Thread: Strange News

This came across as a bit strange.

How $70 million fighter jets just fall off aircraft carriers. Repeatedly, it seems.

Second US fighter jet falls overboard from Truman aircraft carrier

For the second time in just eight days, a US fighter jet has been lost to the Red Sea after falling from the USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier, US officials say.


An F/A-18F Super Hornet was attempting to land on the Truman's flight deck on Tuesday when a manoeuvre failed, "causing the aircraft to go overboard", an official told the BBC's US partner CBS News.
The two crew members inside the aircraft ejected, and sustained minor injuries in the incident. The jets are reportedly worth around $67m (£50m) each.


"Both aviators safely ejected and were rescued by a helicopter assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 11," the official told CBS.



It comes after another Super Hornet went overboard into the same sea last Monday in a separate incident.

Second US fighter jet falls into Red Sea from Truman aircraft carrier

DEI back at it again?

Harvard learned it has an authentic Magna Carta. In 1946, it paid less than $28 for it

It wasn't exactly like the big reveal on the Antiques Roadshow. But one day in December 2023, David Carpenter, a professor of medieval history at King's College London, was searching through the digital archives of the Harvard Law Library when he clicked on a document that would become the biggest discovery of his career.

It had been labeled as a 1327 copy of the Magna Carta, "somewhat rubbed and damp-stained," according to the archive's description. But Carpenter knew almost immediately when he opened the document that it wasn't as advertised: "What do I see before my eyes? For all the world [it] seemed to me an original of the 1300 Magna Carta." He immediately thought, "Oh, my God, this isn't known at all."

It was a remarkable find not only for Carpenter, but for Harvard — especially since the university had paid a London bookseller just $27.50 (about $460 adjusted for inflation) for the document in 1946. An authentic Magna Carta sold in 2007 for $21.3 million.

The Magna Carta is one of the most important documents in history and deeply influenced the framers of the U.S. Constitution. First signed by England's King John in 1215, it aimed to circumscribe the king's power and establish the principle that even the monarchy is not above the law. It also guaranteed certain rights such as protections from arbitrary imprisonment and the right to due process.

But the document went through six different iterations throughout the 13th Century, the final one dating to 1300. "It is, in a way, the last Magna Carta ... the final emphatic Magna Carta," Carpenter says.

Searching through Harvard's digital archives, there were a few giveaways that tipped Carpenter off that he was looking at an authentic copy. "In particular, the letter E of the 'Eduardus,' the king confirming the charter ... looked very similar to the letter in the other originals" of the famous document, Carpenter says. "It clearly was Edward I confirming Magna Carta. And the date at the end was 1300."

But his intuition still needed scholarly backing. Carpenter brought in a colleague, Nicholas Vincent, a professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia and a fellow Magna Carta expert. "We combined forces to try and prove that we were right because, you know, first impressions can be misleading," Carpenter says.

They contacted Harvard, requesting an ultraviolet scan so they could examine the document more closely. That's when Jonathan Zittrain, head of the Harvard Law School library, first learned there was some interest in the document.

"There's not always a 'eureka' moment, where it's like 'Ah, yes,' " Zittrain says. "You've got to tie together a number of threads to figure out the authenticity of something."

"We were very fortunate that our British colleagues were in a position with their deep, deep expertise on exactly this topic, to look at a digitized copy of our holding," he adds. "They could then do a bunch of preliminary work from their desks."

Carpenter says while copies of the Magna Carta are abundant, originals are quite rare — with only about two dozen known to exist. There are only six other known copies of the 1300 version of the document like the one at Harvard.

Zittrain says it's serendipity that the document's authenticity was ever discovered — one that "nobody might have thought was in the cards."

He credits not only Carpenter and Vincent, but Harvard's decision to digitize their archives so that the public at large can access them. "And of course," Zittrain adds, "it makes you wonder, gosh, what else do we have between the couch cushions?"

An authentic Magna Carta has been discovered in Harvard's archives : NPR

So incredibly strange, yet again.

happens every day

Melania Trump (the Statue) Vanishes in Slovenia

The bronze sculpture, erected near Ms. Trump’s hometown in eastern Slovenia, was chopped off at the feet and stolen, the police said.

Where is Melania Trump?

No, not the rarely seen first lady, but the statue made in her likeness that watched over her nearby hometown, Sevnica, Slovenia.

The life-size bronze statue, 15 minutes outside Sevnica, disappeared from its perch this week. The theft was reported on Tuesday, the police said. But it’s not clear when, exactly, it was taken, Alenka Drenik Rangus, a spokeswoman for the police, said by phone on Friday.

Police are still assessing the theft, and an investigation is still ongoing, Ms. Drenik Rangus added.

Residents of Sevnica have their suspicions. Some in the town of about 5,000 people in eastern Slovenia say it could have been an act of vandalism; others say it was probably melted down for cash. None of the people interviewed thought, however, that the statue’s disappearance had been in any way political.

Melania is rarely seen in the spotlight or anywhere else, and even when she does do something, it’s so bizarre, so I don’t even want to think about her that much, said Igor Pavkovic, who has lived in Sevnica all his life and recalled laughing when he first saw the statue.

The expressionless sculpture, its arm raised in a tight wave, never quite captured the heart of Sevnica’s residents. Originally made of wood, it was hacked from a linden tree and unveiled in 2019 by an artist who used a chain saw to create a very, very rough likeness of the first lady.

Painted powder blue to reflect the cashmere dress and gloves that Ms. Trump wore to her husband’s first inauguration, in 2017, the statue stood nine feet tall. But it was derided as resembling a scarecrow or a Smurf. Anonymous arsonists set the statue on fire on July 4, 2020.

A bronze replacement was erected later that year. Now, only the statue’s heavy Cubist feet, hacked off at the ankles, remain on the tree trunk that had served as the statue’s plinth. It had stood in a lonely field, far away from the municipal apartment block where Ms. Trump grew up and the school she attended. The privately owned field overlooks the Sava River and a verdant valley, but only runners and cyclists would have regularly crossed paths with the statue.

Both the wood and metal iterations had been commissioned by an American artist, Brad Downey, who worked with local artisans to create the sculptures. He had reported the statue missing, he said in an Instagram post on Saturday.

What’s left is a fragment — rooted, but silenced, he said alongside images of the severed statue.

Mr. Downey said in 2019 that he saw the statue’s form and location as an interrogation of President Trump’s harsh stance on immigration.

The idea to commission the first monument to Melania has some cheekiness to it, but I wanted to do a serious investigation there, Mr. Downey said, adding at the time that the statue, placed atop a tree stump, was rooted in the area Ms. Trump came from.

While no one has claimed responsibility for the statue’s disappearance, it vanished at a time when public dissatisfaction with Mr. Trump’s second-term policies have been expressed globally through vandalism of vehicles made by Tesla, the electric car company owned by Elon Musk, Mr. Trump’s adviser. Satirical advertisements mocking both men have also popped up around London in recent weeks.

Shipment of thousands of chicks left in USPS truck. Overwhelmed shelter needs help adopting them

A Delaware animal shelter is trying to care for and rehome thousands of chicks that survived being left in a postal service truck for three days. Trapped in a warm enclosure, without food and water, thousands died before they were discovered on May 2, CBS affiliate WBOC reported.

The involved parties are still awaiting answers as to how 12,000 chicks were abandoned within the truck at a Delaware mail distribution center. The United States Postal Service said in an email to the Associated Press that it was aware of a process breakdown and was actively investigating what occurred.

The USPS says it has been working with hatcheries for more than 100 years to transport mail-order chicks and that it transports thousands of chicks every year, according to its website.

"Chicks can be safely transported without food or water within 72 hours of hatching. In fact, placing food and water inside the hatchery box could jeopardize the integrity of the box and could endanger the health and safety of the animals inside," the Postal Service website says.

Pennsylvania-based Freedom Ranger Hatchery raised the shipped chicks for their weekly distribution to clients across the country, said a spokesperson for the company. Due to biosecurity concerns, the hatchery cannot take the chicks back.

The chicks were supposed to be delivered to several states, including Texas, Ohio, Florida, and more but the entire shipment was mistakenly sent to Delaware following shipping delays and rejections from distribution centers across the country, WBOC reported.

The hatchery's spokesperson said it would have been best if USPS, after discovering the chicks, had completed delivery, as the recipients would have been adequately equipped to handle the birds — even malnourished ones.

"After three and a half days in the heat, these crates were wet with dead fowl. It was a mess," John Parana, executive director at First State Animal Center and SPCA, told CBS affiliate WBNS-TV.

For more than two weeks, the surviving chicks have been nursed and cared for at the shelter, Parana said.

Last Tuesday, the shelter began offering the birds for adoption, but only a few hundred out of thousands have been picked up. There is no complete count of the chicks, as the shelter has no feasible way to do so, but Parana estimates there to be more than two thousand available.

Some have inquired about buying the birds for meat, but, as a no-kill shelter and SPCA, those were refused.

The strain has turned the animal care center into a 24/7 operation and necessitated a staffing increase, Parana said. Money remains the biggest concern for the donation-reliant nonprofit. Some employees have begun spending their money to support the operations, he added.

Among the birds were young turkeys, geese and quail, but the vast majority were Freedom Ranger chicks. One concern for the shelter, Parana explained, was the increasing demand for space and feed over time, as Freedom Rangers take about ten weeks to reach maturity.

The Delaware Department of Agriculture, after a call from USPS, directed the animals to the shelter, which shares a memorandum of understanding with the animal center as a state vendor. The department said it is responsible for assisting the shelter with funds — for chickens, the rate was $5 each per day.

The department's chief of planning, Jimmy Kroon, said negotiations were ongoing, but Parana claims that the department communicated that they had no funds to allocate for the chicks. Both acknowledged the original rate would be unreasonable in the current circumstances.

"They said that they're gonna try to go after the post office to get recoupment," Parana said. "That doesn't help us in the meantime."

Shipment of thousands of chicks left in USPS truck. Overwhelmed shelter needs help adopting them - CBS News

Bear cub rescued from woods is being raised by humans dressed as bears

Story and pics MSN

Now we know where Seeking an Ursine landed up

Originally Posted by david44

Now we know where Seeking an Ursine landed up

Or it could be just as simple as awful moderation here at TD so he left this dumpster fire like many posters have over the past couple years.

River of Death: 8,000 dinosaur bones discovered at CanadaÂ’s fossil mass grave

In Alberta, Canada, paleontologists continue to excavate one of the biggest dinosaur bonebeds in the world.

In Alberta, Canada, paleontologists continue to unearth thousands of Pachyrhinosaurin bones across a kilometer of land, making this gigantic bonebed one of the densest fossil sites in the world.

Nicknamed “The River of Death,” a local high school teacher initially discovered Pipestone Creek in 1974. Now considered one of the most significant finds from the age of the dinosaurs, it even gave birth to a museum.

A massive event, still unknown, wiped out a whole herd of pachyrhinosaurians in an instant about 72 million years ago. The active site, populated by paleontologists and enthusiasts alike, is about the size of a football field and jam-packed with bones.

But getting to them requires a sledgehammer to crack through the rock before dusting away the layers of time to get to the treasure that never seems to end.

It is jaw-dropping in terms of its density, Professor Emily Bamforth told the BBC.

A terrible tragedy becomes a triumph

Finding dinosaur bones northwest of Alberta, Canada, isnÂ’t exactly unusual. In the Deadfall Hills, super-sized bones are cast along the shoreline. However, underneath the slopes of this lush forest, the biggest reward turned out to require a little extra muscle and delicate handling at the same time.

The treasure of fossilized bones emerges under layers of dirt and dust. The team has collected over 8,000 dinosaur bones thus far, BBC reports. Professor Bamforth gave a map of the dinosaur bones: bones that look like blobs and ribs that appear like long, skinny bones.

As a site that continues to yield fossils belonging to one dinosaur, the pachyrhinosaurus, the evidence is conclusive, even if researchers still cannot confirm what happened to the herd whose bones covered an impressive area the size of a football field.

With a robust build, the member of the Ceratopsidae family had a distinctive beak, a three-horned head, and a “nasal boss.” However, unlike its relatives, its facial structure was more pronounced than the horns.

We believe that this was a herd on a seasonal migration that got tangled up in some catastrophic event that effectively wiped out, if not the entire herd, then a good proportion of it, Prof Bamforth told BBC News.

A flash flood turned a treasure trove: 8,000 dinosaur bones discovered at Canada'''s fossil mass grave

Ship run aground in Norway should be removed within days: company

A ship that made world headlines for running aground in Norway a stone's throw from a house should be dragged loose within days, the head of the company managing the salvage operation said Monday.

Ole Bjornevik, managing director of BOA Offshore, said the company would first unload the ship's cargo, then remove the 135-metre (443-foot) vessel.

"We estimate that there are approximately 1,500 tonnes of pressure on the fore ship. Once we've unloaded that weight of containers, we can pull it off," Bjornevik told AFP.

"We plan to do so on Wednesday," he added.

The NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just metres from a wooden cabin around dawn on Thursday.

A Ukrainian sailor in his 30s was on watch at the time and said he had fallen asleep, according to Norwegian police, who have charged him with "negligent navigation".

The seaman also said none of the cargo ship's collision alarms had worked, prosecutor Kjetil Bruland Sorensen told news agency NTB.

The investigation will also look into whether the rules on working hours and rest periods were adhered to on ship, according to police.

The occupant of the house, Johan Helberg, also slept through the incident, and only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbour called him on the phone.

None of the 16 crew members were injured.

Ship run aground in Norway should be removed within days: company

14 million bees escape after truck overturns in Washington state

Approximately 14 million bees escaped after a tractor-trailer carrying more than 70,000 pounds of pollinator hives rolled over Friday in northern Washington state, authorities said.

The commercial truck hauling the honeybees overturned at about 4 a.m. in Whatcom County, Washington, which borders Canada's British Columbia, the sheriff's office said in a social media post. It's unclear what caused the truck to roll over.

The hives came off the truck shortly after 9 a.m., which freed the bees. The incident happened on Weidkamp Road, which remains closed between Loomis Trail and West Badger roads, the Whatcom County Sheriff's Office said.

Authorities said the public should avoid the area and stay at least 600 feet away.

"While there is no general health risk to the public, anyone who is allergic to bee stings or has concerns should check the State Department of Health webpage on bees and wasps," the sheriff's office said.

Authorities said the road where the truck overturned was closed for about 24 hours to allow the bees to re-hive and find their queen bee.

More than two dozen beekeepers came to assist with the rescue, the sheriff's office said, adding: "The goal is to save as many of the bees as possible."

"At this time, on-scene work is done. Hive boxes from the overturned truck were recovered, restored and returned to use," authorities said in an update. "By morning, most bees should have returned to their hives and those responsible for their delivery will be in charge."

Initially, officials said that some 250 million bees escaped but they corrected the tally on Saturday, citing a beekeeper who assisted at the scene.

"Thank you to those who challenged the math and helped us get closer to the true number," officials said.

The World's Richest Shipwreck in History Could Be Worth More Than $17 Billion

New images support the case that the long lost San José galleon has been discovered.

Adecade ago, the Colombian government announced the discovery of what was presumed to be the wreckage of the San José, a Spanish galleon that was sunk by the British Navy more than 300 years ago. But this wasn’t just any ship. Historians say the vessel was carrying not only a crew of more than 600 men but also a massive fortune, including "200 tonnes of gold, silver, and emeralds belonging to the viceroy of Peru.” In today’s currency, that pot would be worth more than $17 billion, making it the world’s richest shipwreck in history if recovered. In the years since then, the government has funded research efforts to confirm the ship's origins.

This week, researchers shared new findings after sending an underwater drone on “a non-intrusive investigation of an 18th-century AD shipwreck,” which was covered in a new article in the archaeology journal Antiquity, published by Cambridge University Press. The most essential clue: “hand-struck, irregularly shaped coins—known as cobs in English and macuquinas in Spanish—that served as the primary currency in the Americas for more than two centuries.”

A photograph from the port section of the stern, showing the obverse and reverse faces of coin, as they were observed on the seabed.

“This case study highlights the value of coins as key chronological markers in the identification of shipwrecks, particularly those from the Tierra Firme Fleet,” researchers wrote in Antiquity. “The finding of cobs created in 1707 at the Lima Mint points to a vessel navigating the Tierra Firme route in the early eighteenth century. The San José Galleon is the only ship that matches these characteristics.”

The San José Galleon is also referred to as the “Holy Grail of shipwrecks,” and a private company Sea Search Armada (formerly called Glocca Morra) say they first discovered the shipwreck in 1981, and later shared the coordinates with the government. The company then sued the government for $10 billion, “equivalent to half the fortune, according to its calculations.” Colombia has since declared the area a “protected archaeological area,” and President Gustavo Petro wants to recover and raise the wreck for scientific purposes before his term ends in 2026, according to Bloomberg.

Colombian Shipwreck May Be the World’s Richest, Valued at Over $17 Billion

Originally Posted by S Landreth

President Gustavo Petro wants to recover and raise the wreck for scientific purposes before his term ends in 2026

15 sets of twins are graduating from one New York high school

A high school in the suburbs of New York City will be seeing double on graduation day this weekend: Among the nearly 500 students in its graduating class, 30 are twins.

It's a tight knit group. Some of the students at Long Island's Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School have known each other since kindergarten, their parents meeting through a local twins club. Some even still plan family vacations together.

These days, some of the twins are on a group text chain, which has helped them cope with their newfound notoriety as graduation day approaches.

"Honestly when we're together, the room is electric," said Sydney Monka, as she attended graduation rehearsal with the other twins earlier this week. "We're all very comfortable around each other, and we all have these shared experiences so we're all bouncing off each other. It's really cool."

Save for the shared last names, though, the pairs may be hard to spot as they walk the stage Sunday at their high school graduation, held at Hofstra University in Hempstead.

The students are all fraternal twins — meaning born from different eggs and sperm — so none of them are identical. Many of the twins are different genders.

That doesn't make the bonds any less tight, says Bari Cohen, who is attending Indiana University in the fall.

"Especially for boy-girl twins, a lot of people think it's just, like, siblings, but it's more than that, because we go through the same things at the same time," she said of her brother, Braydon Cohen, who is headed to the University of Pittsburgh.

Most, when prodded, give a playful shrug at the curious phenomenon in the high school, which is located in an affluent, largely white district about 35 miles east of Manhattan.

"I guess there's just something in the water," said Emily Brake, who is attending the University of Georgia, echoing a common refrain among the twins.

"We're all just very lucky. I think it's just a coincidence," added her sister, Amanda Brake, who will be attending Ohio State University.

Others acknowledge there's more than Mother Nature at work.

Arianna Cammareri said her parents had been trying for years to have kids, and in vitro fertilization was their last option. Back then, it was more common than it is now for IVF babies to be twins or triplets.

There also may be a genetic component at play.

"There's a few twins in our family, like I have cousins that are twins, so I guess that raised the chances of having twins," added the incoming freshman at Stony Brook University, also on Long Island.

Large cohorts of twins are not unusual at Plainview-Old Bethpage. The high school had back-to-back graduating classes with 10 sets of multiples in 2014 and 2015, and next year's incoming freshmen class has nine sets of twins, according to school officials.

Among the other schools around the country with big sets of graduating twins are Clovis North High School in Fresno, California, with 14 pairs, and Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Maryland, with 10 pairs.

Last year, a middle school in suburban Boston had 23 sets of twins in its graduating class, though that's still far shy of the record for most multiples in the same academic class. New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, had a whopping 44 twin pairs and a set of triplets in 2017, according to Guinness World Records.

Most of the twins at Plainview-Old Bethpage are heading off to different colleges.

An exception is Aiden and Chloe Manzo, who will both attend the University of Florida, where they'll live in the same dormitory on campus and both study business, though with different majors.

"We're going to see each other a lot," Chloe said wryly.

"Deep down, my mom knew it would be easier if we went to the same school," she added. "You know, like moving in, graduation, going to sports games."

Some were apprehensive about living far from their longtime partner in crime.

Emma and Kayla Leibowitz will be attending Binghamton and Syracuse University, respectively. The fifth generation twins say they're already making plans for frequent visits even though the upstate New York schools are some 80 miles apart.

"I think it's gonna be really weird because we really do everything together. She's my best friend. I really can't do anything without her," said Emma.

"We're sleeping over every weekend. I'm coming for football games — like all of it," said Kayla.

Others were looking forward to getting some breathing room.

Sydney and Kayla Jasser said they're both studying fashion design — but at different colleges. Sydney is attending the University of Delaware while Kayla will be attending Indiana University.

"We could have went to the same college, but we just wanted to be able to be independent since we've been with each other forever," Kayla said. "It's good to get out there and have our own experiences."

Watch: Rare "Roll Cloud" Spotted Over Beach In Portugal During Heatwave

A dramatic video showing a "roll cloud" over a beach in Portugal is going viral on social media, leaving netizens mesmerised. According to EuroNews, the incident took place on Monday as the country sweltered under a heat wave. The "roll cloud" hit several beaches along the Portuguese coast. This rare meteorological phenomenon occurs when air masses of contrasting temperatures and sea breezes interact, forming a thick wave of cloud. These clouds are tube-shaped and move horizontally. They resemble a giant wave, but have nothing to do with tsunamis.

A video of this rare phenomenon has surfaced on social media. The clip shows a dense cloud coming out of the ocean and heading towards the beach. As the clouds approach, strong winds appear, taking beachgoers by surprise.

Since being shared, the video has gone viral, garnering more than 20,000 views and several likes.

"Holy canoly! Is this the storm front that will give Europeans a respite from the heatwave in a few days?" asked one user. "It's interesting, because they used to be very common here in Northern Portugal back when my parents were kids (60s-70s) and then they disappeared until yesterday," commented another.

"Wow, it's like a wave!" wrote a third user. "So ominous looking!" added another.

A roll cloud is a low, horizontal, tube-shaped, and relatively rare type of arcus cloud. They usually appear to be "rolling" about a horizontal axis. Roll clouds form near the edge of thunderstorms when relatively cool air moves ahead into the warmer and damper air that's feeding the storm.

According to EuroNews, this rare phenomenon occurred amid a time when mainland Portugal is in the grip of a severe heatwave. On Sunday, the heat produced a wide variety of unstable weather phenomena in the country, such as freak rain showers, violent thunderstorms and hail. These phenomena were reportedly more intense in the interior of the country.

With temperatures rising further into the week, the National Civil Protection Authority has issued a warning to the population with preventative measures and other recommendations. The agency warned that the danger of rural fires is 'Very High' to 'Maximum' in the interior of the North and Centre and in the Algarve.

200 million year-old jawbone revealed as new species

Scientists have discovered a new species of pterosaur – a flying reptile that soared above the dinosaurs more than 200 million years ago.

The jawbone of the ancient reptile was unearthed in Arizona back in 2011, but modern scanning techniques have now revealed details showing that it belongs to a species new to science.

The research team, led by scientists at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, has named the creature Eotephradactylus mcintireae, meaning "ash-winged dawn goddess".

It is a reference to the volcanic ash that helped preserve its bones in an ancient riverbed.

Details of the discovery are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

At about 209 million years old, this is now believed to be the earliest pterosaur to be found in North America.

"The bones of Triassic pterosaurs are small, thin, and often hollow, so they get destroyed before they get fossilised," explained Dr Kligman.

The site of this discovery is a fossil bed in a desert landscape of ancient rock in the Petrified Forest National Park.

More than 200 million years ago, this place was a riverbed, and layers of sediment gradually trapped and preserved bones, scales and other evidence of life at the time.

The river ran through the central region of what was the supercontinent of Pangaea, which was formed from all of Earth's landmasses.

The pterosaur jaw is just one part of a collection of fossils found at the same site, including bones, teeth, fish scales and even fossilised poo (also known as coprolites).

Dr Kligman said: "Our ability to recognise pterosaur bones in [these ancient] river deposits suggests there may be other similar deposits from Triassic rocks around the world that may also preserve pterosaur bones."

Studying the pterosaur's teeth also provided clues about what the seagull-sized winged reptile would have eaten.

"They have an unusually high degree of wear at their tips," explained Dr Kligman. suggesting that this pterosaur was feeding on something with hard body parts."

The most likely prey, he told BBC News, were primitive fish that would have been covered in an armour of bony scales.

Scientists say the site of the discovery has preserved a "snapshot" of an ecosystem where groups of animals that are now extinct, including giant amphibians and ancient armoured crocodile relatives, lived alongside animals that we could recognise today, including frogs and turtles.

This fossil bed, Dr Kligman said, has preserved evidence of an evolutionary "transition" 200 million years ago.

"We see groups that thrived later living alongside older animals that [didn't] make it past the Triassic.

"Fossil beds like these enable us to establish that all of these animals actually lived together."

Largest piece of Mars on Earth fetches $5.3 million at auction, but young dinosaur steals the show

The largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth was sold for just over $5 million at an auction of rare geological and archaeological objects in New York on Wednesday. But a rare young dinosaur skeleton stole the show when it fetched more than $30 million in a bidding frenzy.

The 54-pound (25-kilogram) rock named NWA 16788 was discovered in the Sahara Desert in Niger by a meteorite hunter in November 2023, after having been blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike and traveling 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) to Earth, according to Sotheby's. The estimated sale price before the auction was $2 million to $4 million.

The identity of the buyer was not immediately disclosed. The final bid was $4.3 million. Adding various fees and costs, the official sale price was about $5.3 million. The live bidding was slow, with the auctioneer trying to coax more offers and decreasing the minimum bid increases.

The dinosaur skeleton, on the other hand, sparked a bidding war. With a pre-auction estimate of $4 million to $6 million, it is one of only four known Ceratosaurus nasicornis skeletons and the only juvenile skeleton of the species, which resembles the Tyrannosaurus rex but is smaller.

Bidding for the skeleton started with a high advance offer of $6 million, then escalated during the live round with bids $500,000 higher than the last and later $1 million higher than the last before ending at $26 million. People applauded after the auctioneer gaveled the bidding closed.

The official sale price was $30.5 million with fees and costs. That buyer also was not immediately disclosed.

Parts of the skeleton were found in 1996 near Laramie, Wyoming, at Bone Cabin Quarry, a gold mine for dinosaur bones. Specialists assembled nearly 140 fossil bones with some sculpted materials to recreate the skeleton and mounted it so it’s ready to exhibit, Sotheby’s says. It was acquired last year by Fossilogic, a Utah-based fossil preparation and mounting company.

It’s more than 6 feet (2 meters) tall and nearly 11 feet (3 meters) long, and is believed to be from the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago. Ceratosaurus dinosaurs could grow up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) long, while the T. rex could be 40 feet (12 meters) long.

The bidding for the Mars meteorite began with two advance offers of $1.9 million and $2 million. The live bidding slowly proceeded with increases of $200,000 and $300,000 until $4 million, then continued with $100,000 increases until reaching $4.3 million.

The red, brown and gray meteorite is about 70% larger than the next largest piece of Mars found on Earth and represents nearly 7% of all the Martian material currently on this planet, Sotheby’s says. It measures nearly 15 inches by 11 inches by 6 inches (375 millimeters by 279 millimeters by 152 millimeters).

It was also a rare find. There are only 400 Martian meteorites out of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites found on Earth, the auction house says.

“This Martian meteorite is the largest piece of Mars we have ever found by a long shot,” Cassandra Hatton, vice chairman for science and natural history at Sotheby’s, said in an interview before the auction. “So it’s more than double the size of what we previously thought was the largest piece of Mars.”

It’s not clear exactly when the meteorite was blasted off the surface of Mars, but testing showed it probably happened in recent years, Sotheby's says.

Hatton said a specialized lab examined a small piece of the red planet remnant and confirmed it was from Mars. It was compared with the distinct chemical composition of Martian meteorites discovered during the Viking space probe that landed on Mars in 1976, she said.

The examination found that it is an “olivine-microgabbroic shergottite,” a type of Martian rock formed from the slow cooling of Martian magma. It has a course-grained texture and contains the minerals pyroxene and olivine, Sotheby’s says.

It also has a glassy surface, likely due to the high heat that burned it when it fell through Earth’s atmosphere, Hatton said. “So that was their first clue that this wasn’t just some big rock on the ground,” she said.

The meteorite previously was on exhibit at the Italian Space Agency in Rome. Sotheby’s did not disclose the owner.

Wednesday’s auction was part of Sotheby’s Geek Week 2025 and featured 122 items, including other meteorites, fossils and gem-quality minerals.

Man pulled into MRI machine after he walked into an exam room wearing a chain necklace

A man was pulled into an MRI machine in New York after he walked into the room wearing a large chain necklace, police said.

The man, 61, had entered an MRI room while a scan was underway Wednesday afternoon at Nassau Open MRI. The machine’s strong magnetic force drew him in by his metallic necklace, according to the Nassau County Police Department.

Police said the incident “resulted in a medical episode” that left the man hospitalized in critical condition. Authorities did not release his name and did not have an update on the man’s condition on Friday.

A person who answered the phone at Nassau Open MRI on Long Island declined to comment Friday.

MRI machines “employ a strong magnetic field” that “exerts very powerful forces on objects of iron, some steels, and other magnetizable objects,” according to the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, which says the units are “strong enough to fling a wheelchair across the room.”

Scientists measure largest ever collision of two black holes

Two black holes have collided far beyond the distant edge of the Milky Way, creating the biggest merger ever recorded by gravitational wave detectors.

The two phenomena, each more than 100 times the mass of the sun, had been circling each other before they violently collided about 10 billion light years from Earth.

Scientists at the Ligo Hanford and Livingston Observatories detected ripples in space-time from the collision just before 2pm UK time on 23 November 2023, when the two US-based detectors in Washington and Louisiana twitched at the same time.

Alongside their enormous masses, the signal, dubbed GW231123 after its discovery date, also showed the black holes spinning rapidly, according to researchers.

“This is the most massive black hole binary we’ve observed through gravitational waves, and it presents a real challenge to our understanding of black hole formation,” said Professor Mark Hannam, from Cardiff University and a member of the Ligo Scientific Collaboration.

Gravitational-wave observatories have recorded around 300 black hole mergers.

Prior to GW231123, the heaviest merger detected was GW190521, whose combined mass was 140 times that of the sun. The latest merger produced a black hole up to 265 times more massive than the sun.

“The black holes appear to be spinning very rapidly — near the limit allowed by Einstein’s theory of general relativity,” said Dr Charlie Hoy from the University of Portsmouth.

“That makes the signal difficult to model and interpret. It’s an excellent case study for pushing forward the development of our theoretical tools.”

“It will take years for the community to fully unravel this intricate signal pattern and all its implications,” said Dr Gregorio Carullo, assistant professor at the University of Birmingham.

“Despite the most likely explanation remaining a black hole merger, more complex scenarios could be the key to deciphering its unexpected features. Exciting times ahead!"

Facilities like Ligo in the United States, Virgo in Italy, and KAGRA in Japan are engineered to detect the tiniest distortions in spacetime caused by violent cosmic events such as black hole mergers.

The fourth observing run began in May 2023, and data through January 2024 are scheduled for release later this summer.

“This event pushes our instrumentation and data-analysis capabilities to the edge of what’s currently possible,” says Dr Sophie Bini, a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech.

“It’s a powerful example of how much we can learn from gravitational-wave astronomy — and how much more there is to uncover.”

GW231123 is set to be presented at the 24th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation (GR24) and the 16th Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves, held jointly as the GR-Amaldi meeting in Glasgow, from 14 to 18 July.

Jane Birkin’s original Hermes handbag sells for record €8.6m at Paris auction

Prototype for bag once owned by British-born singer and actor is most expensive fashion accessory sold at auction in Europe

A unique if well-worn handbag created for the singer and actor Jane Birkin by Hermès has been sold in Paris for €8.6m (£7.4m), making it the most expensive fashion accessory ever sold at auction in Europe.

The original battered Birkin bag was used by France’s favourite “petite Anglaise” for nine years and still bears traces of the stickers she put on its black leather.

The prototype of the bag by the French luxury goods firm had been expected to fetch a six-figure sum. In the event, bidding opened at Sotheby’s at €1m, drawing gasps from the room, and rose swiftly during a 10-minute battle between nine collectors, some bidding by phone and online.

The winner was a private collector from Japan, Sotheby’s said on Thursday, adding that the “extraordinary” price made the handbag the world’s second-most valuable fashion item sold at auction, and the most valuable in Europe.

Morgane Halimi, Sotheby’s global head of handbags and fashion, said the sale was a “startling demonstration of the power of a legend and its capacity to ignite the passion and desire of collectors seeking exceptional items with unique provenance”.

The Birkin prototype was “the starting point of an extraordinary story that has given us a modern icon, the Birkin bag, the most coveted handbag in the world”, Halimi added, and “a celebration of the enduring spirit and appeal of its muse, Jane Birkin”, who died in 2023.

The bag’s last owner, who was named as Catherine B and has not disclosed what she paid for it, said she was astonished by the result but also “profoundly moved by the way others have invested so much fervour trying to acquire what they desired beyond words”.

Utility workers in Peru unearth pre-Incan tomb with 1,000-year-old remains

Utility workers excavating trenches to expand underground gas networks in Peru’s capital unearthed two pre-Incan tombs on Thursday. One was empty, but the other held the 1,000-year-old remains of an individual, alongside four clay vessels and three pumpkin shell artifacts.

This isn’t the first time Cálidda, the company that distributes natural gas in Lima, has found archaeological remains. Over more than two decades of excavation work to expand the underground network, the company says it has made more than 2,200 discoveries.

According to archaeologist José Aliaga, the vessels’ iconography and their black, white, and red colors “allow us to establish a connection with the pre-Incan Chancay culture,’ which is approximately 1,000 to 1,470 years old.” Aliaga told The Associated Press that the individual was found wrapped in a torn bundle, in a sitting position with his legs against his chest, and his team will continue cleaning the remains.

“Lima is unique among Latin American capitals,” Aliaga said, “in that various archaeological finds are unearthed during nearly every civil project.”

The Peruvian capital, a city of 10 million people, has more than 400 archaeological sites from the Inca era, the 15th century, or earlier, from the pre-Inca period, according to the Ministry of Culture.

On Thursday, passersby stopped in their tracks to observe the burial site, even taking out their cellphones to take a picture.

“I always thought they were paths where no one had lived," said Flor Prieto, who was walking with her 7-year-old daughter. “But now I know that people older than the Incas have lived there…it feels so exciting.”

“It is very common to find archaeological remains on the Peruvian coast, including Lima, mainly funerary elements: tombs, burials, and, among these, mummified individuals,” said Pieter Van Dalen, dean of the College of Archaeologists of Peru. Van Dalen was not involved in Thursday's discovery.