YANJI, China: At the end of a street of newly built high-rises in the northern Chinese city of Yanji stands an exposed cliff face, where paleontologists scrape away 100 million-year-old rock in search of prehistoric bones.
Like many fossil excavation sites in China, this one was discovered by accident.
China’s rapid city building has churned up a motherlode of dinosaur fossils. While bulldozers have unearthed prehistoric sites in many countries, the scale and speed of China’s urbanization is unprecedented, according to the United Nations Development Program.
Perhaps no one has seized the scientific opportunity more than Xu Xing, a diligent and unassuming standard-bearer for China’s new prominence in paleontology. The energetic researcher has named more dinosaur species than any living paleontologist, racing between dig sites to collect specimens and further scientists’ understanding of how birds evolved from dinosaurs.
Matthew Lamanna, a curator at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, said Xu is “widely regarded as one of the foremost, if not the foremost, dinosaur paleontologist working in China today.”
“Xu Xing is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G,” Kristina Curry Rogers, a paleontologist at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, wrote in an email.
Two years ago, Xu’s colleague at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, Jin Changzhu, was visiting family in Yanji when he heard talk of fossils uncovered at a construction site. A preliminary inspection yielded what appeared to be a dinosaur shoulder bone.
Less than an hour’s drive from the North Korean border, the midsize city has been erecting residential blocks quickly. Seen from a plane, Yanji looks like a Legoland of new pink- and blue-roofed buildings, but there’s one long empty lot of exposed rocky hillside — the excavation site.
When Xu arrived at Yanji, he recognized the site could fill gaps in the fossil record, noting the relative paucity of bones recovered from the late Cretaceous period, which was around 100 million years ago. An analysis of the layers of volcanic ash revealed the site’s age. Xu is now overseeing a team of scientists using picks, chisels and steel needles to study the exposed hillside, where geologic layers resemble a red and gray layer-cake.
The site has yielded partial skeletons of three ancient crocodiles and one sauropod, the giant plant-eating dinosaurs that included some of the world’s largest land animals.
“This is a major feature of paleontology here in China — lots of construction really helps the scientists to find new fossils,” said Xu as he used a needle to remove debris from a partially exposed crocodile skull.
Born in 1969 in China’s western Xinjiang region, Xu did not choose to study dinosaurs. Like most university students of his era, he was assigned a major. His love for the field grew in graduate school in the 1990s, as feathered dinosaurs recovered from ancient Chinese lakebeds drew global attention.
When Xu and Jin discovered fossils in Yanji in 2016, city authorities halted construction on adjacent high-rise buildings, in accordance with a national law.
“The developer was really not happy with me,” said Xu, but the local government has since embraced its newfound claim to fame.
The city is now facilitating Xu’s work, and even built an on-site police station to guard the fossils from theft. Once the excavation is complete, a museum is planned, to display recovered fossils and photos of Xu’s team at work.
It’s not the first museum to commemorate Xu, whose prodigious fieldwork has taken him across China and resulted in a flurry of articles in top scientific journals.
Toru Sekiyu, a paleontologist from the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum in Japan who assisted on the Yanji dig, called his Chinese colleague “a superstar paleontologist.”
But Xu is quick to point out the role that good fortune has played in his career.
“To publish papers and discover new species, you need new data — you need new fossils,” he said, adding that finding new species isn’t something a scientist can plan.
“My experience tells me that you really need luck, besides your hard work. Then you can make some important discoveries.”
With digs in Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Yunnan and other Chinese provinces, Xu patiently oversees excavations, sometimes chiseling for years before he knows their ultimate significance.
While his finds are wide-ranging, much of his career has focused on understanding how dinosaurs evolved into modern birds.
China is an ideal location for that study. Two decades ago, rare dinosaur fossils that preserved traces of feathers were found in ancient lakebeds of northeastern China. This discovery, which helped scientists demonstrate that birds descended from dinosaurs, was possible because the mixture of volcanic ash and fine-grained shale in the lakebeds had preserved bits of soft tissue, including feathers — unlike the majority of dinosaur fossils, which contain only bone.
Since then, a flood of new dinosaur bones unearthed in China has helped scientists rewrite their understanding of the tree of life in various ways.
Xu has been at the forefront of research into how dinosaurs evolved feathers and flight. In 2000, he described a curious pigeon-sized dinosaur with four feathered limbs, apparently early wings that allowed the animal to either fly or glide. In 2012, he detailed a carnivorous tyrannosaur , which also had plumage — raising questions about feathers’ original purpose.
Xu now believes that early dinosaur plumage may have played a role in insulation and in mating displays, even before flight feathers evolved. He co-authored a 2010 paper that examined fossilized melanosomes — pigment packets that give rise to color in modern bird feathers — to deduce the likely colors of dinosaur feathers. Some species likely sported rings of white and brown tail feathers; others had bright red plumage on their heads.
Embracing new technology, his team also uses CT scanners to study the interior of fossils and builds 3-D computer simulations to make inferences about what range of motions a dinosaur may have had.
One of the fossils Xu is now examining, found at a construction site in Jiangxi province, will shed light on how modern birds’ reproductive systems evolved from dinosaurs, he says.
In addition to professional accolades, Xu’s work has attracted attention from schoolchildren in multiple countries, who mail him handwritten notes and crayon drawings of dinosaurs, several of which hang in his Beijing office.
Xu replies to every letter, email and text message with a question about dinosaurs. “I feel it would be weird or impolite not to,” he said. But in an era of social media, Xu has refrained from signing up for WeChat, the dominant messaging platform in China, because “I don’t think I could find time for all the new messages.”
Back at the site in Yanji, a colleague brings him a large rock with an exposed sauropod vertebrae to examine.
The bone has a spongey texture, which Xu says is a result of the animal’s respiratory system. Like modern birds, he believes sauropods breathed using both lungs and distributed air sacs, which can leave an impression in the bones.
Xu uses a brush to flick away dirt to inspect the fossil more closely.
“Basically we are reconstructing the evolutionary tree of life,” he said. “If you have more species to study, you have more branches on that tree, more information about the history of life on Earth.”
China building boom uncovers buried dinosaurs, makes a star
China building boom uncovers buried dinosaurs, makes a star
- China’s rapid city building has churned up a motherlode of dinosaur fossils
Cheating on your spouse is no longer a crime in New York, with the repeal of a little-known 1907 law
Cheating on your spouse is no longer a crime in New York, with the repeal of a little-known 1907 law
ALBANY, N.Y.: New York on Friday repealed a seldom-used, more than century-old law that made it a crime to cheat on your spouse — a misdemeanor that once could have landed adulterers in jail for three months.
Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a bill repealing the statute, which dates back to 1907 and has long been considered antiquated as well as difficult to enforce.
“While I’ve been fortunate to share a loving married life with my husband for 40 years — making it somewhat ironic for me to sign a bill decriminalizing adultery — I know that people often have complex relationships,” she said. “These matters should clearly be handled by these individuals and not our criminal justice system. Let’s take this silly, outdated statute off the books, once and for all.”
Adultery bans are actually law in several states and were enacted to make it harder to get a divorce at a time when proving a spouse cheated was the only way to get a legal separation. Charges have been rare and convictions even rarer. Some states have also moved to repeal their adultery laws in recent years.
New York defined adultery as when a person “engages in sexual intercourse with another person at a time when he has a living spouse, or the other person has a living spouse.” The state’s law was first used a few weeks after it went into effect, according to a New York Times article, to arrest a married man and 25-year-old woman.
State Assemblymember Charles Lavine, sponsor of the bill, said about a dozen people have been charged under the law since the 1970s, and just five of those cases resulted in convictions.
“Laws are meant to protect our community and to serve as a deterrent to anti-social behavior. New York’s adultery law advanced neither purpose,” Lavine said in a statement Friday.
The state’s law appears to have last been used in 2010, against a woman who was caught engaging in a sex act in a park, but the adultery charge was later dropped as part of a plea deal.
New York came close to repealing the law in the 1960s after a state commission tasked with evaluating the penal code said it was nearly impossible to enforce.
At the time, lawmakers were initially on board with removing the ban but eventually decided to keep it after a politician argued that repealing it would make it seem like the state was officially endorsing infidelity, according to a New York Times article from 1965.
Banana taped to a wall sells for $6.2 million in New York
- Chinese-born crypto founder Justin Sun forks over more than six million for the fruit and its single strip of silver duct tape
- Given the shelf life of a banana, Sun is essentially buying a certificate of authenticity that the work was created by Maurizio Cattelan
NEW YORK: A fresh banana taped to a wall — a provocative work of conceptual art by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan — was bought for $6.2 million on Wednesday by a cryptocurrency entrepreneur at a New York auction, Sotheby’s announced in a statement.
The debut of the edible creation entitled “Comedian” at the Art Basel show in Miami Beach in 2019 sparked controversy and raised questions about whether it should be considered art — Cattelan’s stated aim.
Chinese-born crypto founder Justin Sun on Wednesday forked over more than six million for the fruit and its single strip of silver duct tape, which went on sale for 120,000 dollars five years ago.
“This is not just an artwork. It represents a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community,” Sun was quoted as saying in the Sotheby’s statement.
“I believe this piece will inspire more thought and discussion in the future and will become a part of history.”
The sale featured seven potential buyers and smashed expectations, with the auction house issuing a guide price of $1-1.5 million before the bidding.
Given the shelf life of a banana, Sun is essentially buying a certificate of authenticity that the work was created by Cattelan as well as instructions about how to replace the fruit when it goes bad.
The installation auctioned on Wednesday was the third iteration — with the first one eaten by performance artist David Datuna, who said he felt “hungry” while inspecting it at the Miami show.
Sun, who founded cryptomoney exchange Tron, said that he intended to eat his investment too.
“In the coming days, I will personally eat the banana as part of this unique artistic experience, honoring its place in both art history and popular culture,” he said.
As well as his banana work, Cattelan is also known for producing an 18-carat, fully functioning gold toilet called “America” that was offered to Donald Trump during his first term in the White House.
His work is often humorous and deliberately provocative, with a 1999 sculpture of the pope stuck by a meteor titled “The Ninth Hour.”
He has explained the banana work as a critical commentary on the art market, which he has criticized in the past for being speculative and failing to help artists.
The asking price of $120,000 for “Comedian” in 2019 was seen at the time as evidence that the market was “bananas” and the art world had “gone mad,” as The New York Post said in a front-page article.
The banana sold on Wednesday was bought for 35 cents from a Bangladeshi fruit seller on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, according to The New York Times.
Sun has hit headlines in the past as an art collector and as a major player in the murky cryptocurrency world.
He was charged last year by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for alleged market manipulation and unregistered sales of crypto assets, which he promoted with celebrity endorsements, including from Lindsay Lohan.
In 2021, he bought Alberto Giacometti’s “Le Nez” for $78.4 million, which was hailed by Sotheby’s at the time as signaling “an influx of younger, tech-savvy collectors.”
Global art markets have been dropping in value in recent years due to higher interest rates, as well as concern about geopolitical instability, experts say.
“Empire of Light” (“L’Empire des lumieres“), a painting by Rene Magritte, shattered an auction record for the surrealist artist on Tuesday, however, selling for more than $121 million at Christie’s in New York.
Farmer in Argentina gets jail term for killing penguin chicks
- The sheep farmer was found guilty of destroying nests and killing chicks while clearing land along the Punta Tumbo nature reserve
- In his defense, he said he had no choice but to clear the land as the state had failed to set up an access route to his property
BEUNOS AIRES: An Argentinian farmer was given a three-year prison sentence for animal cruelty Wednesday, likely to be commuted, after being found guilty of killing over 100 Patagonian penguin chicks.
The sheep farmer from the southern province of Chubut was found guilty last month of destroying dozens of nests and killing chicks in 2021 while clearing land along the Punta Tumbo nature reserve, home to one of the main colonies of Magellanic penguins on the Atlantic coast.
The farmer is unlikely to be incarcerated as Argentina’s penal code recommends alternatives to prison for a first conviction and sentences up to three years.
Prosecutors had requested a four-year sentence.
Environmental group Greenpeace, the complainant in the case, had welcomed the farmer’s conviction as “an important step for environmental justice.”
The farmer argued there was no choice but to clear the land as the state had failed to set up an access route to his property, or boundaries between his farm and the reserve.
The Magellanic Penguin is listed as a species of “least concern” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List, meaning it is not at risk of extinction even though numbers are in decline.
SpaceX fails to repeat Starship booster catch, as Trump looks on
BOCA CHICA: SpaceX’s Starship megarocket blasted off on its latest test flight Tuesday, with President-elect Donald Trump joining Elon Musk to witness the spectacle firsthand in the latest sign of their ever closer ties.
But the Republican leader was deprived of the chance to see the booster stage caught in the launch tower’s “chopstick” arms, an engineering marvel demonstrated by the company last month and one he personally lauded during his election victory speech.
Instead, the colossal Super Heavy first stage made a more subdued splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. Company representatives cited unmet technical criteria, dampening the triumph of an event attended by a bevy of Trump-world figures, including Donald Trump Jr.
Earlier, Trump greeted Musk warmly on Tuesday afternoon, sporting a red MAGA hat as the pair headed off to watch from the control tower of the company’s Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, where the rocket blasted off at 4:00 p.m. local time (2200 GMT) on the sixth test flight for Starship.
SpaceX founder and CEO Musk has been a constant presence at Trump’s side since the incoming president’s election victory, joining him at a meeting with Argentina’s President Javier Milei and even at a UFC bout.
Trump’s decision to travel to Musk’s home turf was the latest sign of the growing alliance between the billionaire duo, which has raised questions over possible conflicts of interests given SpaceX’s lucrative contracts with NASA and the Pentagon.
Tuesday’s launch marked the quickest turnaround between test flights for the world’s most powerful rocket, a gleaming, 121-meter-tall (400-foot) stainless steel colossus central to Musk’s ambition of colonizing Mars and making humanity a multiplanetary species.
Musk aims to launch the first uncrewed missions to the Red Planet as early as 2026, coinciding with the next “Mars transfer window” — a period when the journey between Earth and Mars is at its shortest.
NASA is also counting on a specialized version of Starship to ferry astronauts to the lunar surface later this decade under its Artemis program.
Flight six of Starship was seen as a test of whether SpaceX’s first booster catch was pure precision or relied on a stroke of luck after Musk — perhaps inadvertently — disclosed how close the last flight came to disaster.
In a clip posted to X showcasing his gaming chops in “Diablo IV,” sharp-eared fans caught an employee briefing him that the Super Heavy booster was “one second away” from a system failure that could have spelled catastrophe.
Starship’s upper stage will make a partial orbit of Earth, reenter the atmosphere and splash down in the Indian Ocean a little over an hour later, but this time in the daylight, providing clearer visuals for analysis.
Key milestones include reigniting Starship’s Raptor engines for the first time in space and trialing new heat shield materials. The flight also carries Starship’s first ever payload — a stuffed banana — and serves as a swan song for the current generation of Starship prototypes.
With twice the thrust of the Saturn V rockets that powered Apollo missions, Starship is the most powerful rocket ever built. Musk has already teased that its successor, Starship V3, will be “3X more powerful” and could take flight within a year.
The flight comes as Musk is riding high on Trump’s November 5 White House win, having campaigned extensively for the returning Republican leader, as well as donating staggering sums from his own fortune to the cause.
His loyalty has paid off. Musk has been tapped to co-lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” — or DOGE, a cheeky nod to the meme-based cryptocurrency Musk loves to promote.
That in turn has led to concerns Musk could engage in “self-dealing” as the CEO is poised to straddle the line between government insider and corporate titan.
Critics worry he could sway regulatory decisions to benefit his six companies, including SpaceX and its marquee Starship program, which has faced launch delays linked to an environmental review the company called “superfluous.”
Stray dogs in Giza become tourist draw after ‘pyramid puppy’ sensation
- Apollo became an overnight sensation last month after being filmed scaling the Great Pyramid of Khafre
- As news of Apollo’s daring climb spread worldwide, interest grew in the dogs who have long made their homes among the ancient stones
CAIRO: Beneath the blazing Egyptian sun, crowds at the Giza Pyramids gazed up at the ancient wonders, but some had their eyes peeled for a new attraction.
“There he is,” one Polish tourist told his wife as they spotted a scrappy dog perched on one of the stones.
They were talking about Apollo, a stray who became an overnight sensation last month after being filmed scaling the Great Pyramid of Khafre, one of the seven wonders of the world.
The viral footage, captured by American paragliding enthusiast Alex Lang and shared online by his friend Marshall Mosher, showed Apollo fearlessly climbing the 136-meter monument, barking at birds from the summit.
“He was acting like a king,” Lang told AFP.
As news of Apollo’s daring climb spread worldwide, interest grew in the dogs who have long made their homes among the ancient stones.
“He is climbing over there,” said Arkadiusz Jurys, a tourist from Poland, craning his neck for a better view.
“It is unusual,” he added, describing Apollo as surveying the picture-snapping crowd from above.
Another visitor, Diego Vega from Argentina, felt a special bond with the dogs.
“Connecting with them feels like connecting with the pharaohs,” he said, while petting a member of Apollo’s pack.
Apollo’s newfound fame has even inspired local guides to include him and his pack in their stories for tourists.
“This is Anubis,” one tour guide told two American tourists, comparing Apollo, now known as the “pyramid puppy,” with the ancient Egyptian god of the dead, often depicted as a man with a jackal’s head.
“He and his pack are now part of our tour conversations,” said Sobhi Fakhry, another tour guide.
Businesses around the Giza plateau are also seeing a boost.
Umm Basma, a 43-year-old woman selling souvenirs near the Khafre pyramid, reported an increase in sales thanks to the influx of tourists eager to meet the so-called pyramid dogs.
“We’ve always seen these dogs climbing the pyramids, but we never thought they would become a blessing for us,” she said.
One pyramid guard, who preferred to remain anonymous, also said that some celebrities had paid for permits to have their own dogs photographed with Apollo.
Apollo, a three-year-old Baladi dog, is part of a pack of about eight that has made their home among the ancient ruins.
The dogs, a local breed, are known for their resilience, intelligence and ability to survive in Egypt’s harsh climate.
Ibrahim el-Bendary, co-founder of the American Cairo Animal Rescue Foundation, which monitors the pyramid dogs, described Apollo as the pack’s “alpha male.”
“He is the bravest and strongest in his pack,” he said.
Apollo was born in a rocky crevice within the Khafre pyramid where his mother, Laika, found shelter. Sadly, some of Apollo’s siblings did not survive the site’s perilous heights.
A sympathetic guard eventually relocated Laika to a safer spot where Apollo now stands out with his distinctive curled tail and confident nature.
The initial focus of Lang and Marshall was the daring canine climber, but their visit led to a deeper connection with Cairo’s stray dogs.
Intrigued by the challenges they face, Mosher decided to adopt a puppy from the pack: Anubi, who is Apollo’s daughter.
Anubi will join Marshall in the US after she receives the dedicated care she needs in Egypt to grow up healthy.
At the pyramids, local animal care groups are now working with the government in order to set up food and water stations for the strays, as well as for other animals including camels and horses.
A permanent veterinary center will be established at the pyramids with staff set to receive animal care training, said Egypt’s tourism minister.
Vicki Michelle Brown, the other co-founder of the American Cairo Animal Rescue Foundation, believes that Apollo’s story can make a difference.
“It sheds so much light on the dogs and cats that are here,” Brown said.
“I definitely believe him (Apollo) climbing the pyramids can help all of the dogs in Egypt to have a better life.”
