Hungry cub makes bold move to beat the pack
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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Largest Martian meteorite EVER found on Earth to go on sale this week: Huge 25kg rock that travelled 140 million miles to Earth could fetch a whopping £3 MILLION at auction
If it ever feels like your living room could use a truly out-of-this-world centrepiece, this might be the perfect purchase. The largest Martian meteorite ever found on Earth is set to go on sale this week. The whopping 25-kilogram rock, named NWA 16788, will be sold at a special natural history-themed auction at Sotheby's in New York this Wednesday. But owning a piece of the red planet comes at an astronomical cost, as this hunk of rock is expected to fetch £1.5-3 million ($2-4 million). With two days before the sale ends, the current bid already stands a staggering £1.2 million ($1.6 million). That sky-high price is a reflection of just how rare and unique this meteorite really is. Measuring 15 by 11 inches by 6 inches (38 by 28 by 15 cm), it is almost 70 per cent larger than any previous asteroid ever found. According to Sotheby's, this represents seven per cent of all Martian material currently on Earth. Martian meteorites make the 140-million-mile journey to Earth after being launched into space by colossal asteroid impacts. Since this process requires such a powerful impact, Martian meteorites are exceptionally rare compared to other types of space rocks. So far, there are only 400 officially confirmed Martian meteorites on Earth compared to 77,000 meteorites of other types. This piece of rock is so large that astronomers believe there are only 19 craters on Mars large enough to have launched it out of orbit. Cassandra Hatton, vice chairman for science and natural history at Sotheby's, says: 'This Martian meteorite is the largest piece of Mars we have ever found by a long shot. 'So it's more than double the size of what we previously thought was the largest piece of Mars.' NWA 16788 was found by a meteorite hunter in Niger in 2023, according to Sotheby's. The rock's glassy-smooth surface suggested it had been burned by the intense heat created as it passed through the atmosphere. 'So that was their first clue that this wasn't just some big rock on the ground,' Ms Hatton says. Based on the lack of surface weathering, Sotheby's also believes that it had not been in the desert very long, making it a relative newcomer to Earth. Samples of the rock were then sent to a lab where its chemical composition was compared to analysis done by the NASA Viking Lander in 1976, confirming it was Martian in origin. This analysis also revealed that a large part of the rock is made up of a type of glass called maskelynite, formed by the intense heat and pressure of an asteroid striking the Martian surface. The rest of the rock's original material is made up of 'olivine-microgabbroic shergottite', a type of Martian rock formed from the slow cooling of Martian magma. Only 5.4 per cent of all Martian asteroids are of the same material, making this an even rarer find. The meteorite was previously on exhibit at the Italian Space Agency in Rome, but Sotheby's did not disclose the owner. This same auction will include the sale of a number of other space rocks, including a 2.5-kilogram sphere of moon rock and shrapnel from a meteor which exploded over Siberia in 1947. This natural history-themed auction will also see the sale of a juvenile Ceratosaurus fossil, expected to sell for $3-4.5 million ($4-6 million) The sale's flagship item is the mounted fossil skeleton of a juvenile Ceratosaurus. Measuring nearly 11 feet (three metres) long and standing at six feet (two metres) tall, this fierce predator lived 154-149 million years ago in the late Jurassic period. Ceratosaurus dinosaurs were bipeds with short arms that appeared similar to the Tyrannosaurus rex, but smaller. The juvenile Ceratosaurus nasicornis skeleton was 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, and is expected to fetch between $3-4.5 million ($4-6 million).
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Cancer treatment ‘revolution' on the horizon, says leading doctor
Cancer treatment is on the "cusp of a golden era", according to NHS England 's outgoing national medical director, Professor Sir Stephen Powis. He expects that the development of drugs harnessing the body's immune system to fight the disease will bring "great advances in cancer survival". In his final interview before retiring, Sir Stephen, 64, told The Times: 'We are at the cusp of a golden era in terms of the way we treat a range of cancers. 'For many cancers now, people should be confident that it's not a death sentence and that more treatments will become available.' He said the rise in people living longer and surviving cancers would continue, alongside cures for some forms of the disease. 'Our understanding of the genetics of cancer, of the way we can target cancers with particular drugs, and how we can use the body's own immune system to target cancers itself, is being revolutionised,' he said. He compared the progress made in treating cancer with the success in developing HIV/Aids treatments since he qualified as a doctor 40 years ago. He also said an increased focus on prevention will help eliminate certain types of cancer. 'We can't prevent all cancers, but there are cancers that we can certainly prevent,' he said, adding that he hopes lung cancers will become 'a lot rarer'. Cancer treatment, he said, would be 'driven by genetics' to become more individualised with the increased ability to pinpoint mutations in cells. His comments come as experts warned of a 'postcode lottery' in cancer services that focus on improving patients' quality of life and providing urgent care for people with the disease. The Royal College of Physicians (RCP), the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR), the UK Association of Supportive Care in Cancer (UKASCC) and the Association for Palliative Medicine (APM) have called for urgent investment in supportive and acute oncology. Sir Stephen warned the biggest challenge facing the NHS was the rise in elderly people and the economic pressure that is putting on the younger generation and the economy. Last week, Sir Stephen warned the British Medical Association (BMA) to 'think really hard' about whether industrial action by resident doctors – formerly junior doctors – planned for later this month is justified. He told The Times the walkout would cause 'tens of thousands of appointments and procedures' to be cancelled. The kidney specialist has served as national medical director since January 2018 and held the role throughout the Covid pandemic.
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
Killer in the nest: how young storks are being strangled by plastic
On a late spring morning in the farmlands of southern Portugal, Dr Marta Acácio set her ladder against a tree and began to climb. Four metres up, she reached the giant white stork nest that was her goal. She knew from telescopic camera shots there was a healthy looking chick inside – and now she wanted to ring it. But when Acácio, an ecologist from University of Montpellier in France, tried to scoop up the chick, it would not come away: it was tethered to the nest by a piece of plastic baler twine. She turned the chick over and recoiled: its belly was a mass of maggots. 'It was being eaten alive from underneath,' says Acácio. With the pocketknife she now carries for dealing with this increasingly common situation, she cut the twine away, put the chick in a carrier bag and climbed back down. She and her colleagues cleaned and disinfected the wound before returning the chick to the nest. 'I was hopeful that the chick would survive,' she says. 'But unfortunately it did not recover from the wounds.' The nest was one of 93 a team of ecologists inspected weekly during the 2023 breeding season. Storks build gigantic nests over decades, weighing up to 1,000kg (2,200lb). They balance not just on branches, but on structures such as telephone poles. Many other bird species, including sparrows, starlings and kestrels, live within the nests. 'The stork nest is actually a colony of other species. It's a fantastic species,' says prof Aldina Franco, an ecologist at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and member of the research team. The scientists were following a hunch that they – and ecologists around the world – were missing a hidden death toll from plastic that birds incorporated into their nests. Scientists tend to inspect nests only at fledging time, yet dead chicks can be swiftly discarded by parents, so those killed by plastic early in their lives might go uncounted. Over four years, the researchers from UEA and Lisbon University photographed nearly 600 white stork (Ciconia ciconia) nests. Then, in each week of the 2023 breeding season, Acácio and Ursula Heinze of UEA physically inspected a selection of nests. The results, published in the journal Ecological Indicators on Monday, are alarming. About 90% of the 600 photographed nests contained plastic. In those the scientists climbed up to, more than a quarter – 27% – contained entangled chicks. Most were only two weeks old. The chief culprit was baler twine, a plastic string used to secure hay bales: either the twine or its wrapping was responsible for almost all the entangled chicks. A few were caught up in domestic plastics such as bags or milk containers. The chicks died from strangulation, amputation and infected wounds. 'They roll and roll and they go around and it's almost as if they tie the rope around their legs even harder as they move,' Franco says. Acácio likes to talk about successful rescues, too. Once, she peered into a nest built on the stump of a cork oak tree to find two three-week-old siblings, their limbs coiled in spirals of blue baler twine. 'I thought the chicks were so badly entangled that neither would survive,' says Acácio, 'Unfortunately the smaller chick did not survive but the larger one, which still has the marks of the entanglement, survived and fledged.' Birds on every continent use plastic and other human litter in their nests. The downsides of plastic debris are well known in the marine world, with graphic images of plastic harming turtles, seabirds and fish. But less is known about its effect on land-based birds. 'This is not a Portuguese problem or even a white stork problem,' says Dr Inês Catry, an avian ecologist at the University of Lisbon who led the project. 'Baler twine is widespread in many areas in many countries.' The few other studies that have been done, in the Americas and Europe, have not involved weekly nest visits and have found lower entanglement rates, of 0.3% to 5.6%. This study found a nestling entanglement rate of 12%. Sign up to Global Dispatch Get a different world view with a roundup of the best news, features and pictures, curated by our global development team after newsletter promotion In Montana in the US, Marco Restani, a wildlife biologist for the power company NorthWestern Energy, has been working with volunteers to monitor ospreys that nest along 600km of the Yellowstone River. Restani says that while plastic entanglement is not yet a population-level threat to ospreys, the cases he does find are 'gruesome'. 'It's a horrible way to die. And it's horrible for people who are discovering it as well.' In Argentina, Dr María Soledad Liébana, a raptor biologist at the Institute of Earth and Environmental Sciences of La Pampa, has studied plastic entanglement among baby southern caracaras, a type of raptor. 'Plastic entanglement does appear to be a serious and growing threat to a wide range of bird species, across many different regions of the world,' she says. For birds already under threat from other factors, a 12% entanglement rate could 'apply a lot of pressure', says Dr Neil James, an ecologist at Scotland's University of the Highlands and Islands. James founded a website in 2019, to which anyone can report entanglements and human debris found in nests. So far, the nests of an 'alarming' 160 species globally have been reported to contain human debris and two-thirds of these are terrestrial, he says. Baler twine is accumulating in the landscape at a formidable rate, say Heinze's team. The market was worth $300m (£220m) globally in 2023 and 80,000 tonnes were being used annually across Europe as of 2019. How much of this leaks into the environment is unknown. While farmers play a crucial role in preventing plastic leaking into the environment – for example by ensuring no plastic debris is left in the field – many aspects of the plastic footprint are out of their control, such as whether there are recycling facilities nearby or whether there are any biodegradable alternatives. Collection schemes are patchy across Europe but research has found that where they are offered they have been successful. Scientists are researching how to replace polypropylene twine, and some biodegradable twines are already on the market. In the meantime, for some of the white storks, there is one simple step that could help, says Heinze: mow under their nests. This provides the birds with a convenient abundance of natural nesting material and reduces the amount of plastic they use. Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield in the Guardian app for more nature coverage
