Ethiopian volcano erupts for first time in recorded history.

Hayli Gubbi, a shield volcano in the Afar Region of Ethiopia, erupted on Sunday 23 November 2025, for what appears to be the first time in recorded history. The volcano erupted for under twelve hours, from about 11.30 am to about 11.00 pm local time (about 8.30 am to about 8.00 pm GMT), producing an ash column about 14 km high, which drifted to the east over the Red Sea, according to the Toulouse Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre. Nobody was directly hurt by the eruption, but local farmers report crops being covered with ash, which may potentially lead to famine in the region.

An ash cloud over Hayli Gubbi on 23 November 2025. Afar Government Communication Service.

Hayli Gubbi is a 493 m high scoria cone (cone of ash) sitting on an older shield volcano (dome shaped volcano made up of layers of lava) located at the southernmost end of the Erte Ale Volcanic Chain. The volcano has never been observed to erupt before, and it is thought not to have erupted since the Late Pleistocene, more than 12 000 years ago, although the remote location of the volcano means that it has not been studied well. 

The deserts of Northern Ethiopia and Southern Eritrea are extremely volcanicly active, with dozens of volcanoes fed by an emerging divergent margin along the East African Rift; the Erta Ale Chain lies on the Ethiopian Rift, the boundary between the Nubian Plate and the Danakil Microplate. The African Plate is slowly splitting apart along the Ethiopian Rift and the East African Rift to the south (which is splitting the Nubian Plate to the West from the Somali Plate to the East). Arabia was a part of Africa till about thirty million years ago, when it was split away by the opening of the Red Sea Rift (part of the same rift system), and in time the Ethiopian and East African Rifts are likely to split Africa into a number of new landmasses.

Rifting in East Africa. The Danakil Microplate is the red triangle to the east of the Afar depression at the southern end of the Red Sea. Università degli Studi di Firenze.

See also...

Outbreak of Marburg Virus in Ethiopia kills at least three.

At least three people have died due to infection with Marburg Virus Disease, with a further three deaths probably linked to the illness, in an outbreak in the town of Jinka in South Ethiopia, according to a press release issued by the World Health Organization on 21 November 2025. 

The Ethiopian Ministry of Health and Ethiopian Public Health Institute first raised the alarm about an outbreak of haemorrhagic fever in the town on 12 November, with the infection being confirmed as Marburg Virus by the National Reference Laboratory two days later. As of 20 November, 33 people have been tested for the Virus, with infection confirmed in six persons, three of whom have died, with the remaining three now receiving treatment. A further three people have died without testing, and are thought likely to have been infected. A total of 206 people who may have come into contact with the Virus have been identified, with an active program of contacting and testing in place.

This is the first known Human outbreak of Marburg Virus in Ethiopia, although the Virus has previously been found in Fruit Bats in the country. 

Map of Ethiopia showing location of Jinka town. World Health Organization.

Marburg Virus Disease is a haemorrhagic fever, similar to the closely related Ebola Virus Disease. Both are caused by single-strand negative-sense RNA viruses of the Filoviridae family. Both are easily spread though contact with bodily fluids, and can also spread by contaminated clothing and bedding.

Negative stained transmission electron micrograph of a number of filamentous Marburg Virions, which had been cultured on Vero cell cultures, and purified on sucrose, rate-zonal gradients. Erskine Palmer/Russell Regnery/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Wikimedia Commons.

Marburg Virus has an incubation period of between two and 21 days, manifesting at first as a high fever, combined with a severe headache and a strong sense of malaise. This is typically followed after about three days by severe abdominal pains, with watery diarrhoea and vomiting. In severe cases the disease develops to a haemorrhagic stage after five-to-seven days, manifesting as bleeding from some or all bodily orifices. This typically leads to death on day eight or nine, from severe blood loss and shock. There is currently no treatment or vaccine available for Marburg Virus, although a number of teams are working on trying to develop vaccines. 

Previous outbreaks of Marburg Virus have been reported in Rwanda, as well as the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania. The Virus has also been reported in a number of other African countries, including Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, and Tanzania. The most recent outbreaks occurred in January this year in Tanzania.

The high rate of infection of healthcare workers seen in Marburg Virus is particularly alarming, as this tends to weaken communities ability to resist the Virus. The Virus can spread quickly in healthcare settings, infecting people whose immune systems are already stressed by other conditions, and creating aa reserve which can feed infections in the wider community. This makes it important to screen all people potentially infected with the disease as quickly as possible, and to arrange for patients to be treated in isolation, as well as quickly tracing all known contacts of any cases, and screening them for infection too.

Marburg Virus is a zoonotic infection (disease transferred from Animals to Humans), with a wild-reserve of the Virus known to be present in Egyptian Fruit Bats, Rousettus aegyptiacus, which are found across much of Africa, the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, and South Asia. These Bats form large colonies in caves or sometimes mines. They are frugivores, and can be major pests of farmed fruits, bringing them into conflict with Humans, and are sometimes hunted for food, all of which create potential avenues for the Marburg Virus to pass from a Bat host to a Human one.

A colony of Egyptian Rousette Bats, Rousettus aegyptiacus. Giovanni Mari/Flikr/iNaturalist.

See also...

Athenar bermani: A new species of Diplodocoid Sauropod from the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation of Dinosaur National Monument, Utah.

In 1913 prolific American fossil hunter Earl Douglass excavated a Sauropod braincase and partial skull roof from the Carnegie Quarry site at Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. This made its way to the collection of the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, where it was given the specimen number CM 26552, and was largely forgotten for half a century (to give some context, Douglass excavated over 300 tonnes of material, including many complete skeletons of Jurassic Dinosaurs such as Diplodocus, Dryosaurus, Stegosaurus, Barosaurus, Camarasaurus, and Brontosaurus, which may have left museum staff a bit busy).

In 1978, palaeontologists David Berman and John McIntosh published a study in which they revised the genera Diplodocus and Camarasaurus, in which they assigned the specimen CM 26552 to Diplodocus. However, since that time our understanding of Sauropods as a group has developed significantly, notably in that proportional differences, which could change significantly as Sauropods grew, are no longer given the same emphasis, with modern palaeontologists instead placing more emphasis on character states (discrete features which can be present or absent).

In a paper published in the journal Palaeontologica Electronica in October 2025, John Whitlock of the Department of Science and Mathematics at Mount Aloysius College and the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Juan Pablo Garderes and Pablo Gallina of the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, the Argentina and Fundación de Historia Natural Félix de Azara, and the Centro de Ciencias Naturales, Ambientales y Antropológicas at Universidad Maimónides, and Matthew Lamanna, also of the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, formally redescribe specimen CM 26552, assigning it to a new species and genus.

Based upon their inspection of CM 26552, Whitlock et al. conclude that it should be placed in the Dicraeosauria, a sub-group of the Diplodocidae, the skulls of which can be determined by (1) the presence of postparietal and frontoparietal fenestrae, (2) the exclusion of the basioccipital from the dorsal margin of the occipital condyle by the exoccipitals, (3) the presence of a distinct prong on the squamosal, (4) the contribution of the frontal to the margin of the supratemporal fenestra, (5) an expanded crista prootica, (6) a free dorsal margin of the antotic process, (7) the presence of a “shelf” overhanging the foramen for the trigeminal (V) nerve, and (8) the flat distal margin of the paroccipital process.

Braincase CM 26552 in anterior (A), (C) and posterior (B), (D) views. Abbreviations: BO, basioccipital; BS, basisphenoid; BT, basal tubera; CPR, crista prootica; EO-OP, exoccipitalopisthotic; F, frontal; LS, laterosphenoid; OS, orbitosphenoid; P, parietal; PO, postorbital; POP, paroccipital process; PR, prootic; S, shelf overhanging the opening for cranial nerve V; SOC, supraoccipital; SQ, squamosal; I, opening for cranial nerve I; II, opening for cranial nerve II; IV, opening for cranial nerve IV; V, opening for cranial nerve V. Whitlock et al. (2025).

Within that group, however, specimen CM 26552 shows a unique combination of features, not seen in any other genera, plus one unique character state,  the presence of a ‘tooth’ in the parietal/opisthotic suture, which has not previously been seen. For this reason, Whitlock et al. assign CM 26552 to a new species and genus, under the name Athenar bermani, where 'Athenar' honours the musician Athenar, 'for whom no better palaeontological comparison exists than a broken skull', and 'bermani' honours palaeontologist David Berman, who did so much of the fundamental modern work on Diplodocoid skulls at Carnegie Museum of Natural History and was responsible for the initial description of the specimen. 

Given the limited material available, no size estimate is made for Athenar bermani, although Whitlock et al. note that it appears to have been larger than the mature Diplodocus CM 11161, but shows incomplete fusion of many of the sutures of the braincase, suggesting that the specimen was a subadult at its time of death. 

See also...

At least ten dead and more than 100 injured following Magnitude 5.5 Earthquake in central Bangladesh.

The United States Geological Survey recorded a Magnitude 5.5 Earthquake at a depth of about 10 km, roughly 30 km to the northeast of the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, slightly after 10.35 local time (slightly after 4.35 am GMT) on Saturday 22 November 2025. At least ten people, including at least one child, have died as a result of the event, with more than 100 injured. Most of those killed or injured appear to have been struck by debris falling from buildings in densely populated urban areas; three people were reportedly killed in a single incident when they were struck by a falling balcony. The event was felt across Bangladesh, as well as neighbouring areas of India.

Debris which fell from buildings into a crowded street in Dhaka, Bangladesh, during an Earthquake on 22 November 2025. Reuters.

Earthquake activity in northern Bangladesh is influenced by the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau, due to the impact of India into Eurasia to the south. The Indian Plate is moving northwards at a rate of 5 cm per year, causing it to impact into Eurasia, which is also moving northward, but only at a rate of 2 cm per year. The collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates has led to the formation of the Himalayan Mountains, the Tibetan Plateau, and the mountains of southwest China, Central Asia and the Hindu Kush.

Block diagram showing how the impact of the Indian Plate into Eurasia is causing uplift on the Tibetan Plateau. Jayne Doucette/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Eastern Bangladesh is also in an area particularly prone to Earthquakes; much of nearby Myanmar lies on the Burma Plate, a small tectonic plate caught between  the Eurasian Plate to the northeast, the Indian Plate to the west and southwest and the Sunda Plate to the southeast. As these larger plates move together the Burma Plate is being squeezed and fractured, with a major fault line, the Kabaw Fault, having formed across much of the north of the country, along which the Burma Plate is slowly splitting. Most Earthquakes in the region are caused by movement on this fault.

The movement of the Burma and surrounding plates. Sheth et al. (2011).

The central part of Bangladesh is potentially affected by both tectonic systems, but is rather less prone to earthquake events, with only six Earthquakes of Magnitude 5.5 or greater since 1950. This may help to explain the level of deaths and injuries associated with this event, although building safety has been a long standing political issue in Bangladesh, marked by events such as the Tazreen Factory Fire in 2012, in which at least 112 people died in a fire at a nine-story factory building with insufficient fire escapes, and the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013, in which an eight story commercial building collapsed, killing 1134 people. Since 2013, the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, 2018 Transition Key Accord, and most recently the Readymade Sustainability Council, have sort to get international garment manufacturing companies operating in Bangladesh to sign up to fire and building safety protocols, but there remains little general building regulation.

See also...

The origin of kissing.

Kissing, if interpreted as mouth-to-mouth contact between members of the same species with no food being transferred, is widespread in the Animal Kingdom, as well as in most (but not all) Human societies. Variants on this have been seen in Mammals, Birds, Fish and even Insects. If this process is narrowed to oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips, then it is still widespread in Old World Monkeys and Apes. 

The advantages of kissing, viewed in a strictly evolutionary sense, are hard to define. Kissing does not appear to aid survival, or enhance reproductive success, and presents an opportunity for the transfer of infections. It has been suggested that kissing may enhance mate selection, enabling one kisser to evaluate the odour, health and/or social skills of the other, although there is no real way to prove this. Another suggestion is that kissing enhances arousal, thereby increasing the likelihood of mating success, though again, this is unprovable. Neither of these explanations can account for kissing between individuals who do not seem to be intent on mating, which is just as widespread as mating-related kissing. One theory which could account for this is that kissing is a social gesture which displays trust, coming intentionally close to the (potentially dangerous) mouth and teeth of a social peer or potential mate, while another is that the practice might facilitate the transfer of potentially beneficial microbes, though again, these hypotheses are impossible to prove one way or the other.

The Kiss, by Gustav Klimt. Österreichische Galerie Belvedere/Google Arts & Culture/Wikimedia Commons.

The meaning of kissing is subject to cultural interpretation in Human societies. Some societies do not kiss at all. In others kissing is an everyday, yet meaningful, event. It can also be a highly symbolic activity. Given this cultural variation in Humans, it is quite possible that kissing is also cultural in non-Human Primates, and may be present in some populations and not others. 

While a number of researchers have come up with different possible explanations for the purpose of kissing, the origin of the practice does not appear to have been examined to date, despite the insight that understanding this could provide on the purpose of the practice. The presence of kissing in different, but closely related, species of Primates suggests that it has not appeared separately in each of these species, but that it first appeared in a common ancestral species, and was then adapted by each evolving lineage to meet their needs.

In a paper published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour on 19 November 2025, Matilda Brindle of the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford and the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London, Catherine Talbot of the School of Psychology at the Florida Institute of Technology, and Stuart West, also of the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford, present the results of a study in which they developed a comparative framework for the practice of kissing across different species of Primate, which was then used to examine the evolutionary history of the behaviour within the group.

Top panel: kissing across the Animal Kingdom (clockwise): Rhesus Macaques, Macaca mulatta; Galapagos Albatross, Phoebastria irrorata; Polar Bears, Ursus maritimus; Wolves, Canis lupus; Prairie Dogs, Cynomys ludovicianus. Bottom panel: non-kissing mouth-to-mouth behaviours (left to right): premastication in Orangutans, Pongo sp.; trophallaxis in Indian Black Ants, Camponotus compressus; and Kiss-fighting in French Grunts, Haemulon flavolineatum. Brindle et al. (2025).

A full systematic review of kissing in Primates in academic literature proved to be impractical. The lack of clear scientific terminology around kissing, combined with a general reticence to discuss such matters in scientific studies, and a very large body of work on kissing in fields such as literature, rendered specialist search engines such as Web of Science unable to produce useful results. Consequently, Brindle et al. settled on a non-systematic review of the literature, combined with searching platforms such as YouTube for evidence of kissing behaviour, with the intent of establishing evidence of kissing in a species, not any data about this. They note that absence of such data does not mean the behaviour does not exist.

In doing this, Brindle et al. set out to answer seven questions, namely: (i) Which primates have been observed kissing? (ii) Does kissing show a phylogenetic signal? (iii) When did kissing first evolve in this group? (iv) How many times did kissing evolve? (v) Has kissing been lost across the course of evolution in any lineages? (vi) Are Neanderthals likely to have kissed? And (vii) how well do different life history variables correlate with the occurrence of kissing?

For the purpose of their study, Brindle et al. defined kissing as 'non-agonistic interactions involving directed, intraspecific, oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips/mouthparts and no food transfer'. This definition still included behaviours seen in Animals such as Ants, Birds, and Polar Bears, but was much more common and widespread in Primates. Brindle et al. further restricted their study to Old World Monkeys and Apes, groups where there was sufficient data for useful comparisons to be made. 

Non-sexual kissing in Orangutans, a mother kissing her child. Sumatran Orangutan Society.

Brindle et al. make it clear that they were looking for the ultimate cause of kissing rather than the proximal one, which is to say, the reason why Primates first started kissing rather than the reasons for this occurring in any group of Primates who already had the behaviour.

They further note that kissing is likely to have begun as a modification of another behaviour. They note that a recent suggestion has been made that kissing began as a part of a oral grooming behaviour, but doubt the veracity of this, noting that this is not usually how Primates groom, and that no evidence was offered to support the hypothesis. They suggest instead that kissing might be a modification of oral-to-oral food transfer, a common phenomenon in Primates.

Because kissing has been speculatively linked to mating success, Brindle et al. compared the presence of kissing in a Primate species to the mating system used by that species. They also compared the presence of kissing to the diet, food sharing and premastication (chewing food before giving it to another individual, typically an infant) habits of each species, since these behaviours might give a species a preadaptation towards kissing. They note that species with frugivorous or omnivorous diets are more likely to share foods with infants, due to the patchy distribution of foods within the environment. Fruits and meats are also the foodstuffs most commonly premasticated before giving them to infants. Reliable data on premastication was only available for the Great Apes. Data on diets from Neanderthals and Modern Humans was included in the dataset.

Kissing the War Goodbye by Victor Jorgensen. US National Archives and Records Administration/Wikimedia Commons.

Brindle et al. used a phylogenetic tree constructed using the 10kTrees Project V3.0 resource, which was cut to include only Old World Monkeys and Apes, including Humans and Neanderthals. Neanderthals were included not just because they nested within the available data, but because it has been suggested that there is evidence from the oral microbiome that Modern Humans and Neanderthals may have exchanged microbial species via kissing some time after the two species split.

The phylogenetic tree was constructed using a Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo framework with the practice of kissing identified as either present or unknown (since it is impossible to assume that a species does not kiss simply because we have not observed it). Neanderthals were also classified as unknown. 

Kissing was found in all species of Great Ape except the Eastern Gorilla, Gorilla beringei. It was also observed in a variety of Old World Monkeys, although chiefly within the Papionini (Macaques and Baboons). Brindle et al. note that much of the data on the Papionini relates to same-sex kissing, at least in part because that was the subject of the studies which had looked at the behaviour in this group.

Brindle et al. conclude that kissing appeared in the common ancestor of all extant Great Apes some time after the split with the common ancestor of all extant Lesser Apes (Gibbons), i.e. between 21.5 and 16.9 million years ago. The trait has subsequently been retained, with the one possible loss in Eastern Gorillas. Kissing was found in eight species of Papionini, but it was impossible to determine that the trait was present in the common ancestor of the group; it has either evolved or been lost multiple times (possibly both). Brindle et al. also conclude that kissing was almost certainly present in Neanderthals.

Phylogeny illustrating the reconstructed evolutionary history of kissing within the Apes (Hominoidea). The occurrence of kissing and other life history variables is displayed at the tips of the tree. Left to right: kissing (observed/not observed); mating system (single/multi-male); diet (folivorous, frugivorous, omnivorous); food sharing (present/absent); and premastication (present/absent). At the tips and nodes of the tree, black circles indicate a trait has been reported or reconstructed as ‘present’; white circles indicate kissing has not been reported or was reconstructed as ‘absent’; grey circles indicate equivocal reconstructions (mean probability less than 0.65); circles are not present where data are missing. The Neanderthal tip represents the mean probability that kissing was ‘present’, based on Bayesian estimation. Maximum Clade Credibility tree created from a sample of 10,000 molecular phylogenies from the 10kTrees project. Brindle et al. (2025).

Brindle et al. also note that there seems to be a strong association between kissing and multi-male mating systems (i.e., systems in which multiple males may compete for the right to mate with a female), with the kissing existing alongside long bonding of females to a single male only in Western Gorillas and some Human societies. Premastication was found in every species in which kissing has been observed, but there was generally an absence of data for species where kissing had not been observed, leading Brindle et al. to refrain from making a judgement on the relevance of this trait.

Brindle et al. conclude that kissing is present in all Great Apes except Eastern Gorillas, and that there is strong evidence that the trait appeared once in the group, between 21.5 and 16.9 million years ago. The data is less clear for Old World Monkeys, where the trait may have appeared once and subsequently been lost in many lineages, or appeared several times in different lineages.

The retention of kissing as a behaviour in Great Apes strongly suggests that it provides an evolutionary advantage, which Brindle strongly suspect is associated with sexual selection, although they do not believe this is sufficient to assert that this was the reason it originally evolved. They note that the limitations of the data they used leave plenty of opportunity for further research on the subject.

See also...