Global Pulse

分类： science

  • Humpback whales make record swims between Australia and Brazil

    Humpback whales make record swims between Australia and Brazil

    Two individual humpback whales have completed the longest documented transoceanic journeys ever recorded for their species, traveling thousands of kilometers between breeding grounds off Australia and Brazil, according to new research published Wednesday by an international team of marine scientists.

    The research team relied on a massive dataset of more than 30,000 photographs of distinct humpback whale tail flukes, a unique identifying marker for every individual, to confirm the two massive mammals had been sighted on opposite sides of the South Atlantic Ocean. The first whale was first photographed off the coast of Queensland, Australia in 2007, and was spotted again near São Paulo, Brazil in 2019 — covering a straight-line distance of 14,200 kilometers, or roughly 8,823 miles. The second individual was observed off Brazil’s Bahia coast, before being re-sighted 22 years later in Australia’s Hervey Bay, a journey of 15,100 kilometers. Researchers confirmed these crossings set a new record for the longest distance between verified sightings of a single humpback whale.

    Growing up to 17 meters long and weighing as much as 40 tons, humpback whales are already famous for long annual migrations between Antarctic feeding grounds and tropical breeding areas, but these transoceanic crossings between separate breeding regions are extraordinarily rare, the study authors noted.

    Despite their infrequency, these cross-regional journeys play a critical role in supporting the long-term resilience and health of global humpback whale populations, explained Stephanie Stack, a PhD researcher at Australia’s Griffith University and co-author of the study. When individual whales move between geographically distant breeding populations, they introduce new genetic material that maintains overall genetic diversity, a key factor in helping populations adapt to long-term environmental change. Stack added that traveling whales may also carry new humpback whale song patterns between regions — a striking parallel to how music trends spread through human cultures, since humpback songs are a socially learned cultural trait that spreads across entire ocean basins.

    The new findings also add further empirical support for a longstanding ecological hypothesis called the Southern Ocean Exchange. This theory proposes that after humpback whales gather to feed in the shared feeding grounds of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, some individuals do not return to their original breeding grounds, instead settling into an entirely new breeding region on a different continent.

    Researchers from Griffith University noted that climate change is altering the Southern Ocean ecosystem in ways that may make these long-distance crossings more common in coming decades. Shifts in sea ice coverage and changes to the distribution of Antarctic krill — the tiny shrimp-like crustaceans that are the primary food source for humpback whales during their feeding season — may push more whales to seek out new breeding routes and areas after feeding, leading to more frequent cross-ocean exchanges.

  • Two humpback whales set records swimming between Australia and Brazil

    Two humpback whales set records swimming between Australia and Brazil

    In a surprising new discovery published in the journal *Royal Society Open Science* on Tuesday, marine researchers have documented two humpback whales completing unprecedented, record-breaking transoceanic crossings between Australia and Brazil, a journey spanning nearly 15,000 kilometers that upends long-held assumptions about the species’ migratory behaviors and population separation.

    Each of the two whales was traced through their one-of-a-kind tail flukes, which bear unique color patterns and jagged edge markings that act like a human fingerprint for marine biologists. Spotted at locations more than 9,000 miles apart, the two animals traveled in opposite directions between the two coastal breeding grounds, with one clocking a journey of just over 9,300 miles — the longest recorded humpback migration to date, surpassing the previous record set by a humpback that swam from Colombia to Zanzibar.

    Humpback whales have long been understood to follow rigid, predictable migratory routes passed down from mother to calf. Their annual cycle typically sees them travel to cold, nutrient-rich polar or subpolar waters to feed on krill and small fish during warmer months, then return to warm tropical breeding grounds for winter. Tracking the far-ranging movements of these deep-diving marine mammals has always been a major challenge for scientists, as the creatures spend the vast majority of their lives below the ocean surface out of direct observation.

    To overcome this barrier, the research team behind the new study compiled and analyzed more than 19,000 whale photographs collected over four decades by both formal research groups and volunteer citizen scientists. Cutting-edge image recognition software was used to match unique tail markings across the entire dataset, leading to the groundbreaking identification of the two crossing individuals. Because photos only capture the whales at their starting and ending points, however, the research team has not been able to confirm the exact route the whales took across the entire South Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

    According to study co-author Stephanie Stack of the Pacific Whale Foundation, the unusual inter-breeding-ground travel is not characteristic of humpback behavior, so the motivation for the two separate journeys remains unclear. One leading hypothesis is that the whales encountered other population groups on shared feeding grounds, then chose to follow those whales to a new breeding ground instead of returning to their original natal site.

    The discovery of not one but two transoceanic crossings between geographically separate breeding sites challenges the scientific consensus that humpback populations in these regions are largely isolated from one another. Phillip Clapham, former head of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration whale research program who was not involved in the new study, noted that while such extreme long-distance movements are very rare, they offer a striking illustration of how far these animals are capable of traveling.

    Unlike in the Southern Hemisphere, large continental landmasses create barriers that make this kind of open cross-ocean odyssey far less feasible for humpback populations in the Northern Hemisphere. Beyond rewriting what we know about humpback range, researchers say the photo-identification method used in this study will prove critical for monitoring how whale migration and distribution shifts as climate change drives ocean warming, which is already altering the distribution of krill — humpbacks’ primary food source — and forcing changes to traditional feeding and breeding grounds.

    The Associated Press’ Health and Science Department received funding support for this reporting from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, with the AP retaining full editorial control over all content.

  • As bee population collapses, US apiarists fear research cuts

    As bee population collapses, US apiarists fear research cuts

    Nestled in a lot behind an abandoned gas station at the foot of Appalachia’s rolling mountains in West Virginia, a dozen apiarists gather around veteran commercial beekeeper Roy Funkhouser, the air thick with the low buzz of thousands of honeybees. What began as a regular monthly meeting for the group — a mix of casual hobbyists and full-time commercial operators — has shifted from a skill-sharing workshop to a forum for growing anxiety: as U.S. bee populations collapse to historic levels, a looming federal funding cut threatens to shutter the nation’s oldest bee research lab, a 100-year-old institution that has led global efforts to combat the threats facing honeybees.

    For Funkhouser, the crisis is not an abstract policy debate — it is a devastating collapse of the livelihood he has built over decades. Where he once tended roughly 1,200 hives, fewer than 200 remain active this year. “It’s a real struggle,” he told Agence France-Presse. “The parasites that we’ve got now, the mites and everything — more viruses and more pesticide exposures, more chemical exposures — everything is just more of a struggle today than what it was in the past.”

    Funkhouser’s experience is far from unique. The latest data from Apiary Inspectors of America shows that U.S. beekeepers lost more than half of all their managed colonies in the 12-month period ending April 2025, marking the worst annual loss rate since the organization began tracking colony health decades ago.

    At the top of the list of threats facing colonies is *Varroa destructor*, a tiny 1.5-millimeter parasitic mite that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recognizes as the single most damaging honeybee pest in the country, inflicting higher economic damage than all other apicultural diseases combined. The crab-like parasites feed on honeybee tissue and fat stores, and spread a debilitating, wing-deforming virus that can wipe out entire colonies in months. Beyond threatening apiculture, the mites put critical agricultural pollination at risk: commercial beekeepers like Funkhouser truck their colonies across the country to pollinate high-value crops, from California’s vast almond orchards to fruit farms across the Midwest. Without sufficient healthy bee populations, crop yields drop sharply, threatening food supplies and raising prices for consumers.

    For years, Funkhouser and his fellow beekeepers have turned to researchers at the USDA’s Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC) — home to the nation’s oldest bee lab — for evidence-based guidance to fight the mite crisis. Zac Lamas, one of the lead entomologists at the BARC bee lab, has worked directly with West Virginia beekeepers to sample colonies, test for genetic markers of disease and pesticide exposure, and develop tailored mitigation strategies.

    “It’s not that we’re working with one beekeeper,” Lamas explained during a field training session with beekeepers. “We might be working with several million dollars’ worth of colonies, or several million dollars’ worth of pollination services that won’t exist because these colonies are at risk.”

    But that support is now at risk of disappearing entirely. As part of a cost-cutting plan driven by congressional funding cuts that reduced USDA agricultural research budgets by more than $32 million in key priority areas, the agency is moving forward with plans to close the entire BARC facility. While some research programs will be redistributed to other federal facilities across the country, the fate of the iconic bee lab remains unclear, and the USDA has not responded to questions about where or if bee research operations will be reestablished.

    Lamas, who has already accepted a new position at a local university after facing layoff from the lab, argues that the closure is a short-sighted decision that undermines decades of progress. The entire bee lab program costs just $3.2 million annually, he says, a tiny fraction of the $600 million in annual economic losses that bee colony collapse currently inflicts on U.S. agriculture. “The idea that we’re redundant and expensive isn’t a good way to generalize the value of this lab or the cost of this lab,” he noted.

    Beyond the direct funding gap, Lamas warns that breaking up the lab will erase irreplaceable institutional knowledge. For a century, BARC has assembled a team of specialists with overlapping skills focused entirely on protecting bee health and supporting national food security. “When we have a new problem, multiple people with complementary skills can work on it quickly,” he said. That collaborative capacity will be lost if the team is scattered, he added.

    For beekeepers already grappling with record losses, the impending closure comes as a devastating blow. Just as researchers are beginning to untangle the complex mix of parasites, viruses, and environmental stressors driving colony collapse, the cut threatens to halt progress. “We’ve got results from a lot of our testing and figured out a lot of the things that are going wrong,” Funkhouser said. “The unfortunate thing is, it seems like when you figure out one thing the next year, it’s something else. Without the lab, we’ll be flying blind.”

  • A medieval book in Rome has been hiding the oldest English poem

    A medieval book in Rome has been hiding the oldest English poem

    A team of medieval literature researchers from Trinity College Dublin has made a landmark scholarly discovery: a 9th-century manuscript holding the oldest intact copy of *Caedmon’s Hymn* — widely recognized as the earliest surviving work of English literature — tucked inside a centuries-old Latin text held in Rome’s National Central Library. The find upends previous timelines for the diffusion of written English, pushing evidence of the language’s cultural significance back more than 300 years.

    Elisabetta Magnanti, a visiting research fellow in Trinity College Dublin’s School of English, told the Associated Press that the moment the team examined digitized scans of the long-overlooked manuscript left the team stunned. Unlike the two earlier known copies of the Old English poem, which were added as afterthoughts by later scribes in margins or appended loosely to the main text, this version is fully integrated into the core of the 9th-century Latin transcription of the Venerable Bede’s *Ecclesiastical History of the English People*. “We were extremely surprised. We were speechless. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we first saw that,” Magnanti said. “It was extraordinary.”

    Scholars widely regard *Caedmon’s Hymn* as the foundational starting point of English literary tradition. Composed in the 7th century by Caedmon, a Northumbrian agricultural worker and later monk at Whitby Abbey in North Yorkshire, the nine-line hymn centers on the creation of the world. According to legend, Caedmon left a medieval feast after feeling embarrassed he could not recite a poem as the other guests did; that night, a vision appeared to him in a dream, commanding him to sing of creation. He awoke and composed the iconic hymn, which Bede recorded in his landmark ecclesiastical history of England.

    Mark Faulkner, associate professor of medieval literature at Trinity College Dublin and Magnanti’s research partner, explained that prior to this discovery, the earliest verified manuscript containing *Caedmon’s Hymn* dated only to the early 12th century. This new find dates to the 9th century, predating the previous record holder by 300 years. Faulkner, who traveled to Rome with Magnanti to examine the manuscript in person for the first time, noted that the discovery reshapes scholarly understanding of how early written English spread across regions. “Prior to the discovery of the Rome manuscript… this attests to the importance that was already being attached to the English in the early 9th century,” Faulkner said.

    The journey of the manuscript to its long-ignored resting place in Rome reads like a centuries-long historical detective story, researchers say. The transcription of Bede’s text was originally completed in the scriptorium of the Benedictine Abbey of Nonantola, a major medieval manuscript production center near modern-day Modena in northern Italy. As the abbey’s influence waned in the 17th century, its vast collection of manuscripts was relocated multiple times: first to another Roman abbey, then to the Vatican, and finally to a small local church. Along the way, dozens of texts were separated from the collection and disappeared into private hands, reemerging only in the early 19th century among the stocks of prominent international rare book collectors.

    This particular copy of Bede’s history passed through several prominent owners: it was first acquired by renowned English antiquarian Thomas Phillipps, who later sold portions of his collection after falling into financial hardship. Swiss bibliophile Martin Bodmer acquired the text, before it moved to New York City as part of the rare book collection of Austrian-born dealer H.P. Kraus in the 20th century. Italy’s Ministry of Culture, which had spent decades tracking down and repatriating the Nonantola Abbey’s missing manuscripts, purchased the text from Kraus in 1972 and transferred it to Rome’s National Central Library, where it remained largely unexamined by scholarly circles for the next 50 years.

    Magnanti, who had spent more than four years compiling a comprehensive catalog of all existing copies of Bede’s *Ecclesiastical History*, spotted the manuscript listed in the library’s public catalog and suspected it had never received rigorous scholarly analysis, due to its convoluted provenance. She requested access to the text, and three months after confirming the manuscript was still held in the library’s stacks, she received full digitized scans of the entire document, leading to the game-changing discovery.

    The discovery comes as Rome’s National Central Library undertakes a major open-access initiative to digitize its entire collection of Nonantola Abbey manuscripts, making all texts freely available to researchers around the world via the library’s website. The project is part of a broader effort to unlock thousands of rare, understudied medieval texts for global scholarly collaboration. Andrea Cappa, head of manuscripts and the rare books reading room at the library, noted that the discovery of *Caedmon’s Hymn* is just the first of what may be many new breakthroughs from the collection. “The discovery made by the experts of Trinity College is just one starting point, a single manuscript that might pave the way for countless other discoveries, in countless other fields, through international cooperation like this,” Cappa said.

  • Scientists find climate change is reducing oxygen in rivers worldwide

    Scientists find climate change is reducing oxygen in rivers worldwide

    A groundbreaking new research published in *Science Advances* on Friday has uncovered a quiet, growing threat to global river ecosystems: human-caused global warming is driving a steady decline in dissolved oxygen levels across the world’s waterways, putting fish populations and entire aquatic habitats at severe risk. The research, led by environmental scientist Qi Guan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Nanjing, combines decades of satellite data and artificial intelligence analysis to deliver one of the most comprehensive assessments of river deoxygenation to date.

    Guan’s team tracked changes in oxygen content in more than 21,000 rivers spanning every continent from 1985 onward. The data revealed an average 2.1% drop in dissolved oxygen across all studied systems over the 38-year study period. While this decline may seem modest at first glance, researchers warn that it represents a cumulative trend that will escalate if current warming rates continue. By the end of the 21st century, the study projects an additional average 4% oxygen loss globally, with some vulnerable river basins facing drops close to 5% that would trigger severe ecological harm.

    The basic science behind the trend is well-established: warmer water inherently holds less dissolved oxygen than colder water, and rising water temperatures drive more oxygen out of rivers and into the atmosphere. Guan’s study quantified the share of global deoxygenation driven by warming: nearly 63% of the observed oxygen loss can be traced directly to rising water temperatures from anthropogenic climate change. Other contributing factors include nutrient pollution from agricultural fertilizers, urban stormwater runoff, altered flow patterns from dam construction, and changes in surface wind dynamics, but warming remains the single largest driver of the trend.

    If current deoxygenation rates persist, the study warns that heavily impacted regions including the eastern United States, India, the Arctic and most of tropical South America could see a 10% total oxygen loss from 1985 levels by 2100, even under moderate carbon emissions scenarios, not the most severe worst-case climate projections. Already, one of India’s most important and heavily polluted water systems, the Ganges River, is losing oxygen more than 20 times faster than the global average, according to the analysis. Tropical systems such as the Amazon Basin are particularly at risk: previous research found the number of days with dead zone conditions in the Amazon has increased by nearly 16 days per decade since 1980.

    When dissolved oxygen drops low enough, it creates hypoxic (low-oxygen) or anoxic (no-oxygen) dead zones, areas where most aquatic life cannot survive. Fish suffocate, biodiversity collapses, and water quality degrades in these areas, which already threaten major water bodies including the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay and Lake Erie. Outside experts not involved in the study echoed Guan’s team’s alarm over the emerging trend.

    Karl Flessa, a geoscientist at the University of Arizona, noted that deoxygenation is an incremental process that builds over time to create irreversible harm. “Deoxygenation is a very slow process. If we have a long period, the negative impact will attack the river ecosystems,” Guan said. “The low level of oxygen can cause a series of ecological crises such as biodiversity decline, water quality degradation and maybe some fish will die.” Flessa added that many already stressed rivers are just a small temperature increase away from tipping into dangerous hypoxic conditions, which would eliminate sport and commercial fish populations in popular fishing areas.

    Emily Bernhardt, an ecologist and biogeochemist at Duke University, explained that rising river temperatures amplify the harm caused by existing water pollution. “As rivers warm it becomes easier and easier for the same pollution problems as before to cause more severe, more long lasting or more widespread hypoxia and anoxia,” she said. That means cutting water pollution has become an even more critical priority as the climate warms, she added. Marc Bierkens, a hydrology professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands who also was not part of the new study, has observed similar trends in his own independent research: he found global river oxygen stress has increased by 13 days per decade, and dead zone occurrences by nearly 3 days per decade, since 1980, trends that will accelerate with continued warming.

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental reporting for this article was supported by funding from private philanthropic foundations, with the AP retaining full editorial control over all content.

  • Southeast Asia’s largest dinosaur identified in Thailand

    Southeast Asia’s largest dinosaur identified in Thailand

    A decades-long paleontological effort has yielded a groundbreaking discovery in Thailand, where scientists have formally classified a massive new sauropod species as the largest dinosaur ever uncovered in Southeast Asia. The newly named *Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis*, a long-necked herbivore that walked the Earth between 100 and 120 million years ago, measures a staggering 27 meters long and weighs approximately 27 tonnes — equal to the combined mass of nine full-grown Asian elephants.

    Lead researcher Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul, a Thai PhD student affiliated with University College London, noted that the specimen far outpaces one of the world’s most famous dinosaur displays. “Our dinosaur is big by most people’s standards — it likely weighed at least 10 tonnes more than Dippy the Diplodocus,” he explained, referencing the iconic composite cast that drew millions of visitors at London’s Natural History Museum.

    The first fragments of the dinosaur were uncovered 10 years ago by local residents in Chaiyaphum, a rural province in northeast Thailand. However, full excavation and detailed analysis of the fossil remains only wrapped up earlier this year, with the formal findings published Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal *Scientific Reports*.

    While the recovered bones share some characteristics with previously documented sauropod species, researchers identified a suite of unique anatomical features that warrant classification as an entirely new species. The species’ name draws from multiple cultural and geographic references: “Naga” references the legendary serpent prominent in Southeast Asian folklore, “Titan” pays homage to the giant deities of Greek mythology, and “chaiyaphumensis” honors the province where the remains were found.

    Sethapanichsakul dubbed the giant “the last titan” for a key geological reason: the fossil was recovered from one of the youngest known dinosaur-bearing rock formations in Thailand. After the period when *Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis* lived, the region was gradually submerged by a shallow sea, eliminating the terrestrial conditions needed for large dinosaur fossils to form and be preserved. That means this find is very likely the most recent large sauropod that paleontologists will ever uncover in the Southeast Asian region.

    Today, a full-size reconstructed skeleton of the giant herbivore is on public display at Bangkok’s Thainosaur Museum, giving visitors the chance to see Southeast Asia’s largest confirmed dinosaur up close.

  • Indonesia’s first giant panda cub, Rio, is growing and healthy before his public debut

    Indonesia’s first giant panda cub, Rio, is growing and healthy before his public debut

    CISARUA, Indonesia — The very first giant panda cub ever born in Indonesian territory has passed a routine health assessment, with veterinary specialists confirming the young animal is developing steadily and in excellent health, just weeks ahead of his first public appearance at the Indonesian Safari Park outside Jakarta.

    Named Satrio Wiratama and affectionately nicknamed Rio by caretakers, the 169-day-old cub has already hit key developmental milestones: he can walk independently, climb onto his mother’s back for play, and has begun nibbling on nutrient-rich bamboo shoots. He currently weighs 10 kilograms, or 22 pounds, putting his growth slightly ahead of the average pace for giant panda cubs his age, particularly when it comes to tooth development.

    On Friday, veterinary teams carried out comprehensive checks of Rio’s sensory functions, including hearing and vision. All tests confirmed his senses are fully active, leaving veterinarians optimistic about his ability to adapt to the presence of crowds when he opens to visitors later this month.

    “What matters most is that all of Rio’s senses are functioning properly,” explained Bongot Huaso Mulia, the lead veterinarian monitoring Rio’s growth. “He can already process changes in his environment, assess new surroundings, and adapt to the presence of more people, even tolerating moderate levels of noise. We will continue his gradual acclimation training to prepare him for public viewings.”

    Rio was born on November 27 to 15-year-old parents Hu Chun and Cai Tao, who arrived in Indonesia in 2017 as part of a 10-year giant panda conservation partnership between Indonesia and China. The pair reside in a purpose-built enclosure, called the Panda Palace, at the Cisarua park located 70 kilometers, around 43 miles, outside Jakarta in West Java. The 5,000-square-meter hilltop facility features a three-tier living space, an elevator, dedicated sleeping quarters, on-site medical facilities, and separate indoor and outdoor play areas for the bears.

    The two adult giant pandas have already developed a large following among Indonesian wildlife enthusiasts, and Rio’s birth sparked even more excitement across the country. Panda fans have flooded the park’s social media channels with requests for an early public appearance, making Rio’s debut one of the most anticipated local wildlife events of the year.

    Rio’s name carries symbolic weight, representing the shared hope, resilience, and joint conservation commitment between Indonesia and China for protecting endangered species. As a global icon of wildlife conservation and China’s unofficial national mascot, giant pandas have long played a role in diplomatic exchange through Beijing’s international loan programs, a practice widely referred to as “panda diplomacy.”

    Giant pandas are notoriously difficult to breed in captivity, so every successful birth is a major milestone for global conservation efforts. Fewer than 1,900 giant pandas remain in the wild, scattered across the mountainous habitats of China’s Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Gansu provinces. Rio was conceived through artificial insemination, a rare success that carries important implications for research.

    According to Aswin Sumampau, president director of Taman Safari Indonesia, Rio’s birth does more than just add a new beloved member to the park’s panda family. It also contributes valuable new genetic data on giant pandas that will advance collaborative research between Indonesian and Chinese conservation scientists.

    “This is the moment we have all waited years for,” Sumampau noted. “It is a small but meaningful victory for our team. We successfully bred a species that is extremely challenging to reproduce in captivity. To put this achievement in perspective, no giant panda cubs have been born in any ex-situ conservation facility around the world for the past two years. Taman Safari is proud to have achieved this milestone.”

  • Giant new dinosaur identified from fossils in Thailand

    Giant new dinosaur identified from fossils in Thailand

    A groundbreaking paleontological discovery from northeastern Thailand has introduced the world to an entirely new species of giant long-necked dinosaur, one that ranks as the largest prehistoric reptile ever uncovered in Southeast Asia. Dubbed *Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis*, the massive herbivore walked the Earth between 100 and 120 million years ago—roughly 40 million years before Tyrannosaurus rex, and nearly twice the size of the iconic apex predator. The new find is detailed in a recent paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports, led by an international collaboration of researchers from University College London (UCL) in the United Kingdom and Mahasarakham University in Thailand.

    The fossilized remains of *Nagatitan* were first unearthed a decade ago along the banks of a rural pond in Thailand’s Chaiyaphum Province. Experts calculate the dinosaur reached an extraordinary 27 meters (88 feet) in total length—surpassing the famous long-necked *Diplodocus* in size—and tipped the scales at 27 tonnes, equal to the combined weight of nine fully grown adult Asian elephants. Like other giant long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs, it belongs to the sauropod family, a group that includes the largest terrestrial animals to ever walk the planet.

    The species’ name carries deep cultural and geographic context: “Naga” references the mythical serpent figure central to Southeast Asian folklore, “Titan” draws from the giant deities of Greek mythology, and the specific epithet “chaiyaphumensis” honors the province where the fossils were recovered. Lead study author Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul, a Thai doctoral candidate at UCL who has been fascinated by dinosaurs since childhood, calls *Nagatitan* Thailand’s “last titan.” The fossil was recovered from the youngest dinosaur-bearing rock formation in the country; after this geological period, the region was submerged by a shallow sea, making future finds of large dinosaur remains highly unlikely. As Sethapanichsakul explains, this means *Nagatitan* is very likely the most recent large sauropod that paleontologists will ever discover in Southeast Asia. For the lead author, the project also fulfilled a lifelong dream: naming a new dinosaur species, a goal he set as a child.

    Beyond its impressive size, the discovery carries major implications for understanding sauropod evolution and the impact of ancient climate change on dinosaur development. When *Nagatitan* roamed what is now Thailand, global temperatures were elevated and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were rising. Study co-author Professor Paul Upchurch of UCL notes that the success of giant sauropods during this warm period poses an interesting evolutionary puzzle: large-bodied animals retain more body heat, making them more vulnerable to overheating in high temperatures. Upchurch suggests rising temperatures likely altered the abundance and distribution of plant life that the massive herbivores relied on, creating conditions that allowed sauropods to evolve to their extraordinary sizes.

    Thailand has emerged as a critical hub for dinosaur paleontology in Asia, with *Nagatitan* marking the 14th unique dinosaur species identified from the country’s fossil deposits. Dr. Sita Manitkoon, a paleontologist at Mahasarakham University and co-author of the study, explains that Thailand hosts an unusually high diversity of dinosaur remains, and ranks as the third most fossil-rich country for dinosaur remains in all of Asia. This new find adds to a growing body of research that is reshaping scientific understanding of Cretaceous dinosaur life in Southeast Asia, a region that has historically been understudied compared to other major fossil-bearing regions of the world.

  • ‘Bingo! It’s a match’- Franklin expedition sailor’s DNA links to BBC reporter

    ‘Bingo! It’s a match’- Franklin expedition sailor’s DNA links to BBC reporter

    Decades of mystery surrounding one of the 19th century’s most infamous Arctic expeditions have taken an unexpected turn, as genetic research has unlocked a direct family link between a long-dead crew member and a contemporary British journalist.

    The story began with the doomed 1845 Franklin Expedition, led by Sir John Franklin, which set out from Britain to chart the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic. The entire expedition, consisting of 129 sailors including John Bridgens, disappeared without a clear trace, leaving behind one of the polar region’s most enduring historical puzzles. For nearly 180 years, archaeologists and researchers have slowly pieced together fragments of the expedition’s tragic end, recovering skeletal remains from scattered archaeological sites across the Arctic islands.

    A team of genetic scientists from Canada’s University of Waterloo recently conducted advanced DNA testing on remains recovered from one of these sites, cross-referencing the genetic profile against a public database of family history and genetic samples. What they found delivered a stunning revelation: the remains belonged to John Bridgens, the great-great-great uncle of Rich Preston, a reporter working for the BBC. When the match was confirmed, lead researchers exclaimed the triumphant line: “Bingo! It’s a match.”

    This breakthrough does more than just identify a single sailor’s remains. It highlights how modern genetic genealogy is transforming the study of historical mysteries, allowing researchers to connect long-lost historical figures to living descendants and shed new light on the fates of the men who died on the Franklin Expedition. For Preston, the discovery offers a deeply personal connection to a little-known ancestor who played a small part in one of history’s most famous maritime disasters.

  • Ancient teeth hint at canoodling between early human relatives

    Ancient teeth hint at canoodling between early human relatives

    For decades, paleoanthropologists have struggled to pin down the exact evolutionary connections between our modern species and the ancient hominin groups that walked the Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago. Now, a breakthrough analysis of ancient tooth enamel is opening an unprecedented window into these early relationships, revealing genetic traces that still linger in the DNA of people living today.

    The focus of the new research, published by an international team led by researcher Qiaomei Fu from the Chinese Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, is *Homo erectus* — one of the earliest widespread hominin species to emerge out of Africa. First appearing roughly 2 million years ago on the African continent, *H. erectus* migrated outward across much of the Old World, establishing populations in Asia, parts of Europe, and beyond. Today, fossil remains of the species have been uncovered from sites spanning Indonesia, Georgia, Spain, China, and other regions, but recovering intact genetic material from these ancient specimens has long been nearly impossible. Heat, humidity, and the passage of hundreds of millennia break down DNA and large proteins, leaving researchers with gaping holes in their understanding of how *H. erectus* is related to later hominin groups, including modern humans.

    To overcome this barrier, the research team turned to a new approach: isolating and sequencing ancient proteins preserved in the hard enamel of 400,000-year-old *H. erectus* teeth recovered from multiple sites across China. The sample included teeth from six individuals: five males and one female. When the team analyzed the protein sequences, they made two striking genetic discoveries.

    The first was a previously undocumented mutation in an enamel-forming protein that the team says may serve as a unique genetic marker for East Asian *Homo erectus* populations. The second finding, however, holds far broader implications for understanding human evolution: the team identified a genetic variant that also appears in a small share of modern humans, as well as in Denisovans, the mysterious extinct hominin group that interbred with early modern humans as our species expanded across Eurasia.

    This shared genetic variant leads researchers to a groundbreaking conclusion: ancient *Homo erectus* populations likely interbred with the ancestors of Denisovans, passing the genetic variant down to that lineage long before modern humans entered the region. The presence of the same variant in modern humans, the team hypothesizes, came later, when early modern humans intermingled with Denisovan populations already carrying the *H. erectus* DNA.

    Outside experts say the research represents an important step forward in untangling the messy, complex web of human evolution. “This traces who we are now back to our ancestors in a really cool and exciting way, using new methods,” said Ryan McRae, a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History who was not part of the research team.

    McRae noted that the exact relationship between these ancient groups remains far from settled. It is equally possible, he explained, that *Homo erectus* is actually a direct ancestral population that gave rise to Denisovans directly, with the genetic variant passing down through unbroken lineages rather than through interbreeding between separate groups. With only a small set of protein sequences from *H. erectus* to work with, resolving this debate remains a major challenge.

    Study lead author Qiaomei Fu echoed that uncertainty, emphasizing that more fossil evidence and genetic data is critical to mapping the full story of human evolution. “We really need to get more DNA and bits of *H. erectus* to figure out how this predecessor is exactly related to other humans,” Fu said. The research team hopes that the protein extraction method used in this study will open the door to similar analyses of other ancient hominin fossils from warm, tropical regions where DNA preservation has long been impossible, slowly filling in the missing pieces of our evolutionary history.