‘Hobbit’ hominins scavenged meat left over by Komodo dragons

 

Image courtesy of Lionel Bret/Eurelios/Science Photo Library

Joel Kontinen

Did hobbits or Homo floresiensis  eat animal bones left by Komodo dragons, according to devolution, the science says it is so.

The diminutive ancient humans nicknamed hobbits that lived on the Indonesian island of Flores until around 50,000 years ago had limited hunting skills, according to a study of animal bones found in their caves. Instead, researchers think they scavenged meat that was left behind by Komodo dragons.

Fossils of Homo floresiensis were first announced to the world in 2004. These humans stood just over a metre tall and their remains have been dated to between 90,000 and 50,000 years old.

Source:

 James Woodford 2026 ‘Hobbit’ hominins scavenged meat left over by Komodo dragons | New Scientist 3 July

Catholic nun issues chilling warning about aliens amid religious conflict

 

Image courtesy of Phylyp, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Joel Kontinen

 A catholic nun says UFOs are rooted in the spiritual realm and can be fallen angels or evil spirits.  

However, Mother Miriam many UFO sightings and alleged alien encounters may be the work of fallen angels.

“Citing the teachings of St Thomas Aquinas, she noted that the medieval theologian described angels as extraterrestrial beings because they originate from another world, the spiritual realm.

'The Catholic position, there is such a thing as extraterrestrial intelligence,' she said. 'These creatures really are from another world, the spiritual world. They're what we call fallen angels.'”

Source:

Stacy Liberatore 2026 Catholic nun issues chilling warning about aliens amid religious conflict 26 June

This could be why we still haven’t found alien life

 

Image courtesy of NASA

 Joel Kontinen

Where is alien life? We have found hundreds planets but alien life is still missing. What is the reason for  this? It could be that alien life never existed or are there other valid reasons?

The search for extraterrestrial life has been a topic of fascination and speculation for centuries. The universe has not yet yielded conclusive evidence of alien life. This phenomenon, known as the Fermi Paradox, poses the question: given the high probability of habitable planets, why have we not detected signs of extraterrestrial civilizations? 

Scientists aren’t finding alien life because they are likely searching for the wrong signals or looking in the wrong places, a new study warns.

Astronomers are mainly focused on avoiding “false positive” cases of instruments being fooled by the biology-mimicking chemistry of non-living things on other planets. However, , the study says that they should consider false negatives as well. A false negative is when life is present on an alien world but it remains invisible to us because we aren’t looking for the right signals.

“We should be aware of these false-negative results,” Inge Loes ten Kate, an astrobiologist from the University of Amsterdam, said. “These shortcomings are not yet high on the research agenda.”

False negatives may yield from factors like poor preservation of biological traces, weak signals from planets or limits of existing instruments.

Some theories try to explain this:

The Rare Earth Hypothesis: Suggests that the conditions necessary for complex life are extraordinarily uncommon across the universe. 

Life Is Common, Intelligence Is Rare: Many scientists believe that while simple life forms may be abundant, the emergence of intelligence is a rare leap. 

The Great Filter: A theory that posits a barrier preventing most life from reaching our level of development, such as the leap from single-celled organisms to complex life. 

But what if there is no alien life?

 Source:

Vishwam Sankaran 2026 This could be why we still haven’t found alien life 28 May

The most detailed survey of the universe ever conducted starts now

 

Image Courtesy Of Nsf–Doe Vera C. Rubin Observatory/Noirlab/Slac​/Aura

Joel Kontinen

What do we know of the universe?  Not much, but the most detailed survey of the universe starts now.  Over 11 000 new asteroids discovered and ”they are expected to result in the most complete inventory of solar system objects ever created.”

“The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile is finally beginning its mammoth survey of the universe. After a year of testing and calibration,it is starting the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, which is poised to become the most detailed record of the universe ever captured.

For the next decade, Rubin will collect about 10 terabytes of data every night in the form of hundreds of high-resolution images of the southern sky. Each image will cover an area about 40 times the size of the full moon, and the completed survey will include nearly the entirety of the sky that is visible from the southern hemisphere.

This treasure trove of data will serve several purposes. The first, which has already begun, is to alert researchers to anything changing in the night sky, such as the appearance of supernovae or the motion of asteroids and comets. they are expected to result in the most complete inventory of solar system objects ever created,”

Source:

 Leah Crane 2026 The most detailed survey of the universe ever conducted starts now | New Scientist 30 June 

Early Homo sapiens may have lived in rainforests, new clues suggest — and it could overturn our understanding of human evolution

 

Image courtesy of Phil P Harris, CC BY-SA 2.5

Joel Kontinen

Did early humans live in the rainforests ages ago? This is what new study suggests.  

Nearly 70,000 years ago, modern humans created stunning rock art in an unexpected place: the tropical Indonesian island of Sulawe. The finding, announced in January, made headlines for being the oldest known rock art in the world.

But the discovery's location also highlighted another surprising finding: that members of our species, Homo sapiens, were thriving in the tropics tens of thousands of years ago.

But that perspective has been changing over the past few decades. Sulawesi's ancient rock art is one of several clues that modern humans may have lived in tropical rainforests for hundreds of thousands of years. That would mean modern humans could have been living in these hot, wet regions since soon after the emergence of our species in Africa around 300,000 years ago.

Understanding how, when and where modern humans inhabited rainforests — and how that shaped our evolution — "may give us an insight into something about what it means to be uniquely human," Patrick Roberts, an archaeologist and anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology and author of the book "Jungle: How Tropical Forests Shaped World History" (Penguin, 2022), said, .

But the evolution thing is not true.

Conventional wisdom held that modern humans emerged from one parent population in an East African savanna and did not encounter rainforests until around 12,000 years ago, after agriculture emerged to support survival in these climes. The lack of H. sapiens fossils from Africa's tropics appeared to support this view.

Then, in 2017, scientists identified the oldest modern-human fossils — except they weren't in East Africa, but rather in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco. The following year, Eleanor Scerri, an archaeological scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany, and her colleagues reviewed archaeological evidence, including the Jebel Irhoud fossils, and integrated it with genetic data from present-day populations. The evidence pointed toward H. sapiens originating from many subdivided populations across Africa.

Source:

Sophie Berdugo 2026 Early Homo sapiens may have lived in rainforests, new clues suggest — and it could overturn our understanding of human evolution | Live Science 26 June

 

 

 

 

 

Hidden black hole could explain mystery at the heart of our galaxy

 

Image courtesy of Spark802, CC BY-SA 4.0

Joel Kontinen

The centre of our galaxy is a strange and chaotic place, but we may finally have an explanation for  three populations of stars, all strikingly different from one another but with similar ages, and researchers have come up the with a relatively simple model that can explain all of them at once.

This is a Darwinian explanation of the origin of  a  galaxy and black holes and stars.  The history of the Sagittarius A objects  is based on fables and not  objective science.

The closest objects to Sagittarius A* are called S-stars: a spherical swarm of stars, many of which are on elongated orbits that take them dangerously close to the black hole. Their distribution also has a strange, unexplained gap called a zone of avoidance. The next layer contains clockwise disc stars, which are massive stars that sit in a relatively orderly disc outside the orbits of the S-stars. Finally, there are the off-disc stars, which are on more scattered orbits, including some that appear to circle in the opposite direction from the rest.

Source:  

 Leah Crane 2026 Hidden black hole could explain mystery at the heart of our galaxy | New Scientist 24 June

Walking shark found in Papua New Guinea is new to science

 

Image courtesy of MV Erdmann.

Joel Kontinen

Sharks are living fossils that defy the cause of evolution. Walking sharks are not new in evolution, but this one is new to science. 

“Sharks in the genus Hemiscyllium, commonly known as walking sharks or epaulette sharks, use their pectoral fins like legs to move around and are only known to be in Australia and New Guinea.”

Walking sharks does not mean that they have discovered a breaks  that makes Darwin’s theory that says walking fishes do away  with fishes with legs cannot form.

“The new species the Darwinian has been named Hemiscyllium after Christine Dudgeon at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, who was part of the team that formally identified it.

She first encountered the shark after midnight one day in March 2025, swimming in just a metre of water covering a meadow of seagrass in Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea.”

Source:

James Woodford 2026 Never-before-seen shark that 'walks' on land discovered off Papua New Guinea | Live Science 16 June 

Elusive dwarf fox, feared extinct, photographed for the first time on island of Yucatán

 

Image courtesy of (Rathe fael Chacón.

Joel Kontinen

The Lazarus effect  is evident in tiny foxes in the Yucatan.

The tiny animal was part of the mysterious Cozumel fox population, a potentially undescribed species that had not been officially sighted in more than 20 years.

Park and museum officials spotted and captured the fox in 2023 and, after a health assessment, released it back into the wild. Researchers have now shared the photographs and documented the encounter in a new study published May 4 in the journal Neotropical Biology and Conservation.

Although the rediscovery confirms that Cozumel foxes are still alive, they are likely on the brink of extinction, the study authors noted

.Cozumel foxes are an example of insular dwarfism, an evolutionary process in which larger animals, including fox-sized mammals, evolve to be smaller after colonizing islands, where there are limited resources and less space than on the mainland. The foxes aren't the only mammals that have shrunk on Cozumel over time; other examples include the island's.critically endangered pygmy raccoons (Procyon pygmaeus) and dwarf coatis.

The Darwinist tend to picture this an evolutionary process, but it is not.  

Source:

Patrick Pester 2026 Elusive dwarf fox, feared extinct, photographed for the first time on island off Yucatán | Live Science 21 June

 

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Walking shark found in Papua New Guinea is new to science

 

Image courtesy of MV Erdmann

Joel Kontinen

Sharks are living fossils that defy the cause of evolution. Walking sharks are not new in evolution, but this one is new to science.  

Sharks in the genus Hemiscyllium, commonly known as walking sharks or epaulette sharks, use their pectoral fins like legs to move around and are only known to be in Australia and New Guinea.

The new species has been named Hemiscyllium dudgeonae after Christine Dudgeon at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, who was part of the team that formally identified it.

She first encountered the shark after midnight one day in March 2025, swimming in just a metre of water covering a meadow of seagrass in Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea.

Dudgeon was looking for a different species, Hemiscyllium michaeli, known to inhabit nearby waters. “Because it was so late and I had been in the water for a while, I was a bit over it,” she says. “Then I just saw one swimming along the bottom.”

She shone her torch in front of the shark, which was nearly three-quarters of a metre long, making it freeze as a defensive response. Then she grabbed it and gently employed a jiujitsu-like move that researchers call the “flip and tuck”. “You sort of just flip them over and tuck the tail under your armpit and it stops them from wriggling away,” she says.

Once the shark was secure, she handed it over to her colleague, Jess Blakeway, who was in a boat drifting nearby.

The species that the team had been expecting to find has a more leopard-like pattern. “This new one has got lots of spots and dashes that reminded me of braille or morse code,” says Blakeway.

Source:

James Woodford 2026 Walking shark found in Papua New Guinea is new to science | New Scientist 16 June 

Gas from Uranus reveals it has an icy centre

 

Image courtesy of JPL/NAS

Joel Kontinen

Carbon monoxide in Uranus's deep atmosphere in dictates that the planet contains more ice than rock, suggesting it formed more like Neptune than we thought.

It  seems that  Uranus has more water than scientist taught, but it is inside the planet.  Genesis seems to indicate that all planets had water in them.

Uranus appears to have far more water frozen as ice in its interior than astronomers thought, potentially settling a long-runnig mystery about whether it formed differently to its closest neighbour, Neptune.

Ice giants like Uranus and Neptune have thick, gassy atmospheres. This makes it hard to know what is inside the planets’ interiors or how they formed. Scientists can, however, measure gases in their atmospheres, which they can then link to processes and elements deeper inside.

Carbon monoxide in a planet’s atmosphere is often associated with its deepest parts being rich in water or ice, but while neighbouring Neptune has displayed abundant carbon monoxide suggestive of an ice-rich centre, Uranus has been lacking, which has led some astronomers to argue it instead has a rocky interior. If true, this would mean that Neptune and Uranus formed in very different ways and aren’t as similar as they appear

Source:

Alex Wilkins 2026 Gas from Uranus reveals it has an icy centre | New Scientist 19 June 

Complex life on Earth may last 500 million years longer than expected

 

Image courtesy of Vimal-S/Unsplash,

Joel Kontinen

How long  will complex life dwell on Earth? Some researchers say that it will be 500 million years in the future.

As the sun expands over the coming billions of years, Earth will become inhospitable to any life more complex than a microbe – but that might take longer than we thought.

The sun is getting brighter and expanding as it ages, and will one day begin to cook our planet before engulfing it altogether – but complex life may be able to hold on in this hellish Earth scenario for much longer than we previously thought.

Estimates based on looking at other stars suggest that our sun is maturing into a red giant, a process that will destroy Earth in around 5 billion years, but it remains an open question as to how long the planet will remain habitable. As far as complex life goes, the last standing will be the vegetative biosphere – plants, both aquatic and terrestrial. Their ability to continue thriving will be mediated in part by the temperature of the planet, but mainly by the levels of carbon dioxide, which is necessary for photosynthesis.

But  according to the book of Revelation, life on Earth will be very different.

 Source:

 Leah Crane 2026 Complex life on Earth may last 500 million years longer than expected | New Scientist18 June 

 

Arctic Ocean reaches tipping point that could be dire for marine life

 

Image courtesy of European Union, Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery,

Joel Kontinen

As sea ice melts, more light will infiltrate the Arctic Ocean, allowing phytoplankton and other marine life to flourish – or so we thought. In fact, phytoplankton growth in some parts of the Arctic is now starving other parts of a crucial nutrient, a tipping point that could spell trouble for seals, polar bears and even commercial fish in the north Atlantic.

The Arctic Ocean might be dire for marina life. As the sea ice melts, it causes more sunlight in the Arctic Ocean. This causes phytoplankton to grow and has depleted a crucial nutrient, which could severely affect animals higher up the food chain.

Phytoplankton, the tiny photosynthesising organisms that form the basis of the marine food chain, have been increasing across the Arctic, according to satellite measurements of the green pigment chlorophyll. Algal blooms there have broken records.

Source:  

 Alec Luhn 2026 Arctic Ocean reaches tipping point that could be dire for marine life | New Scientist 16 June

 

Iran Sent Missiles At Israel, On The Exact WRONG Hebrew Date!

‘Forgotten’ pollutants cause 15 per cent of global warming

 

Image courtesy of Jonas Gratzer/Jonas Gratzer

Joel Kontinen

Why do the so called forgotten pollutants cause a great deal of global warming? Searchers say that the indirect greenhouse gases can contribute 15 per cent of what is understood as global  warning. 

Carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds don’t just poison the air we breathe. They also fuel chemical reactions in the atmosphere that heat the planet.

Of all the global warming that has happened since the pre-industrial era, about 15 per cent has been caused by emissions other than greenhouse gases, mainly carbon monoxide and VOCs. That is double the contribution of nitrous oxide, the third-most-common greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and methane.

Source:

 Alec Luhn 2026 ‘Forgotten’ pollutants cause 15 per cent of global warming | New Scientist 11 June 

Wolves seen hunting European bison in rare camera-trap recording

 

Image courtesy of John Ceulemans/Shutterstock

Joel Kontinen

Europe’s largest land animal, the bison, is thought to be relatively unthreatened by predators, but footage from Białowieża Primaeval Forest in Poland shows it does face attacks from wolves.

Wolves are making a comeback in many parts of Europe

Deep in the Polish wilderness, a camera trap has captured a pack of wolves hunting down a juvenile bison.

The rare footage suggests that in Europe, bison might be on the menu for wolves more commonly than previously thought.

“My mind was blown,” says Robin Wijnands at the Polish Academy of Sciences. “I was really surprised because I really didn’t expect wolves to hunt bison, especially when there are so many other prey available in the forest.”

These attacks happened after the first humans – Adam and Eve  - rebelled after what God  said in Genesis 3 about the fall of man. Animals also begin to kill each other.   

Source:

Gennaro Tomma 2026 Wolves seen hunting European bison in rare camera-trap recording | New Scientist 10 June 

What Trump said about the Iranian war?

What Israel shall do with the Iranian assault in Israel and the war in Lebanon?

 

Earth has a mysterious triple symmetry that may influence its climate

 

Image courtesy of Planetary Visions Ltd/Science Photo Library

Joel Kontinen

The Earth is more special than we thought.

A line that runs through Africa, Europe, Alaska and both poles divides Earth into two halves that reflect the same amount of light – and this newly discovered symmetry may play a critical role in the planet’s climate.

It was previously known that the northern and southern hemispheres have almost equal reflectivity, or albedo, but Jianhao Zhang at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US and his colleagues have now uncovered a second line of symmetry along the 27° east and 153° west meridians.

At first, Zhang thought it must be a coincidence. “What convinced me that the east-west symmetry is not trivial are three features: its uniqueness, its persistence and what we call the triple symmetry feature,” he says. “Finding one division with equal total reflection might be expected. But finding a persistent, unique east-west division that also balances land-ocean distribution, clear-sky reflection and cloudy-sky reflection is much less trivial – especially given how variable and dynamic clouds are.”

Øivind Hodnebrog  says “I was a bit sceptical of an east-west symmetry separated at around 27 degrees east, which intuitively seems much less obvious than a separation at the equator,

However, Hodnebrog says he now agrees it is likely a “robust feature, and potentially another fascinating property of the Earth”.

The connection to ENSO may also be significant, says Hodnebrog. Unlike the north-south symmetry, which appears to be weakening due to the effects of climate change on sea ice and clouds, the east-west symmetry is currently stable, though models suggest it could weaken in future. “A potential future asymmetry could be an indication of changes in the atmospheric circulation,” he says.

Martin Jucker at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, says there is a high potential that the east-west symmetry is a coincidence.

“Earth’s weather and climate communicate easily across longitudes,” says Jucker. “This is due to Earth’s rotation, which creates bands of circum-global easterly and westerly winds, and atmospheric perturbations preferentially propagating in the east-west direction as well.”

Source:

James Woodford 2026 Earth has a mysterious triple symmetry that may influence its climate | New Scientist 3 June 

Biofluorescence seen in colourful fire salamanders for the first time

 

Image courtesy of  Ant?nez Glez,  (CC BY-NC); Royal Society Open Science,

Joel Kontinen

Some salamanders have spectacular features, They have biofluorescence feature. It is an intelligent design device that  can warn  the salamanders of predators.   

For the first time, fire salamanders (Salamandra salamandra) have been shown to bio fluoresce, absorbing and re-emitting light at different wavelengths.

In this instance, 10 fire salamanders in Catalonia, Spain, gave off a blue-green glow after being exposed to ultraviolet light.

This ability had never been recorded in fire salamanders before, despite being a very well-studied species.

The fluorescence, which was produced by secretions from the salamanders’ skin glands, appeared primarily on the side and undersihe fluorescence, which was produced by secretions from the salamanders’ skin glands, appeared primarily on the side and underside of their bodies.

The researchers behind the work believe that this biofluorescence may help the animals to attract mates, or perhaps even protect themselves from predators.

Source: 

Michael Dalton 2026 Biofluorescence seen in colourful fire salamanders for the first time | New Scientist 3 June 

Hidden store of manganese may have helped Earth get its oxygen

 

Image courtesy of Claus Lunau/Science Photo Library.

Joel Kontinen

Computer simulations have uncovered a new manganese compound that could exist deep in Earth’s mantle and may be connected to the process that gave our atmosphere oxygen.

When did the Earth get its oxygen? According to a new study, it may have got it from manganese that may have been present deep before in the Earth’s mantle.  Some evolutionists believe that manganese was present in the early stages of the Earth’s history.

Deep below our feet, manganese may exist in a form we have never seen before, and this underground source of the metal could have played a role in the story of how Earth got its oxygen.

Until about 2 billion years ago, Earth’s atmosphere barely contained any oxygen. Then came the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE) when oxygen produced by photosynthesizing microbes started to accumulate, spurring development of more diverse forms of life and changing the planet.

Manganese is thought to have been a crucial component in an early version of photosynthesis, before the evolution of the oxygen-producing pathway that is widespread today. In Earth’s crust, manganese is commonly found in oxygen-containing ores, which started to accumulate at around the same time as the GOE.

Source:

 Karmela Padavic-Callaghan 2026 Hidden store of manganese may have helped Earth get its oxygen | New Scientist 2 June 

Carbon credits are flawed, but they can still help save forest

 

Image courtesy of Heikki Valve, CC BY-SA 3.0

Joel Kontinen

Carbon credits are wrong, but they can save forests that is good for the environment.

In 1986, an energy CEO heard a briefing about climate change and felt guilty that his company was building a coal-fired power plant in Connecticut. The company eventually paid to plant trees for timber in Guatemala so farmers would stop cutting down intact forest, in theory compensating for the coal plant’s carbon emissions.

The idea would develop into markets that allow companies to offset their emissions by buying “voluntary” carbon credits that help avoid deforestation, among other measures. Advocates say land users should be paid to leave a forest standing. Critics say maybe the land users weren’t going to cut down the forest anyway.

Source:

 Alec Luhn 2026 Carbon credits are flawed, but they can still help save forests | New Scientist12 May 

Space storms could switch train signals and cause serious accidents

 

Joel Kontinen

Critical safety equipment in many train systems is vulnerable to disruption by space weather, which could lead to fatal accidents. Space storms can  wreak havoc in some UK train stations.

A number of electrical systems in the railways of many countries, including the UK, are vulnerable to space weather. In the worst case, a red signal could be turned green, potentially causing a deadly train crash, says Cameron Patterson at Lancaster University in the UK.

“You could have disruptions to signalling systems, which are crucial to railway safety,” he says. “We have to prepare for these things now, and getting that message across, I think, is really important.”

A number of electrical systems in the railways of many countries, including the UK, are vulnerable to space weather. In the worst case, a red signal could be turned green, potentially causing a deadly train crash, says Cameron Patterson at Lancaster University in the UK.

“You could have disruptions to signalling systems, which are crucial to railway safety,” he says. “We have to prepare for these things now, and getting that message across, I think, is really important.”

Source:

 Michael Le Page 2026 Space storms could switch train signals and cause serious accidents | New Scientist 26 May 

Millions of planets might form around supermassive black holes

 

Massive amounts of dust swirl around active nuclei at the centres of galaxies, and these discs could give rise to vast numbers of rocky planets, some even the size of stars. Image courtesy of NASA and M. Weiss/Chandra X-ray Center

Joel Kontinen

What does black holes done for planets? According to a recently published study, they form planets around supermassive black holes.

The active centres of galaxies might be regions of extraordinary planet formation, where millions of worlds are born.

Most galaxies in the universe, such as our own Milky Way, host a supermassive black hole at their centre. Most of the time, these black holes are quiescent, as there is no matter falling into them. But occasionally they become active and consume huge amounts of dust and gas, perhaps from a merger with another according to evolution, becoming an active galactic nucleus for millions of years.

Source:

By Jonathan O’Callaghan 2026 Millions of planets might form around supermassive black holes | New Scientist 28 May

Weird and wonderful sea pen found on Mystery Ridge

 

Image courtesy of Paul Satchell/The Nippon Foundation/Nekton Ocean Census/Schmidt Ocean Institute.

Joel Kontinen

An ongoing census of sea life in the South Atlantic has identified over 1000 new creatures, including a new species of sea pen.

Odd creatures are found in the depths of the sea.  If you think this picture looks a bit like a feather pen, then you’d be correct. Except it’s not the type that you can write with. It is a type of coral that is found  805  metres below the sea level.

Sea pens are a type of coral that live on the sea floor and are made up of several specialised polyps. This particular sea pen is new to science, and was discovered at a depth of 805 metres on Mystery Ridge off the South Sandwich Islands, a chain of islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. It was found thanks to the Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census, a global programme aiming to discover 100,000 new marine species over the seas.

Source:

Michael Dalton 2026 Weird and wonderful sea pen found on Mystery Ridge | New Scientist 26 May 

 

Israel News: Why Javier Milei, the President of Argentina have closed relation with Israel?

Why Javier Milei, the President of Argentina have closed relation with Israel? 

There's a new T. rex from the dinosaur age — and it ruled the seas with a skull-crushing bite

 

An artist's reconstruction of Tylosaurus rex swimming in the Cretaceous seas of North America. Image courtesy of Alderon Games/Path of Titans.

Joel Kontinen

There's a new T. rex in town.  However,  this one didn't hunt on land. It ruled the ancient seas.

Scientists have described a new species of mosasaur, a member of a marine reptile group that lived at the same time as dinosaurs during the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago). The newly named species fits into an already known genus: Tylosaurus. But its new species name, Tylosaurus rex — T. rex, for short — sets it apart from the other mosasaur species in the group.

The species name means "king of the tylosaurs," according to a new study published  May 21 in the journal Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. According to evolution, the fossils are about 80 million years old and were discovered mostly in northern Texas decades ago.

The mosasaur T. rex measured up to 13 meters) long, or about the length of a tour bus. It had finely serrated teeth, unusually powerful jaws, and evidence on its fossils of violent combat with its own species.

While examining a fossil in the American Museum of Natural History's collection, Zietlow noticed that a specimen labeled as Tylosaurus proriger — a well-known mosasaur species first described in 1869 — didn't quite match others of its kind. The unusual fossil was discovered in 1979 near an artificial reservoir outside Dallas.

After comparing the specimen with the original name-bearing fossil of T. proriger held at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, Zietlow and her colleagues found that it belonged to a newfound species

Compared with T. proriger, the newly described T. rex was  4 metres longer, had finely serrated teeth (which T. proriger lacked) and lived several million years later. Most T. proriger fossils were discovered in what is now Kansas and are roughly 84 million years old, while the fossils now identified as T. rex are mostly from Texas and date to about 80 million years ago. At that time, the Western Interior Seaway stretched from the Gulf of Mexico up to the Arctic and was home to many sea creatures, including mosasaurs.

But the dates in the millions of years are inflated.  

Source:

Kenna Hughes-Castleberry 2026 There's a new T. rex from the dinosaur age — and it ruled the seas with a skull-crushing bite | Live Science May 21

 

 

 

 

The ‘doomsday’ glacier’s giant ice shelf is about to break away

 

Image courtesy of Chang W. Lee/New York Times/ Redux/eyevine

Joel Kontinen

The floating ice shelf of world’s widest glacier – Thwaites glacier in Antarctica – is detaching, with worrying implications for global sea-level rise.

Can global warming spell doom for in Antarctica? Some say that the climate was established by God at the end pf the global flood in Noah's time but others are  more sceptical. They say that men can destroy the planet.

Antarctica’s most threatened glacier is about be further destabilised, as the floating ice shelf in front of Thwaites glacier is set to break away.

“Its final demise could happen suddenly, and to avoid being caught on the hop, we have already prepared an ‘obituary’ press release,” says Rob Larter at the British Antarctic Survey.

Dubbed the “doomsday glacier”, Thwaites is about the size of Britain, but it is shrinking rapidly and is already responsible for 4 per cent of all global sea-level rise. Worse still, its collapse is expected to set off a domino effect in the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, ultimately resulting in a calamitous sea-level rise of 3.3 metres and changing the coastline of the entire planet.

Source:

Alison George 2026 The ‘doomsday’ glacier’s giant ice shelf is about to break away | New Scientist 18 May 

Natural sunscreen found in fish eggs can be made by E. coli factories

 

Image courtesy of WILDLIFE GmbH / Alamy

Joel Kontinen

Intelligent design has provided  zebrafish eggs to produce a chemical that keeps the suns rays  from harming people. The chemical is known as gadusol.

A team led by Ping Zhang at Jiangnan University, China, inserted genes from zebrafish into the bacterium Escherichia coli to give it the enzymes needed to synthesise gadusol. Then, by using small RNA molecules to dial up gadusol production in the bacteria and tweaking their growing conditions, they increased the yield by nearly 93 times, from 45.2 milligrams per litre of liquid growth medium to 4.2 grams per litre.

In experiments, gadusol displayed antioxidant properties comparable to vitamin C, suggesting it may help neutralise free radicals that cause damage in cells.

Gadusol is transparent, unlike melanin, and yet is perfectly tuned to block out harmful UV rays from the sun, which makes it ideal for organisms hiding from prey. “I think we haven’t necessarily given it the praise that it deserves,” says James Gagnon at the University of Utah, who was part of a team that discovered gadusol’s role as a sunscreen in fish embryos. “This is a great molecule.”

Gadusol is found in the eggs of zebrafish, salmon and sturgeon, as well as coral, where it protects organisms from ultraviolet damage. But it’s only found in small quantities so extracting it from organisms for use as a sunscreen is impractical

Gagnon says further testing is needed, but the compound is likely to be safe for humans and the environment because so many animals already use it. Thanks to its transparency, it might also avoid the milky residue that some current sunscreens leave on the skin.

“Everyone wants to hint that this is going to be a great sunscreen for humans,” says Gagnon.

Source:

 Matthew Sparkes 2026 Natural sunscreen found in fish eggs can be made by E. coli factories | New Scientist 13 May 

 

Asteroid to miss Earth by a quarter of the length from us to the moon

 

Image courtesy of  buradaki/Shutterstock

Joel Kontinen

An asteroid that missed the Earth by some 90, 000 kilometers was very real, It was not the object can was mentioned in the book of Revelation that was called bitterness as it caused the seas to become bitter.   

Asteroid 2026JH2 will zoom past Earth at a distance of only 90,000 kilometers  next week. It has enough mass to wipe out a city, but simulations suggest there is no chance of an impact for at least the next century.

An asteroid with the potential to ruin a city will pass Earth next week. 2026JH2, as it has been labelled by the astronomy community, is predicted to zoom by our planet at an estimated distance of 90,917 kilometers – only a quarter of the distance between us and the moon.

“In astronomical terms, it’s as close as you can get without hitting,” says Mark Norris at the University of Lancashire, UK.

 Source: 

Matthew Sparkes 2026 Asteroid set to fly very close to Earth | New Scientist 13 May