Science News Briefs from around the World: February 2023 - Scientific American

BAHAMAS

Biologists strapped tiny cameras onto tiger sharks to survey seagrass successful the Caribbean. The footage helped grow estimates of the planetary country of seagrass sum by 41 percent—a bully motion for the clime due to the fact that seagrass stores carbon.

CHINA

Scientists person struggled to place the creatures that near down the world’s oldest skeletal remains—500-million-year-old tubelike structures. Now a new investigation of specimens from Yunnan (including a uncommon look astatine their fossilized brushed tissues) suggests the animals were jellyfish relatives that resembled oversea anemones.

MALAYSIA

Researchers person produced stem cells utilizing tegument from Malaysia’s past antheral Sumatran rhinoceros, Kertam, who died successful 2019. Converting these cells into viable spermatozoa could assistance to prevention the critically endangered carnal from extinction.

MEXICO

Archaeologists unearthing an administrative analyzable of the past metropolis Teotihuacán recovered the astir 1,700-year-old skeleton of a spider monkey that was not autochthonal to the region. Experts fishy it was a acquisition from the neighboring Maya, pointing to antecedently chartless animal-based diplomacy.

REPUBLIC OF CONGO

A caller survey suggests the Congo peatlands person alternated—every fewer 1000 years—between releasing c dioxide (when dry) and storing it (when wet). This whitethorn mean the peatlands are a clime alteration “time bomb” acceptable to merchandise stored c arsenic they dry.

U.K.

A meteorite that landed successful an English driveway has been found to incorporate water with a ratio of hydrogen isotopes resembling Earth’s. This supports the thought that the young Earth’s h2o could person been brought by asteroids.