This amazing photograph shows an embryonic elephant in the womb - with its tiny trunk clearly visible.
The incredible image of George, Whipsnade Zoo's latest pachyderm arrival, was captured 19 months before he was born.
Staff used three-dimensional ultrasound scans and tiny cameras to film the pregnancy process from conception to birth.
There's the tiny trunk! Staff
carried out an ultrasound scan of the elephant embryo at approximately 3
months into its 22-month pregnancy
Moments after the birth: The baby
Asiatic Elephant George is seen here just minutes after his mum Karihma
gave birth at Whipsnade zoo
Seen here at about three months into the 22-month pregnancy, the elephant embryo is unmistakeable.
Ultrasound scans are carried out throughout, much like with humans, to monitor the health and well-being of mum and baby.
A year and a half later
George's amazing birth was filmed and viewers can witness the moment in
ITV1's The Zoo at 8pm tomorrow night, Tuesday 16 November.
Easy does it: Staff at the zoo clean the newborn baby elephant, which already weighs more than an adult male
Four days old and counting: Little
George meets his older sister, Donna while mum Karishma stays close by.
The little fellow looks a little unsure about things in his brand new
world
George was 124
kilograms when he was born - which is more than a human adult - and now
at six months old he weighs around 60 stone.
He is a boisterous
member of the herd of Asian elephants at the Zoo in Dunstable,
Bedfordshire, where he loves to play in the 7-acre paddock with his big
sister Donna. Zoo spokeswoman
Rebecca Smith said: 'We have a team come over from Berlin to take
ultrasound scans of all our pregnant elephants.
'It is normal procedure
but the clarity of the images varies of course. But this is one of the
clearest we have ever seen with the trunk so visible. It is
unmistakeably an elephant!'
Every birth of an
elephant, including in zoos, is very important for species conservation
because both African and Asian elephants are threatened by extinction.
Every inch a proud mother: Karishma, mother of 6-month-old George the elephant enjoys a mid morning snack
Six months old now...and 60 stone:
George is a friendly elephant and loves his keeper, Rob Conachie, one of
the devoted zoo staff who has become very close to the animals in his
care
The birth itself drags on
for two nights. During the first night labour pains come on the cow
elephant and the calf goes to its final birth position.
During the second night the actual birth is introduced with second stage contractions and goes on until the early morning hours.
ITV spokesperson Naomi Phillipson said: 'I'm not aware of an elephant birth being shown on prime time TV in such detail before.
'It's quite
something and a big event for the zoo because it's not something that
happens very often. Any birth is captivity is important - particularly
for reasons of conservation.
'It's the first time Whipsnade have allowed cameras into the zoo for about ten years so we feel very privileged.'
The series follows the
emotionally intense, and at times heartbreaking experiences, of the
devoted keepers who inevitably become very close to the animals in their
care.
Over 25% of flowers face extinction – many before they are even discovered
Scientists say human activity could spell end for a quarter of all flowering plants, with huge impact on food chain
The giant carnivorous plant, Nepenthes attenboroughii, is under threat
of extinction - along with 25% of all others on earth. Photograph:
Redfern Natural History/PA
More than one-in-four of all flowering plants are under threat of
extinction according to the latest report to confirm the ongoing
destruction of much of the natural world by human activity.
As a result, many of nature's most colourful specimens could be lost
to the world before scientists even discover them, claims the research,
published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The results reflect similar global studies of other species groups by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature,
which estimates that one-in-five of all mammals, nearly one-in-three
amphibians and one-in-eight birds are vulnerable to being wiped out
completely. Later this year the results of a huge global analysis of
all the world's estimated up to 400,000 plants by Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew, is due to be published by the IUCN as part of its ongoing
mission to assess the state of all life on Earth.
"[This year] marks the International Year of Biodiversity," said Stuart Pimm of Duke University
in North Carolina, USA, one of the authors of the report. "The focus of
this celebration has often been on the species we know of, along with
discussions on the unprecedented challenge of conserving this
biodiversity in the face of threats such as habitat loss. However, by
asking just how many species we will lose before they are even
discovered, our study has revealed a figure that is truly alarming."
The researchers started by carrying out an independent review of
how many flowering plants – which make up most of the plant kingdom –
exist. By considering the rate at which new specimens are being
described to science, adjusted to reflect the growing number of
scientists over the years, and interviewing experts who focus on
different groups such as orchids, irises or grasses, the team
calculated that on top of the existing "best estimate" of 352,282
flowering plants there are another 10-20%, or 35,000-70,000, which have
still to be officially discovered.
The second stage was to assess the level of threats from habitat
loss due to clearing land for planting crops or trees, development, or
indirect causes such as falling groundwater levels and pollution.
They started with a study published in the journal Endangered Species Research in 2008, which estimated that one-in-five known species were vulnerable to extinction.
However based on the fact that new species – like recent
discoveries – are likely to be found in "biodiversity hotspots", where
there are huge numbers of endemic species which are not widely
distributed around the world, and a high level of habitat loss, they
estimated that all so-far-undiscovered flowering plants were also at
risk.
"If we take the number of species that are currently known to be
threatened, and add to that those that are yet to be discovered, we can
estimate that between 27% and 33% of all flowering plants will be
threatened with extinction," said David Roberts, one of the co-authors,
of the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent.
The paper adds: "These estimates are based on immediate threat, and
do not consider further development of destructive factors - including
climate disruption." The paper's third, lead, author was Lucas Joppa of
Microsoft Research in Cambridge.
The warning comes as there is growing international recognition of
the value of the natural world to humans in providing ecosystem
services, from flood protection and medicines to spiritual spaces and
enjoyment.
"Plants are the basis for much of life on earth with virtually all
other species depending on them; if you get rid of those you get rid of
a lot of the things above them," added Roberts.
Almost 60 pilot whales die stranded on New Zealand beach
Nearly 60 pilot whales have died after becoming
stranded on a beach in New Zealand according to conservation
officials. Daily Telegraph (London) 20.08.2010
The mass stranding of a pod of 73 whales was discovered
midmorning. Carolyn Smith from the Department of Conservation said the
whales probably beached overnight, which was why so many died before a
rescue operation was launched.
The area around Kaitaia beach, in the far north of New Zealand,
was experiencing heavy rain and wind which Ms Smith said helped the
surviving whales by ensuring they did not dry out but made it difficult
for rescuers preparing to refloat the mammals.
At least five people are needed to work with each of the whales, which weigh up to 1.5 tonnes.
Whale beachings are not uncommon along the New Zealand coast and
more than 100 pilot whales died in a stranding in the South Island last
December. A pod of 101 pilot whales stranded on the same beach in
2007.
The country has one of the world’s highest rates of whale
standings, according to the Department of Conservation. Since 1840,
more than 5,000 standings of whales and dolphins have been recorded
around the New Zealand coast.
Welcome to the world! Heart-warming pictures show giant panda tenderly washing newborn cub By Mail Foreign Service 28.07.2010
These heart-warming pictures show a giant panda nurturing her newborn cub at a reserve in southwest China's Sichuan Province.
The eight-year-old panda tenderly licks the cub clean and carries it to safety in her mouth.
First-time mother Ju Xiao
gave birth to twins at the Bifengxia base in Ya'an, but only nursed the
first cub, according to a Malaysian news agency.
Come to mum! Ju Xiao gingerly picks the cub up in her mouth and carries it to safety
Protective: The giant panda gave
birth to twins, but only nurtured the first cub, of which she
immediately became fiercely protective, not letting people near it
Pandas rarely give birth to twins and mothers often only take the first cub as their own.
When the second cub was
ignored, it was immediately sent to a panda nursery, said Tang
Chunxiang, deputy chief of the giant panda protection and research
centre in Wolong, which oversees the Ya'an reserve.
The second cub, which was male, weighed a meagre 135g.
Tiny paws: The pink baby takes its first breaths as Ju Xiao looks on
The gender of the first
cub was not immediately known as Ju Xiao's motherly instincts
immediately kicked in and she stopped people from approaching it, said
Tang.
Giant pandas are among the world's most endangered species.
Statistics from the State
Forestry Administration show some 1,590 pandas live in the wild, mostly
in the mountains of Sichuan, and more than 210 live in captivity.
Galápagos giant tortoise saved from extinction by breeding programme
Reintroduction of species that Charles Darwin saw raises conservation hopes for other wildlife
Giant tortoise numbers on the island of Española have risen to about 1,500 from a low of 15 in the 1970s. Photograph: Frans Lanting/Corbis
Scientists have successfully reintroduced giant tortoises to a
Galápagos island where the species once teetered on extinction, raising
conservation hopes for the rest of the archipelago.
A survey of Española, the southernmost island, confirmed last week
that a pioneering effort to repatriate giant tortoise hatchlings has
produced a thriving, reproducing population of more than 1,500
specimens. The project aims to turn the clock back to before human
beings all but wiped out a species that helped to inspire Charles
Darwin's theories on evolution and natural selection. "It's a great end
to a sad story," said Johannah Barry, president of Galápagos
Conservancy, a Virginia-based organisation which partly funded the
study.
Preliminary results of the survey, conducted over 10 days by 24
wardens from the Galápagos national park authority, found that
albatross, cactus and woody vegetation had also partly recovered,
restoring the island to something akin to what Darwin saw two centuries
ago.
A giant tortoise (Geochelone hoodensis) population which
in the 1970s had dropped to about 15 was once again a common sight on
the island, said Washington Tapia, a park official who led the survey,
which used electronic devices to track the animals. "During the
expedition we found nests, recently hatched tortoises, and adults born
on Española, which indicates that the tortoise population is doing
well."
The population now numbered between 1,500 to 2,000, said Linda
Cayot, a scientific adviser to Galápagos Conservancy. "We will have a
much better idea when the survey results are compiled." The original
population was thought to number up to 5,000 before becoming a
vulnerable source of fresh meat for passing sailors.
The project's success has bolstered a plan to "re-tortoise"
another island, Pinta, with the same species in the hope of re-creating
a "pre-human" balanced ecosystem. The scattering of rocky, volcanic
islands 600 miles west of mainland Ecuador are a Unesco world natural
heritage site and home to dozens of endemic species found nowhere else.
Some 95% of the territory's 3,000 sq miles is a protected area.
"It's completely amazing, one of the few places where you can
actually see evolution happening in real time," said Henry Nicholls,
ambassador for the Galápagos Conservation Trust. He welcomed the
recovery of Española's giant tortoise population. "They are a flagship species which capture the public imagination."
For much of the 20th century the archipelago was a symbol of human
destruction. After sailors ran out of tortoises to eat, they introduced
goats to several islands. From numbering just a handful the new
arrivals multiplied into thousands, then tens of thousands. They
stripped vegetation and made the islands uninhabitable for the few
remaining tortoises and other endemic species.
Authorities decided to cull the invaders in the 1970s with teams
of marksmen, but some goats survived, bred and perpetuated the problem
until the 1990s when helicopters, dogs and radio tracking devices were
used. The breakthrough was using "Judas" goats fitted with electronic
collars to pinpoint the elusive herds.
"Every month they would go back, shoot all of them except the
Judas, go back a month later, shoot again and so on, until it was just
the Judas left. Then it was shot," said Nicholls.
The threat to the islands' endemic species meant there was little
protest over the goat slaughter. "There was little public outrage
because it was seen that the tortoises were at risk," said Barry.
Scientists moved 15 giant tortoises – among the last survivors of the
species – from their ruined Española habitat to a captive breeding
programme. As the goats were eradicated, progeny from the breeding
programme were reintroduced to the island.
"Tortoises have begun to play their role as ecosystem engineers,"
said Tapia, leader of the island survey. "We can say with certainty
that the ecological integrity of Española is being re-established." A
similar plan to repopulate Pinta, on the northern end of the
archipelago, is now under way. However, the only surviving Pinta
tortoise is Lonesome George, who has failed to reproduce despite
decades in a captive breeding programme.
Rather than wait to see if George produces offspring over the next
few decades, scientists have decided to introduce Española tortoises —
the closest genetic match to their Pinta cousins — to the island. The
first 39-strong batch plodded on to their new home in May. They are
sterile and will be closely monitored. If all goes well, they will be
followed by fertile tortoises. "There is continuing work on all of the
islands and the tortoise populations continue to grow. Eventually, we
hope to see healthy populations on most of the islands," said Cayot.
Nicholls, author of a book on Lonesome George, said the
Galápagos's most famous bachelor may yet sire an heir. "There have been
so many surprises with George's story I wouldn't rule it out. And time
is on his side." He added: "When it comes to conservation of island
biodiversity, goats are pure evil.
They reproduce at an unbelievable rate and completely destroy the
native plants. The eradication of goats from most of Galápagos is
nothing short of incredible. It is the most ambitious, most successful
goat eradication campaign waged anywhere in the world."
Lewis Pugh: 'human polar bear' swims Mount Everest glacial lake
Green campaigner dubbed the ''human polar bear'' became the first man ever to swim across a glacial lake - on Mount Everest.
Published: 23.05.2010
Lewis Pugh, 40, completes his swim in icy cold waters across a glacial lake near Mount EverestPhoto: PA
Environmentalist Lewis Pugh, 40, wore just trunks, goggles and a
swimming hat to swim 1km (0.62 miles) across Pumori Lake. The icy lake
lies 17,000ft (5,300m) up the famous mountain near the Khumbu Glacier
and its waters are around just 2C.
Lewis took 22 minutes and 51 seconds to breast stroke across the
lake and had to find a "delicate balance" between going too fast and
too slowly. He says if he had gone too quick he could have lost energy
and drowned but if he had been too slow he would have suffered
hypothermia. His epic dip has become the first ever long distance swim
to be completed under the summit of Everest.
Lewis, a lawyer of Plymouth, Devon, has previously swam in
Antarctica and across the North Pole to draw attention to melting sea
ice. But he says his latest was his hardest swim ever as he had to
battle altitude sickness as well as freezing conditions.
He said: "It's one of the hardest swims I've ever undertaken. When
I swam in Antarctica and across the North Pole I swam with speed and
aggression but on Mount Everest you can't use the same tactics.
''Because of the altitude you need to swim very slowly and
deliberately. I felt I was going to drown. I was gasping for air and if
I had swum any faster I would have gone under.
"I was deeply concerned that I wouldn't make 1km and I'm delighted that I've finally achieved it''
Lewis says he took part in the swim to bring the "world's
attention" to the melting of glaciers and its effect on the region. He
said: ''The glaciers in the Himalayas are not just ice. They are a
lifeline - they provide water to approximately two billion people.''
n the pink: The cherry blossoms
have finally bloomed on The Stray, a park in Harrogate, North
Yorkshire, providing a spectacular setting for walkers yesterday. 20.05.2010.
Blue, weighing 8lb, is the son of
mother Prancer and father Rudolph. The calf is the first reindeer to be
born to a small herd located in a 750-acre Cornwall estate. 04.05.2010.
Spike-nosed tree frog and tame woolly rat found in Indonesian New Guinea
Conservationists offer latest dispatch from jungle paradise in Foja mountains that offers vision of life on earth without humans
Long-nosed tree frog is one of the new species discovered in Foja mountains rainforest on the Indonesian island of New Guinea. Photograph: Tim Laman/NG
Those who have been there call it a lost world and the closest
thing on Earth to the Garden of Eden. Undisturbed for thousands of
years, the mist-shrouded Foja mountains of Indonesian New Guinea
offer a vision of a planet without human influence. Dripping with life,
the pristine forested slopes harbour a bewitching display of
spectacular species, many of which are new to science.
Today, conservationists offer the latest dispatch from this jungle paradise. An expedition to the remote mountains by experts from Conservation International
and the National Geographic Society has revealed a stunning diversity
of flora and fauna, including several expected new species.
The finds include a bizarre spike-nosed tree frog, a huge tame woolly rat, a yellow-eyed gargoyle-like gecko and a tiny forest wallaby, the smallest documented member of the kangaroo family.
"While animals and plants are being wiped out across the globe at
a pace never seen in millions of years, the discovery of these
absolutely incredible forms of life is much needed positive news," said
Bruce Beehler, a senior research scientist with Conservation
International who took part in the expedition. "Places like these
represent a healthy future for all of us and show that it is not too
late to stop the current species extinction crisis."
The Foja mountains, located in the Indonesian province of Papua
on the island of New Guinea, cover an area of more than 300,000 square
hectares of unroaded, undeveloped and undisturbed rainforest. The
region is recognised by scientists as a productive species generator
because of its relative isolation, elevation and tropical environment.
The latest expedition, which took place in November 2008, is the
third of its kind since 2005. It was part-funded by the National
Geographic Society, and a special feature on the visit, "Discovery in
the Foja Mountains," appears in the June issue of National Geographic magazine.
"The Foja mountains are a virtual island where species have
evolved for millennia," said John Francis, vice-president for research,
conservation and exploration at National Geographic.
The conservationists say they are highlighting the new discoveries to encourage the government of Indonesia to bolster long-term protection of the Foja area, which is classified as a national wildlife sanctuary.
The tree frog, found sitting on a bag of rice in the campsite, has
a Pinocchio-like protuberance on its nose that points upwards when the
male calls, but deflates and points downwards when he is less active.
Other discoveries recorded during the survey included a new
blossom bat, which feeds on rainforest nectar, a small new tree-mouse,
a new black and white butterfly related to the common monarch, and a
new flowering shrub.
In addition to the new kangaroo-related dwarf wallaby, scientists
obtained the first photographs of a free-ranging individual of the
extremely rare golden-mantled tree-kangaroo, which is critically
threatened by hunting in other parts of New Guinea. They also spotted a
pair of new imperial pigeons with rusty, whitish, and grey-coloured
feathers.
The biologists on the expedition, including scientists from
Indonesia, endured torrential rainstorms and life-threatening flash
floods, which saw rivers swell by more than two metres in less than 30
minutes, as they tracked species from the low foothills to the top of
the range, at an altitude of 2,200 metres. Poor weather made helicopter
journeys haphazard, which left the scientists short of food and forced
to journey by foot.
To help stem the losses, Conservation International said it
intended to double or triple the number of species discovered over the
next few years through collaborations to allow scientists to visit more
unexplored places. Many new species may help benefit human health or
help protect food and fresh-water security, it said, and could prove
important for conservation.
The discoveries
Spike-nosed tree frog
Discovered in the campsite, the male frog's nasal protrusion swells and points up when he calls.
Imperial pigeons
This novel bird was spotted several times on the expedition, but missed previously, which suggests a very low population.
Tree-kangaroo
First photograph of a wild and extremely rare golden-mantled tree kangaroo, critically threatened by hunting
Gallery (10 pictures): Conservation
International and National Geographic have released these stunning
images of new species from a recent expedition to the Foja mountains in
Indonesian New Guinea
Gallery (15 pictures): Scientists,
cavers and wildlife film-makers have ventured inside the extinct Mount
Bosavi volcano in Papua New Guinea in search of rare species
Gallery (17 pictures): It
was one of the few places on the planet that remained unmapped and
unexplored. But now Mozambique's Mount Mabu has started to yield its
secrets to the world
As frost was forecast to
hit the UK this week, ice was no problem for this polar bear cub and
his mother as they larked about on the frozen water, skidding about,
then jumping in the icy waters.
The youngster had
been taken to the coast by his mother just as the sea began to freeze.
Fascinated by the holes in the newly forming ice he leapt in and out of
the water.
Slip-sliding away: The polar bears appear to be making the most of the slippy ice
Whoops: The baby polar bear falls into the feezing water as his bemused mother looks on
And she was happy to oblige, also teaching her son how to slide on the newly formed ice.
Flat on their backs the pair waved their impressive paws in the air as they skidded on the make-shift ice rink.
Wildlife photographer
Steven J Kazlowski was lucky enough to capture the moment off the coast
of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, America.
Chimpanzee Pansy the morning after she died. Photograph: Nicola McCleery/Blair Drummond Safari Park
In the final hour, they huddled around, studied her face and shook
her gently as if to revive her. And when the others had drifted away,
one stayed behind to hold her hand.
As death scenes go, it has all the poignancy of human loss, but
this was no everyday tragedy. The last breath was drawn before
scientists' cameras and represents one of the most extraordinary
displays of chimpanzee behaviour ever recorded.
Video footage of the death of Pansy, who at fifty-something was
the oldest chimpanzee in the UK, was released by scientists today. The
film captures for the first time the complex reactions of our nearest
evolutionary cousins to the death of a group member.
Studying the apes' behaviour could tell us as much about ourselves
as the attachments and responses to death that chimpanzees exhibit
within their groups and families, scientists believe. It could also
challenge procedures for dealing with terminally ill animals in
captivity.
"Some of these behaviours have never been seen before in
chimpanzees. It leads us to ask questions about the evolutionary
origins of our own response to death and dying in a member of our own
group or family," said Jim Anderson, an expert in the social behaviour
of non-human primates at Stirling University in Scotland, who recorded
the footage. "Many of our greatest philosophical questions concern
death and dying and how we perceive it and deal with it."
Pansy, a female who died of old age at Blair Drummond Safari Park
at the end of 2008, was one of four chimpanzees being filmed by
Anderson's group. When she became ill, vets paid regular visits to give
treatment, while her companions – her daughter, a male and another
female – looked on from a distance.
When Pansy lay down in a nest that one of the other apes had made,
the rest gathered around her and began grooming and caressing her.
Shortly before she died, all three crouched down and inspected her face
very closely. They then began to shake her gently. "It is difficult to
avoid thinking that they were checking for signs of life," said
Anderson.
"After a time, it seemed that the chimpanzees arrived at a
collective decision that she had gone. Two left immediately, but one,
the other adult female, stayed and held her hand," said Anderson. "That
evening, her daughter came back and stayed with her mother all night
long. She was trying to sleep, but was clearly very disturbed. All
three of them were."
Chimpanzees are rare, even among non-human primates, in displaying
self-awareness and empathy to other individuals. An animal may only
respond to death in an apparently emotional way once these abilities
have evolved, Anderson said.
The chimps' behaviour contrasts starkly with accounts of chimps
being killed during encounters with other animals in the wild.
Typically, groups react to violent deaths by going into a mass frenzy.
Anderson, whose research is published in the journal Current Biology, described the behaviour of chimps at Blair Drummond after a death as "serene".
The footage has led him to call into question the wisdom of
removing terminally ill animals from their enclosures shortly before
they die. "At least in some cases, it might be better for all concerned
to allow the animal to die in the comfort of familiar surroundings," he
said.
Other extraordinary footage of chimps dealing with death is reported in a second paper in the same journal.
Dora Biro, a researcher at Oxford University, witnessed the deaths
of five chimpanzees, including two infants, in a community living in
the forests of Bossou in Guinea. The mothers of the two infants, which
were killed by a respiratory disease, carried their dead offspring for
weeks and months.
During that time the two infant corpses became mummified, but the
mothers continued to groom the bodies and carried them to their day and
night nests as though there were alive. Over time, the mothers began to
allow others in the group to handle the corpses and went longer periods
without them.
A
young chimpanzee, Fokayé, plays with the mummified corpse of an infant
group-mate, Jimato, at Bossou, Guinea. On a number of occasions,
Fokayé's mother, Fotaiu appears to showed aversion towards
being touched by the corpse. Jimato's mother, Jire, eventually
retrieves the corpse. She carried it for 68 days after the death.
Video: Biro et al/Current Biology
"Chimpanzees are humans' closest evolutionary relatives, and they
have already been shown to resemble us in many of their cognitive
functions.
They empathise with others, have a sense of fairness, and can cooperate
to achieve goals," said Biro. "How they perceive death is a fascinating
question and little data exist so far concerning chimpanzees' responses
to the passing of familiar or related individuals either in captivity
or in the wild." She added: "Our observations confirm the existence of an extremely
powerful bond between mothers and their offspring which can persist,
remarkably, even after the death of the infant, and they further call
for efforts to elucidate the extent to which chimpanzees understand and
are affected by the death of a close relative or group-mate.
"This would both have implications for our understanding of the
evolutionary origins of human perceptions of death and provide insights
into the way chimpanzees interpret the world around them."
1 / 21 Microbes:Chlamydophrys, a little reported
amoeba inside a house called a test, usually has one large nucleus and
forms clusters as in this group of 10.
Ocean explorers have made
an inventory of the ocean species that are hardest to see, yet together
underpin almost all other life on Earth. The study has been carried out
as part of the Census of Marine Life,
a huge 10-year project involving researchers in more than 80 nations
that aims to chart the diversity, distribution and abundance of life in
the oceans
Photograph: D. J. Patterson, L Amaral-Zettler, M. Peglar and T. Nerad/MBL
Scientists call for research on climate link to geological hazards
Experts say suggestions
that climate change could trigger more volcanoes and earthquakes are
speculative, but there is enough evidence to take the threat seriously.
Smoke
and steam hang over the volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in
Iceland. Volcanic ash drifting across the Atlantic forced the
cancellation of flights in Britain and disrupted air traffic across
Europe last week.Photograph: Jon Gustafsson/AP
Scientists today called for wide-ranging research into whether
more volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides and tsunamis could be triggered
by rising global temperatures under global warming.
Significant warming of the atmosphere in the distant past can be
linked to changes in geological activity, they say. Suggestions that climate change
predicted for coming decades could bring similar changes remain
speculative, but the scientists say there is enough evidence to take
the threat seriously. Some experts have already linked current levels
of global warming to rockfalls and landslides in mountain regions.
Richard Betts, a climate modeller at the Met Office Hadley Centre
in Exeter, said: "This is a new area of academic research with
potentially interesting implications. It was previously assumed there
was no link at all between climate change and these events, but it is
possible to speculate that climate change might make some more likely.
If we do get large amounts of climate change in the long term then we
might see some impacts."
He said there was no evidence that current levels of global warming were influencing events such as last week's earthquake in China that killed hundreds of people and the volcanic eruption in Iceland that grounded flights across Europe.
Experts say global warming could affect geological hazards such as
earthquakes because of the way it can move large amounts of mass around
on the Earth's surface. Melting glaciers and rising sea levels shift
the distribution of huge amounts of water, which release and increase
pressures through the ground.
These pressure changes could make ruptures and seismic shifts more
likely. Research from Germany suggests that the Earth's crust can
sometimes be so close to failure that tiny changes in surface pressure
brought on my heavy rain can trigger quakes. Tropical storms, snowfall
and shifting tides have all been linked to shifts in seismic activity.
Writing in a special series of scientific papers on the topic
published today by the Royal Society, Bill McGuire, head of the
Benfield Hazard Research Centre at University College London, says: "In
relation to anthropogenic climate change, modelling studies and
projection of current trends point towards increased risk in relation
to a spectrum of geological and geomorphological hazards in a warmer
world, while observations suggest that the ongoing rise in global
average temperatures may already be eliciting a hazardous response from
the geosphere."
He adds: "In order to improve knowledge and reduce uncertainty, a
programme of focused research is advocated ... The IPCC
[Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] is also strongly exhorted
to address more explicitly in future assessments the impact of
anthropogenic climate change on the geosphere, together with its
manifold potentially hazardous consequences."
The papers follow a special meeting on the subject last year and are published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A.
They include studies of the likely impact of rising temperatures on
events such as earthquakes and volcanoes, as well as whether the
release of gas from undersea deposits called gas hydrates could trigger landslides and tsunamis.
McGuire says: "No increase in the global incidence of either
volcanic activity or seismicity has been identified to date ... It may
be the case that modulation of potentially hazardous geological
processes due to anthropogenic climate change proves too small a signal
to extract from the background noise of normal geophysical activity, at
least in the short to medium term."
The Eyjafjallajokull
volcano which is causing such travel chaos across northern Europe at
the moment, is only one of about 500 active volcanoes around the world.
Find out why some of them are erupting ...
British explorers have filmed what
are believed to be the world's deepest undersea volcanic vents, more
than three miles under the Caribbean sea.
Experts aboard the RRS James Cook say they found the vent in an
area known as the Cayman Trough, a gap in the ocean's bottom that
served as the setting for James Cameron's underwater thriller The
Abyss.
The vent's depth and isolation has raised hopes that new and
exotic forms of life may be found basking in the warmth of the
superheated mineral-rich water.
Experts hope the finding will yield insight into how life formed on Earth, and perhaps elsewhere too.
Scientists from the National Oceanography
Centre in Southampton made the discovery in the Cayman Trough in the
Caribbean using a remote-controlled robot submarine.
They discovered slender spires made of copper and iron ores. The
water being pumped out from of the so-called "black smokers" is hot
enough to melt lead.
The area is almost half a mile deeper than has ever been seen
before and, with extremely high water pressure, it is tantamount to a
"hell on Earth".
The boiling water that gushes out from deep-sea vents helps to nourish colonies of marine creatures.
Spring about to 'explode' in Britain
Experts believe release of pent-up energy after such a long, hard winter could produce the most spectacular spring in years
A few daffodils manage to break into
bloom in a Cornwall park in early March. The UK has experienced the
coldest winter in more than 30 years.
Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA
Up in the plane and ash trees, all London's wildlife
appeared hard at spring yesterday. Tail feathers were shaking along
the Regent's canal, the first buds were bursting on brambles and
honeysuckle and carpets of crocuses were delighting crowds in the grand
royal parks.
But in Camley Street natural park,
just 100 metres from St Pancras station, there was still precious
little sight or sound of a new season. A heron was spotted last week, a
few tits were investigating the bat boxes but the grasses were dead,
the hedgehog boxes empty and the newts absent.
It's been the longest, hardest winter the UK has known for 30 years,
with twice as many frosty nights as usual, says the Met Office. Wales
has barely seen a daffodil and vast swaths of countryside that should
be green by now are still dull and grey after months under snow. But –
shout it! - tomorrow is the vernal equinox, the official first day of spring
in the northern hemisphere, when night and day are the same length.The
release of pent-up energy could spur the most spectacular spring for
years, but there have been losers as well as winners.
For more than a decade, ever milder winters have led to ever earlier springs, with daffodils and frogspawn found at Christmas and confused insects
and small mammals stirring in January. But this year, says Matthew
Oakes, conservation adviser to the National Trust, harks back to older
times when British life, to all natural intents, began near the end of
March. "The trend is to earlier seasons, but this is a slow, late, old
fashioned spring," he said.
Oakes, who keeps meticulous records of nature's first sightings,
says wildlife in London is well ahead of the rest of the country
because of the "heat island" effect of 12 million people driving cars
and heating their homes.
"Outside London, everything appears incredibly late this year.
It's the first year since 1996 that there have been no bumblebees in
January. In the woods very little has been happening. The bluebells and
wild garlic are putting up their first spikes and the primroses are
just starting. There a little bit of green from honeysuckle and rose
but the woods are really leafless. "Rooks are only building their
nests now. The bluebells this year will be very late, perhaps not in
full flower until mid-May," he adds.
Oates's predictions were echoed by Steve Marsh, a conservationist
with the Woodland Trust, which has up to 40,000 people recording the
arrival of the seasons and posting sightings on the web. He said:
"This has been an exceptional season. We've only had one blackthorn in
blossom so far, yet usually we would have 1,000 or more sightings by
now.
There have been only 10 recordings of coltsfoot when we would have
expected hundreds. And it's the same with celandines. Normally we would
see them now right across the UK, but this year there has been sparse
coverage in the south and midlands and almost none reported in northern
England and Scotland". But he adds that even this year's "late" spring
is early compared to 1970s. "
Among those celebrating, say conservationists, are snowdrop lovers
- and those cherishing bats, who can expect a bumper year because the
baby mammals thrive in a hard winter with its deep, refreshing
hibernation. Equally, Jack Frost may have stopped some pests in their
tracks, including the parasitical sturmia bella fly which has nearly
wiped out tortoiseshell butterflies and the midge that can spread the
bluetongue virus among livestock.
But pity the very small birds,
says Paul Stancliffe, of the British Trust for Ornithology. "We don't
know for certain yet what effect this winter has had on bird
populations, but other bad winters, like in the 1940s and 1960s, really
hit small ones like the goldcrest and the wren very hard. This winter
will almost certainly have had an [adverse] effect on them. But the
growing British habit of feeding garden birds will certainly have
helped, he says. "We spend £200m-300m a year on bird food. That will
have seen many birds through the harshest months."
On the wing, there are further signs of winter easing its grip.
Scientists in Ghana this week reported great flocks of swifts heading
north and the first swallows and wheatears have just arrived in
southern England from equatorial Africa after one of nature's greatest
annual journeys. "The migration is well under way," says Stancliffe,
whose records suggest we can expect great numbers of swallows, swifts,
willow warblers, ring ouzel and housemartins to arrive in the next few
weeks.
"It's all about to explode," says Oakes. "It could come with a
bang and be one of the most spectacular springs in years. We've all –
humans and wildlife – suffered a lot. We all need the sunshine now".
Spring 2010
What's thriving
• Snowdrops
• Crocuses
• Bats
What's not
• Daffodils
• Bluebells
• Bumblebees
• Kingfishers
Bees: the falling rise of a beloved insect
Ian Douglas explains why he, along with the rest of Britain, loves bees, and why they need all the help they can get. By Ian Douglas
Ian Douglas with his beesPhoto: Philip Hollis
The honeybee population is down again this year, thanks to the
cool damp summer of 2009, a sharp cold winter and rising levels of a
nasty little mite called varroa. But the level of public affection for
the little furry creatures has rarely been higher.
Pby honeybees is necessary for hundreds of millions of pounds
worth of crops in the UK alone, including apples, plums, raspberries,
quinces, cabbages, sprouts and onions. In the US, too, vast crops, such
as cotton, almonds, soya and apricots, rely on their help.
I started beekeeping five years ago. I had met Robin Dartington,
an eminent and persuasive beekeeper, at a wedding. By the end of the
evening, I had promised to meet his bees and, some weeks later, I did.
I'd always been nervous of stinging insects but hoped that confronting
a large number would calm me down.
From the moment I held the wooden frame dripping with hundreds of
buzzing brown beasts, separated from my hand only by a thin surgeon's
glove that had snapped anyway, my misgivings disappeared. I sensed that
there must be a technique to doing it properly but hoped that a little
respect and application would get me there. I spent a few evenings on a
course held by my local beekeepers' association, attended their
teaching apiary class, and now have bees of my own.
They're rewarding, frustrating, calming and baffling all at the
same time. Sometimes I get honey, sometimes I get none; very
occasionally I get stung, but mostly I don't. And I learn something
every time I visit them.
I'm far from alone in my enthusiasm. Membership of the British
Beekeepers' Association (BBKA) has leapt from 13,000 to almost 17,000
in the last 12 months, and the waiting list to buy a nucleus of bees
from Thorne's, the beekeeping suppliers, is getting longer every day.
To cater for them, the BBKA have started an adopt-a-hive scheme.
In the same way that you might adopt a penguin at your local zoo, the
BBKA will find a beekeeper near you who will send you a jar of their
honey, a certificate, newsletter and other honey-related goodies. For
£29.50 a year (far less than it actually costs to buy a hive, which
range from £100 to almost £500), anyone can feel involved in improving
the lot of the honeybee.
An object of love feels all the more precious when it is in
danger, and our bees are certainly at risk. The varroa destructor mites
that were first seen in Far Eastern honeybee colonies in the 1960s had
spread to British bees within 30 years, and have all but wiped out the
wild bee population. No colony can survive for long without being
tended by a beekeeper armed with thymol or oxalic acid, and some of the
mites, worryingly, are becoming resistant. Varroa, a nasty little red
crab-shaped creature, about the size of the head of a pin, sits in the
cells feeding on unborn bees. It does not kill the grubs outright but
they can grow up malformed or vulnerable to infection, which means the
colony becomes weaker until it can no longer support itself and
collapses.
Other pests and diseases have threatened bee populations before,
but treatments, husbandry methods and resistant new strains of bee have
been found through the hard work of scientists and bee-keepers.
Thankfully, more than £4 million of Government money has gone to the
National Bee Unit for research, and backing from Haagen-Dazs ice cream,
Jordan's cereals and the organisational might if the Women's Institute
all add to the funding. Weapons to fight varroa will eventually be
found, too, as long as people are willing to support the slow and
expensive route towards knowledge.
A hive on a rooftop, tucked in the corner of a city garden or,
like my own, in an allotment patch provides a city-living apiarist with
kilos of wonderful golden honey and a unique opportunity. There is no
other way to keep livestock, take a crop from miles of land you don't
need to own, watch the seasons turn in the colour of the pollen and the
taste of the honey, and form a happy relationship with tens of
thousands of wild animals, all contained in a wooden box.
As Raymond Blanc, Michelin-starred chef, says: "We cannot take it
for granted that the bees will always be buzzing around; we have to
keep them healthy. Remember: without bees there will be no more honey
for tea."
'Nothing prepares you for the cold' . . . the Catlin Arctic Survey team last year. Photograph: Martin Hartley
Six am on a sub-zero morning in Devon. A five-mile run in the
dark, ending in a couple of hill sprints. Breakfast. Circuit training
in the barn; beyond any pain threshold to physical exhaustion. Lunch.
Ninety minutes dragging weighted tyres up and down a 1:6 hill. The only
upside is that the mud has frozen over. It's mindless, repetitive,
punishing effort, not improved by an ex-marine shouting in your ear.
Tea. A three-mile run, followed by more circuits. Die.
One day of this – well, most of it. OK then, half, and I'm
shattered. For Ann Daniels, Martin Hartley and Charlie Paton, the three
members of the second Catlin Arctic Survey into the effects of climate change, whose latest trip to the north pole was announced yesterday,
it's day six of a week-long bootcamp. I'm just thankful to have avoided
the 15-mile run across Dartmoor that entailed wading waist-deep through
ice-cold rivers.
You can't pull a 120kg (265lb) sled over pressure ridges for 12
hours a day for 60 days if you're not fit. And if the three weren't
polar fit when they started this camp, they certainly will be by the
end. Yet fitness is just a small part of the package. Anyone – even me
– could probably get fit enough if we were prepared to put the hours
in, but few of us would last a day out on the ice.
Daniels is one of the world's leading polar explorers, the first
woman – along with team-mate Caroline Hamilton – to reach both the
north and south poles as part of all-women teams, and she readily
admits there are many people out there who are a great deal fitter than
her – "I'm 45 now, for God's sake." Yet when it comes to endurance and
sheer willpower, she's in a league of her own.
"You can train all you like," she says, "but nothing prepares you
for the cold. On a good day it can be minus 15, on a bad day minus 45;
factor in the wind chill and it can feel more like minus 70. The cold
penetrates your bones and never leaves. Even when you're in your tent
at night there's no respite. It's with you the whole time; you just
have to try and shut it out. You can't always do it, especially towards
the end of an expedition when you're exhausted."
It's the cold Hartley and Paton fear most too. They are also polar
veterans and know exactly what's coming. "I'd done a lot of climbing in
the Himalayas and I thought I knew all about cold," says Hartley, the
expedition photographer. "But I was hopelessly unprepared the first
time I went to Resolute [the settlement in the north of Canada that is the start point for Arctic exploration]. My equipment was totally inadequate and I would have died if someone hadn't lent me some warmer clothes.
British polar exploration is sometimes seen as the stamping ground
of the upper-class adventurer, an image perpetuated in recent years by
the successes of Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Pen Hadow, the director of the
Catlin Arctic Survey.
Unless you're lucky enough to have the clout to attract the
sponsorship money and fix up your own gigs, your average explorer has
to take the jobs that are going. You might be joining a team on a new
route; you might be guiding amateurs who fork out £20,000 to be
airlifted 60 miles from the pole and escorted in on foot. Or you could,
like the Catlin team, become scientists for the trip – something that
is more controversial than it sounds.
There's a long tradition of science in the polar regions. It's the
ideal environment for everything from ocean-ography, astrophysics,
meteorology and glaciolology to all things climate change and the
Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station has been a base for scientists for
more than 50 years. But the demarcation lines have always been firmly
engraved in the ice. Scientists do science: explorers explore.
Hadow crossed the divide with the first Catlin Arctic Survey last
year, when his team became the first to measure ice-thickness en route
to the pole – a more critical determinant than surface area of the
speed at which the ice-cap is melting. Some scientists and climate
change sceptics went to great lengths to rubbish their findings that
the ice-cap was melting faster than previous projections had suggested,
pointing to weaknesses in methodology and ridiculing equipment
failures. But the survey is back again this year to continue where they
left off.
Hartley will be there to record every-thing; the landscape, the
water, the science. "We have a responsibility to document the Arctic
ocean in summer," he says. "I've been there many times over the last
few years and the ice is melting. It's a fact. It could even disappear
completely in my lifetime."
The expedition comes with its own health warning. Ice floes calve,
people get injured and rescue isn't always possible if a plane can't
land. And then there are the polar bears.
Back at the bootcamp, two marines give us a demonstration in
unarmed combat. It's all quite handy for a night out in Streatham, but
not much use if a polar bear is heading your way. Even if it doesn't
have a knife. So what do you do if a bear comes sneaking up on you from
behind a pressure ridge?
For the first and only time, the explorers look nervous. They can
see the story. Climate change explorers shoot polar bear. "Um, you
would fire the gun above its head to scare it off," says Daniels
eventually. And if that doesn't work? "Look," Hartley laughs. "There's
no such thing as a small polar bear." Fine. So the bear gets it.
Incredible pictures of camouflaged animals show how nature plays hide-and-seek
Stare at these photos for
a long time and you might spot one of the many expertly hidden
camouflaged animals. It's almost like nature is playing a huge game of
hide-and-seek.
Everything from marine
life, lizards, insects and birds show an incredible mastery of avoiding
detection by blending into patterns in rock formations, plants and the
ocean floor.
Red alert: A pygmy seahorse can just be seen nestling among coral in Malaysia
Ultimate defence: A Chinese ghoul can barely be seen lurking on the sea bed
HIde and seek: Grasshoppers hiding among mosses and lichens in Cameroon
From Cameroon to France, animals have evolved to blend seamlessly into their surroundings.
A pygmy seahorse is almost undetectable among red coral in Malaysia while a Chinese ghoul lurks anonymous on the sea bed.
In another incredible
picture - some almost appearing like 1990s craze Magic Eye graphics - a
moorish wall gecko virtually vanishes against a sandy background in
France.
Fade to grey: A moorish wall gecko on a wall in France
Super powers found in spider silk
Spider silk could help turn ordinary wood into a super-material, research suggests.
The claim was made by scientists unravelling the secrets of spider silk, which is stronger and less brittle than steel.
Researchers found that spiders are masters of nanotechnology,
employing a unique crystal structure to give their silk such unusual
properties. They believe in future it may be possible to copy spider
ingenuity to create new classes of materials that are both incredibly
flexible and strong out of cheap, ordinary elements.
Theoretically, they could even be made from wood, straw or hemp, say the scientists.
Carbon-based materials made the same way would be even stronger than spider silk.
A key property of spider silk is its combination of strength and
"ductility" - its ability to bend or stretch without breaking. Most
man-made materials, in contrast, sacrifice strength for ductility.
Ceramics, for instance, are strong yet brittle.
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in
Cambridge, US, studied the fundamental properties of spider silk using
computer models to simulate its structure. The silk is made from
proteins including some that form thin flat crystals called beta-sheets.
Researchers found that the size of the crystals was critical. When
they measured about three nanometres (three millionths of a millimetre)
across they made the silk ultra-strong and ductile. But if the crystals
grew to five nanometres the material became weak and brittle. This fits
in with what scientists know about nanomaterials - materials that exist
in ultra-small units.
Particles and fibres at these small scales often acquire unusual
properties that are absent when the same materials exist in larger
"packages". Spider silk was strong despite its components being
connected by naturally weak hydrogen chemical bonds, said the
scientists. The geometry of the crystals allowed the hydrogen bonds to
work co-operatively, shielding each other against external forces.
Almost half of all primates face 'imminent extinction'
Of 634 primate species, 48% are on the IUCN's 'red list' of animals under threat as loggers, hunters and smugglers thrive
A blue-eyed back lemur, one of just 2,300 in existence
Almost
half of the world's primate species – which include apes, monkeys and
lemurs - are threatened with extinction due to the destruction of
tropical forests and illegal hunting and trade.
In a report
highlighting the 25 most endangered primate species, conservationists
have outlined the desperate plight of primates from Madagascar, Africa,
Asia and Central and South America, with some populations down to just
a few dozen in number.
The golden headed langur,
which is found only on the island of Cat Ba in north-eastern Vietnam,
is down to 60 to 70 individuals. And there are fewer than 100 northern
sportive lemurs left in Madagascar, and around 110 eastern black
crested gibbons in north-eastern Vietnam.
"All over the world, it's mainly habitat destruction that affects primates the most," said Christoph Schwitzer,
head of reseaarch at the Bristol Conservation and Science Foundation
and one of the authors of the report. "Illegal logging, fragmentation
of forests through fires, hunting is a big issue in several African
countries and also now in Madagascar. In Asia one of the main problems
is trade in hearts for traditional medicine, mainly into China."
Russell Mittermeier,
a primatologist and president of Conservation International, said: "The
purpose of our top 25 list is to highlight those that are most at risk,
to attract the attention of the public, to stimulate national
governments to do more, and especially to find the resources to
implement desperately needed conservation measures. In particular, we
want to encourage governments to commit to biodiversity conservation
measures when they gather in Japan in October. We have the resources to
address this crisis, but so far, we have failed to act."
There are fewer than 320 Delacour's Langurs
left in Vietnam, thanks to the trade in the animals' bones, organs and
other tissues for traditional medicines. The Sumatran organ utan is
down to around 6,600 due to fragmentation of their habitats and the
removal of forest to make way for agricultural uses such as palm oil
plantations.
Schwitzer said that the primate he monitors, the blue-eyed black lemur
in Madagascar, has suffered from the rapid destruction of forests in
recent years and now numbers no more than 2,300. "With the political crisis
in Madagascar, this has been exaggerated in the last year or two, with
lots more illegal logging and now even the government is selling
logging concessions more or less illegally."
With some
populations of primates down to just a few hundreds or thousands, many
species are at imminent risk of extinction. "There are no small
disasters for small populations, the disasters are always big," said
Schwitzer. "Even if they are a few thousand, they can be wiped out by a
couple of events like cyclones. It's very easy for these populations to
fail."
Schemes such as the UN's Redd
programme (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation
in Developing Countries), which are being proposed as part of any
global deal to tackle climate change, will be crucial in maintaining
falling primate populations. The idea is that rich countries would pay
developing countries to maintain their forests, therefore locking in
the carbon and preventing further greenhouse gas emissions. In an
enhanced version of the idea, developing countries will be incentivised
to plant more trees, growing their forest areas. "Several countries and
governments have pledged support - if this is going to happen and it's
well done, then we stand a good chance to be able to save some of these
primates' forest habitats for the future," said Schwitzer.
And
conservation measures can work, if they are put in place in time. There
have been some limited successes, for example, in helping some primate
species to recover - the black lion tamarin was moved from "critically endangered" to "endangered" on the IUCN Red List, similar to the golden lion tamarin in 2003. That was the result of more than 30 years of conservation effort at zoos and by scientists.
Schwitzer
hoped the new report would highlight the extent of the dangers facing
some of humankinds' closest relatives in the wild. "Support and action
to help save these species is vital if we are to avoid losing these
wonderful animals forever."
Big freeze gives rise to rarest frosty phenomenon: a snow pipe
It looks like the work of aliens, late-night pranksters or an as yet undiscovered animal building a nest. But this strange-looking snow formation has a very natural explanation.
'Snow rolls' are cylinders of snow found in freezing conditions on open ground and most commonly appear on the prairies of North America.
Also known as snowrollers, snow bales and snow doughnuts, the phenomenon requires a precise balance of air temperature, ice, snow, moisture and wind. They are essentially a wintry version of tumbleweed.
Totally natural: An example of the giant self-rolling snow rolls pictured by dog walker Ron Trevett
Builder Ron Trevett, 55, and his wife Aileen, 54, were amazed to find them in a field near their home in Yeovil, Somerset, as they walked their dogs. 'We saw them from a distance on the ridge of the field, and we thought some kids had been playing up there and making giant snowballs,' said Mr Trevett. 'But when we got up there we saw there were no footprints and there were hundreds of them, too many for children to have done it. We realised it must have been the wind.'
The couple considered themselves privileged to have had the chance to see them.
'We feel very lucky. I'm the wrong side of fifty and I've never seen anything like it in my life.
Dozens of snow rolls were found scattered across this Somerset field
Frank Barrow, a lecturer in meteorology at the Met Office, described the exact science behind the formations and said it was nature's version of a snowman. He said: 'They start off with a nice thick layer of snow, with the top snow just on the point of melting either because of general temperature or sunshine on the surface.
'The top snow layer becomes a bit sticky and you then need a fairly strong wind. The sticky layer can be peeled off the colder and more powdery snow underneath by the wind, forming a roll. 'In the first picture you can see some of the powdery stuff sticking to the lower outside surface of the roll. I suppose it is a natural version of making a snowman.'
The rolls are not hollow to begin with, as a number of layers build up as the roll gets larger the further it is blown.
However, the inner layers are weaker as they are formed first and are easily blown away. Eventually the rolls become too big to be blown any further or come to rest against vegetation or at the bottom of a hill.
Liz Bentley, from the Royal Meteorological Society, said despite their rarity more snow rolls could appear in the UK in the coming days. 'These rolls are unusual here because we don't tend to have major snow events like the one we're experiencing now.
'They happen with the combination of lying snow and high wind speeds, mostly in North America and Northern Europe, and they can be as small as a tennis ball or they can be as large as two feet across – depending on how strong the wind is and how smooth the surface of the snow is,' she said.
Oldest footprints reveal when sea creatures took their first steps on land. By Daily Mail Reporter 07.01.2010
The earliest footprints made by Earth's first four-legged creatures have been unearthed by scientists. The fossilized tracks were left 395million years ago by several primitive animals up to 2.6m long. They are being hailed as a 'missing link' in one of evolution's most spectacular transitions - the shift from water to land.
How one of the ancient creatures may have made the tracks 395million years ago
The tracks were found in the Holy Cross Mountains in south-eastern Poland, one of the oldest ranges in Europe, and have distinctive 'hand' and 'foot' shapes with no evidence of a dragging body. Some of the prints described in Nature are up to 3.3m wide - indicative of animals just over 2.6metres in length.
Tetrapods, a group that includes humans, were thought to have evolved from fish via an intermediate stage. These elpistostegids are thought to have had a tetrapod-like head and body shape but retained many fish characteristics such as paired fins instead of hands and feet.
But the trackways, made in a shallow marine lagoon, are 10 million years older than the oldest elpistostegid body fossils suggesting they were late-surviving relics rather than transitional forms.
Holy Cross Mountains in Poland provide a wealthy resource for fossil hunters
Some of the prints described in Nature are up to 10.2" wide - which suggests the animals were 2.6m in length
Professor Per Ahlberg and colleagues at Uppsala University in Sweden say their findings highlight how little we know of the earliest history of land vertebrates.
Palaeontologist Dr Philippe Janvier, lof the National Natural History Museum in Paris, said the tracks 'show the first tetrapods thrived in the sea, trampling the mud of coral-reef lagoons.' 'This is at odds with the long-held view that river deltas and lakes were the necessary environments for the transition from water to land during vertebrate evolution,' he said.
The arapaima needs to surface to breathe, which leaves it vulnerable. Photograph: Corbis
The arapaima, a giant Amazon river fish that can grow longer and heavier than a human adult, is at risk of extinction, according to a new study. Overfishing and errors in classification are believed to have left the world's largest scaled freshwater fish critically endangered
A report in the Journal of Applied Ichthyology, a branch of zoology devoted to fish, said there were four sub-species of arapaima – not just one, as previously thought – and that they were under severe pressure from fishermen. Arapaima mature relatively late and need specific habitats to live and reproduce. The fish's size – it can grow to more than 2m and weigh over 200kg – and need to surface to breathe have left it vulnerable to harpoons and gill nets, said the authors, Leandro Castello of the Woods Hole Research Centre in Falmouth, Massachusetts, and Donald Stewart of the State University of New York. "They have the curse of being tasty and of having to breathe air," Castello told the BBC. Much of what is known about the arapaima, also known as pirarucu or paiche, is based on a taxonomic review conducted over 160 years ago.
The researchers analysed nearly all preserved museum specimens of supposed arapaima and found only one specimen of Arapaima gigas. The others are suspected to be closely related species. "Our new analyses indicate that there are at least four species of arapaima," said Castello. "So, until further field surveys of appropriate areas are completed, we will not know if Arapaima gigas is extinct or still swimming about."
Fishermen ignore regulations intended to manage stocks, he said, and there is a lack of data about population numbers. "The present situation may be one in which one species of arapaima is recovering in certain areas, while unrecognised species are going extinct."
Made in China - millions of years ago
The Chinese government's attempts to curb the black-market trade in dinosaurs and other fossils could restrict scientific research.
By Lewis Smith
Dinosaur fossils in Kunming, southwest ChinaPhoto: AFP
When Harry Kreigstein bought a mysterious fossil encased in 150lb of rock at a palaeontology show six years ago, he was convinced it was special. It didn't disappoint.
Once the rock was stripped away, the fossilised animal was revealed to be a missing link in the ancestry of Tyrannosaurus rex, king of the ancient predators. Almost identical to the giant killer, yet just a fraction of the size – and 60 million years older – its discovery astonished scientists.
The miniature T.rex is just one of a host of exceptional fossil finds that have emerged from China over the past 20 years. But tracking its history reveals a seamy underworld of black-market trading and overzealous regulation that threatens to restrict scientists' access to fossils, which could play a vital role in their efforts to explain how life evolved.
When Dr Kreigstein, an eye surgeon and collector from Martha's Vineyard, in the US, paid close to $100,000 for the fossil, he was told that it came from Japan. In fact, it had been dug up in China, and exported illegally.
Like countless other fossils, the tiny T.rex ancestor, which has been named Raptorex kreigsteini, was almost certainly found by one of the many thousands of farmers and agricultural workers who go digging to supplement their income. For them, discovering a particularly spectacular specimen can mean instant wealth, though most of the profit is believed to go to the middle men, who smuggle these fossils out of China for lucrative sales to dealers and collectors.
For fossils of most insects, fish and common plants, a farmer can expect to be paid several yuan – probably less than £1. But for the most impressive specimens of dinosaurs, ancient birds and early mammals they can make up to 500,000 yuan (about £45,000) – a fortune in a country where average earnings in rural areas are less than £400 per year.
So profitable is the trade, especially for unusual and scientifically important specimens, that fakes are also being created by sticking the fossils of different animals together. The most notorious was the half-bird, half-dinosaur fossil of Archaeoraptor liaoningensis, which was declared by National Geographic in 1999 to be the missing link between birds and dinosaurs – until Chinese researchers established that it was a composite of at least two separate creatures.
The reason why the trade has grown so large is that China has become the centre of the world's fossil industry. About a third of recent scientific papers in the field are either about remains discovered in China or involve Chinese paleontologists.
This is not just down to China's size, but to the extraordinary level of fossil preservation in at least three large sites. Millions of years ago, these areas boasted rich habitats bursting with a variety and quantity of wildlife, with rock beds enabling the specimens to be exceptionally well preserved.
Liaoning, near the north-east coast, provides enormous detail about the Cretaceous period, from 110 to 130 million years ago, a time when dinosaurs, birds, mammals and flowering plants were all diversifying rapidly. It is here that much of the evidence of early birds and feathered dinosaurs has been found. The ash and mud that covered the creatures' corpses prevented rapid decomposition, enabling soft body parts to fossilise rather than just the bones.
Next is the Chengjiang Formation, in south-west China, which dates from about 525 million years ago and tells the story of the "Cambrian explosion", the period when the ancestors of all modern creatures evolved. The Doushantuo Formation, also in south-west China and dating from 590 to 565 million years ago, throws a similar spotlight on Precambrian life, which was buried alive by sediment that poured suddenly into the coastal lagoons.
Between them, these areas have provided crucial evidence to support the idea that dinosaurs may have been feathered, such as a fossil of the Beipiaosaurus, revealed in January 2009, which had the best example of a feather yet seen. Such creatures are not just the most primitive yet unearthed, but the likely ancestors of modern birds: less than two months ago, a birdlike dinosaur with four feathered limbs, Anchiornis huxleyi, was dated as being older than the earliest known primitive bird, Archaeopteryx. Other Chinese fossils have contributed enormously to the understanding of the evolution of birds themselves. Among those that have been found are Eoconfuciusornis zhengi, one of the first birds to fly, and Gansus yumenensis, a 110 million-year-old specimen, which suggests all modern birds derived from waterfowl.
However, China's fossil riches face a twin threat – not just from treasure hunters, but from government regulation. In an understandable effort to crack down on the black-market trade, which has seen many of the best specimens vanish into private collections before scientists even know of their existence, the Chinese government is planning to introduce draconian new measures to prevent their export.
"There's a feeling that people are making a lot of money," explains Dr David Unwin, a paleontologist at the University of Leicester. "It's China's national heritage that's being lost."
However, he and others are worried that the new legislation, details of which are still unclear, will restrict "the ability of people to collect fossils or for fossils to end up in museums".
"The great fear is the legislation would impose its own problems. China does have some fantastic fossils and there are some amazing people working on them, who are leading the way in many areas. It would be a real shame if they were to be slowed down or even stopped," says Dr Unwin. "The trick will be to make laws that don't harm science but restrict those who do things illegally. There are always black markets in fossils. My great concern would be that legislation would create a bigger black market and would impact on science."
Zhou Zhonghe, a professor at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, says that one of the prime aims of the new measures is to stop fossils being sold illicitly to collectors: "I have seen photos or specimens of so many valued fossils, but many – if not most of them – will probably rest in private homes or with unknown collectors."
He is hopeful that the new legislation will include guarantees to protect the needs of science, and has, along with other senior Chinese academics, approached legislators to try to get them to moderate the original draft legislation. They have been encouraged by some of the changes made, but remain uncertain about what the final draft will contain.
Among government proposals is the creation of a national committee of experts to assess the value of each dig permit, and fines of up to 500,000 yuan for people who break the law. Fossils will be classified as either important or general, and there will be new regulations on which fossils private collectors will be allowed to keep.
"The previous draft, announced earlier this year, did make us very worried," Prof Zhonghe said. "Since then, we have had several meetings with the legislators, who seemed to take on board our criticisms and to be willing to consider many of our suggestions – though not all of them. We will see what will be in the final regulation. Generally, we feel positive about this because we have asked for a more authoritative regulation on fossils."
Indeed, despite the concerns about the impact of new legislation, there is a widespread recognition that, without action, China's rich fossil beds will continue to be pillaged for the black market. Dr Unwin says the sheer scale of the problem means that it can only be "a sensible thing to do" to prevent a free-for-all.
Prof Paul Sereno, of the University of Chicago, has devoted much of the past two decades to the study of Chinese fossils. He was also the scientist who led the research into Dr Kreigstein's tinyT.rex ancestor, insisting that in return for Raptorex kreigsteini being named after the doctor's parents, Roman and Cecile, who survived the Holocaust, the 9ft-long fossil would be returned to China.
He warns that poorly designed legislation could drive the black market further underground and fail to halt the trade, to the detriment of scientists who do follow the rules.
"If there's a place to sell it, there's a way to get it there. Barriers could end up hindering science rather than the black market, which can always find back doors."
As weather patterns become less predictable, Katine farmers can no longer rely on annual cash crops for survival, so they are looking at citrus fruits to provide a solution
Working in a Katine field at sunrise. Photograph: Martin Godwin
At 7am, the first rays of sunshine reach the bent backs of the Otoo family as they hoe their acre of cassava. It is the rainy season and that means a lot of early labour for the subsistence farmers of Katine sub-county. All summer, a disastrous drought caused every crop to fail except for the new strains of cassava.
Their store houses empty, everything rides on the success of the next harvest in December.
Charles Otoo calls to his two eldest children who are working in the field barefoot alongside him before school. He tells them to get ready for school. Dew still clings to the thatched roofs of their three round mud houses as they run off and scrub their hands and feet in a purple washing-up bowl placed on the ground outside and change into their bright green school uniforms.
The setting is idyllic, but it is startling how little Otoo, his wife and six children have. Thanks to the Katine project, which is being implemented by the African Medical and Research Foundation (Amref) and funded by donations from Guardian readers and Barclays, he now has anti-malaria bed nets, but his children still sleep on a sheet laid on the mud floor.
His family survive on two meals each day. Lunch is beans and cassava bread. Supper is dried fish and millet or beans. "We don't have money for breakfast - you need money for things like milk and sugar - so we only have lunch and supper," he says.
Otoo wants to expand his farm so he can fund his children through secondary school. Susan, the eldest at 13, goes to the new primary school built by Amref, Amorikot. "I like looking at the new buildings, especially the new iron sheets on the roof," she says. "I remember the old school was bad because the children were in grass huts and we had to sit on the ground. Now I sit at a desk and there are books in the school. I like my teachers. I like learning." She would like to be a nurse.
The big hope for the Otoo family is their village farmers' group, set up with help from Amref, with technical assistance from Farm-Africa. Over the next year, Amref wants to establish farmers' groups in all 66 villages in Katine sub-county, giving local people access to new disease-resistant, high-yield strains of crops, such as cassava, and training them in new soil management techniques and sustainable management of their land.
To the eyes of a first-time visitor, in the rainy season at least, Katine's countryside looks lush and fertile. Farmers here are organic - they could not afford fancy fertilisers - and nature and cultivation appear to be in perfect harmony. According to David Ogwang, Amref's livelihoods assistant, however, appearances are deceptive. Not only was there a catastrophic drought - and the absence of two proper wet seasons in recent years is feared to be a consequence of climate change - but in some places Katine's soils are exhausted and the land over-farmed.
Ogwang, a local man who is fluent in the local language, Ateso, explains how the 20 years of insurgency and unrest in the region, which only ended in 2003, wiped out three crucial things - big trees, herds of cattle and, most importantly, a generation's farming knowledge.
Planting trees
Large trees were important in Katine because their roots acted as a giant sponge, retaining water below ground so even in drought villagers could get water from their pumps, traditionally situated close to these trees. During the insurgency, cattle herds were stolen and many people were so poor they could only make money from cutting down the trees and selling charcoal. The herds that the Iteso traditionally tended have also gone; Charles Otoo has 10 acres, but only two cows, which are barely the size of Shetland ponies.
Before their land was blighted by insurgency, farmers would rotate crops, starting with cotton, which has deep roots that drew nutrients to the surface, and finishing the cycle with groundnuts, which put nitrogen back into the soil. The market for cotton, however, has collapsed, and with the changing climate, annual crops like groundnuts are now susceptible to drought. Population pressures also mean land is farmed more intensively, reducing the soil quality.
This is where the farmers' groups come in. Local farmers - and everyone is one – are being trained how to better nurture their soil (without becoming dependent on expensive fertilisers) and are being taught to plant useful trees and how to germinate, nurture and graft citrus trees.
Gifts of tools and wheelbarrows - Otoo's group shares two - are an incentive to get them started.
"Iteso has no cash crop at the moment," says Otoo. "Because farmers can no longer rely on annual cash crops because of the way the rains are coming, farmers are looking at citrus fruits as a solution." He strides over to a low shelter he has built out of trees and grasses. Shaded from the rising sun are several thousand thriving lemon seedlings. As chairman of his group, Otoo is growing them for everyone; when they are big enough, each member will get 100 seedlings - enough to plant a lemon grove of almost an acre.
The fruits of this labour are not as far away as you might imagine. Lemon trees start fruiting at three years and in their fifth or sixth year will be laden with lemons. At this age, one tree can produce two to three large sackfuls, which fetch UShs 35,000 (£12). Amref took Otoo's group to visit a farmer in a neighbouring district who is making UShs 2m (£670) from his trees.
Farmers in Katine hope to grow pineapples, mangoes and oranges as well. Given Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni's historic neglect of this region, it is uncertain whether his proposal to install a citrus processing plant in Soroti, the nearest big town to Katine, will materialise. Presidential promises are as uncertain as the changing climate, but in the face of change, the people of Katine are determined to find a more secure and sustainable livelihood.
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The giant carnivorous plant, Nepenthes attenboroughii, is under threat
of extinction - along with 25% of all others on earth. Photograph:
Redfern Natural History/PA
n the pink: The cherry blossoms
have finally bloomed on The Stray, a park in Harrogate, North
Yorkshire, providing a spectacular setting for walkers yesterday. 
Awash with colour: A lion prowls
through a carpet of bluebells, which have arrived a month later than
normal this year thanks to the unusually cold winter 
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14.04.2010.
Spring about to 'explode' in Britain
Dozens of snow rolls were found scattered across this Somerset field
