Home Blog

How an ancient asteroid strike carved out 2 grand canyons on the moon

New research shows that when an asteroid slammed into the moon billions of years ago, it carved out a pair of grand canyons on the lunar far side.

That’s good news for scientists and NASA, which is looking to land astronauts at the south pole on the near, Earth-facing side untouched by that impact and containing older rocks in original condition.

U.S. and British scientists used photos and data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to map the area and calculate the path of debris that produced these canyons about 3.8 billion years ago. They reported their findings Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

The incoming space rock passed over the lunar south pole before hitting, creating a huge basin and sending streams of boulders hurtling at a speed of nearly 1 mile a second (1 kilometer a second). The debris landed like missiles, digging out two canyons comparable in size to Arizona’s Grand Canyon in barely 10 minutes. The latter, by comparison, took millions of years to form.

“This was a very violent, a very dramatic geologic process,” said lead author David Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

Kring and his team estimate the asteroid was 15 miles (25 kilometers) across and that the energy needed to create these two canyons would have been more than 130 times that in the world’s current inventory of nuclear weapons.

How an ancient asteroid strike carved out 2 grand canyons on the moon
This image provided by NASA shows a view from orbit, looking straight down at the Moon’s surface, where an ancient asteroid strike carved out a pair of grand canyons on the moon’s far side. Credit: Ernie T. Wright/NASA via AP

Most of the ejected debris was thrown in a direction away from the south pole, Kring said.

That means NASA’s targeted exploration zone around the pole mostly on the moon’s near side won’t be buried under debris, keeping older rocks from 4 billion plus years ago exposed for collection by moonwalkers. These older rocks can help shed light not only on the moon’s origins, but also Earth’s.

Kring said it’s unclear whether these two canyons are permanently shadowed like some of the craters at the moon’s south pole. “That is something that we’re clearly going to be reexamining,” he said.

How an ancient asteroid strike carved out 2 grand canyons on the moon
Width and depth of the Grand Canyon along the Bright Angel hiking trail from the south to the north rim compared with the width and depth of Vallis Planck, one of the grand canyons on the Moon. Colors show 500 meter elevation steps. Credit: David A. Kring, Danielle P. Kallenborn, and Gareth S. Collins.

Permanently shadowed areas at the bottom of the moon are thought to hold considerable ice, which could be turned into rocket fuel and drinking water by future moonwalkers.

NASA’s Artemis program, the successor to Apollo, aims to return astronauts to the moon this decade. The plan is to send astronauts around the moon next year, followed a year or so later by the first lunar touchdown by astronauts since Apollo.

More information: David A. Kring et al, Grand canyons on the Moon, Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-55675-z , www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-55675-z

Journal information: Nature Communications 

© 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Santorini rocked by more earthquakes as uncertainty grows

Several more earthquakes have struck waters around the Greek island of Santorini just hours after authorities there declared a state of emergency.

The tourist hotspot has been rocked by seismic activity this week with thousands of earthquakes recorded since Sunday.

On Thursday evening, a 4.6 magnitude quake was recorded at 20:16 local time (18:00 GMT) in the sea between Santorini and another island, Amorgos, followed by a 4.2 magnitude quake roughly two hours later.

Santorini residents have begun night patrols amid fears of looting on the island, which has largely been left deserted as most residents have left.

More than 11,000 people have departed as authorities report earthquakes are being recorded on a minute-by-minute interval.
Experts have warned it is unclear when this period of “seismic crisis” on the popular tourist island might end.

Thursday’s quakes have so far not been as severe as the 5.2 magnitude shock which occurred on Wednesday in waters between the two Greek islands.

So far no injuries have been reported, and there has also been no major damage on the island.

But authorities are preparing in case a larger quake hits. On Wednesday, they warned of landslide risks to parts of the island.

Magnitude refers to the size of an earthquake, with increases marked as decimal points.

A magnitude 6.0 and above is considered severe, whereas a magnitude 5.2, the strongest experienced so far in the region, is considered moderate.

On Thursday, Greek officials said the state of emergency for the island would be in place for nearly an entire month, until 3 March.

Greece is one of Europe’s most earthquake-prone countries. Seismologists have told the BBC it is difficult to predict how long the recent wave of seismic activity will last, with authorities warning it could go on for weeks.

“It is really unprecedented, we have never seen something like this before in [modern times] in Greece,” said Dr Athanassios Ganas, research director of the National Observatory of Athens.

He told the BBC: “We are in the middle of a seismic crisis.”

The “clusters” of quakes, which began on Friday, have puzzled scientists who say such a pattern is unusual because they have not been linked to a major shock.

Dr Ganas says they are seeing many earthquakes within a relatively small area, which don’t fit the pattern of a main shock and after shock sequence.

Those remaining on the island have raised fears of a potential tsunami. They have built makeshift defences from sacks placed along the island’s Monolithos beach, where buildings stand very close to the water.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who is expected to visit Santorini on Friday, struck an optimistic tone at a meeting of civil protection experts earlier on Wednesday.

“All plans have been implemented. Forces have been moved to Santorini and the other islands, so that we are ready for any eventuality,” he said.

He asked residents to “stay calm and cooperate with the authorities”.

Santorini is on what is known as the Hellenic Volcanic Arc – a chain of islands created by volcanoes – but the last major eruption was in the 1950s.

Greek authorities have said the recent tremors were related to tectonic plate movements, not volcanic activity.

Scientists cannot predict the exact timing, size or location of earthquakes.

How a student’s teenage curiosity led to the first megalodon discovery in Canada

Louis-Philippe Bateman’s fascination with megalodon began with a single sentence in a book about Canada’s geological evolution. It described giant, mysterious fossilized shark teeth discovered in the 1960s by fishermen dredging for scallops off Canada’s Atlantic coast. The curiosity felt by the teenager with a budding interest in paleontology would resurface in a meaningful way during his undergraduate years at McGill University.

Under the mentorship of Hans Larsson, the Canada Research Chair in Vertebrate Paleontology and Professor at the Redpath Museum, Bateman delved into the study of the fossilized teeth discovered decades earlier. The fossils had never been formally studied or identified.

“I’d read about these teeth when I was in high school, and it always stuck with me,” said Bateman, now a graduate student in the Department of Biology. “When I started working with Hans, I asked if we could take a closer look while we were at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, where the fossils are held, for another project. That’s where this all began.”

The fossils turned out to belong to Otodus megalodon, the largest shark species ever to exist. This discovery marked the first confirmed evidence of megalodon in Canada.

Identifying these fossils required a mix of detective work and scientific rigor. Some specimens were accessible in museum collections, like those in Ottawa, while others existed only in historical fisheries journals or as photographs sent by museum curators. Others belonged to private collectors, some of whom were reluctant to share their nautical treasures.

Despite the challenges, Bateman’s careful analysis of diagnostic characteristics—such as the triangular shape of the teeth and their massive size—confirmed their identity.

“Megalodon teeth are pretty distinctive,” Bateman said. “Once you find specific characteristics or combinations of them, you can confidently classify the species.”

The study also examined how the ancient climate influenced where the species was found. Using a global database of megalodon fossil occurrences, Bateman and Larsson analyzed temperature data to map the shark’s range.

Their findings, now published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, showed that temperature played a significant role in limiting megalodon’s habitat, aligning with what scientists know about its physiology as a mesothermic (partially warm-blooded) predator.

‘So much potential for discovery’

While Bateman focused on identifying and contextualizing these fossils, the implications of his work extend beyond the prehistoric past.

“Megalodon was likely the largest hyper-predator to ever exist in the oceans,” Bateman said. “Knowing more about its physiology and distribution helps us understand its role in ancient ecosystems and can inform future studies on marine biodiversity and predator-prey dynamics.”

The study also highlights a broader issue in paleontology: the vast “dark data” of museum collections.

“About 90% of fossils in collections remain undescribed,” Bateman said. “Eastern Canada, in particular, is underexplored compared to regions like Alberta. There’s so much potential for discovery.”

Bateman credits Larsson’s mentorship with having played a crucial role in providing him with the tools and opportunities to pursue his passion.

“Hans encouraged me to ask questions and explore,” Bateman said. “He made it possible for me to follow this thread of curiosity from high school all the way to publication.”

More information: Louis-Philippe Bateman et al, The first Otodus megalodon remains from Canada and their predicted range limit, Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1139/cjes-2024-0110

Journal information: Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences 

Provided by McGill University 

Ice streams move due to tiny ice quakes: Dynamics of Greenland’s ice decrypted

The great ice streams of the Antarctic and Greenland are like frozen rivers, carrying ice from the massive inland ice sheets to the sea—and a change in their dynamics will contribute significantly to sea-level rise.

In order to estimate just how much sea levels will rise, climate researchers rely on computer simulations of the ice streams. Until now, they have based these simulations on an assumption that the ice streams flow slowly but steadily into the sea like thick honey.

However, satellite measurements of the flow speed of ice streams show that such simulations are inaccurate and have shortcomings to correctly reflect reality. This leads to considerable uncertainties in estimates of how much mass the ice streams are losing and how quickly and how high sea levels will rise.

Ice streams both judder and flow

Now, a team of researchers led by ETH professor Andreas Fichtner has made an unexpected discovery: deep within the ice streams, there are countless weak quakes taking place that trigger one another and propagate over distances of hundreds of meters.

This discovery helps to explain the discrepancy between current simulations of ice streams and satellite measurements, and the new findings should also impact the way ice streams are simulated in the future.

The paper is published in the journal Science.

“The assumption that ice streams only flow like viscous honey is no longer tenable. They also move with a constant stick-slip motion,” says Fichtner. The ETH professor is confident that this finding will be integrated into simulations of ice streams, making estimates of changes in sea level more accurate.

Riddles relating to ice cores resolved

The ice quakes explain the origin of numerous fault planes between ice crystals in ice cores obtained from great depths. These fault planes are the result of tectonic shifts and have been known to scientists for decades, although no explanation had been found for them until now.

“The fact that we’ve now discovered these ice quakes is a key step towards gaining a better understanding of the deformation of ice streams on small scales,” explains Olaf Eisen, Professor at the Alfred Wegener Institute and one of the study’s co-authors.

The study by this international research team led by ETH Zurich involved researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, the Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), the University of Strasbourg, the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI), the Swiss Federal Institute WSL and other universities.

Fire and ice are related

The fact that these ice quakes cannot be observed at the surface and have therefore remained undiscovered until now is due to a layer of volcanic particles located 900 meters below the surface of the ice.

This layer stops the quakes from propagating to the surface. Analysis of the ice core showed that these volcanic particles originate from a massive eruption of Mount Mazama in what is now Oregon (U.S.) some 7,700 years ago.

“We were astonished by this previously unknown relationship between the dynamics of an ice stream and volcanic eruptions,” Fichtner recalls.

The ETH professor also noticed that the ice quakes start from impurities in the ice. These impurities are also leftovers from volcanoes: tiny traces of sulfates that entered the atmosphere in volcanic eruptions and flew halfway around the world before being deposited on the Greenland ice sheet in snowfall. These sulfates reduce the stability of the ice and favor the formation of microfissures.

A 2,700-meter borehole in the ice

The researchers discovered the ice quakes using a fiber-optic cable that was inserted into a 2,700-meter-deep borehole and recorded seismic data from inside a massive ice stream for the first time.

This borehole was drilled into the ice by researchers from the East Greenland Ice-core Project (EastGRIP), led by the Niels Bohr Institute and strongly supported by the Alfred Wegener Institute, resulting in the extraction of a 2,700-meter-long ice core.

Once drilling work was complete, the researchers took the opportunity to lower a fiber-optic cable 1,500 meters into the borehole and record signals from inside the ice stream continuously for 14 hours.

The research station and borehole are located on the North East Greenland Ice Stream (NEGIS), around 400 kilometers from the coast. The NEGIS is the biggest ice stream of the Greenland ice sheet, whose retreat is a large contributor to current rising sea levels. In the area of the research station, the ice is moving towards the sea at a speed of around 50 meters per year.

As ice quakes occur frequently over a wide area in the researchers’ measurements, ETH researcher Fichtner believes it is also plausible that they occur in ice streams everywhere, all the time. To verify this, however, it will be necessary to take seismic measurements of this kind in other boreholes—and there are already plans to do just that.

More information: Andreas Fichtner, Hidden cascades of seismic ice stream deformation, Science (2025). DOI: 10.1126/science.adp8094www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp8094

Journal information: Science 

Provided by ETH Zurich 

Roving the red planet: New paper documents first Mars mission soil samples

A new paper released today documents the first soil, airfall dust, and rock fragment samples collected by NASA for return from Mars. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas astrobiologist leading the specimen selection team discusses what the samples so far reveal.

The paper is published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

To date, the only objects from Mars that humans possess are meteorites that crash-landed here on Earth. Thanks to NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Mission, scientists for the first time in history are able to retrieve handpicked samples—ranging from rock cores the size of a piece of blackboard chalk, to collections of fragmented rocks the dimensions of a pencil eraser and miniscule grains of sand or dust that could fit on the tip of a needle.

Percy, as the rover is nicknamed, launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla. in July 2020, and arrived in February 2021 at Jezero Crater—a 28-mile-wide former lakebed selected for its potential to help scientists understand the story of Mars’s wet past. The years-long mission seeks to determine whether Mars ever supported life, understand the processes and history of Mars’s climate, explore the origin and evolution of Mars as a geologic system, and prepare for human exploration.

The specimens are currently slated for return to Earth sometime in the mid-to late-2030s. In the meantime, NASA has so far collected 28 of the mission’s target of 43 samples.

“The samples will help us learn more about Mars, but they can also help us learn more about Earth because the surface of Mars is generally much older than the surface of Earth,” said UNLV College of Sciences professor Libby Hausrath, an aqueous geochemist who investigates interactions between water and minerals.

She’s a member of the NASA Mars Sample Return team that helps determine which specimens the rover will bring back to Earth for inspection by powerful lab equipment too large to send to Mars. She’s also the lead author of the new research article.

“There are many possibilities for spinoff technologies used for space exploration that can then be used on Earth,” Hausrath added. “And one of the biggest benefits we get from the space program is that it’s exciting for students and children, and can help attract people into science—we need all the future scientists to help with science topics like these and others.”

The project fulfills a decades-long dream for Hausrath, who fell in love with Mars while pursuing her Ph.D. and partnered with an advisor to write a proposal to work with data from NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers.

“This was one of my career goals for a long time, to be able to serve on a Mars mission, so I was really excited to have this opportunity,” Hausrath said. “It really is just incredible the level of detail and precision that the Perseverance rover has. To get the data back and be able to target a specific rock or soil area, and be able to take measurements and decipher information from a tiny sample or specks of dust on another planet is just mind-blowing.”

Why scientists care

Unlike Earth, Mars doesn’t have plate tectonics constantly shifting and tilting the planet’s surface. Similar to the way scientists study a tree’s rings or examine a cave’s stalactites for historical climate pattern changes, researchers are able to glean information about Mars’s 4 billion-year-old existence by using the rover’s instruments to core rocks and dig soil samples for clues to the history of Mars, including possible signs of past life.

Examining the rocks’ geochemistry and airfall dust also has the potential to shed light on how Mars’s climate heats and cools and its relative temperature. This information may also tip off how the planet formed, reveal clues about the early solar system, and help pinpoint the time period when life arose on Earth.

“During early Mars history, the planet is believed to have been warmer and had liquid water, which is much different than its current environment, which is very windy, dry, and cold,” said Hausrath. “I’m really interested in water and what kinds of environments can be habitable. And Mars, in particular, is quite similar to Earth in lots of ways. If there was past life on Mars, we might be able to see signatures of it.”

The mission also serves as a de facto scouting mission that could unlock clues about the similarities or challenges that humans might face during future trips to the red planet. To highlight the importance of recon, Hausrath recounted the experience of the first astronauts on the moon.

“The lunar regolith is actually really sharp so it was cutting holes in the astronauts’ spacesuits, which is something scientists hadn’t anticipated,” she said. “There’s a lot of dust and sand on Mars’s surface, and bringing back samples is of great interest and value to scientists to figure out how future human astronauts could interact with the particles swirling in the air or potentially use them for building materials.”

How the rover works

Percy boasts a cache of futuristic instruments that scientists can manipulate from millions of miles away. It can measure chemistry and mineralogy by shooting a laser from a distance of several meters. It has proximity instruments that can measure fine-scale elements. Researchers use the rover’s wheels to make trenches, allowing them to see below the planet’s surface. Science, engineering, and navigational cameras transport images back to Earth.

“It’s like a video game to see these images of Mars up close,” said Hausrath. “You can zoom in, see the rocks and soil, pick out a spot to measure, figure out the chemistry and mineralogy of a specific rock—it’s just incredible that we’re able to do these things that seem like they’re out of science fiction.”

Hausrath is one of the team’s tactical science leads. During daily meetings, members collaborate on instructions to send back to the rover for collection.

“There are some instruments that just can’t be miniaturized and sent to Mars,” Hausrath said, “so once the samples are back on Earth, we’ll have much finer resolution, be able to measure smaller amounts of each of the samples and with higher precision, and look at things like trace metals and isotopes.”

Until then, the samples are being held on Mars in small tubes and are either being stored on the rover or at the Three Forks depot, a swath of flat ground near the base of an ancient river delta that formed long ago when it flowed into a lake on the planet’s Jezero Crater. Scientists have mapped an intricate layout, so that the samples can be found even if buried under layers of dust.

Eventually, they’ll be retrieved by a robotic lander that’ll use a robotic arm to carefully pluck the tubes into a containment capsule aboard a small rocket that will ship them to yet another spacecraft for the long ride home to Earth.

What the rocks reveal

On Earth, life is found nearly everywhere there’s water. The Percy team is on a mission to find out if the same was true for Mars billions of years ago, when the planet’s climate was much more like ours. The rock and soil samples are being pulled from the once water-rich Jezero crater as well as the crater rim—a swath laden with clay minerals, which result from rock-water interactions and look similar to soils on Earth.

Until the samples are back on Earth, scientists won’t be able to say for sure whether they contain traces of microorganisms that may have once thrived on the red planet. But so far, there are strong indicators that bolster previous predictions about water flowing freely on Mars an estimated 2 billion years ago.

Percy’s cameras show that the surface crust differs from the soil below, with larger pebbles on top versus finer grains below the surface. Some particles are coarse and weathered, evidence that they likely touched water and thus are a sign of habitable environments in the past. Atmospheric measurements provide signs of recent processes likely including water vapor in soil crust formation.

The bedrock is abundant with olivine, a mineral also found in Mars meteorites. Olivine can undergo serpentinization—a process that occurs when olivine interacts with water and heat—which on Earth indicates the potential for habitability.

But perhaps the most exciting find (and one of Hausrath’s personal favorites) is a rock with “leopard spots” nicknamed “Cheyava Falls,” after a Grand Canyon waterfall. The rock contains phosphate, which is of interest to scientists because it’s a major building block of life on Earth—from energy metabolism and cell membranes to DNA and rNA.

Analysis continues. The NASA team is looking forward to collaborating with the European Space Agency (ESA), which plans to launch its rover, the Rosalind Franklin, in 2028. It will carry equipment to Mars capable of drilling 200 cm below the surface—much deeper than Percy’s 4–6 cm drill.

“That would probably get beneath the effects of radiation, so we’d be able to see things we haven’t seen before potentially if there were traces of organic molecules in the past on Mars,” Hausrath said.

The journey back home

NASA, in partnership with ESA, is currently slated to bring the specimen tubes home sometime between 2035 and 2039. When the samples cross back into Earth’s orbit, their first stop will be a receiving facility where they’ll be carefully inspected to determine whether they’re safe for release to researchers. The overall cache of 43 rock and soil samples will include five witness tubes to test for potential contamination.

“Planetary protection is top of mind for the mission—making sure Mars is protected from us and that we’re also protected potentially from Mars,” Hausrath said. “The goal is maintaining safety from the samples in case there are any concerns for human hazards and also preventing any contamination from us impacting the samples.”

After clearance, she said, researchers around the world will be able to request pieces of these “international treasures” for study, similar to the current program for accessing Mars meteorites.

“One of the really cool things about the mission is that it is so international and the samples are really a global effort,” Hausrath said. “It’s really great for us to work together to bring these samples back for this goal that benefits all of us.”

More information: E. M. Hausrath et al, Collection and In Situ Analyses of Regolith Samples by the Mars 2020 Rover: Implications for Their Formation and Alteration History, Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets (2025). DOI: 10.1029/2023JE008046

Journal information: Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets 

Provided by University of Nevada, Las Vegas 

Cretaceous fossil from Antarctica reveals earliest modern bird

Sixty-six million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, an asteroid impact near the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico triggered the extinction of all known non-bird dinosaurs. But for the early ancestors of today’s waterfowl, surviving that mass extinction event was like…water off a duck’s back.

Location matters, as Antarctica may have served as a refuge, protected by its distance from the turmoil taking place elsewhere on the planet. Fossil evidence suggests a temperate climate with lush vegetation, possibly serving as an incubator for the earliest members of the group that now includes ducks and geese.

A paper published in the journal Nature describes an important new fossil of the oldest known modern bird, an early relative of ducks and geese that lived in Antarctica at around the same time Tyrannosaurus rex dominated North America.

The study was led by Dr. Christopher Torres, a National Science Foundation (NSF) Postdoctoral Fellow at Ohio University’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine.

The fossil, a nearly complete, 69-million-year-old skull, belongs to an extinct bird named Vegavis iaai, and was collected during a 2011 expedition by the Antarctic Peninsula Paleontology Project.

The new skull exhibits a long, pointed beak and a brain shape unique among all known birds previously discovered from the Mesozoic Era, when non-avian dinosaurs and a bizarre collection of early birds ruled the globe. Instead, these features place Vegavis in the group that includes all modern birds, representing the earliest evidence of a now widespread and successful evolutionary radiation across the planet.

“Few birds are as likely to start as many arguments among paleontologists as Vegavis,” says lead author Dr. Torres, now a professor at University of the Pacific. “This new fossil is going to help resolve a lot of those arguments. Chief among them: where is Vegavis perched in the bird tree of life?”

Vegavis was first reported 20 years ago by study co-author Dr. Julia Clarke of The University of Texas at Austin and several colleagues. At that time, it was proposed as an early member of modern (also known as crown) birds that was evolutionarily nested within waterfowl.

But modern birds are exceptionally rare before the end-Cretaceous extinction, and more recent studies have cast doubt on the evolutionary position of Vegavis. The new specimen described in this study has something that all previous fossils of this bird have lacked: a nearly complete skull.

Cretaceous fossil from Antarctica reveals earliest modern bird
Christopher Torres, former NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Ohio University and lead author of the paper describing a new skull of the 69-million-year-old bird, Vegavis iaai, that once inhabited the shallow oceans off the coast of present-day Antarctica. Credit: Ben Siegel (Ohio University), 2021.

This new skull helps lay that skepticism to rest, preserving several traits like the shape of the brain and beak bones that are consistent with modern birds, specifically waterfowl. Unlike most waterfowl today, the skull preserves traces of powerful jaw muscles useful for overcoming water resistance while diving to snap up fish.

These skull features are consistent with clues from elsewhere in the skeleton, suggesting that Vegavis used its feet for underwater propulsion during pursuit of fish and other prey—a feeding strategy unlike that of modern waterfowl and more like that of some other birds such as grebes and loons.

“This fossil underscores that Antarctica has much to tell us about the earliest stages of modern bird evolution,” says Dr. Patrick O’Connor, co-author on the study, professor at Ohio University, and director of Earth and Space Sciences at Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

Birds known from elsewhere on the planet at around the same time are barely recognizable by modern bird standards. Moreover, most of the handful of sites that even preserve delicate bird fossils yield specimens that are so incomplete as to only give hints to their identity, as was the situation with Vegavis until now.

“And those few places with any substantial fossil record of Late Cretaceous birds, like Madagascar and Argentina, reveal an aviary of bizarre, now-extinct species with teeth and long bony tails, only distantly related to modern birds. Something very different seems to have been happening in the far reaches of the Southern Hemisphere, specifically in Antarctica,” noted Dr. O’Connor.

Cretaceous fossil from Antarctica reveals earliest modern bird
Digital reconstruction of the Late Cretaceous (~69 million years old) crown bird Vegavis iaai that was completed following high-resolution micro-computed tomography of a fossil-bearing concretion discovered on Vega Island, Antarctic Peninsula. Credit: Joseph Groenke (Ohio University) and Christopher Torres (University of the Pacific), 2025

How the Antarctic landmass helped shape modern ecosystems in deep time is a topic of active research by scientists from around the world. Indeed, according to study co-author Dr. Matthew Lamanna of Carnegie Museum of Natural History, “Antarctica is in many ways the final frontier for humanity’s understanding of life during the Age of Dinosaurs.”

Dr. Torres was supported at Ohio University for three years by the NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, working on a project examining the relationship between bird diversification and resilience to extinction through the combined lenses of ecology, brain anatomy, and other life history traits. He is now in his first year as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at University of the Pacific in Stockton, California.

“This discovery exemplifies the power of scientific research and the crucial role our institution plays in advancing knowledge about Earth’s deep history,” Ohio University President Lori Stewart Gonzalez said.

“This research not only enhances our understanding of early bird evolution but also highlights the invaluable contributions of OHIO graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who are at the forefront of these expeditions. It is through these global, expeditionary efforts—whether in the field or in the lab—that we can truly grasp the dynamic changes our planet has undergone over millions of years.

“This study is a prime example of real-world experiential learning that connects STEM education with hands-on, transformative research, preparing the next generation of scientists to tackle the challenges of the future.”

“Large-scale projects like this one, involving students and postdoctoral researchers, prepare the scientists of tomorrow to collaborate, advance science, and tackle the biggest questions facing our planet,” added Dr. O’Connor.

Other co-authors of the study include Joseph Groenke (Ohio University), Ross MacPhee (American Museum of Natural History), Grace Musser (The University of Texas at Austin and Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History), and Eric Roberts (Colorado School of Mines).

More information: Christopher Torres, Cretaceous Antarctic bird skull elucidates early avian ecological diversity, Nature (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08390-0www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08390-0

Journal information: Nature 

Provided by Ohio University 

Enceladus study shows the physics of alien oceans could hide signs of life from spacecraft

Searching for life in alien oceans may be more difficult than scientists previously thought, even when we can sample these extraterrestrial waters directly.

A new study focusing on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn that sprays its ocean water into space through cracks in its icy surface, shows that the physics of alien oceans could prevent evidence of deep-sea life from reaching places where we can detect it.

Published 6 February 2025 in Communications Earth and Environment, the study shows how Enceladus’s ocean forms distinct layers that dramatically slow the movement of material from the ocean floor to the surface.

Chemical traces, microbes, and organic material—telltale signatures of life that scientists look for—could break down or transform as they travel through the ocean’s distinct layers. These biological signatures might become unrecognizable by the time they reach the surface where spacecraft can sample them, even if life thrives in the deep ocean below.

Flynn Ames, lead author at the University of Reading, said, “Imagine trying to detect life at the depths of Earth’s oceans by only sampling water from the surface. That’s the challenge we face with Enceladus, except we’re also dealing with an ocean whose physics we do not fully understand.

“We’ve found that Enceladus’ ocean should behave like oil and water in a jar, with layers that resist vertical mixing. These natural barriers could trap particles and chemical traces of life in the depths below for hundreds to hundreds of thousands of years. Previously, it was thought that these things could make their way efficiently to the ocean top within several months.

“As the search for life continues, future space missions will need to be extra careful when sampling Enceladus’s surface waters.”

Using computer models similar to those used to study Earth’s oceans, the study has important implications for the search for life in the solar system and beyond.

As scientists discover more ice-covered ocean worlds orbiting the outer planets and distant stars, similar ocean dynamics could confine evidence of life and its building blocks to deeper waters, undetectable from the surface.

Even on worlds like Enceladus, where ocean material is conveniently sprayed into space for sampling, the long journey from deep ocean to surface could erase crucial evidence.

More information: Ocean stratification impedes particulate transport to the plumes of Enceladus’, Communications Earth & Environment (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s43247-025-02036-3

Journal information: Communications Earth & Environment 

Provided by University of Reading 

Fresh quake barrage hits Greek island Santorini

A fresh series of quakes hit the Aegean island of Santorini early on Thursday, part of an unprecedented seismic wave that has baffled scientists and led to a mass exodus of residents. Seven successive tremors measuring over 4.0 magnitude were recorded in the early morning by the Athens Geodynamic Institute, Greece’s leading authority on earthquake analysis.

This was after a 5.2 quake, the strongest so far since the weekend, was recorded on Wednesday evening.

Experts have so far been unable to give a definitive estimate on when the seismic activity will end, but stress that it is unprecedented.

“The intensity is falling but has not yet stabilized,” the institute’s research director Athanassios Ganas told state TV channel ERT.

“We’re at the halfway point,” the institute’s deputy director Vassilis Karastathis told the station.

The institute on Thursday said over 6,000 tremors had been recorded in the area near the islands of Santorini, Amorgos, Anafi and Ios since January 26.

Over 11,000 residents and seasonal workers have left Santorini since the weekend by sea and air, with operators adding extra flights and ferries.

Experts say the region has not experienced seismic activity on this scale since records began in 1964.

Santorini lies atop a volcano which last erupted in 1950—but an experts’ committee on Monday said the current tremors were “not linked to volcanic activity”.

No injuries or damage have been reported.

But rescue teams have been sent to the area as a precaution, and additional seismic sensors have been deployed.

The head of Greece’s earthquake planning and protection authority, Efthymios Lekkas, on Wednesday warned there were five areas at risk of possible rockslides on Santorini, including the ports of Fira and Athinios.

Schools on more than a dozen islands in the Cyclades have been shut as a precaution until Friday, prompting many people with children to leave Santorini until the quake scare eases.

Santorini attracted about 3.4 million visitors in 2023. Upwards of a million of those were cruise ship passengers.

European travel agents contacted by AFP said the number of foreign visitors to Santorini at this time of year was minimal, with more bookings expected in the spring.

© 2025 AFP

How Japan’s 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake shifted the landscape

Land topography is usually formed gradually over long periods of time, but sometimes a single event can dramatically change things. On New Year’s Day in 2024, a devastating earthquake in the Noto Peninsula upended the region.

A group of researchers sought to examine how this earthquake—and possibly others like it in the past—played a role in shaping the topography of the Noto Peninsula.

They found evidence that the main geomorphic characteristics of the Noto Peninsula (such as its steep cliffs in the north and gentle slopes in the south) could be explained by repeated occurrences of earthquakes of the same kind as the one that occurred on January 1. This finding may also be useful for understanding the impact future earthquakes may have.

The team of researchers from Tohoku University, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Oita University, and the German Research Center for Geosciences conducted the multi-disciplinary study that involved experts in geodesy, seismology, and geomorphology. Their paper is published in the journal Science Advances.

Satellite radar images acquired by the ALOS-2 satellite operated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) were used by the geodesy specialists to construct maps of the three-dimensional displacements caused by the Noto Peninsula earthquake.

  • Shifting landscapes due to the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake in Japan (A) Uplift distribution along the coast (black) and the retreat distance of coastline change caused by the earthquake (blue). (B) Photograph of land emergence area. (C) Photograph showing the uplift measurement survey at Kaiso Port. Credit: Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adp9193
  • Shifting landscapes due to the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake in Japan (A) Uplift distribution from the satellite image analysis and field survey. (B) North-south displacements from the satellite image analysis, after removing the displacements caused by the fault slip. (C) Fault slip model estimated from the deformation data. Credit: Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adp9193
  • Shifting landscapes due to the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake in Japan (A) Uplift distribution along the coast (black) and the retreat distance of coastline change caused by the earthquake (blue). (B) Photograph of land emergence area. (C) Photograph showing the uplift measurement survey at Kaiso Port. Credit: Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adp9193
  • Shifting landscapes due to the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake in Japan(A) Uplift distribution from the satellite image analysis and field survey. (B) North-south displacements from the satellite image analysis, after removing the displacements caused by the fault slip. (C) Fault slip model estimated from the deformation data. Credit: Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adp9193

The results showed more than 4m of uplift and emergence of new terraces along the northern coast of the peninsula, westward movement of the whole North Noto, and slope displacements in mountainous areas. Some aspects could only be fully captured by the satellite radar image analyses, such as wide-area slumps (a type of landslide) spanning several kilometers.

“To support the satellite image analyses, we had a geomorphology team conduct fieldwork and actually measure the amount of uplift in person,” explains Yo Fukushima, “They traveled to 52 sites along a 120-km section of the coastline.”

This allowed the team to compare their on-the-ground observations with the satellite image analyses. The uplift distribution was in agreement with the results of the analyses, supporting their accuracy. This information was then used by the geodesy and seismology team to estimate a fault-slip model designed to explain the uplift and westward displacement patterns.

The match between the landscape features of the peninsula and deformation associated with the earthquake suggests that repetition of large earthquakes of the same kind as the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquakes can explain the landscape buildup. The details uncovered from this study provide completely new insights that enrich our knowledge of precisely how earthquakes can drastically change the very ground we stand on.

More information: Yo Fukushima et al, Landscape changes caused by the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake in Japan, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adp9193

Journal information: Science Advances 

Provided by Tohoku University 

Efforts to find alien life could be boosted by simple test that gets microbes moving

Finding life in outer space is one of the great endeavors of humankind. One approach is to find motile microorganisms that can move independently, an ability that is a solid hint for life. If movement is induced by a chemical and an organism moves in response, it is known as chemotaxis.

Now, researchers in Germany have developed a new and simplified method for inducing chemotactic motility in some of Earth’s smallest life forms. They published their results in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences.

“We tested three types of microbes—two bacteria and one type of archaea—and found that they all moved toward a chemical called L-serine,” said Max Riekeles, a researcher at the Technical University of Berlin. “This movement, known as chemotaxis, could be a strong indicator of life and could guide future space missions looking for living organisms on Mars or other planets.”

Extreme survivors

The species included in the study were chosen due to their ability to survive in extreme environments.

The highly motile Bacillus subtilis, in its spore form, can survive extreme conditions and endure temperatures of up to 100°C. Pseudoalteromonas haloplanktis, which is isolated from Antarctic waters, has an aptitude for growing in colder environments, between -2.5° and 29°C.

The archaeon Haloferax volcanii (H. volcanii), belongs to a group similar to bacteria but is genetically different. Its natural habitats include the Dead Sea and other highly saline environments, so it, too, is well adapted to tolerate extreme conditions.

“Bacteria and archaea are two of the oldest forms of life on Earth, but they move in different ways and evolved motility systems independently from each other,” Riekeles explained. “By testing both groups, we can make life detection methods more reliable for space missions.”

L-serine, the amino acid the researchers used to get these species moving, has previously been shown to trigger chemotaxis in a wide range of species from all domains of life. It is also believed to exist on Mars. If life on Mars has a similar biochemistry to life on Earth, it is plausible that L-serine could attract potential Martian microbes.

Moving microbes

The results showed that L-serine worked as an attractor for all three species. “Especially, the usage of H. volcanii broadens the scope of potential life forms that can be detected using chemotaxis-based methodologies, even when it is known that some archaea possess chemotactic systems,” Riekeles explained.

“Since H. volcanii is thriving in extreme salty environments, it could be a good model for the kinds of life we might find on Mars.”

The researchers used a simplified approach, which might make the difference between it being feasible on future space missions or not. Instead of complex equipment, they used a slide with two chambers separated by a thin membrane. Microbes are placed on one side, and the chemical L-serine is added to the other.

“If the microbes are alive and able to move, they swim toward the L-serine through the membrane,” Riekeles explained. “This method is easy, affordable, and doesn’t require powerful computers to analyze the results.”

For this method to work on a space mission, however, some adjustments to the process would be needed, the researchers said. Smaller and more robust equipment that can survive the harsh conditions of space travel and a system that can work automatically without human intervention are two of them.

Once these difficulties are overcome, microbial movement could help detect microbes that might exist in outer space, for example, in the ocean of Jupiter’s moon Europa.

“This approach could make life detection cheaper and faster, helping future missions achieve more with fewer resources,” concluded Riekeles. “It could be a simple way to look for life on future Mars missions and a useful addition for direct motility observation techniques.”

More information: Application of chemotactic behavior for life detection, Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.3389/fspas.2024.1490090

Provided by Frontiers