
Fiona the Pregnant Sea Reptile's Fossil Hints at the Birth of a New Ocean
An accomplice in the killing: the breakup of the southern supercontinent of Gondwanaland. South America, once unified with Africa and Antarctica, pulled away, and a new ocean basin called the Roca Verdes opened up.
'One of the hypotheses is that this is actually the opening of the early South Atlantic Ocean,' said Matthew Malkowski, a professor of geological sciences in Texas.
The geological forces that pulled apart the continents also ruptured the Earth's crust, causing volcanoes and earthquakes, and those earthquakes sometimes set off massive underwater landslides.
One day in the early Cretaceous period, one of those landslides collapsed down a submarine canyon in Roca Verdes, generating turbulent flows of sediment.
'Probably these landslides might have trapped the ichthyosaurs and threw them to the bottom of the canyon and covered them with sediment,' said Judith Pardo-Pérez, an associate professor in Chile. — KENNETH CHANG / NYT

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Observer
15-07-2025
- Observer
Fiona the Pregnant Sea Reptile's Fossil Hints at the Birth of a New Ocean
About 131 million years ago, a pregnant ichthyosaur — a dolphin-like reptile of the dinosaur era — swam in seas that are now part of southern Chile. And then she died. An accomplice in the killing: the breakup of the southern supercontinent of Gondwanaland. South America, once unified with Africa and Antarctica, pulled away, and a new ocean basin called the Roca Verdes opened up. 'One of the hypotheses is that this is actually the opening of the early South Atlantic Ocean,' said Matthew Malkowski, a professor of geological sciences in Texas. The geological forces that pulled apart the continents also ruptured the Earth's crust, causing volcanoes and earthquakes, and those earthquakes sometimes set off massive underwater landslides. One day in the early Cretaceous period, one of those landslides collapsed down a submarine canyon in Roca Verdes, generating turbulent flows of sediment. 'Probably these landslides might have trapped the ichthyosaurs and threw them to the bottom of the canyon and covered them with sediment,' said Judith Pardo-Pérez, an associate professor in Chile. — KENNETH CHANG / NYT


Observer
16-06-2025
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Ancient Trees, Dwindling in the Wild, Thrive on Sacred Ground
The Putuo hornbeam, a hardy tree that thrives in the damp air by the East China Sea, could be easily overlooked by visitors to the Huiji Temple on an island in Zhejiang province. The tree has an unremarkable appearance: spotty bark, small stature and serrated leaves with veins as neatly spaced as notebook lines. But as far as conservationists can tell, no other mature specimen of its species is alive in the wild. The holdout on the island, Mount Putuo, has been there for about two centuries. And according to a study published in the journal Current Biology, its setting may have been its salvation. The study found that religious sites in eastern China have become refuges for old, ancient and endangered trees. Buddhist and Taoist temples have long sheltered plants that otherwise struggled to find a foothold, including at least eight species that now exist nowhere else on Earth. 'This form of biodiversity conservation, rooted in cultural and traditional practices, has proved to be remarkably resilient,' said Zhiyao Tang, a professor of ecology at Peking University and one of the study's authors. The trees survived at religious sites partly because they were planted and cultivated there. The report noted that Buddhism and Taoism emphasize spiritual association with plants and the temples tended to be left undisturbed, shielding the areas from deforestation. — JACEY FORTIN / NYT


Observer
09-06-2025
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How a Two-Story Boulder Ended Up on a 120-Foot-High Cliff
Just a stone's throw from the ocean, indeed. Small family farms dot the southern coast of Tongatapu, the largest island of Tonga in the South Pacific. But something lies amid the cassava and banana plants that doesn't belong: a staggeringly large, off-white boulder. The rock, which features prominently in Tongan mythology, was recently scrutinized by scientists. New results suggest that the object was transported inland thousands of years ago when tsunami waves breached a 120-foot cliff. That event might have been set in motion by an earthquake in the nearby Tonga-Kermadec Trench, the team reported in the journal Marine Geology. From Japan to the Bahamas, scientists have spotted hulking rocks that simply don't fit their surroundings. Such boulders were likely transported by moving water, and the powerful waves of tsunamis are often invoked as culprits. Last July, researchers traveled to Tongatapu to analyze several coastal boulders. The team got a tip from a group of Tongan farmers about a boulder nearby on farmland belonging to the Teisina family. That boulder turned out to be roughly the size of a two-story house. 'It was unreal,' said Martin Köhler, a geoscientist at the University of Queensland in Australia, who led the research. The rock, made of limestone, was nearly completely camouflaged by vegetation. Köhler's team surveyed the rock, known locally as Maka Lahi or 'Big Rock,' and calculated that it weighed more than 1,300 tons. Maka Lahi is more than 650 feet inland. As there's nothing taller around, the rock must have been dislodged from its earlier home by one or more enormous waves, the team surmised. Using computer simulations, the researchers modeled waves of different heights that rolled in anywhere from every 10 to 600 seconds. Waves of at least 160 feet high were needed to dislodge the boulder and send it rolling or sliding to its final resting place. Based on the age of the flowstone growing on the lower half of the boulder, the researchers estimated that the massive waves that transported Maka Lahi struck about 7,000 years ago, before the human occupation of Tonga. — KATHERINE KORNEI /NYT