KYIV, Aug 26 (Reuters) – Ukraine’s president urged the world to act much faster to force Russian troops to vacate Europe’s largest nuclear power plant after the site was cut from electricity for hours in an incident he said risked an international radiation disaster.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russian shelling on Thursday had sparked fires in the ash pits of a nearby coal power station that disconnected the Zaporozhzhia plant from the power grid. A Russian official said Ukraine was to blame.
The switch to walking on two legs, instead of four, is a major moment in the evolution of our species, which is why scientists are keen to pinpoint exactly when it happened – and a new study puts the adaptation as happening around 7 million years ago.
That’s based on a detailed analysis of thigh (femur) and forearm (ulna) fossils from Sahelanthropus tchadensis, the oldest representative species of humanity. These fossils were first discovered in Toros-Menalla in Chad in 2001.
At the same time, it’s probably likely these early hominins did a fair bit of tree climbing using all four limbs as well – as you would expect if the species made the gradual shift from four legs to two legs.
“Here we present postcranial evidence of the locomotor behavior of S. tchadensis, with new insights into bipedalism at the early stage of hominin evolutionary history,” write the researchers in their published paper.
3D models of the Sahelanthropus tchadensis fossils. (Franck Guy/PALEVOPRIM/CNRS – University of Poitiers)
By comparing the thigh and forearm fossils with the equivalent bones from humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas, the researchers were able to figure out the mechanics of how they were used, and how this species moved about (its “locomotor mode”).
A total of 20 different characteristics of the fossilized bones were used to establish whether S. tchadensis walked on two legs or four, including the outer shape of the remains and the internal structures, assessed via microtomography imaging.
They concluded that “habitual bipedality” with some tree climbing was the most likely scenario.
The team also suggests that there is a difference between the way the species climbed trees compared to gorillas and chimpanzees of today: with firm hand grips, rather than leaning back on finger and toe bones.
“The curvature and cross-sectional geometric properties of the ulna… are indicative of habitual arboreal behaviors, including climbing and/or ‘cautious climbing’, rather than terrestrial quadrupedalism,” write the researchers.
The research builds on an earlier study of a skull fossil dug up at the same site and thought to also belong to S. tchadensis. The skull analysis suggested that these ape-like creatures were bipedal, but now there’s more comprehensive evidence.
The fossils date from around the time (between 6-8 million years ago) that humans split off genetically from chimpanzees and bonobos, which are our closest still-living relatives, so it’s a crucial stage – and one that has already attracted plenty of scientific debate.
These early hominins would have probably lived in an environment that mixed forests, palm groves and grasslands, with both walking on two legs and clambering up trees being options for them as they looked for food and water.
“The most parsimonious hypothesis remains that the postcranial morphology of Sahelanthropus is indicative of bipedality and that any other hypothesis would have less explanatory power for the set of features presented by the material from Chad,” write the researchers.
It’s been a long time – and one major global pandemic – since bird flu last caused international concern back in 2007 and 2008. But now the disease (aka H5N1) is devastating bird populations around the world once again. Gannets in Scotland, demoiselle cranes in India and common cranes in Israel are among the species worst affected.
Since spring 2021, when the new strain of Avian flu was first detected in poultry and wild birds, it has killed more than 86 million birds in the USA and Europe alone, according to The Financial Times. This has been mostly through culling, which involves the mass slaughter of birds in areas where the disease has been detected.
Hundreds if not thousands of gannets are already thought to have been wiped out on Bass Rock to the east of Scotland. And on the Isles of Scilly to the west of Cornwall, the flu has been detected and more than 40 birds have died amid fears that the condition has spread widely.
The Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust hoped the department for environment, food and rural affairs (Defra) would help carry out more testing and culling where necessary but said their earliest arrival would be Wednesday. Last week, culling was carried out by Defra elsewhere in Cornwall where an outbreak was confirmed on Friday.
Julian Branscombe, of the Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust, told Time Out: ‘We’ve been seeing increasing numbers of dead or sick birds washing up over the last week, particularly gannets and herring gulls. Members of the public have reported over 40 carcasses now, with other birds offshore showing signs of illness.’
Branscombe said neighbouring gannet colonies in the Channel Islands and South and West Wales have confirmed Avian flu cases, leaving the Trust highly concerned about transmission.
He adds: ‘We are hopeful that Defra will be responding more quickly from now on, as the results will be imperative to helping us manage the situation. Right now, we need a quick response and joined-up thinking across government departments, so that we don’t see the same devastation witnessed in other areas of the UK.’
Image caption,Alderney Wildlife Trust said it expected the island’s gannet colonies – which represent nearly 1% of the global population – to be particularly impacted
Hundreds of seabirds have died as conservationists prepare for a “significant increase” in reports of “devastating” avian flu in Alderney.
Alderney Wildlife Trust said it expected the island’s gannet colonies – which represent nearly 1% of the global population – to be particularly impacted.
It means poultry or other birds cannot be imported or exported.
A spokesperson for the wildlife trust said: “Our team spends hundreds of hours each year studying these birds and working with the government to ensure their protection, and all of us are finding this current situation extremely distressing.”
What’s considered officially “dangerous heat” in coming decades will likely hit much of the world at least three times more often asclimate changeworsens, according to a new study.
In much of Earth’s wealthy mid-latitudes, spiking temperatures and humidity that feel like 103 degrees or higher — now an occasional summer shock — statistically should happen 20 to 50 times a year by mid-century, said a study Monday in the…
Fernanda, the only known living Fernandina giant tortoise (Chelonoidis phantasticus, or “fantastic giant tortoise”), now lives at the Galápagos National Park’s Giant Tortoise Breeding Center on Santa Cruz Island. Credit: The Galápagos Conservancy
Stephen Gaughran, a geneticist at Princeton University, has verified that “Fernanda” is related to a tortoise that was taken from Fernandina Island more than a century ago and that both of them are genetically distinct from all other Galápagos tortoises.
A tortoise from a Galápagos species that was long thought to be extinct has been discovered alive. The tortoise is the first of her kind to be discovered in more than a century and has been given the name Fernanda after her home on Fernandina Island.
A single specimen of the Fernandina Island Galápagos giant tortoise (Chelonoidis phantasticus, or “fantastic giant tortoise”) was discovered in 1906. The chance to ascertain if the species is still alive came with the discovery of a female tortoise on Fernandina Island in 2019.
Stephen Gaughran from Princeton University demonstrated that the two known Fernandina tortoises are members of the same species and genetically distinct from all other members by sequencing the genomes of both the living individual and the museum specimen and comparing them to the other 13 species of Galápagos giant tortoises. He co-authored a recent paper in the journal Communications Biology that established the survival of her species.
“For many years it was thought that the original specimen collected in 1906 had been transplanted to the island, as it was the only one of its kind,” said Peter Grant, Princeton’s Class of 1877 Professor of Zoology, Emeritus and an emeritus professor of ecology and evolutionary biology who has spent more than 40 years studying evolution in the Galápagos islands. “It now seems to be one of a very few that were alive a century ago.”
Fernanda, named after her Fernandina Island home, is the first of her species identified in more than a century. Princeton geneticist Stephen Gaughran successfully extracted DNA from a specimen collected from the same island more than a century ago and confirmed that Fernanda and the museum specimen are members of the same species and genetically distinct from all other Galápagos tortoises. Credit: The Galápagos Conservancy
Many ecologists questioned if Fernanda was really a native phantasticus tortoise when she was first found. She lacked the male historical specimen’s notable saddleback flare, but experts theorized that she may have had deformed features due to her clearly stunted development. Even though they can’t swim, tortoises can be transported from one Galápagos island to another during hurricanes and other strong storms because they can float. The tortoises have also been transported across islands by seafarers, according to historical records.
“Like many people, my initial suspicion was that this was not a native tortoise of Fernandina Island,” said Gaughran, a postdoctoral research fellow in ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton.
To determine Fernanda’s species definitively, Gaughran sequenced her complete genome and compared it to the genome he was able to recover from the specimen collected in 1906. He also compared those two genomes to samples from the other 13 species of Galápagos tortoises — three individuals from each of the 12 living species, and one individual of the extinct C. abingdonii.
“We saw — honestly, to my surprise — that Fernanda was very similar to the one that they found on that island more than 100 years ago, and both of those were very different from all of the other islands’ tortoises,” said Gaughran, who conducted the analyses after arriving at the University in February 2021.
In 2019, he was in the lab of Adalgisa Caccone at Yale University, the senior author of the paper. “The finding of one alive specimen gives hope and also opens up new questions, as many mysteries still remain,” said Caccone. “Are there more tortoises on Fernandina that can be brought back into captivity to start a breeding program? How did tortoises colonize Fernandina, and what is their evolutionary relationship to the other giant Galápagos tortoises? This also shows the importance of using museum collections to understand the past.”
“Part of my postdoc is developing a tool that analyzes DNA from ancient museum specimens so we can compare them to modern samples,” Gaughran said.
His tool is flexible enough to work on almost any ancient specimen. “The software doesn’t care if it’s a seal or a tortoise or human or Neanderthal,” he said. “Genetics is genetics, for the most part. It’s in the interpretation where it matters what kind of creature the DNA comes from.”
The Fernandina Island Galápagos giant tortoise (Chelonoidis phantasticus, or “fantastic giant tortoise”) was known only from this single specimen, collected in 1906, before “Fernanda” was found in 2019. Credit: California Academy of Sciences
At Princeton, Gaughran works with Andrea Graham and Bridgett vonHoldt to unravel the mysteries of pinniped (seal and walrus) evolution.
“Stephen solves conservation mysteries, in species ranging from tortoises to pinnipeds, with the deft and careful application of genetic and bioinformatic tools,” said Graham, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
“He has such a curiosity for discovering the messages and codes tucked away in ancient remains,” said vonHoldt, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. “Stephen has been collecting specimens from several hundred years old to a few thousand, and these really hold the keys for understanding the history of when and how genomes changed over time. It is not surprising to me that he also led the effort to unravel the mystery of Fernanda, the fantastic ghost tortoise that has been rediscovered through molecular research. What a cool discovery!”
A long-standing mystery
Since 1906, scant but compelling evidence has hinted that giant tortoises might still live on Fernandina Island, an active volcano on the western edge of the Galápagos Archipelago that is reputed to be the largest pristine island on Earth.
A single specimen of C. phantasticus — “the fantastic giant tortoise” — was collected by explorer Rollo Beck during a 1906 expedition. The “fantastic” nature refers to the extraordinary shape of the males’ shells, which have extreme flaring along the outer edge and conspicuous saddlebacking at the front. Saddlebacking is unique to Galápagos tortoises, and the phantasticus tortoise shows it more prominently than the other species.
Since its 1906 discovery, the survival of the Fernandina tortoise has remained an open question for biologists. In 1964, 18 scats attributable to tortoises were reported on the western slopes of the island. Scats and a possible visual observation from an aircraft were reported during the early 2000s, and another possible tortoise scat was seen in 2014.
The island has remained largely unexplored, due to extensive lava fields blocking access to the island’s interior.
“Fernandina is the highest of the Galápagos islands, geologically young, and is mainly a huge pile of jagged blocks of brown lava; Rosemary and I once climbed to the top,” said Grant, referring to his wife and research partner Rosemary Grant, an emeritus senior research biologist at Princeton. “At lower elevations, the vegetation occurs in island-like clumps in a sea of recently congealed lava. Fernanda was found in one of these, and there is evidence that a few relatives may exist in others.”
Scientists estimate that Fernanda is well over 50 years old, but she is small, possibly because the limited vegetation stunted her growth. Encouragingly, recent tracks and scat of at least 2 or 3 other tortoises were found during other recent expeditions on the island.
Tortoises of the Galápagos
Two or three million years ago, a storm carried one or more giant tortoises from the South American mainland westwards. Because they don’t swim, the tortoises bred only with others on their own islands, resulting in rapid evolution — following the pattern of the better-known Galápagos finches. Today, there are 14 different species of giant Galápagos tortoises, all descended from a single ancestor.
(Some scientists debate whether these should be considered species or subspecies, but the Princeton-Yale team concluded that they are different enough, with thousands of distinctive genetic markers, to be separate species.)
Diversification of Galápagos tortoises reveals a continuum of shell shapes, with the easternmost islands showing rounder, domed shells, and the westernmost island — Fernandina — showing the most dramatic saddlebacking. The domed tortoises live in more humid, higher elevation ecosystems, while their saddlebacked cousins inhabit drier, lower elevation environments. All 14 are listed on the IUCN Red List as either vulnerable, endangered, critically endangered, or extinct.
The tortoise populations were decimated by European seafarers who hunted them for food, having discovered that they could keep tortoises alive on their ships with minimal effort, as the reptiles could survive with little food or water. “They were a great source of fresh meat for the sailors, but it meant that many of the species were severely overhunted,” said Gaughran. “And because they have such a long generation time, the populations have a hard time recovering quickly.”
“The genetic work provides intriguing hints of a mixing of genes with members of another population,” said Grant. “It would be fascinating if confirmed by future detective work on the genome. Another thought-provoking finding is the nearest relatives are not on the nearest very large island (Isabela) but on another (Española) far away on the other side of Isabela. The question of how the ancestors reached Fernandina is left hanging.”
Fernanda is now at the Galápagos National Park Tortoise Center, a rescue and breeding facility, where experts are seeing what they can do to keep her species alive.
“The discovery informs us about rare species that may persist in isolated places for a long time,” said Grant. “This information is important for conservation. It spurs biologists to search harder for the last few individuals of a population to bring them back from the brink of extinction.”
Unlike big game hunting, for the most part hunting small game offers participants the opportunity to enjoy each others company in a less restrictive atmosphere and to converse, laugh and just generally cut up and have a good time. Dove hunting is no different, and is now almost here, with the season opening on Sept. 1.
Dove season is always long awaited for me and my family and friends. We look forward to it each year and begin talking about months in advance, heck all year really. And each time we do, laughter usually ensues as stories of hunts past flow from our lips and rekindle the fond and funny memories, like the year one of my buddies tried making a one-handed shot…
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – Tennessee residents will be allowed to hunt without a license for one day only this weekend.
Their targets? Squirrels.
Free Hunting Day, Aug. 27, is an event the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) holds annually on the opening day of squirrel season in hopes of increasing the interest in hunting.
“Squirrel hunting is one of Tennessee’s oldest and favorite traditions,” a TWRA media release says. “The day serves as an excellent opportunity for people to experience the enjoyment of the sport.”
On Free Hunting Day, state resident hunters are exempt from hunting licenses and Wildlife Management Area (WMA) permit requirements. However, hunter education requirements still apply. Anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 1969 is required to have successfully completed a hunter education course.
Six months to the day since the start of the Russian invasion, here is what to expect for the next six months
Dignitaries and members of the public attend an independence day ceremony in Lviv, Ukraine.Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Wed 24 Aug 2022 09.03 EDT
1. The war will probably run on for a year at least but is essentially deadlocked and its intensity is lessening
Six months of war may have gone by, but neitherUkrainenor Russia are ready to stop fighting, despite the losses they have sustained. Ukraine wants its occupied territories back, and Russia wants to keep inflicting pain not just on its opponent but, by proxy, the west also. The Kremlin believes winter will play to its advantage.
There have been no negotiations between the two sides since evidence emerged of the massacres at Bucha, Irpin and elsewhere…
A representation of the modes of locomotion practiced by Sahelanthropus. 
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Exposing the Big Game 
