‘Dragon Man’ skull may be new species, shaking up human family tree. The strange skull appeared soon after the Japanese invaded northeast China in the early 1930s.
A team of locals was raising a bridge near Harbin, a city in China’s northernmost province, when one of the workers stumbled on a surprise in the river mud. The nearly complete human skull had an elongated cranium from which a heavy brow bone protruded, shading the gaping squares that once housed eyes. This Face Changes the Human Story. But How? A trove of bones hidden deep within a South African cave represents a new species of human ancestor, scientists announced Thursday in the journal eLife.
Homo naledi, as they call it, appears very primitive in some respects—it had a tiny brain, for instance, and apelike shoulders for climbing. But in other ways it looks remarkably like modern humans. When did it live? Where does it fit in the human family tree? And how did its bones get into the deepest hidden chamber of the cave—could such a primitive creature have been disposing of its dead intentionally?
Alaska’s Sea Ice Completely Melted for First Time in Recorded History. The country of Iceland has held a funeral for its first glacier lost to the climate crisis.
The once massive Okjökull glacier, now completely gone, has been commemorated with a plaque that reads: “A letter to the future. Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. Elizabeth Warren on 'light bulb' trolling in the face of climate change: 'Give me a break' On Wednesday, CNN finally provided an extended (very, very extended, in an effort to evade DNC rules on debates) look into the Democratic proposals for combatting climate change.
The repeated message was that we must undertake a comprehensive, economy-wide effort to quickly cut carbon emissions. We must change how we power our homes, and our cars, and what industry can and cannot dump into the air as by-product of its daily manufacturing efforts. At stake is the well-being of literally billions of people, the shape of our coastlines, the ability of agriculture to feed us, and which plants and animals will vanish from our local landscapes. Beilue: Have onion weather forecast, will travel.
It was long about this time several years ago and Garry Karber was minding his own business as parts manager at Hergert Ford in Perryton.
A big burly guy with a leather vest, shoulder-length hair and a braided beard — and with a knife in one hand — went to the service area and asked a mechanic where this Garry Karber was. The mechanic quickly said he was up front, and don’t blame me for whatever is your problem. “Here is this guy coming right at me with a knife,” Karber said, “and he lays an onion on the counter and says, ‘Show me how to do this.’” Such is the life of Karber, the onion weather forecaster. Timelapse – Google Earth Engine. Study: flood control engineering likely has worsened floods - Nation World - Amarillo Globe-News - Amarillo, TX.
By JANET McCONNAUGHEY Associated Press NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Flood control work in the Mississippi River and its tributaries has likely made floods worse in Mississippi and Louisiana, researchers say.
Using 500 years of data from tree rings and from sediment in oxbow lakes — bends that once were part of the Mississippi River but became lakes when the river changed its path slightly — they say the river has flooded more often and poured more water into those states over the past 150 years than any previous period. Climate change may be responsible for about one-quarter of the difference, they estimate. Engineering, such as building levees and creating a straighter, narrow channel for navigation, is likely responsible for the rest, researchers from Massachusetts, Illinois, Alabama, South Carolina, Texas and Liverpool, England, say in Wednesday's journal Nature.
Some outside scientists praised the entire paper. Equal Earth projection. The man who uncovered the secret lives of snowflakes. In 1904, Wilson Bentley, who developed an apparatus to photograph snowflakes in the 1880s, beseeched the Smithsonian to care for his collection.
(Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post) In 1904, Wilson Bentley, who developed an apparatus to photograph snowflakes in the 1880s, beseeched the Smithsonian to care for his collection. Video: This Vermont farmer's snowflake photos were a lifelong passion (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post) The first snow of the season fell on the day I visited Wilson Bentley's photography collection. Are the Great Plains Headed for Another Dust Bowl? A new study shows dust storms have become more common and more severe on the Great Plains, leading some to wonder if the United States is headed for another Dust Bowl, reports Roland Pease for Science.
With nearly half the country currently in drought and a winter forecast predicting continued dry weather for many of the afflicted regions, dust storms could become an even bigger threat. In the 1930s, the Dust Bowl was caused by years of severe drought and featured dust storms up to 1,000 miles long. But the other driving force behind the plumes of dust that ravaged the landscape was the conversion of prairie to agricultural fields on a massive scale—between 1925 and the early 1930s, farmers converted 5.2 million acres of grassland over to farming, reported Sarah Zielinski for Smithsonian magazine in 2012. The Future of Mars Exploration.