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The first ancient flying reptiles were winners of increasing Triassic humid environments

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The first ancient flying reptiles were winners of increasing Triassic humid environments

Pterosaurs, which dominated the skies of the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, first evolved to take to the air in warm and humid conditions during the Late Triassic, a new study suggests.

In a paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, a research team—including academics from the University of Birmingham, University College London and Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany—has combined data on the distribution of fossils in the Triassic period with information on the ancient climate in the same areas.

The team focused on the distribution of two closely related groups, pterosaurs and lagerpetids. Living approximately 240–201 million years ago, lagerpetids were a group of relatively small (rat-to-dog-sized) land- and tree-dwelling active reptiles. These small land-based reptiles are now considered the closest relatives to pterosaurs, the study reveals, and were able to tolerate a wider range of climate conditions than their close flying kin, including the arid areas of the ancient landmass Pangea. This broad tolerance resulted in a widespread distribution of this group.

Pterosaurs, meanwhile, appear to have been at first confined to the more humid conditions found in smaller areas of the ancient world, based on fossils found in modern-day Italy and Austria, and the southwestern U.S.A., all regions that at the time were close to the equator.

During the Late Triassic, climatic conditions changed across the globe, leading to a general increase in warm and humid conditions outside the equatorial belt. This became an opportunity that allowed the flying reptiles to rapidly spread across the globe, including to high-latitude areas such as what is now Greenland and South America.

Dr. Davide Foffa from the University of Birmingham, and corresponding author of the paper, said, “Pterosaurs capture the imagination, with the idea of terrifying reptiles dominating the air at the time while dinosaurs were roaming the world. However, pterosaur origins are still wrapped in mystery. Our study adds new information to this puzzle, suggesting that their early evolution during the Triassic period into a dominant group may have been favored by changing climates and environments.”

Dr. Emma Dunne, from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, and a co-author of the paper, added, “Climate change is a leading cause of biodiversity change, both in the present day and the geological past. However, it is only in the last few years [with advances in modeling methods] that paleontologists are getting to grips with how climate change impacted the biodiversity of prominent fossil groups like the pterosaurs.”

Dr. Alessandro Chiarenza, from University College London, and co-leading author of the paper, noted, “Taken together, ecological models and fossil data paint a coherent picture of early pterosaur evolution. Lagerpetids thrived as generalists, while pterosaurs, initially confined to humid tropical niches and perhaps limited flight performance, occupied equatorial treetops.”

When global climates shifted and forested corridors opened, those same wings catapulted them into every corner of the planet and ultimately carried them through one of Earth’s greatest extinctions. What began as a tale of missing fossils is becoming a textbook example of how paleoclimate, paleoecology and evolutionary innovation intertwine to illuminate a patchy history that has intrigued paleontologists for two centuries.

More information: Climate drivers and palaeobiogeography of lagerpetids and early pterosaurs, Nature Ecology & Evolution (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41559-025-02767-8

Journal information: Nature Ecology & Evolution 

Provided by University of Birmingham 

Where do Antarctic submarine canyons get their marine life?

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Where do Antarctic submarine canyons get their marine life?

Submarine canyons around Antarctica tend to have less sea ice, higher sea surface temperatures, and more biomass such as phytoplankton blooms than the shelves they cut into. Phytoplankton blooms feed Antarctic krill, making these canyons an attractive feeding ground for larger predators such as penguins, who make permanent homes for foraging and breeding on the shores surrounding submarine canyons.

Previous studies suggested that, as on a farm, the phytoplankton blooms that attract predators were locally grown, supported by the upwelling of nutrient-rich water. But newer research shows that water moves through the canyon more quickly than phytoplankton can accumulate, so it is likely that currents transport most of the surface biomass into the canyon from other parts of the ocean. Canyons therefore act more like biomass supermarkets, to which food is delivered, than like farms.

In an article published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, Darren McKee and colleagues examined to what degree phytoplankton grow locally in Palmer Deep canyon on the western Antarctic Peninsula versus being transported in by ocean currents. To do so, they used high-frequency radar to measure ocean currents and satellite imagery taken hours to days apart to measure levels of surface chlorophyll, a proxy for phytoplankton.

The results showed that both processes were occurring. Ocean currents appeared to bring in much of the phytoplankton that flowed on the western side of the canyon, making it more like a supermarket, the researchers write. In contrast, more phytoplankton seem to be growing in place on the eastern flank, making it more like a farm.

The authors also examined how the movement of water correlated to plankton growth, by tracking chlorophyll levels in moving parcels of water. In general, they found that water parcels that saw an increase in phytoplankton levels as they moved through the canyon tended to exhibit more clockwise motion, whereas parcels that saw decreasing phytoplankton levels showed more counterclockwise rotation.

More information: Darren C. McKee et al, Disentangling Advection and Lagrangian Evolution of Surface Chlorophyll in a Nearshore Submarine Canyon Using Satellite Remote Sensing and High‐Frequency Radar, Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans (2025). DOI: 10.1029/2024JC022101

Journal information: Journal of Geophysical Research 

Provided by Eos

This story is republished courtesy of Eos, hosted by the American Geophysical Union. Read the original story here.

Bolg amondol: New monstersaur reveals complex evolutionary history of giant Gila monster relatives

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Bolg amondol: New monstersaur reveals complex evolutionary history of giant Gila monster relatives

A newly discovered, raccoon-sized armored monstersaurian from the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Southern Utah, United States, reveals a surprising diversity of large lizards at the pinnacle of the age of dinosaurs.

Named for the goblin prince from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” the new species Bolg amondol, also illuminates the sometimes-murky path that life traveled between ancient continents.

“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,” said lead author Hank Woolley from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County’s Dinosaur Institute.

“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.”

Published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the collaborative research led by the Dinosaur Institute and the Natural History Museum of Utah (NHMU) reveals hidden treasures awaiting future paleontologists in the bowels of museum fossil collections, and the vast potential of paleontological heritage preserved in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and other public lands.

“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, associate professor at the University of Utah and curator of paleontology at NHMU.

“The fact that Bolg co-existed 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 micro-habitats.”

New monstersaur species a 'goblin prince' among dinosaurs
Artistic reconstruction of Bolg amondol, depicted raiding an oviraptorosaur dinosaur nest amidst the lush Kaiparowits Formation habitat. Credit: Cullen Townsend

A Middle Earth-inspired moniker

Bolg represents an evolutionary lineage that sprouted within a group of large-bodied lizards called monstersaurs, that still roam the deserts from which Bolg was recovered. Woolley knew that a new species of monstersaur called for an appropriate name from an iconic monster creator, Tolkien.

“Bolg is a great-sounding name. It’s a goblin prince from ‘The Hobbit,’ and I think of these lizards as goblin-like, especially looking at their skulls,” said Woolley.

He used the fictional Tolkien Elvish language Sindarin to craft the species epithet. “Amon” means “mound,” and “dol” means “head,” a reference to the mound-like osteoderms found on Bolg’s and other monstersaur’s skulls. “Mound-headed Bolg” would fit right in with the goblins—and it’s revealing quite a bit about monstersaurs.

Hidden gems in collection drawers

The Bolg amondol discovery highlights the likelihood that more large-bodied lizards existed during the Late Cretaceous Period than previously thought.

Bolg, along with other fossils from the Kaiparowits Formation, demonstrate that at least three types of predatory lizards lived in the Late Cretaceous sub-tropical floodplains of what is now Southern Utah. Additionally, this find shows that unexplored diversity is waiting to be dug up both in the field and in paleontology collections.

“Bolg is a great example of the importance of natural history museum collections,” Irmis said. “Although we knew the specimen was significant when it was discovered back in 2005, it took a specialist in lizard evolution like Hank to truly recognize its scientific importance and take on the task of researching and scientifically describing this new species.”

New monstersaur species a 'goblin prince' among dinosaurs
Identified bones belonging to Bolg amondol. They are not much to look at, but they are jam-packed with valuable information on the anatomy and lifestyle of Bolg amondol. Credit: Natural History Museum of Utah/Bureau of Land Management

The researchers identified the new species from tiny pieces of skull, limbs, girdles, vertebrae and bony armor called osteoderms. Most fossil lizards from the age of dinosaurs are even scrappier—often just single, isolated bones or teeth—so despite their fragmentary nature, the parts of Bolg’s skeleton that survived contain a stunning amount of information.

“That means more characteristics are available for us to assess and compare to similar-looking lizards. Importantly, we can use those characteristics to understand this animal’s evolutionary relationships and test hypotheses about where it fits on the lizard tree of life,” Woolley said.

Stairway to monstersaurs

The monstersauria are characterized by their large size and distinctive features, such as sharp, spire-like teeth and pitted, polygonal armor attached to their skulls. They have a roughly 100-million-year history, but their fossil record is largely incomplete, making the discovery a big deal for understanding these charismatic lizards. Bolg would have been a bit of a monster to our eyes.

“Three feet tip to tail, maybe even bigger than that, depending on the length of the tail and torso,” said Woolley. “So, by modern lizard standards, they’re a very large animal, similar in size to a Savannah monitor lizard; something that you wouldn’t want to mess around with.”

Bolg’s closest known relative hails from the other side of the planet in the Gobi Desert of Asia. Though dinosaurs have long been known to have traveled between the once-connected continents of the Late Cretaceous Period, Bolg reveals that smaller animals also made the trek, suggesting there were common patterns of biogeography across terrestrial vertebrates during this time.

The rocks where Bolg was discovered—the Kaiparowits Formation of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument—have emerged as a paleontological hotspot over the past 25 years, producing one of the most astounding dinosaur-dominated records in North America. Discoveries like this underscore the importance of preserving public lands in the Western U.S. for science and research.

“The exceptional record of big lizards from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument may prove to be a normal part of dinosaur-dominated ecosystems from North America, filling key roles as smaller predators hunting down eggs and small animals in the forests of Laramidia,” said co-author Joe Sertich from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Colorado State University.

More information: New monstersaur specimens from the Kaiparowits Formation of Utah reveal unexpected richness of largebodied lizards in Late Cretaceous North America, Royal Society Open Science (2025). DOI: 10.1098/rsos.250435

Journal information: Royal Society Open Science 

Provided by University of Utah 

Earliest evidence of humans in the Americas confirmed

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Earliest evidence of humans in the Americas confirmed

Vance Holliday jumped at the invitation to go do geology at New Mexico’s White Sands. The landscape, just west of Alamogordo, looks surreal—endless, rolling dunes of fine beige gypsum, left behind by ancient seas. It’s one of the most unique geologic features in the world.

But a national park protects much of the area’s natural resources, and the U.S. Army uses an adjacent swath as a missile range, making research at White Sands impossible much of the time. So it was an easy call for Holliday, a University of Arizona archaeologist and geologist, to accept an invitation in 2012 to do research in the park. While he was there, he asked, skeptically, if he could look at a site on the missile range.

“Well, next thing I know, there we were on the missile range,” he said.

Holliday and a graduate student spent several days examining geologic layers in trenches, dug by previous researchers, to piece together a timeline for the area. They had no idea that, about 100 yards away, there were footprints, preserved in ancient clay and buried under gypsum, that would help spark a wholly new theory about when humans arrived in the Americas.

Researchers from Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom and the U.S. National Park Service excavated those footprints in 2019 and published their paper in 2021. Holliday did not participate in the excavation but became a co-author after some of his 2012 data helped date the footprints.

The tracks showed human activity in the area occurred between 23,000 and 21,000 years ago—a timeline that would upend anthropologists’ understanding of when cultures developed in North America. It would make the prints about 10,000 years older than remains found 90 years ago at a site near Clovis, New Mexico, which gave its name to an artifact assemblage long understood by archaeologists to represent the earliest known culture in North America.

Critics have spent the last four years questioning the 2021 findings, largely arguing that the ancient seeds and pollen in the soil used to date the footprints were unreliable markers.

Now, Holliday leads a new study that supports the 2021 findings—this time relying on ancient mud to radiocarbon date the footprints, not seeds and pollen, and an independent lab to make the analysis. The paper was published in the journal Science Advances.

Specifically, the new paper finds that the mud is between 20,700 and 22,400 years old—which correlates with the original finding that the footprints are between 21,000 and 23,000 years old. The new study now marks the third type of material—mud in addition to seeds and pollen—used to date the footprints, and by three different labs. Two separate research groups now have a total of 55 consistent radiocarbon dates.

“It’s a remarkably consistent record,” said Holliday, a professor emeritus in the School of Anthropology and Department of Geosciences who has studied the “peopling of the Americas” for nearly 50 years, focusing largely on the Great Plains and the Southwest.

“You get to the point where it’s really hard to explain all this away,” he added. “As I say in the paper, it would be serendipity in the extreme to have all these dates giving you a consistent picture that’s in error.”

Millennia ago, White Sands was a series of lakes that eventually dried up. Wind erosion piled the gypsum into the dunes that define the area today. The footprints were excavated in the beds of a stream that flowed into one such ancient lake.

“The wind erosion destroyed part of the story, so that part is just gone,” Holliday said. “The rest is buried under the world’s biggest pile of gypsum sand.”

For the latest study, Holliday and Jason Windingstad, a doctoral candidate in environmental science, returned to White Sands in 2022 and 2023 and dug a new series of trenches for a closer look at the geology of the lake beds. Windingstad had worked at White Sands as a consulting geoarchaeologist for other research teams when he agreed to join Holliday’s study.

“It’s a strange feeling when you go out there and look at the footprints and see them in person,” Windingstad said. “You realize that it basically contradicts everything that you’ve been taught about the peopling of North America.”

Holliday acknowledges that the new study doesn’t address a question he’s heard from critics since 2021: Why are there no signs of artifacts or settlements left behind by those who made the footprints?

It’s a fair question, Holliday and Windingstad said, and Holliday still does not have a peer-reviewed answer. Some of the footprints uncovered for the 2021 study were part of trackways that would have taken just a few seconds to walk, Holliday estimates. It’s perfectly reasonable, he said, to assume that hunter-gatherers would be careful not to leave behind any resources in such a short timeframe.

“These people live by their artifacts, and they were far away from where they can get replacement material. They’re not just randomly dropping artifacts,” he said. “It’s not logical to me that you’re going to see a debris field.”

Even though he was confident in the 2021 findings to begin with, Holliday said, he’s glad to have more data to support them.

“I really had no doubt from the outset because the dating we had was already consistent,” Holliday said. “We have direct data from the field—and a lot of it now.”

More information: Vance Holliday, Paleo-lake Geochronology Supports Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) Age for Human Tracks at White Sands, New Mexico, Science Advances (2025). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adv4951. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adv4951

Journal information: Science Advances 

Provided by University of Arizona 

Eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki volcano creates ash plume visible 90 miles away

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Eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki volcano creates ash plume visible 90 miles away

Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki volcano in south-central Indonesia erupted Tuesday, spewing towering columns of hot ash into the air. Authorities raised the eruption alert to the highest level and expanded the danger zone to 8 kilometers (about 5 miles) from the crater.

Indonesia’s Geology Agency said in a statement it recorded the volcano unleashing 10,000 meters (about 32,800 feet) of thick grey clouds on Tuesday afternoon, following significant volcanic activities, including 50 in two hours, rather than the usual daily 8 to 10 activities.

The ashes expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud that could be seen from the cities located 90 kilometers (about 56 miles) to 150 kilometers (nearly 93 miles) from the mountain.

There were no casualties reported.

Eruption of Indonesia's Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki volcano creates ash plume visible 90 miles away
Volcanic smoke billows from Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki during an eruption, as seen from Lembata, Indonesia, Tuesday, June 17, 2025. Credit: AP Photo/Andre Kriting

Residents were warned to be vigilant about heavy rainfall triggering lava flows in rivers originating from the volcano.

An eruption of Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki in November killed nine people and injured dozens. It also erupted in March.

The 1,584-meter (5,197-foot) mountain is a twin volcano with Mount Lewotobi Perempuan in the district of Flores Timur.

Indonesia is an archipelago of 270 million people with frequent seismic activity. It has 120 active volcanoes and sits along the “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

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

Ancient termite poo reveals 120 million-year-old secrets of Australia’s polar forests

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Ancient termite poo reveals 120 million-year-old secrets of Australia’s polar forests

Imagine a lush forest with tree-ferns, their trunks capped by ribbon-like fronds. Conifers tower overhead, bearing triangular leaves almost sharp enough to pierce skin. Flowering plants are both small and rare.

You’re standing in what is now Victoria, Australia, about 127 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous Period. Slightly to your south, a massive river—more than a kilometer wide—separates you from Tasmania. This river flows along the valley forming between Australia and Antarctica as the two continents begin to split apart.

During the Early Cretaceous, southeastern Australia was some of the closest land to the South Pole. Here, the night lasted for three months in winter, contrasting with three months of daytime in summer. Despite this extreme day-night cycle, various kinds of dinosaurs still thrived here, as did flies, wasps and dragonflies.

And, as our recently published research in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology reveals, termites also chewed through the decaying wood of fallen trees. This is the first record of termites living in a polar region—and their presence provides key insights into what these ancient forests were like.

Home makers, not homewreckers

Termites might have a public reputation as homewreckers.

But these wood-eating bugs are a key part of many environments, freeing up nutrients contained in dead plants. They are one of the best organisms at breaking down large amounts of wood, and significantly speed up the decay of fallen wood in forests.

The breakdown of wood by termites makes it easier for further consumption by other animals and fungi.

Their role in ancient Victoria’s polar forests would have been just as important, as the natural decay of wood is very slow in cold conditions.

Although the cold winters would have slowed termites too, they may have thrived during long periods of darkness, just as modern termites are more active during the night.

The oldest termite nest in Australia

Our new paper, led by Monash University paleontology research associate Jonathan Edwards, reports the discovery of an ancient termite nest near the coastal town of Inverloch in southeastern Victoria. Preserved in an 80-centimeter-long piece of fossilized log, the nest tunnels carved out by termites were first spotted by local fossil-hunter extraordinaire Melissa Lowery.

Without its discoverers knowing what it was then, the log was brought into the lab and we began investigating the origins of its structures.

Understanding the nest was challenging at first: the tunnels exposed on the surface were filled with what looked like tiny grains of rice, each around 2 millimeters long. We suspected they were most likely the coprolites (fossilized poo) of the nest-makers. Once we took a look under the microscope we noticed something very interesting: this poo was hexagonal.

How did this shape point to termites as the “poopetrators”?

Modern termites have a gut with three sets of muscle bands. Just before excretion, their waste is squeezed to save as much water as possible, giving an almost perfect hexagonal shape to the pellets.

The size, shape, distribution and quantity of coprolites meant we had just discovered the oldest termite nest in Australia—and perhaps the largest termite wood nest from dinosaur times.

A global distribution

We continued to investigate the nest with more specific methods.

For example, we scanned parts of it with the Australian Synchrotron—a research facility that uses X-rays and infrared radiation to see the structure and composition of materials. This showed us what the unweathered coprolites inside the log looked like.

We also made very thin slices of the nest and looked at these slices with high-powered microscopes. And we analyzed the chemistry of the log, which further supported our original theory of the nest’s identity.

The oldest fossilized termites have been found in the northern hemisphere about 150 million years ago, during the Late Jurassic Period.

What is exciting is that our trace fossils show they had reached the southernmost landmasses by 127 million years ago. This presence means they had likely spread all over Earth by this point.

The termites weren’t alone

Surprisingly, these termites also had smaller wood-eating companions.

During our investigation, we also noticed coprolites more than 10 times smaller than those made by termites. These pellets likely belonged to wood-eating oribatid mites—minuscule arachnids with fossils dating back almost 400 million years. Many of their tunnels ring those left by the termites, telling us they inhabited this nest after the termites abandoned it.

Termite tunnels may have acted as mite highways, taking them deeper into the log. Moreover, because both groups ate the toughest parts of wood, these two invertebrates might have directly competed at the time. Modern oribatid mites only eat wood affected by fungi.

Regardless, our study documents the first known interaction of wood-nesting termites and oribatid mites in the fossil record.

This nest also provides important support for the idea that Australia’s polar forests weren’t dominated by ice, as modern termites can’t tolerate prolonged freezing.

This is the first record of termites living in a polar region, and their presence suggests relatively mild polar winters—something like 6°C on average. Termites would’ve been key players in these ecosystems, kickstarting wood breakdown and nutrient cycling in an otherwise slow environment.

So maybe next time you spot a termite nest, you’ll see a builder, not a bulldozer.

More information: Jonathan P. Edwards et al, Earliest trace fossil evidence of wood-eating termites (Isoptera) and mites (Oribatida) in circumpolar environments of Australia, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2025.113059

Journal information: Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Thick clay layers on Mars may have been stable place for ancient life

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Thick clay layers on Mars may have been stable place for ancient life

The planet Mars is home to thick layers of clay that can span hundreds of feet. Since they need water to form, these outcrops have long been of interest to scientists looking for signs of past life on the red planet.

In a new study published in Nature Astronomy, scientists from The University of Texas at Austin and collaborators took a closer look at these clay terrains and found that most formed near standing bodies of surface water, which were common on Mars billions of years ago. This environment would help foster the chemical weathering needed to create thick, mineral-rich layers of clay and could have provided the right mix of water, minerals and a calm environment for life to develop.

“These areas have a lot of water but not a lot of topographic uplift, so they’re very stable,” said the study’s lead author Rhianna Moore, who conducted the research as a postdoctoral fellow at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences. “If you have stable terrain, you’re not messing up your potentially habitable environments. Favorable conditions might be able to be sustained for longer periods of time.”

The study was conducted as part of UT’s Center for Planetary Systems Habitability, which investigates the origins and requirements for life on Earth and other planetary bodies. Moore is now with NASA as part of a team supporting the Artemis mission to the moon.

The researchers noted that the thick clays could also be a sign of an imbalanced water and carbon cycle on ancient Mars, which could explain why Mars appears to be missing carbonate rocks in environments where they would be expected on Earth.

Billions of years ago, Mars was a wet world. It had lakes and rivers, which created geological formations that are carved on the surface of the planet today. The thick clay layers formed during this wet period. However, before this study, little was known about the environments in which they formed and how the surrounding terrain influenced their evolution.

Moore analyzed images and data from 150 clay deposits that had been previously identified in a global survey conducted by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. She investigated trends in their topographical characteristics and how close they were to other geological features, such as former bodies of water.

She found that the clays were mostly found at low elevations near lake deposits but away from valley networks, where water is thought to have flowed more vigorously across the terrain. This balance between chemical and physical weathering led to their preservation through time. Co-author Tim Goudge, an assistant professor at the Jackson School’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said that the Mars clay environment is similar to the tropical places where thick clay layers are found on Earth.

“On Earth, the places where we tend to see the thickest clay mineral sequences are in humid environments, and those with minimal physical erosion that can strip away newly created weathering products,” he said. “These results suggest that the latter element is true also on Mars, while there are hints at the former as well.”

However, the clays also reflect an ancient Martian world that was very different from the Earth of today.

On Earth, shifting tectonic plates are constantly exposing fresh rock that can readily react with water and CO2 in the atmosphere, which helps regulate the climate. However, Mars lacks tectonic activity. When Martian volcanoes released CO2 into the atmosphere, the lack of a source for new reactive rock would have led the greenhouse gas to linger—causing the planet to become warmer and wetter. The researchers suggest that these conditions may have contributed to the formation of the clays.

What’s more, the lack of new rock on the surface may have impeded the chemical reactions needed to form carbonate rock—which would normally form from volcanic rock that underlies most Martian geology given CO2, water and time. Ongoing clay formation may have contributed to the dearth of carbonates by sucking up water and sequestering chemical byproducts in the clay, rather than having them leach out into the wider environment, where they could react with the surrounding geology.

“It’s probably one of many factors that’s contributing to this weird lack of predicted carbonates on Mars,” said Moore.

More information: Rhianna D. Moore et al, Deep chemical weathering on ancient Mars landscapes driven by erosional and climatic patterns, Nature Astronomy (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02584-w

Journal information: Nature Astronomy 

Provided by University of Texas at Austin 

From asteroid mining to space rustling—what do we do when an asteroid threatens Earth?

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From asteroid mining to space rustling—what do we do when an asteroid threatens Earth?

Asteroids colliding with Earth might seem farfetched, but the planetary threat is real. Just this year news broke of an asteroid with a 1%–2% chance of a fatal collision occurring in 2032. While more recent measurements of Asteroid 2024 YR4 suggest the threat will not be realized this time, what about the next time?

A new Swinburne research paper published in Aerospace delves into the ethical, legal and social issues involved in asteroid mining and planetary defense. It highlights the need for a framework or governing body to be established to protect civilization.

This is not a new issue but one that continues to plague the world, with no clear mandates for who should act in the interest of protecting the planet and our lives, says lead author Swinburne bioethicist expert Dr. Evie Kendal.

“It is not just in planetary defense that human interactions with asteroids fall into an ethical and legal gray area, with asteroid mining continuing to attract prospective businesses despite a lack of clarity regarding ownership rights.

“While the legal situation is being considered globally, various ethical issues remain, including how to protect occupational health and safety for off-world miners, how off-world mineral assets should be taxed and how we can avoid space piracy and claim-jumping that would undermine confidence among prospectors.

“More broadly, issues like should we be disturbing the space environment at all and if so, where should the extracted resources be used to avoid exacerbating climate change on Earth, warrant closer attention.”

Dr. Kendal points to NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, a collaboration with private company, SpaceX. DART crashed into the Didymos asteroid in September 2022, successfully altering its trajectory.

“This was a world first proof-of-concept for planetary defense using kinetic impactor technology.”

While most asteroids and comets burn up in the atmosphere on their way to Earth, larger ones like 2024 YR4 could cause significant damage and even global catastrophes.

“For a planetary defense response, many assume the UN-endorsed Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG) will play a central role and most likely lean heavily on those involved in the DART mission,” says Dr. Kendal.

“However, the highly publicized tensions between the current US President, Donald Trump, and the founder and CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, coupled with recent funding decisions severely impacting the scope of NASA’s work, mean such an assumption should be doubted.”

Frameworks and governing bodies need to be developed now in order to prepare and protect for the future, Dr. Kendal says. The 2021 comedy film “Don’t Look Up,” also explores a hypothetical scenario in which a planetary defense action is undermined so a private company can mine the valuable comet instead.

“In both the asteroid mining and planetary defense contexts, we can no longer rely on non-binding agreements or assumptions based on historical cooperation. We need clear ethical and policy guidance to govern continued human activity in the space domain.”

More information: Evie Kendal et al, Technical Challenges and Ethical, Legal and Social Issues (ELSI) for Asteroid Mining and Planetary Defense, Aerospace (2025). DOI: 10.3390/aerospace12060544

Provided by Swinburne University of Technology 

Fossil discovery reveals giant ancient salamander

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Fossil discovery reveals giant ancient salamander

A giant, strong-jawed salamander once tunneled through ancient Tennessee soil. And thanks to a fossil unearthed near East Tennessee State University, scientists now better understand how it helped shape Appalachian amphibian diversity.

The giant plethodontid salamander now joins the remarkable roster of fossils from the Gray Fossil Site & Museum.

The findings appear in the journal Historical Biology, authored by a team of researchers from the Gray Fossil Site & Museum and ETSU: Assistant Collections Manager Davis Gunnin, Director and Professor of Geosciences Dr. Blaine Schubert, Head Curator and Associate Professor of Geosciences Dr. Joshua Samuels, Museum Specialist Keila Bredehoeft and Assistant Collections Manager Shay Maden.

“Our researchers are not only uncovering ancient life, they are modeling the kind of collaboration and curiosity that define ETSU,” said Dr. Joe Bidwell, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

“This exciting find underscores the vital role our university plays in preserving and exploring Appalachia’s deep natural history.”

Today, Southern Appalachian forests are renowned for their diversity and abundance of salamander species, especially lungless salamanders of the family Plethodontidae. Tennessee alone is home to more than 50 different salamanders—one in eight of all living salamander species.

Dusky salamanders, common in Appalachian Mountain streams, likely evolved from burrowing ancestors, relatives of Alabama’s Red Hills salamander, a large, underground-dwelling species with a worm-like body and small limbs. Their explosive diversification began around 12 million years ago, shaping much of the region’s salamander diversity today.

Dynamognathus robertsoni, the powerful, long-extinct salamander recently discovered at the site, had a bite to match its name. Roughly 16 inches long, it ranked among the largest salamanders ever to crawl across the region’s ancient forests.

“Finding something that looks like a Red Hills salamander here in East Tennessee was a bit of a surprise,” Gunnin said.

“Today, they’re only found in a few counties in southern Alabama, and researchers thought of them as a highly specialized dead-end lineage not particularly relevant to the evolution of the dusky salamanders.

“Discovery of Dynamognathus robertsoni here in Southern Appalachia shows that these types of relatively large, burrowing salamanders were once more widespread in eastern North America and may have had a profound impact on the evolution of Appalachian salamander communities.

Dynamognathus robertsoni is “the largest plethodontid salamander and one of the largest terrestrial salamanders in the world,” Gunnin said. Dusky salamanders in the Appalachians today reach only seven inches long at their largest.

Researchers believe predators like this one may have driven the rapid evolution of Appalachian stream-dwelling salamanders, highlighting the region’s key role in salamander diversification.

“The warmer climate in Tennessee 5 million years ago, followed by cooling during the Pleistocene ice ages, may have restricted large, burrowing salamanders to lower latitudes, like southern Alabama, where the Red Hills salamander lives today,” said Samuels

Maden explained the naming of this new salamander.

“This group of salamanders has unusual cranial anatomy that gives them a strong bite force, so the genus name—Dynamognathus—Greek for ‘powerful jaw,’ is given to highlight the great size and power of the salamander compared to its living relatives,” said Maden.

The species name robertsoni honors longtime Gray Fossil Site volunteer Wayne Robertson, who discovered the first specimen of the new salamander and has personally sifted through more than 50 tons of fossil-bearing sediment since 2000.

From volunteers and students to staff to faculty, the ETSU Gray Fossil Site & Museum is represented by a dynamic team of lifelong learners and is one of the many reasons ETSU is the flagship institution of Appalachia.

“The latest salamander publication is a testament to this teamwork and search for answers,” said Schubert.

“When Davis Gunnin, the lead author, began volunteering at the museum as a teenager with an interest in fossil salamanders, I was thrilled, because this region is known for its salamander diversity today, and we know so little about their fossil record. Thus, the possibility of finding something exciting seemed imminent.”

More information: Davis Gunnin et al, A new plethodontid salamander from the Early Pliocene of northeastern Tennessee, U.S.A., and its bearing on desmognathan evolution, Historical Biology (2025). DOI: 10.1080/08912963.2025.2501332

Journal information: Historical Biology 

Provided by East Tennessee State University

Oldest known dinosaur bone infection found in 220-million-year-old Plateosaurus

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Oldest known dinosaur bone infection found in 220-million-year-old Plateosaurus

The dinosaur that welcomes visitors to the Natural History Museum harbors a fascinating history. Researchers have identified a severe bone infection in the dinosaur, which lived around 220 million years ago in Switzerland and met a sticky end in the mud.

During the Late Triassic period, some 220 million years ago, a nearly eight-meter-long Plateosaurus roamed among the giant horsetails that stood two meters tall in what is now the Frick Valley in the canton of Aargau. The dinosaur got stuck in the mud, which was a common cause of death for its kind.

At that time, the Frick area resembled a playa; a large, flat depression within a semi-arid basin susceptible to flooding. This created large mud traps in which many of these animals would perish. However, this particular dinosaur’s odds of escaping the sticky mud were even lower than usual, as it suffered from a major bone infection that rendered its right arm useless.

In 2018, the almost complete skeleton of this dinosaur was discovered in the Frick valley. Plateosaurus trossingensis would have walked on its two hind limbs and is a forerunner of the iconic giant long-necked, long-tailed sauropods, such as the famous Diplodocus.

It was excavated and prepared as a prominent exhibit for the new Natural History Museum of the University of Zurich (UZH) to replace Meggie the Megatherium, a popular but scientifically inaccurate reconstruction of an ancient giant sloth.

Deep-dive into the dinosaur’s bone structure

Researchers at the Department of Paleontology, the Natural History Museum of UZH, and the Frick Dinosaur Museum have now described the skeleton and studied the chronic disease affecting its right shoulder and upper arm. For a glimpse inside the fossil, the team used computed tomography (CT). The work is published in the Swiss Journal of Palaeontology.

But which CT scanner could accommodate a dinosaur’s limbs? At the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) in Dübendorf, luckily, an array of CT equipment was available—including 3D micro CT scanners and a 2D fan-beam Linac scanner capable of scanning samples measuring up to 70 x 200 cm and weighing up to one ton—perfect for the dinosaur’s upper arm and shoulder bones. The team identified the disease as likely a very severe case of osteomyelitis, an infection of the bone tissue.

Oldest diagnosis of bone infection in a dinosaur
The exhibit today at the Natural History Museum includes the life-sized reconstruction of Plateosaurus in the foreground, a partial reconstruction of its habitat and the excavated skeleton. Credit: Stefanie Herter

“Osteomyelitis affects many living animals, including mammals such as humans, as well as birds and reptiles,” explains Jordan Bestwick, postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Paleontology at UZH.

“This disease is known to have affected several different dinosaur groups, including sauropods, so we had access to a range of specimens to compare our Plateosaurus with. The affected bones in the shoulder and upper arm have unusually rough internal and external textures, altered shapes, and are even fused together—symptoms that are broadly typical of osteomyelitis.”

This discovery is fascinating not only because, at around 220 million years old, it is currently the oldest reported case of osteomyelitis in a dinosaur, but the size of the infected area was unusually large.

“Previous studies of osteomyelitis in dinosaurs report localized areas of infection, such as toe bones or a couple of adjacent bones in the spine,” explains Jordan Bestwick.

“Having an entire infected shoulder and upper arm is very unusual. Although we don’t know what initially caused the infection, the animal likely suffered from this disease for a substantial part of its life, possibly rendering its right arm useless.”

Pride of place at the Natural History Museum

The specimen, which has since been nicknamed “Teoplati” in a public naming competition, now welcomes the numerous visitors to the Natural History Museum of UZH. Prominently placed at the entrance of the museum, the skeleton lies in its original pose, with a towering life-size reconstruction next to it.

Dennis Hansen, from the Natural History Museum, who led the creation of the exhibit, says, “We wanted a display that highlights the tragic story of this particular animal.” The life-size reconstruction stands upright in front of a small landscape diorama. Footprints in the drying mud record some of the dinosaur’s final steps before it broke through the cracked surface to meet its muddy fate.

“Together with the paleo-reconstruction wizards from the Danish company 10 Tons, we created a reconstruction based on the skeleton that also showcases the disease on its right arm and shoulder,” says Hansen.

“This makes the display one of the few worldwide where the reconstruction of an individual dinosaur includes its pathologies.” A fitting tribute to this iconic, early large dinosaur.

More information: Sina F. J. Dupuis et al, Osteology and histology of a Plateosaurus trossingensis (Dinosauria: Sauropodomorpha) from the Upper Triassic of Switzerland with an advanced chronic pathology, Swiss Journal of Palaeontology (2025). DOI: 10.1186/s13358-025-00368-3

Provided by University of Zurich 

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