Scientists in Antarctica: why they’re there and what they’ve found

David William Hedding, University of South AfricaA media storm blew up in mid-March 2025 when a researcher at South Africa’s isolated Sanae IV base in Antarctica accused one of its nine team members of becoming violent. The Conversation Africa asked geomorphologist David William Hedding, who has previously carried out research from the frozen continent, about the work researchers do in Antarctica, what conditions are like and why it matters. What do researchers focus on when they’re working in Antarctica? Currently, the main focus of research in the Antarctic revolves around climate change because the White Continent is a good barometer for changes in global cycles. It has a unique and fragile environment. It’s an extreme climate which makes it highly sensitive to any changes in global climate and atmospheric conditions. Importantly, the Antarctic remains relatively untouched by humans, so we are able to study processes and responses of natural systems. Also, the geographic location of Antarctic enables science that is less suitable elsewhere on the planet. An example of this is the work on space weather (primarily disturbances to the Earth’s magnetic field caused by solar activity). Studying space weather is significant because the magnetic field of the Earth can impact communication platforms, technology, infrastructure and...

Read More........→March 26, 2025

Scientists Discover Oldest Bird Fossils, Rewrite History of Avian Evolution

A photograph and interpretive line drawing show the Baminornis zhenghensis fossil – credit: Min WangAccording to a truly field-altering fossilized bird found in China, birds already existed in the Late Jurassic period, approximately 160 million years ago.The new discovery suggests that rather than a linear evolutionary path from dinosaur to bird, these two orders evolved somewhat simultaneously.An artistic representation of the newly discovered species, Baminornis zhenghensis, with the preserved bones highlighted – credit: Zhao Chuang.Baminornis zhenghensis is the world’s oldest species of avid. A holotype fossil was recently found in East China’s Fujian Province and described in the journal Nature. The pelvis, trunk, forelimbs, and part of the hindlimb are all intact.“Baminornis is a landmark discovery and ranks among the most important bird fossils unearthed since the discovery of Archaeopteryx in the early 1860s,” Stephen Brusatte, a paleontologist from the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the study but wrote a commentary accompanying it, tells Xinhua.“This is a groundbreaking discovery. It overturns the previous situation that Archaeopteryx was the only bird found in the Jurassic Period,” Zhonghe Zhou, a paleontologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and co-author of the study, tells the Chinese news agency...

Read More........→March 05, 2025