Latest news with #Holocene
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
New Music Biennial review – sitars, thorax-quaking bass and vibrators
'Growling through the trombone is a new one for me,' admitted one musician between performances of Ailís Ní Ríain's work Holocene. Bradford Cathedral echoed with squawks, rattles and primordial grumbling as the combined forces of Onyx Brass and Hammonds Band conjured Ní Ríain's vivid soundscape of life on Earth 11,000 years ago (imagine prehistoric megafauna getting the Jaws treatment). But those lower brass growls weren't the score's most daring feature. That honour goes to the four percussionists who teased waves of soft rustling from cymbals with small battery-operated vibrators. All in a day's work at the New Music Biennial – now in its fifth iteration and hosted this year in Bradford, UK City of Culture 2025, before the same lineup of 20 short pieces decamps to London's Southbank Centre in July. Most weren't strictly world premieres (nor is the Biennial strictly biennial) but as a free showcase of activity across the UK music scene, there's nothing quite like it. Folk, jazz and electronic artists appear alongside classical ensembles – though such labels mean little when most of the featured music crosses such boundaries as standard. Composer and violinist Ellie Wilson's haunting Moth x Human, for instance, turned data about night-time moth activity into a beguiling synthesised fabric ('the moths are collaborating') with which her small acoustic ensemble duetted in The Loading Bay, an unused warehouse and building site converted into two intimate performance venues and an art gallery. Xenia Pestova Bennett's Glow was a shimmering, spooky set of movements for magnetic resonator piano and Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble, woven through with spine-tingling recorded narration about weird light phenomena in Danish, Welsh and Turkish. Sitarist and composer Jasdeep Singh Degun's Into the Night – bringing together five Indian classical musicians with the BBC Concert Orchestra – was his latest thrilling example of cross-cultural collaboration, the orchestra amplifying and harmonising the two raags on which the Indian classical musicians improvised, nods and smiles passing between them. Less persuasive (despite a fearless performance by the Carice Singers and conductor George Parris) was Daniel Kidane's fiendishly difficult N'dehou, a rambling, pointillistic tapestry of syllables inspired by a Cameroonian single-note bamboo flute. In a longstanding feature of the New Music Biennial, each work is played twice, sandwiching a short interview. 'What's the difference between the piece we just heard and commercial dance music?' asked the presenter between performances of Alex Groves' Dance Suite in a small subterranean nightclub. 'I don't think there is one,' grinned Groves. And it's true that the grimy, thorax-quaking bass, looped vocal melodies and rhythmic prestidigitation of Zubin Kanga's virtuosic performance – on laptop, keyboard and Midi-controlling Roli Seaboard – were obviously at home in the space in a way most of the audience were not. The huge, unnamed difference, however, was the invitation to listen closely and admire how Dance Suite functioned as a 'set of baroque dances for the 21st century' (hardly a conventional description of most electronic dance music): a reminder of the radical impact of how we talk about music – any music – on what we end up hearing. At the Southbank Centre 4-6 July.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Researchers make jaw-dropping discovery after drilling over 2,000 feet into Arctic ice: 'Will offer unprecedented insight'
A team of international researchers in Canada made a thrilling breakthrough in an "ambitious Canadian flagship" ice-drilling project, the University of Manitoba announced. Scientists from Canada, Denmark, and Australia teamed up with a "goal of drilling and retrieving a [613-meter] deep ice core" in Nunavut. Ice cores are an incredibly rich and valuable source of historical data about the atmosphere and changes to the climate. "Crucially, the ice encloses small bubbles of air that contain a sample of the atmosphere — from these it is possible to measure directly the past concentration of atmospheric gases, including the major greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide," the British Antarctic Society explained. In October, the team of scientists detailed their project in the Journal of Glaciology. Their abstract postulated that, based on their research, an "undisturbed Holocene climate record could likely be recovered from Müller Ice Cap" on Umingmat Nunaat (Axel Heiberg Island). On May 26, the University of Manitoba issued a press release stating that the ice core's successful retrieval was complete. Lead researcher Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, who recently participated in a similar project in Antarctica, said the retrieval was difficult, but the outcome was worth it. "It has logistically been a challenging project, so I am so excited to successfully retrieve the ice core from Müller," she commented. The University indicated the sample could "provide 10,000 years of knowledge on climate and sea ice from the Arctic Ocean" and contain key insights concerning mercury pollution. University of British Columbia Polar Climate Scientist Anais Orsi shared her colleague's enthusiasm. "This is the first time such measurements have been done on the Canadian ice cap, and the results are looking very exciting," Orsi commented. The University noted that data obtained from the ice core "will have far-reaching implications for Inuit communities in Nunavut and northern Canada," enabling scientists to extrapolate findings and more accurately predict coming changes to the climate in that region. "Such a remote site, at the edge of the Arctic Ocean, will offer unprecedented insight into the long-range atmospheric transport of environmental contaminants to the far North — reconstructions of great importance both to science and to local communities," said Alison Criscitiello of the University of Alberta. Should we be digging miles beneath Earth's surface? No way Definitely Depends what it's for Depends where we do it Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Metro
3 days ago
- Science
- Metro
Earth may be experiencing a sixth mass extinction event
Hiyah Zaidi Published June 6, 2025 10:52am Updated June 6, 2025 10:52am Link is copied Comments There is no doubt that humans are changing the Earth. From global warming, to mass migration and many animal species being wiped out altogether, the way the world was is no more. But is all this change actually causing a mass extinction event? (Picture: Getty) It is no surprise that humans will one day be extinct, as nothing lasts forever. It's suggested that around 98% of all the organisms that have ever existed on our planet are now extinct. However, when an organism goes extinct, it is usually replaced by another that has a similar role (Picture: Getty) According to the Natural History Museum, Earth's 'normal' extinction rate is often thought to be somewhere between 0.1 and 1 species per 10,000 species per 100 years, which is known as the background rate of extinction. But at least five times in the last 500 million years there has been something called a mass extinction event (Picture: Getty) A mass extinction event is when species disappear much faster than they are replaced. This is usually defined as around 75% of the world's species being lost in a short period of geological time of less than 2.8 million years. Dr Katie Collins, Curator of Benthic Molluscs at the National History Museum, says: 'It's difficult to identify when a mass extinction may have started and ended. However, there are five big events that we know of, where extinction was much higher than normal background rate, and these are often used to decide whether we are going through a sixth one now.' Past extinction events were caused by extreme temperature changes, sea levels changing or one off events like volcanic eruptions or asteroids hitting the Earth (Picture: Getty) One study, published in the journal PNAS, says yes. It suggests that groups of related species are disappearing at a rate of 35% times higher than the expected rate. And there is no guarantee that humans would survive the extinction event. Co-author Dr Gerardo Ceballos suggests that the whole biosphere of the Earth may change, maybe even into a state where it may be impossible for humanity to endure unless dramatic action is taken. He said: 'Biodiversity will recover but the winners [are] very difficult to predict. Many of the losers in these past mass extinctions were incredibly successful groups' (Picture: Getty) It is undeniable that we are seeing some drastic changes to our planet. Extreme weather such as flooding, wildfires and drought have become more frequent, with data revealing that both 2023 and 2024 became the hottest year on record. But as migration changes, humans are also introducing invasive species that are threatening ecosystems all over the world. Although extinction naturally occurs over hundreds and thousands of years, humans are speeding up this process, which researchers have dubbed as the Holocene extinction (Picture: Getty) However, not all researchers agree. A paper published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution questions if we are really heading towards a mass extinction, as they say that less than 0.1% of Earth's known species have gone extinct in the last 500 years, and that the numbers alone do not support a mass extinction. They said: 'Claiming a sixth mass extinction requires a quantitative criterion, and no plausible scenarios for 75% species loss have been proposed.' They added: 'Current projections of future extinction seem more consistent with ~12–40% species loss, which would be catastrophic but far from the 75% criterion used to argue for a sixth mass extinction' (Picture: Getty)
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Ancient DNA reveals mysterious Indigenous group from Colombia that disappeared 2,000 years ago
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A new analysis of ancient DNA from hunter-gatherers who lived millennia to centuries ago has revealed a previously unknown genetic lineage of humans who lived in what is now Colombia. People of this lineage lived near present-day Bogotá around 6,000 years ago but disappeared around 4,000 years later, according to a study published May 28 in the journal Science Advances. The findings could shed light on major cultural changes that occurred during that time. It's thought that the first Americans journeyed along the Bering Land Bridge from Asia during the last ice age and arrived in North America at least 23,000 years ago, according to trackways found at White Sands National Park in New Mexico. It's still debated when the first people arrived in South America, but there's evidence of people at the site of Monte Verde II, in Chile, from 14,550 years ago. Some of the early Indigenous people who reached South America settled in the Altiplano, a plateau near what is now Bogotá. This region underwent several cultural shifts during the Early and Middle Holocene (11,700 to 4,000 years ago), and researchers already knew about the development of a type of ceramic pottery that emerged during the Herrera period beginning about 2,800 years ago. But how this technology came to the area is still a matter of debate. To investigate ancient population movements in the region, researchers sequenced genomes using samples from the bones and teeth of 21 skeletons from five archaeological sites in the Altiplano spanning a period of 5,500 years. These included seven genomes from a site known as Checua dating back 6,000 years, nine from the Herrera period around 2,000 years ago, three from the Muisca period, whose remains date to 1,200 to 500 years ago, and two from Guane populations north of Bogotá about 530 years ago. "These are the first ancient human genomes from Colombia ever to be published," study co-author Cosimo Posth, a paleogeneticist at the University of Tübingen in Germany, said in a statement. The genomes from the Checua site belonged to a relatively small group of hunter-gatherers, the team found. Their DNA isn't particularly similar to that of Indigenous North American groups, nor to any ancient or modern populations in Central or South America. "Our results show that the Checua individuals derive from the earliest population that spread and differentiated across South America very rapidly," study co-author Kim-Louise Krettek, a doctoral student at the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen, said in the statement. But some 4,000 years later, that population had completely vanished. Evidence of their DNA wasn't present in later groups who inhabited the region, either. "We couldn't find descendants of these early hunter-gatherers of the Colombian high plains — the genes were not passed on," Krettek said. "That means in the area around Bogotá there was a complete exchange of the population." The findings suggest that cultural changes that occurred at the start of the Herrera period, such as the more widespread use of ceramics, were brought into the region by migrating groups from Central America into South America sometime between 6,000 and 2,000 years ago. "In addition to technological developments such as ceramics, the people of this second migration probably also brought the Chibchan languages into what is present-day Colombia," study co-author Andrea Casas-Vargas, a geneticist at the National University of Colombia, said in the statement. "Branches of this language family are still spoken in Central America today." Chibchan speakers were widespread in the Altiplano at the time of European contact, and genetic markers linked to people who spoke Chibchan languages first appeared there 2,000 years ago. RELATED STORIES —Newly discovered 'ghost' lineage linked to ancient mystery population in Tibet, DNA study finds —'Mystery population' of human ancestors gave us 20% of our genes and may have boosted our brain function —Unknown human lineage lived in 'Green Sahara' 7,000 years ago, ancient DNA reveals The Chibchan-related ancestry may have spread and mixed with other groups on multiple occasions. The genetic composition of later Altiplano individuals is more similar to that of pre-Hispanic individuals from Panama than to Indigenous Colombians, suggesting some mixing in Colombia. Ancient remains from Venezuela also carry some Chibchan-related ancestry, though they aren't as closely linked to ancient Colombians. This suggests the possibility of multiple Chibchan language expansions into South America. Future studies could involve sequencing more ancient genomes in the Altiplano and nearby regions, the researchers wrote in the study. Such research might help narrow down when Central American populations arrived in the region and how widespread they became.
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Are we in a sixth mass extinction?
Around 66 million years ago, a six-mile-wide asteroid hit Earth, triggering the extinction of three-quarters of all living species. The age of dinosaurs, which had lasted 165 million years, ended with a fiery crash and suddenly sooty skies. Farther back in our planet's history, volcanic eruptions, rapid climate change, and plummeting oxygen levels have caused at least four additional mass extinctions, with smaller pulses of biodiversity loss also showing up in the fossil record. In each of the five largest events, which spanned anywhere from thousands to tens of millions of years, at least 75 percent of Earth's species died out. These are the most commonly agreed upon major mass extinctions in paleontology. You've also likely heard about a sixth one. Many ecologists and biologists say we're on the precipice (or already in the midst) of another era of mass extinction. This sixth mass extinction, also referred to as the Holocene or Anthropocene extinction, is described as ongoing and caused by human activities. Hunting, overfishing, habitat destruction, human encroachment, and invasive species introductions are the major drivers of the losses incurred thus far. Human-caused climate change is also set to become another factor, as decades of rising temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, and increasingly extreme weather catch up to already stressed ecosystems. It's indisputable that humans shape life on Earth in major ways, and that animals and plants are dying out at an alarming rate. But is it true that our impact is on par with that of an asteroid? Not all scientists agree. There is no question that Earth is losing species fast. 'Biodiversity crisis is a pretty accurate term' to describe the present moment, says John Wiens, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Arizona. 'Extinction crisis' is another, he adds, 'based on the large number of species that are threatened with extinction.' Five other experts that Popular Science corresponded with for this article all agree on this 'crisis' terminology. In comparison with background levels of extinction, all of our sources said that current extinction rates are much higher. Extinction isn't always a sign of disaster. It's also a natural outcome of evolution. As species diverge, compete, and struggle to survive, not all of them make it long-term. Conditions on Earth shift over geologic time, and those forces inevitably lead to some dead ends on the tree of life. [ Related: Earth's 5 catastrophic mass extinctions, explained. ] However, throughout most of our planet's history, the rate of new species emerging has exceeded the rate of species dying out, says Gerardo Ceballos, an ecologist and conservation biologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Thus, biodiversity normally exists in a positive balance. Currently, we're losing species far faster than new ones emerge. Present extinction rates are up to 100 times faster than background levels, according to one 2015 study co-authored by Ceballos. In that analysis, Ceballos and his colleagues estimated the natural vertebrate extinction rate sits at around two species lost per 10,000 species each century. Then, they compared that statistic with the number of confirmed and likely extinctions recorded on the International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. They determined that, even using conservative numbers, the extinction rate for every vertebrate group was between eight and 100 times the background rate. The species losses incurred in the past 100 years would have taken thousands of years to occur naturally, per the assessment. Other counts find the current rate of extinction is even higher. One often cited 2014 study concluded Earth is losing species 1,000 times faster than natural background rates. That analysis also reported the level of loss is poised to accelerate to 10,000 times the background rate in the near future. These numbers vary widely in large part because the estimates of background extinction rates are difficult to pin down. The fossil record is incomplete, so scientists generally rely on mathematical models and reconstructions of the past to determine what was once alive and when it died out. Small shifts in starting assumptions can lead to major changes in the final calculations. The time period you're calculating average extinction rate over and types of organisms you're assessing also impact the result. This same ambiguity in estimating extinction rate persists in the present. Though Wiens describes our moment as a biodiversity crisis, he doesn't believe it meets the bar for a sixth mass extinction. 'No one has provided a quantitative analysis that has really shown that,' he says. If the top five major mass extinctions in the paleontological record each killed off at least 75 percent of species at the time, then the sixth one should theoretically cross the same threshold. Yet so far, the IUCN has confirmed fewer than 1,000 extinctions from the past 500 years–just about 0.1 percent of all known species, according to an analysis co-authored by Wiens in April. We have not catalogued every living species, and the IUCN is far from having assessed all known species. The IUCN database is also biased, skewing towards large, charismatic vertebrates and wealthy regions like North America. The criteria for extinction are strict, requiring extensive surveys, and yet sometimes species reappear after being declared gone forever. Still, the IUCN dataset is among the best windows we have into the state of life on Earth, and it suggests there's a way to go before three quarters of species are gone. [ Related: Earth's 'Great Dying' killed 80-90% of life. How some amphibians survived. ] However, it's worth noting that other assessments estimate a much higher proportion of species have already disappeared. One 2022 paper, which extrapolated extinction rates from data on mollusks, found that upwards of 10 percent of all species may have gone extinct in the past 500 years. And, those like Ceballos who argue a major mass extinction has already begun, point to calculations that indicate we could reach that grim, 75 percent mile marker in just a few centuries. If all IUCN threatened species went extinct in the next 100 years, and that rate of species loss continued, Earth would surpass 75 percent loss of species across most vertebrate animal groups in under 550 years, according to a landmark 2011 review paper. This study published in Nature, remains among the most thorough quantitative assessments of extinction trends. Yet to write every threatened species off as doomed to imminent extinction would be a mistake, says Stuart Pimm, a conservation biologist at Duke University and president of the conservation non-profit, Saving Nature. 'We have no idea what the future is,' he says. And, in the meantime, 'there's a lot of things we can do.' Pimm points to conservation success stories like the rebound of certain baleen whale populations and the stabilization of savanna elephant numbers over the past 25 years. He worries that claims about the sixth extinction might leave the public resigned to what might otherwise be a preventable catastrophe. 'It's not inevitable,' Pimm says. From the paleontological perspective, mass extinctions are something that can only be definitively confirmed in the past tense. They are defined based on the proportion of species that existed before, but not after a cataclysmic event like a major asteroid strike. If there's not yet an after, it's impossible to say for sure what number of lineages died out. There are no crystal balls in science. And in that uncertainty, there's room for hope that we could stop species from sliding off the cliff. But nearly half of all animals are losing population worldwide, according to a 2023 estimate, based on trend data for more than 71,000 species. Barring exceptional levels of investment and intervention, lots of species are already doomed to extinction, says Sarah Otto, an evolutionary biologist at the University of British Columbia. 'Many of the extinctions we think that humans are causing haven't actually happened yet. These are the 'living dead' species whose population sizes are small, whose habitats are fragmented,' she explains. 'There's a lot of extinction debt.' [ Related: An 'ancestral bottleneck' took out nearly 99 percent of the human population 800,000 years ago. ] A 2020 report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found that an average of 25 percent of species across animal and plant groups are threatened with extinction within decades, and that the human impacts to blame are intensifying. Without preventative action, as species disappear, 'there will be a further acceleration in the global rate of species extinction,' the report authors write. Species depend on one another for survival, Otto notes. For example, in our acidifying and warming oceans, coral reefs are teetering on the brink. If they go, then the fate of the many species dependent on the infrastructure they provide is unclear. Major losses of marine life could then have knock-on effects on land. Notably, the IPBES report doesn't directly consider the influence of climate change on future extinction rate. If it did, 'those projected numbers could really go up,' says under Wiens' comparatively rosy outlook, he still expects 12 to 40 percent species losses over the next century. And if species don't disappear across their entire ranges, local losses and population declines can still have major repercussions for ecosystem function and human society. The 75 percent threshold is an arbitrary line, Otto notes. Lots can go wrong before we officially place sixth in the world's worst contest. Human impacts on biodiversity 'will be seen in the fossil record,' she says. 'Whether or not it's going to be up there in the top six is really a matter of what we do next.' This story is part of Popular Science's Ask Us Anything series, where we answer your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the ordinary to the off-the-wall. Have something you've always wanted to know? Ask us.
