Fossil mammal with reptile-like teeth changes picture of our evolution

 

Image courtesy of Paul Bowden. This shows an animal known as Dongoconodon platycauda,

Joel Kontinen

A newly discovered, semi-aquatic mammal – which would have lived alongside the dinosaurs – had the streamlined appearance of a water rodent, feet almost identical to a platypus and teeth that grew like a reptile’s. It is an ancient mammal that replace  its teeth throughout its life.

The researchers who studied the near-complete, 120-million-year-old fossil, named Dongoconodon platycauda, say its disparate anatomy offers a window into early mammal evolution. That is what the evolutionists say.

Evolution and millions of years are not the way some animals evolve.  The believe in millions of years is not a scientific one.

D. platycauda was found in 2018 in Liaoning, China. Shundong Bi at Yunnan University, China, and his colleagues studied the fossil after the collector who found it took it to the Mongolia Museum of Natural History. When it was alive, the mammal would have weighed up to 190 grams and measured about 40 centimetres long

 Source:

James Woodford 2026 Fossil mammal with reptile-like teeth changes picture of our evolution | New Scientist 2 October 

Elephants imitate each other when they produce deep rumbling sounds

 

Image courtesy of ElephantVoices

Joel Kontinen

Elephants appear to harmonise their vocal rumbles when they join together to form choruses, tuning their voices to sound more alike as the chorus unfolds.

Elephants  talk with each other with deep rumbling sounds.

“It’s sort of like what humans do in conversation, where you almost start to adopt the speaking patterns or accents of whoever you’re interacting with,” says Sara Keen at Earth Species Project. 

Elephants communicate using a rich repertoire of body language, but also a wide range of sounds. These include their iconic trumpet call, and also throatier roars. The most common call is the rumble – so low-pitched it is often undetectable by humans – which can travel up to 10 kilometres, transmitting long-distance information that can potentially include the identity of the caller and what’s happening at the time.

Joyce Poole at Elephant Voices, a non-profit organisation based in Washington DC, that promotes the study and protection of elephants, says scientists have long been intrigued by the way elephants will rumble together in choruses. Studying those complex sounds, however, has proved extremely difficult because it is hard to pick out any given rumbling elephant in the chorus – what researchers call “the cocktail party problem”.

 Source:

Christa Lesté-Lasserre 2026 Elephants imitate each other when they produce deep rumbling sounds | New Scientist 1 October

Spectacular feathered dinosaur fossil shows bird-like adaptations

 

Image courtesy of Andrea Cau et al., Nature Communications (2026)

Joel Kontinen

The 57-centimetre-long fossil is between 100 million and 145 million years old, and was discovered by a farmer near the town of Lamadong in Liaoning, China.

Some Darwinist sat  that a bird like dinosaur was found in China,  it was was donated to a museum at Hebei GEO University in 2023, where Ji Qiang and his colleagues examined the exquisitely preserved specimen, complete with plumage, teeth, wings and articulated spine.

he researchers determined that the dinosaur was a new species, which they named Norellraptor barsboldi in honour of palaeontologists Mark Allen Norell and Rinchen Barsbold. It belongs in a group of small dinosaurs with both feathers and wings known as microraptorines.

Based on evolutionary relationships, the researchers found that around 30 per cent of anatomical changes in microraptorines also evolved in the bird lineage, but in a different order, providing evidence that the two groups evolved flight separately and for different reasons.

Analyses of N. barsboldi’s bone microstructure, its growth patterns and its evolutionary relationships show that the evolutionary sequences leading to flight adaptations in living birds and in bird-like dinosaurs were quite different, says Jacqueline  Nguyen.

This survey does not say that dinosaurs and birds are relatives.

Source:

James Woodford 2026 Spectacular feathered dinosaur fossil shows bird-like adaptations | New Scientist 29 September 

Why is this monster El Niño so strong?

 

Image courtesy of CSU/CIRA & JMA/JAXA

Joel Kontinen

Some researchers are thinking why is the el Niño so powerful this autumn, although the time for it is gone.   

Many who spoke a lot about evolution are now talking about global warming.

Mind-blowing. Unprecedented. Off the charts. Jaw-dropping. Godzilla-level. Superlatives have been flying about the current El Niño climate pattern, which is already the strongest on record months before it is expected to peak – and unusually, they are coming from scientists, rather than the media. So, what has made this such an exceptional event?

This will no doubt be the subject of many studies to come, but the broad picture is clear. Two main factors have driven the formation of this record-smashing El Niño, the first of which was set in motion long before it began.

Source:

Michael Le Page 2026 Why is this monster El Niño so strong? | New Scientist 28 September 

Milei rips apart the UN:s anti-Israel circus

 

The Argentinian president Javier Milei rips apart the UN:s anti-Israel circus.

Copying others can help young orangutans build a broad diet

 

Copying others can help young orangutans build a broad diet

Image courtesy of Guilhem Duvot, SUAQ Project

Joel Kontinen

According to evolution,  orangutans  are almost human,  so they are able to copy some of the traits of humans and from other apes. But animal intelligence is not something we would smirk at. Some birds are intelligent than apes. 

Young orangutans acquire a substantial body of knowledge before they can survive independently, which they must do by the time they are 8.5 years old. This includes understanding what foods are safe to eat, where to fi intelligrent than apes. nd them and how to process them in a rainforest offering hundreds of food options of varying levels of accessibility – from easy-to-access leaves to the more inaccessible but also manimal ore nutritious seeds at the heart of a tough, spiny neesia fruit.

The findings suggest that orangutans have different strategies for developing broad survival skills, says Revathe Thillaikumar at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany.

Scientists already know that orangutans can acquire this knowledge both by observing their mothers and other individuals in their social circle – a process known as social learning – and by exploring entirely on their own without any input from others, which is known as individual learning. But how these two forms of learning work together – and how they affect what orangutans learn to eat before becoming independent – hasn’t been clear.

To find out, Thillaikumar and her colleagues analysed nearly 7000 instances of learning recorded during more than 1700 hours of observations of wild Sumatran orangutans at Suaq Balimbing, a research station in Indonesia.

Youngsters who learned by watching others also tended to continue manipulating new objects or trying new foods for about 145 minutes after they had closely observed another orangutan. This activity is reminiscent of the way in which children will spend time imitating an activity they have just seen demonstrated by an adult, says Thillaikumar. “Yeah, it’s practice.”

Source:

Christa Lesté-Lasserre 2026 Copying others can help young orangutans build a broad diet | New Scientist 24 September 

Fire amoeba breaks heat tolerance record for complex life

 

Incendiamoeba cell reproducing at 63°C Image courtesy of Felix Mikus.

Joel Kontinen

Animals cam be incredible,  A species of amoeba discovered in California’s Lassen Volcanic National Park can survive and thrive in temperatures that had been considered impossibly high for complex life.

Previously, according to Angela Oliverio at Syracuse University, New York, 60°C was considered the “4-minute mile” barrier for eukaryotes.

But the four minute mile has been broken.

Oliverio and her colleagues collected I. cascadensis from a small geothermal stream within California’s Lassen Volcanic National Park, flowing through a “beautiful meadow” less than half a metre wide for most of its length. Temperatures in the stream range from 49°C to 65°C, with a pH range of 6 to 7.

At full stretch, I. cascadensis is, on average, about 40 micrometres long and 10 µm wide, says Oliverio.

“This is over 10 times the size of the average bacterial cell, and closer to the width of a human white blood cell,” she says. In such a hot environment, the fire amoeba is the top-order predator, feeding on thermophile bacteria, which are far more common.

Bob Leung at Monash University, Australia, says the discovery means he will have to rewrite his lectures on extremophiles.

Source:

James Woodford 2026 Fire amoeba breaks heat tolerance record for complex life | New Scientist 22 September