour will get a hold in the population as a new cultural trait or will disappear.”

Some animals like to show off their intelligence, like the tiny racoons in México. They did not want to eat them but to play with them.

Source:

Matt von Hippel 2026 Pygmy raccoons teach each other to make toys out of paper and sand | New Scientist 3 September