Discovery
This image provided on Oct 15 by the European Space Agency (ESA), taken by the Mercury Transfer Module’s Monitoring Camera 2, shows the closest approach to Venus. The medium-gain antenna of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter is visible at the top of the image, along with the magnetometer boom, which extends from the top right of the frame. A spacecraft bound for Mercury swung by Venus last Thursday, using Earth’s neighbor to adjust its course on the way to the solar system’s smallest
and innermost planet. (AP)
Fossils of new species found:
Researchers have discovered fossils of a tiny burrowing reptile among a vast expanse of petrified wood in eastern Arizona.
The new species has been named Skybalonyx skapter, a part of a group known as drepanosaurs from the Triassic Period, about 220 million years ago.
Petrified Forest National Park outside Holbrook is considered one of the premier places to study plants and animals from that period, sometimes known as the dawning age of dinosaurs.
The researchers say the ancient reptiles are strange because of morphologies that include enlarged second claws, bird-like beaks and tails with claws. They likely looked like a cross between an anteater and a chameleon.
They say the new species could be even stranger because it has claws that allow it to burrow, rather than climb into and live in trees, more like a mole or mole-rat.
The fossils were discovered by a team of researchers from the park, Virginia Tech, the University of Washington, Arizona State University, Idaho State University and the Virginia Museum of Natural History. They published their findings earlier this month in the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology.
They found the fossils in the summers of 2018 and 2019 using a screen-washing technique. (AP)
Eels dumped in NYC park:
Andrew Orkin was taking a break from his evening jog to sit by Prospect Park Lake when he turned around and was startled to see a tangle of wriggling snakes.
“And quite a big pile – fully alive,” said Orkin, a music composer who lives near the Brooklyn park.
They turned out to be eels that had escaped from one of two large plastic bags that split open as a man dragged them to the shoreline. After dumping the eels in the lake, the man walked away, explaining to bystanders that “I just want to save lives.”
The illegal release late last month became a curiosity on social media, but the dumping of exotic animals in urban parks isn’t new. In cities across the country, nonnative birds, turtles, fish and lizards have settled into, and often disturbed, local ecosystems.
New Yorkers free thousands of nonnative animals every year, many of them abandoned pets that quickly die. But others can survive, reproduce and end up causing lasting harm.
“People like animals and they sometimes think they’re doing a good thing by letting them go,” said Jason Munshi-South, urban ecologist at Fordham University. “Most will die. Some will become a problem, and then there’s no going back.”
New York state and city officials say it’s too soon to know how the eels in Prospect
Park might affect local species. But based on photos taken by bystanders, officials identified them as swamp eels native to Southeast Asia like those that have been found in at least eight states.
Once introduced – often after being purchased at local live fish markets, officials say – the eels eat almost anything including plants, insects, crustaceans, frogs, turtles and other fish. And they could prey upon or compete with the park’s native species for however long they survive, said Katrina Toal, deputy director of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation’s Wildlife Unit.
There are no plans to eradicate the eels. Since they’re nocturnal and spend most of their time burrowed in the sediment of lakes, rivers and marshes, spotting and removing them from the lake could be impossible.
“This kind of species is a little tricky. They’re well hidden,” Toal said. “We’re not going to go out there and try to trap any of them.”
Without having witnessed the release, officials from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which is investigating the incident, could not specify the number of eels released last month. Bystanders described seeing more than 100 of them.
DEC officials say they will look for swamp eels during the agency’s next survey in the spring, but don’t expect them to make it through the winter.
However, said University of Toronto freshwater ecologist Nicholas Mandrak, “Even if they don’t survive, they could have negative short-term impacts.” (AP)
ga’s
Rankin Jr and Jules Bass. Rankin later gave them to his secretary, who gave them to her nephew, who owned them until Lutrario bought them in 2005.
The figures, among several used to make the special, are the first encountered by the auctioneers at Profiles in History, which specializes in selling rare and coveted Hollywood memorabilia. (AP)