See it: Fossil of giant fish lizard unearthed in Argentina
NEQUEN, Argentina – An astonishing discovery has been unearthed by paleontologists in Argentina.
Local officials say the discovery has been made after a landowner in the area reported the presence of fossilized remains in a field.
According to members of the Argentine National Gendarmerie, a local paleontologist confirmed the fossil was that of an Ichthyosaur – a prehistoric marine animal.
True to their name, which means fish lizard in Greek, according to National Geographic, the early versions of the Ichthyosaur looked much like a lizard with fins.
"There's growing evidence that Ichthyosaurs evolved giant species within about eight million years after they first emerged during the Triassic," said an article from National Geographic. "Many of them were monstrous predators that hunted other marine reptiles and any other prey smaller than themselves, almost as if they were giant orcas."
These creatures were large, fast predators. According to National Geographic, the reptile appeared more than 210 million years ago.
Cave Discovery Of 6,000-Year-old Hunter's Toolkit Offers Rare Glimpse Into Earliest Lives In West Texas
"Apex predators, they were the Orca of their time," said an article from National Geographic.
After the paleontologist's confirmation, an environmental patrol team was able to condition and properly remove it.
The fossil has been transported to the Carmen Funes Museum, according to Argentina.gob.ar.Original article source: See it: Fossil of giant fish lizard unearthed in Argentina
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USA Today
5 hours ago
- USA Today
Stinging and 'wicked' Asian needle ants are spreading across the US
Stinging and 'wicked' Asian needle ants are spreading across the US Asian needle ants have been linked to multiple cases of life-threatening reactions and the mysterious ants keep spreading. Show Caption Hide Caption See Nat Geo's photo challenge winners National Geographic wildlife filmmaker Bertie Gregory announced the winners of a photo challenge celebrating the Earth's beauty. An invasive species of stinging, carnivorous ants have been slowly spreading in about 20 states. Last year at least three cases of life-threatening anaphylactic reactions were reported in Georgia, making this little (and little-known) insect a growing problem. "Asian needle ants" will reach their yearly peak numbers in July and August, but it will still be tough to spot them, even if you get stung by one. They are so small and blend in so well that stings often occur when someone — perhaps while gardening or moving wood – unknowingly disturbs them. "Imagine somebody inserting a needle directly into your flesh," said Benoit Guénard, a professor of ecology and entomology at the University of Hong Kong who studied the ants in North Carolina. "It's a very sharp, acute pain but it's quite local." Tracking them has long been a challenge, but researchers now say the spread of the Asian needle ant shouldn't be ignored. "They're pretty widespread on the East coast," said. Daniel Suiter, a professor of urban entomology at the University of Georgia. "If you live in an area which is dominated by hardwood trees, there's a good chance there are Asian needle ants underfoot." For some, the stings can be life-threatening. For others, it's an unusual pain that can come and go for hours. That's just one of the mysteries of Brachyponera chinensis — roughly translated as "short, wicked ant from China" - though they're actually native to China, Japan and the Koreas. Hard to track, hard to kill The invasive insect was first discovered in the United states in 1932 in Decatur, Georgia, but was only recognized as a serious pest in the past two decades as it began to spread significantly throughout the southeast. Now it's found as far north as Connecticut and as far south as Florida, as well as in Wisconsin and Washington state, according to the site There are reports they have also appeared in Texas. These ants are carnivorous, seeking out prey such as flies, beetles, grasshoppers and their favorites: termites. Given their hunting habits, they don't lay down scent trails as some ants do, making it difficult to track them back to their colonies and eradicate. "Most ants are in-your-face invasive, they lay a pheromone trail to get to food. You can't miss an ant trail that's half an inch wide," said Suiter. "These remain hidden." The dark brown ants live in colonies in leaf litter, rotted logs, firewood and mulch. They often occur in residential settings, including parks, and urban areas, finding homes and under railroad ties, logs, bricks, and pavers. They can also nest in potted plants, under wood piles, and in lawns. "People are most often stung when they're working in their garden," said Theresa Dellinger, a diagnostician at the insect identification lab at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. "Nobody likes to be putting in their bedding plants and then suddenly have unexpected pain." The worker ants' bodies are about 0.2 inches long, small, dark and shiny but with lighter orange legs and antennae. "They have a long jaw and a big stinger on the business end," Dellinger said. Although they're relatively long and thin, the "needle" in their name actually comes from their Japanese name, Oo-hari-ari, which means "giant needle ant' and refers to size of their stinger, she said. It's very possible to learn to live with Asian needle ants, just as we've learned to live with bees, said Andrew Johnston, an insect diagnostician at Purdue University's Department of Entomology. "They're not aggressive, they don't swarm the way fire ants do," he said. "Wear gloves and pay attention to what you're grabbing." Because the ants like to live in moist areas and around wood, keeping loose logs and firewood up off the ground so they stay dry is one way to avoid infestations, said Suiter. And if you're sensitive to insect stings, suggests Dellinger, "carry an EpiPen." A painful, long-lasting sting Guénard has been stung by many different ant and insect species but said Asian needle ants are the only ones he knows of where the pain is very acute at first, then disappears and then can come back over and over again. "The first, initial pain lasted a few seconds. Then about five minutes later, when the pain had eased, I felt 'ouch!' as if somebody had stung me again in the same place. The pain continues to reoccur in the same place, it disappears and then comes back," said Guénard. "For me, it goes on for about two hours," he said. "But I know in some people it lasts for as much as 24 to 48 hours." In a small number of cases it can also be deadly. The sting can cause allergic reactions and in 1% of victims, the venom can result in deadly anaphylactic shock. Decades of mystery There's a lot researchers don't yet understand about why these invasive ants only began to significantly spread in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. Native to China, Japan and Korea, the Asian needle ant was first identified in Georgia in 1932 but probably arrived here well before that. "It's very likely the ants were introduced in the early 20th century because by 1934 they were already found in three states, so clearly they hadn't just arrived," Guénard said. Because they live in dirt and mulch, Guénard speculates that they might have come into the United States in the root balls of trees being imported from Asia. What puzzles researchers is the timing of their spread. The ants remained relatively localized well into the 1970s, research shows. In 1962 a very thorough inventory of the ants of North Carolina was conducted by entomologist W. G. Carter. "He never found them," said Guénard. Then between 1991 and 2017, Asian needle ants spread across North Carolina and are now found across the state. "Something happened," Guénard said. "I could not tell you exactly what." The spread of this invasive species is causing ecological damage as they spread, research shows. Because they are predators, Asian needle ants hunt native insects that have evolved to have important roles in local ecosystems. For example, while no one wants termites in their home, in the forest they are critical part in the health of the woods. "They're very important because they help with the decomposition of dead wood and other organic matter," Guénard said. Research has also shown that local native ants are an important part of seed dispersal for some plant and tree species. If the Asian needle ants take over their territory, the seeds don't get spread. "The seeds just die rather than being dispersed," he said. As the climate warms and becomes wetter in some areas, the extent of where these ants can thrive is growing and they're expected to invade new regions. The amount of North America that could become suitable is expected to increase as much as 75% over the next 50 or so years, according to Guénard's previous research. How dangerous are Asian needle ants? Asian needle ants aren't as aggressive as fire ants and will mostly just run away when they encounter humans. However, they will defensively sting if they feel pressure, for example from someone reaching into a pile of wood, mulch or soil near their nest. The ants can pose a health risk because their venom can produce allergic reactions in some individuals. Virginia Tech encourages anyone who is allergic to bee stings to seek immediate medical attention if they begin to experience breathing problems or other allergic reactions after being stung by an Asian needle ant. A survey of people who live in an ant-habitat area of Korea found that 2.1% of those bitten experienced systemic allergic reactions, including 1.2% who went into anaphylaxis. The danger appeared to be highest in people who had experienced repeated stings over time. There is no national repository of Asian needle ant health problems, but when Guénard maintained a website about the insects while he was conducting research in North Carolina, he received reports of 21 cases of health problems, in Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington. D. C. Of those case, at least 12 individuals reported having severe allergic reactions including anaphylactic shock. The cases involved people moving logs, gardening and even while swimming, when young female ants flying to establish new colonies fell into swimming pools. The stinging events were especially frequent during the summer swarming period from April to September, with a peak in May to July. In Georgia, Suiter got three calls about cases of anaphylactic shock after Asian needle ant stings last year. "I fully expect that some people who end up in the emergency room were stung by them but didn't realize it," he said. There is concern that people who are hypersensitive to other stinging insects may be at an increased risk of anaphylaxis from Asian needle ants. Symptoms reported by the USDA can include: Skin reactions include hives, itching, and flushed or pale skin. Low blood pressure (hypotension). Constriction of the airway, wheezing, and difficulty breathing. Swollen tongue or throat. Weak and rapid pulse. Nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea. Dizziness or fainting. Psychological symptoms, such as a feeling of impending doom. Unlike stings from invasive fire ants, the sting of an Asian needle ant does not produce a blister. What can you do about Asian needle ants This particular variety of ant is more difficult to eradicate than other ant species because they don't lay pheromone trails that can be disrupted or easily used to get the ants to take poison back to their nests. Instead they use a process known as tandem carrying. "One worker ant will pick up another worker ant and drag it over to the food source to show it where it is," Dellinger said. That makes baiting them difficult, especially because their colonies – typically fairly small and flat – are hard to spot. "We suggest a protein-based bait for this species, and it can take some time for these ants to take the poison back to the colony," she said. 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Yahoo
6 hours ago
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236-million-year-old Triassic fossil reveals earliest known butterfly, moth scales
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Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
The Dreadful Policies Halting Archeological Discoveries
Thanks to the creative application of new technologies, the 2020s are quietly shaping up to be a golden age of archaeology. In 2023, then-21-year-old Luke Farritor (now with the Department of Government Efficiency) combined machine‑learning pattern recognition with high‑resolution CT scans to decipher the first word from the Herculaneum scrolls—a Roman library charred by Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Fully decrypting the library could ultimately double the surviving corpus of Ancient Greek and Roman literature—an unprecedented bonanza for classical scholarship. Analysis of ancient DNA has resolved long-debated questions about human migrations. After sequencing hundreds of Bronze Age human genomes, David Reich's research team at Harvard positively identified southwest Russia as the geographical origin of the Indo-European languages, while other genomic work has dated Homo sapiens-Neanderthal interbreeding to 47,000 years ago, several millennia prior to earlier best guesses. Fossilized human footprints in White Sands, New Mexico, have been conclusively dated to about 23,000 years ago—proof that people were in North America during the last Ice Age and forcing scholars to rethink when and how humans first crossed into the New World. Lidar has recently revealed massive ancient cities under jungle canopies, from the Mayan platform of Aguada Fénix in Mexico—larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza—to mysterious urban centers in the ancient Amazon. These developments—whether driven by artificial intelligence, the decryption of ancient genomics, or airborne lasers—promise to momentously expand society's understanding of humanity's past. Notably absent from this bounty, however, are the fruits of traditional, physical, Indiana Jones-style archaeology. The world of bits, as has often been the case these days, is leaving the world of atoms in the dust. While the storied bits over atoms problem is a complicated one, legal mechanisms are straightforwardly to blame for throttling archeological discovery. The case of Italian antiquities policy is paradigmatic. Since the 1930s, Italy—along with Greece, Turkey, and Egypt—has vested ownership of all antiquities in the state. Commerce in freshly unearthed artifacts is outlawed, and unauthorized excavation is punishable by hefty fines and sometimes prison time. Even using a metal detector requires a permit. Edward Luttwak, a historian and author of The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, explains that in Italy, "if you find something, you report it to the authorities. The authorities take it, goodbye. Most often, what they take from you, they put in a depot, a basement, a warehouse, and it never even gets shown." This is the unfortunate lot of the fortunate discoverer of an Italian artifact. Report a Roman coin? It'll be confiscated. Find an Etruscan urn while planting olives? Your land will be turned into an archaeological site the government may never have time to excavate. It's unsurprising, then, that Italians frequently don't report their findings to the government. Many artifacts end up on the black market (in 2023, Italy's Carabinieri Art Squad seized nearly 70,000 illegally excavated artifacts), or are even simply destroyed or hidden away. Private hoarding is an especially pernicious problem: When "illegally excavated" (read: most) Italian artifacts are privately held in people's houses, they are lost both to scholarship and public view. "You could fill twice the museums that exist in Italy from what people have hidden in their houses," says Luttwak, "which they wouldn't hide if you could report [them] to the authorities like they do in England." The British model provides a striking contrast. Since the 1996 Treasure Act, British law has required that significant archaeological finds be reported. Instead of simply seizing them, if the state wishes to retain an item, it must compensate the finder and landowner at its full market value. To capture the far larger universe of objects that fall outside the law's narrow legal definition of "treasure," the state-sponsored Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) established a voluntary nationwide program through which average Britons can log any find, whether or not the state intends to acquire it, into an open scientific database. As of 2020, over 1 million objects have been logged in PAS. According to Michael Lewis, head of Portable Antiquities and Treasure at the British Museum, over 90 percent of PAS-recorded items are found by metal detectorists on cultivated land, indicating how the scheme has turned what was once seen as a threat into a fountainhead of archaeological data. Thanks to these policies, Britain has been increasingly outpacing Italy in Roman archaeology despite its relatively modest classical history, as seen in this viral map of the provenance of hoards of Roman coins. Notice the sheer quantity of Roman coin discoveries reported in the U.K., far surpassing those in Italy. This disparity isn't explained by Roman Britain being richer than Roman Italy (quite the opposite), but by modern Britain recognizing and leveraging incentives to bring history out of occultation. The Great Stagnation of physical archaeology is a choice. The failure of policymakers to get the basics right—to make physical archaeology worth anyone's time—renders the richest landscapes fallow. Luttwak's attention is on one such landscape: the confluence of the Busento and Crati rivers on the edge of Cosenza, Calabria. Contemporary accounts record that in 410 A.D. the Visigoth chieftain Alaric—fresh from sacking Rome—was buried beneath the temporarily diverted river along with the treasures of the Eternal City. "Alaric's treasure is located in the southern part of the city of Cosenza," says Luttwak. "It was documented by an eyewitness." Alaric took "gold and silver objects…statues, and all kinds of things—possibly even the Temple menorah….When Alaric died in Cosenza, he got as the king one third of the treasure [to be] buried with him." "It could be found," explains Luttwak, "with hovering metal detectors, because he was buried with his weapons, too." Alaric's hoard—and maybe Judaism's most iconic physical symbol—should be discoverable today with an aerial anomaly survey and some clever hydraulics. The technology is ready; the incentives are not. Change the rules, and the payoff could be extraordinary. The post The Dreadful Policies Halting Archeological Discoveries appeared first on
