Study says new Jurassic bird fossil is 'missing link'
BEIJING: A groundbreaking fossil discovery in Zhenghe county, Fujian province, has reshaped our understanding of avian origins. Scientists identified Baminornis zhenghensis, a 150-million-year-old bird species from the late Middle Jurassic, as the oldest unambiguous Jurassic bird fossil ever found.
Published in Nature earlier this year, the study by a joint team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Fujian Institute of Geological Survey reveals this species as a pivotal "missing link" in bird evolution.
The fossil, unearthed in Zhenghe's swampy deposits in November 2023, showcases a pygostyle — a fused tailbone central to modern birds' flight mechanics. This feature shifts a bird's center of gravity, enabling precise aerial control.
Previously, such advanced traits were believed to have emerged much later. Unlike Archaeopteryx, a feathered dinosaur with a reptilian tail, Baminornis bridges the anatomical gap between dinosaurs and true birds.
The Zhenghe Fauna, a lush Jurassic wetland ecosystem teeming with diverse life, offers unprecedented insights into post-dinosaur evolution.
"This discovery rewrites textbooks, showing birds' dinosaurian roots and their leap from land to sky," said CAS academician Xu Xing.
Researchers continue exploring Zhenghe's fossil beds, hinting that even older avian ancestors may await discovery. As science peels back layers of time, one truth remains: evolution's story is ever-unfolding. - China Daily/ANN
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The Star
6 days ago
- The Star
Study says new Jurassic bird fossil is 'missing link'
BEIJING: A groundbreaking fossil discovery in Zhenghe county, Fujian province, has reshaped our understanding of avian origins. Scientists identified Baminornis zhenghensis, a 150-million-year-old bird species from the late Middle Jurassic, as the oldest unambiguous Jurassic bird fossil ever found. Published in Nature earlier this year, the study by a joint team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Fujian Institute of Geological Survey reveals this species as a pivotal "missing link" in bird evolution. The fossil, unearthed in Zhenghe's swampy deposits in November 2023, showcases a pygostyle — a fused tailbone central to modern birds' flight mechanics. This feature shifts a bird's center of gravity, enabling precise aerial control. Previously, such advanced traits were believed to have emerged much later. Unlike Archaeopteryx, a feathered dinosaur with a reptilian tail, Baminornis bridges the anatomical gap between dinosaurs and true birds. The Zhenghe Fauna, a lush Jurassic wetland ecosystem teeming with diverse life, offers unprecedented insights into post-dinosaur evolution. "This discovery rewrites textbooks, showing birds' dinosaurian roots and their leap from land to sky," said CAS academician Xu Xing. Researchers continue exploring Zhenghe's fossil beds, hinting that even older avian ancestors may await discovery. As science peels back layers of time, one truth remains: evolution's story is ever-unfolding. - China Daily/ANN
The Star
26-05-2025
- The Star
Hong Kong warned of surge in inflammatory bowel disease rates
The number of Hongkongers suffering from incurable chronic gut conditions could surge by 150 per cent over a 20-year period due to unhealthy diets, high in sugar and fat, according to a global study. Scientists from the study that was co-led by researchers from Hong Kong and Canada raised the alarm after a projection model estimated that the prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease in the city would rise from 40 cases per 100,000 people in 2014 to 100 in 2034. 'The 150 per cent increase in the total number in terms of prevalence – this is quite scary,' said Professor Ng Siew Chien, associate dean of the Chinese University of Hong Kong's medical school and an expert in gastroenterology who co-led the study. Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team. 'We call this probably an explosion.' Researchers found that the rates were related to economic development and that less developed places, such as Malaysia and mainland China, had lower rates than Hong Kong, although they were also trending upwards. IBD refers to a group of conditions that cause swelling and inflammation of tissue in the digestive tract, with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis being the two most common types. Common symptoms of such conditions include diarrhoea, abdominal pains and cramps, and blood in the stool. IBD sufferers are also more likely to develop serious illnesses such as colon cancer. The researchers' projection model is based on real-world data collected from more than 500 studies in 82 regions that took place between 1920 and 2024. It also anticipated a rise in the local incidence rate for IBD, which involves the number of new cases per 100,000 people. While the rate in Hong Kong was 0.1 in 1985, it rose to about three in 2013 and is estimated to have exceeded four in 2023. The figures placed the city in the second part of a four-stage model outlined in the study, meaning it was experiencing a phase of 'acceleration in incidence' in IBD cases. Other jurisdictions that were seeing similar trends to Hong Kong included many relatively newly industrialised nations in Asia and Latin America, such as mainland China, Japan and South Korea. In the mainland, the rate of new cases rose from two per 100,000 people in 2010, to 15 in 2020. The total number of IBD patients in the country is expected to exceed 1.5 million by this year, according to Ng. The study, which was published in top scientific journal Nature last month, placed countries with low incidence and prevalence rates, such as many places in Africa, in the stage one category. Most countries in North America, Europe and Oceania were classified as being in stage three, meaning the number of new cases had already slowed down, but the total number of patients had steadily increased. While such conditions are not fatal and can be managed with medications and treatments, they cannot be cured. Serious cases can require surgery to remove a patient's colon and rectum, who must then carry a pouch to collect their waste. The late Shinzo Abe resigned as the prime minister of Japan in 2020 due to his struggles with ulcerative colitis. Study co-leader Professor Gilaad Kaplan, a gastroenterologist from the medical school of Canada's University of Calgary, said increases in new cases of IBD correlated with economic advancement. 'The earlier a country transitions into economic advancements, the earlier we see that trigger into stage two,' he said. Kaplan said that while higher incidence and prevalence rates were due to improved detection and diagnostic tools in economically advanced regions, environmental factors also played a crucial role. A person's diet was one of the strongest pillars under the category of environmental factors that contributed to a rise in cases, Kaplan and Ng said. Diets that were high in fat, sugar, ultra-processed foods, additives and colourings could change the health of a person's gut, she said. 'These foods actually affect our gut microbiome, which is the bacteria and viruses inside our gut,' the researcher said. 'They can induce [and] increase bacteria that can cause inflammation ... These bacteria produce toxins and chemicals inside the gut, and then it makes the gut very thin.' Ng explained that the resulting toxins and inflammatory responses inside the gut could then disturb one's immune system. She added that a growing number of IBD patients could see the local healthcare system face an increased economic burden, citing her own separate analysis on the topic. The academic noted that the average medical cost for a patient with the condition was about HK$40,000 to HK$50,000 (US$6,380) a year, about twice the amount paid by someone suffering from type 2 diabetes. Kaplan, meanwhile, said that IBD patients would get older and become more challenging to manage if they developed other conditions such as diabetes or dementia. Both researchers called for preventive actions to slow down IBD's growing prevalence and incidence rates. 'Our models show that if we can prevent the incidence of new diagnoses, even just by a small amount, that has a huge impact on blunting the overall growth or prevalence of the disease,' Kaplan said. He added that people could stave off such conditions by adopting a healthy, whole food diet, while officials could create policies that increased the availability of healthy foods. Sharing her tips on preventing the condition among the children of IBD patients, Ng said: 'Less processed food; just cook everything from scratch. Try not to use so many antibiotics if you can, because that changes the gut microbiome as well.' More from South China Morning Post: For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2025.
The Sun
23-05-2025
- The Sun
Astronomers spot galaxy shaped like the Milky Way but is far more massive
WASHINGTON: Astronomers have observed a galaxy dating to an earlier epoch in the universe's history that surprisingly is shaped much like our Milky Way - a spiral structure with a straight bar of stars and gas running through its center - but far more massive, offering new insight into galactic formation. The distant galaxy, called J0107a, was observed as it appeared 11.1 billion years ago, when the universe was about a fifth of its current age. The researchers used data from the Chile-based Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to study the galaxy. They determined that the galaxy's mass, including its stars and gas, was more than 10 times greater than that of the Milky Way, and it was forming stars at an annual rate approximately 300 times greater. J0107a was more compact than the Milky Way, however. 'The galaxy is a monster galaxy with a high star formation rate and plenty of gas, much more than present-day galaxies,' said astronomer Shuo Huang of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, lead author of the study published this week in the journal Nature. 'This discovery,' said study co-author Toshiki Saito, an astronomer at Shizuoka University in Japan, 'raises the important question: How did such a massive galaxy form in such an early universe?' While a few galaxies that are undergoing star formation at a similar rate to J0107a exist in today's universe, almost all of them are ones that are in the process of a galactic merger or collision. There was no sign of such circumstances involving this galaxy. J0107a and the Milky Way have some commonalities. 'They are similarly huge and possess a similar barred structure. However, the Milky Way had plenty of time to form its huge structures, while J0107a didn't,' Saito said. In the first few billion years after the Big Bang event 13.8 billion years ago that initiated the universe, galaxies were turbulent entities and were much richer in gas than those existing currently - factors that fostered extreme bursts of star formation. While galaxies with highly organized structures like the barred spiral shape of the Milky Way are common now, that was not the case 11.1 billion years ago. 'Compared to other monster galaxies in the distant universe (dating to an earlier cosmic epoch) whose shapes are usually disturbed or irregular, it is unexpected that J0107a looks very similar to present-day spiral galaxies,' Huang said. 'Theories about the formation of present-day galactic structures may need to be revised,' Huang added. The Webb telescope, as it peers across vast distances back to the early universe, has found that galaxies with a spiral shape appeared much earlier than previously known. J0107a is now one of the earliest-known examples of a barred spiral galaxy. About two thirds of spiral galaxies observed in the universe today possess a bar structure. The bar is thought to serve as a form of stellar nursery, bringing gas inward from the galaxy's spiral arms. Some of the gas forms what are called molecular clouds. Gravity causes the contraction of these clouds, with small centers taking shape that heat up and become new stars. The bar that is part of J0107a measures about 50,000 light years in length, Huang said. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). The Webb telescope 'has been studying the morphology of early massive galaxies intensely recently. However, their dynamics are still poorly understood,' Saito said.
