Latest news with #NaturalHistoryMuseum
Forbes
4 hours ago
- Science
- Forbes
How Life Survived Snowball Earth
Artist's impression of "Snowball Earth." The Snowball Earth hypothesis suggests that, hundreds of ... More millions of years ago, the Earth's surface may have frozen solid as a result of severe climate change. During the Cryogenian period about 700 to 635 million years ago, Earth experienced a super ice age, one that froze the entire planet from the poles to the equator. Scientist have long wondered how life survived this 'Snowball Earth.' Most of the surface was covered by ice, so there was no to little sunlight reaching the oceans, and with no weathering happening on the frozen-solid continents, no nutrients were washed into the sea. Maybe hot springs deep beneath the ice provided a last viable spot where life persisted until the ice receded. In a new study, researchers at MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, the Natural History Museum in London and the University of Waikato in New Zealand, propose an alternative hypothesis. 'We're interested in understanding the foundations of complex life on Earth. We see evidence for eukaryotes before and after the Cryogenian in the fossil record, but we largely lack direct evidence of where they may have lived during,' says lead author Fatima Husain, a graduate student in MIT. 'The great part of this mystery is, we know life survived. We're just trying to understand how and where.' The scientists found that lifeforms could have survived the global freeze by living in watery oases on the surface. Similar environmental conditions still exist today in cryoconite holes. Dark-colored dust and debris transported by glaciers to the surface absorb sunlight, heating up and melting into the ice forming small pockets and holes. At temperatures hovering around 0 degrees Celsius, the resulting meltwater ponds could have served as habitable environments for early life. Cryoconite hole on a glacier The researchers analyzed samples from a variety of cryoconite holes and meltwater ponds located on the McMurdo Ice Shelf in an area that was first described by members of Robert Falcon Scott's 1903 expedition as 'dirty ice.' They discovered clear signatures of life in every pond. Even more surprising, the communities varied from pond to pond, revealing a high diversity of life forms. There were cyanobacteria, prokaryotic, single-celled photosynthetic organisms that lack a cell nucleus or other organelles. The oldest cyanobacteria-like fossils appear on Earth over 3 billion years ago. While these ancient microbes are known to survive within some of the the harshest environments on Earth, the researchers wanted to know whether eukaryotes — complex organisms that evolved a cell nucleus and other membrane bound organelles — could also weather similarly challenging circumstances. Chemical analysis showed the presence of various molecules clearly associated with eukaryotic life. The team found that salinity plays a key role in the kind of life a pond can host: Ponds that were more brackish or salty had more similar communities, which differed from those in ponds with fresher waters. 'No two ponds were alike,' Husain explains. 'There are repeating casts of characters, but they're present in different abundances. And we found diverse assemblages of eukaryotes from all the major groups in all the ponds studied. These eukaryotes are the descendants of the eukaryotes that survived the Snowball Earth. This really highlights that meltwater ponds during Snowball Earth could have served as above-ice oases that nurtured the eukaryotic life that enabled the diversification and proliferation of complex life — including us — later on.' Additional material and interviews provided by MIT News.
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on Our Story With David Attenborough and The Herds: a new theatre of the Anthropocene
As parts of the UK swelter, this week brought yet more alarming reports of increasing temperatures, extreme weather events and dwindling chances of meeting the global 1.5C target. It was the UK's warmest spring on record and its driest in more than 50 years. Communicating the urgency of our predicament without provoking despair and hopelessness is an intractable challenge, especially when it comes to children. But two trail-blazing theatre experiences are bringing the breakdown of the natural world into urban metropolises, and raising the alarm with such immediacy that even those of us fortunate enough to live in places that have so far been relatively unaffected by the climate crisis must pay attention. Our Story With David Attenborough is a breathtaking 50-minute immersive history of the planet, from the team behind the recent film Ocean. Thanks to 24 projectors and 50 speakers, the Natural History Museum's Jerwood Gallery is transformed into the solar system, prehistoric caves, the ocean and the jungle. As in Maurice Sendak's children's classic Where the Wild Things Are, 'the walls [become] the world all around'. We swim with whales and come face to face with gorillas – as Sir David did in Life on Earth in 1979. We look from space: like last year's Booker prize-winning novel, Orbital, by Samantha Harvey, Our Story inspires the feelings of awe and protectiveness towards our planet that astronauts call 'the overview effect'. In the past, Sir David has been accused of not speaking out strongly enough on human-made ecological disaster. But the Guardian writer George Monbiot, once one of his fiercest critics, described Ocean, released for Sir David's 99th birthday this year, as the film 'I've been waiting for all my working life'. In Our Story, we journey through mass extinctions of the past and, speculatively, in the future. Without change, 'the prospect for the generations that follow is grim', the audience is warned. Next Friday, hundreds of lifesize elephants, giraffes, gazelles and animal puppets of all kinds will stampede through London's streets on their 20,000km journey from central Africa to the Arctic Circle. The Herds is the follow-up project to The Walk. In 2021, a 12-foot puppet girl, Little Amal, travelled from the Turkey-Syria border to London, to raise awareness of the refugee crisis. Little Amal reached 2 million people in 17 countries. Now her creators hope to do the same for the climate emergency. As the herd flees north, it will be joined by puppets of native species from each country it visits. Manchester is its next destination, before continuing on to Scandinavia. The project's artistic director, Amir Nizar Zuabi, has acknowledged that all such endeavours, however ambitious, are just 'water dripping on a stone'. But, as he says, over time enough drips can reshape a stone. These are visceral, sensory immersions. Like Olafur Eliasson's climate art installation The Weather Project at Tate Modern in 2003, such spectaculars invite us to reflect together – they are collective experiences. This is the theatre of the Anthropocene: vast, cataclysmic, beautiful and yet ultimately hopeful as well. They help us visualise what a different world might look like – if only politicians and corporations were made to act. The next chapter is up to us. As Sir David says at the end of Our Story, we must work towards a time when Earth becomes a planet 'with not only an intelligent species, but a wise one too'.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Previously unknown 76M-year-old, raccoon-sized monstersaur species discovered in Utah
Hank Woolley was visiting the Natural History Museum of Utah one day when he stumbled across a jar labeled 'lizard.' Inside was a 76-million-year-old fossil that paleontologists had uncovered from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 2005. It was eventually transported to the Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City, where it ended up being stored in a jar. Woolley, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County's Dinosaur Institute, opened the jar to find a fragmentary skeleton, which inspired him to dig deeper. 'We know very little about large-bodied lizards from the Kaiparowits Formation in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, so I knew this was significant right away,' he explained in a statement. That decision a few years ago is now helping researchers gain a better understanding of the fossil's importance, as it gives them an improved glimpse of what Utah's ecosystem looked like 76 million years ago. Woolley is the lead author of a new study identifying a prehistoric ancestor of the Gila monsters that roam southern Utah and the Southwest U.S. today. His team's findings were published in the journal Royal Society Open Science on Tuesday. 'Discovering a new species of lizard that is an ancestor of modern Gila monsters is pretty cool in and of itself, but what's particularly exciting is what it tells us about the unique 76-million-year-old ecosystem it lived in,' said co-author Randy Irmis, an associate professor at the University of Utah and curator of paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Utah, and one of the study's co-authors. Paleontologists knew the fossil was 'significant' when they first uncovered it two decades ago, Irmis explains. They brought it back to Salt Lake City, where it sat and waited for the right expert to know its gravity. Woolley, who specializes in lizard evolution, happened to be that guy. He quickly got to work assembling the team that pieced together the fossils and then analyzed its skull, vertebrae and limbs, as well as other features. The team discovered that the lizard was much more intact than many lizard species of its time, and that they had uncovered a species previously unknown to experts. The species would have been about the size of a raccoon, making it one of the smaller creatures of its time, which is when southern Utah was more of a subtropical floodplain, researchers point out. The team decided to name the species Bolg amondol, or 'Bolg' for short. It's a nod to the goblin prince from J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Hobbit,' largely for the lizard's goblin-like skull. 'The fact that Bolg coexisted with several other large lizard species indicates that this was a stable and productive ecosystem where these animals were taking advantage of a wide variety of prey and different microhabitats,' Irmis said. The team says the discovery could help piece together the evolution of lizards, especially since it was a precursor to modern-day species like the Gila monster. Irmis co-authored another study published earlier this year that explored how crocodiles and alligators may have survived extinction, which included species that would have existed at the same time as Bolg. Meanwhile, the researchers also believe there were probably other species like it that existed during the Late Cretaceous Period, which is a more probable theory thanks to Bolg. The next discovery could be waiting to be uncovered in Utah's public lands, or stored safely away in a jar like Borg.
Time Out
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Alexandra Palace is hosting a massive sleepover soundtracked by Max Richter
London's arts institutions love a good sleepover. You can already get 40 winks at the Natural History Museum' Dino Snores nights, the Science Museum's Astronights and the British Museum's sleepovers, and now another beloved London arts venue is hosting a truly special, limited-edition overnight experience this September in collaboration with British-German composer Max Richter in celebration of the tenth anniversary of his opus, SLEEP. Comprising 204 individual tracks, SLEEP is an epic, 8 hour and 30 minute-long lullaby created for listeners to fall asleep to, and has previously been performed live at overnight events in a bunch of iconic global settings, including Sydney Opera House, the Philharmonie de Paris and The Great Wall of China. The events – and the mammoth task of preparing for such lengthy performances – were also captured in a documentary of the same name, directed by Richter's creative partner Yulia Mahr. And now it's the turn of Alexandra Palace to host more of his truly special all-nighters. The north London music venue will be hosting two performances of SLEEP this September, marking the first time the piece has been performed in London since 2017. The concerts will start at 10pm and finish at around 6am as the sun rises, and audiences will be provided with beds and bedding, as well as being served a light breakfast at the end of the night. Fancy bunkering down in the Grade II-listed Great Hall for the night? Tickets for the event are on sale now via the Alexandra Palace website, with prices starting at £249.75 (steep for a concert, yes, but not unreasonable for a one-night stay in one of London's fancier hotels, which is how we prefer to think of the experience!)
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
A new species of dinosaur was discovered sitting in a jar since 2005
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, BGR may receive an affiliate commission. A new species of dinosaur has been discovered after its fossil sat in a jar in a museum for 20 years. The Bolg amondol, which is named after the goblin from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, was first discovered in 2005, according to New Scientist. However, its fossil sat in a jar in the back of the Natural History Museum of Utah until recently when Hank Woolley spotted it and finally popped off the top. Woolley, who is the leader author on a new study published in Royal Society Open Science, says, 'I opened this jar of bones labeled 'lizard' at the Natural History Museum of Utah, and was like, oh wow, there's a fragmentary skeleton here.' Today's Top Deals Best deals: Tech, laptops, TVs, and more sales Best Ring Video Doorbell deals Memorial Day security camera deals: Reolink's unbeatable sale has prices from $29.98 Woolley says he then went on to identify the new species of dinosaur as a raccoon-sized lizard. The study was published this month, and breaks down the discovery and what we know about B. amondol so far. The species is believed to be an ancient ancestor to modern Gila monsters and is estimated to have roamed the Earth around 76 million years ago. Finding new species is always an exciting prospect, as it unlocks new information about our planet's storied past. Sure, we're still not 100% sure how life on Earth originated, or even if the these creatures would have continued living had Earth not been struck by the asteroid that killed all the dinosaurs. But with this discovery, we unlock a little more of the story. Woolley says they went with the name of the creature from The Hobbit because he thinks of these lizards as 'goblin-like,' especially when looking at their skulls. This is another example of how huge discoveries like this can sometimes go years without being uncovered, as storage can often become bogged down with skeletons in jars and other collection materials. Still, it's exciting to see a new species of dinosaur added to the list, especially when it is something that was found somewhere like southern Utah. Back when B. amondol roamed the Earth, Utah would have likely been a sub-tropical region. That's a marked difference from the often dusty landscapes we know and love today. More Top Deals Amazon gift card deals, offers & coupons 2025: Get $2,000+ free See the
