Norellraptor barsboldi: A new species of Microraptorine Dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota of northeastern China.

The Microraptines are a small group of Paravian Dinosaurs (the group that includes Birds and their closest relatives, the Dromaeosaurs, Troodontids, and Scansoriopterygids), known mostly from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota of northeastern China. The remarkable preservation of the Jehol Biota fossils means that while the Microraptines were not apparently widespread or numerous, the specimens we do have are often exceptionally well preserved. Such fossils have produced Microraptines with feather-like integumentary structures, true pennaceous feathers and remnants of the gut contents, enabling a more detailed reconstruction of their ecology than has been possible for many more numerous Dinosaur groups.

Many Microraptines are interpreted as having been capable of flying, and the close relationship between Microraptines and Birds has made them an important group to palaeontologists studying the origin of flight. The closest sister group to the Microraptines is usually thought to be the Dromaeosaurs, a group of medium-sized Paravian Theropods clearly quite incapable of flight, which raises two possibilities. Either the ability to fly arose twice (or more than twice) within the Paravian clade, or the earliest members of the group had the ability, with groups such as the Dromaeosaurs losing this ability secondarily. 

In a paper published in the journal Nature Communications on 29 September 2026, Xuri Wang of the Key Laboratory of Stratigraphy and Paleontology of the Ministry of Natural Resources, and the Hebei GEO University, Yannan Ji of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, Andrea Cau of the OPHIS Museo Paleontologico e Centro Erpetologico, Martin Kundrát of the Center for Integrative Paleobiology at Pavol Jozef Šafárik University, Yichuan Liu, also of the Key Laboratory of Stratigraphy and Paleontology of the Ministry of Natural Resources, and of the China University of Geosciences, Yang Wang, again of the Key Laboratory of Stratigraphy and Paleontology of the Ministry of Natural Resources, and Qiang Ji, also of the Hebei GEO University describe a new species of Microraptorine Dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota of northeastern China.

The new species is named Norellraptor barsboldi, where 'Norellraptor' means 'Norell's Raptor' in honour of American palaeontologist Mark Allen Norell, and 'barsboldi' honours the late Mongolian palaeontologist Rinchen Barsbold (1957-2025), these being two scientists who have made exceptional contributions to the study of Paravian Dinosaurs. It is described from a single specimen (130108-MHGU-F4281) from an exposure of the Jiufotang Formation in the town of Lamadong, in Jianchang County, which is in western Liaoning Province.

Norellraptor barsboldi 130108-MHGU-F4281. (a) Whole specimen. (b) Skull in lateral view. (c) Close up of the rostrum. (d) Close up of the posterior part of skull. (e) Pectoral region. (f) Distal end of tail. Abbreviations: aof, antorbital fossa; arm, ascending ramus of maxilla; at, anterior tympanic recess; bt, basal tuber; bp, basypterygoid process; cf, coracoid fenestra; ct, caudal tympanic recess; cnV, 5th cranial nerve opening; cnVII, 7th cranial nerve opening; cv, cervical vertebra; d1, first dorsal vertebra; de, dentary; dt, dorsal tympanic recess; fo, foramen; fr, frontal; fu, furcula; gl, glenoid; h, humerus; la, lacrimal; lat, laterosphenoid; lcv, last caudal vertebra; lp, lateral pneumatic recess; mc, metacarpus; mxf, maxillary fenestra; na, nasal; oc, oto￾sphenoid crest; or, otic region; pa, parietal; paw, postantral wall; pmx, premaxilla; pp, paroccipital process; ppd, posterior processes of dentary; pt, pterygoid; pxf, promaxillary fenestra; r, radius; rp, retroarticular process; sa, surangular; sc, sca￾pula; so, supraoccipital; sp, sternal plate; sr, sclerotic ring; u, ulna; up, uncinate process; vor, ventral otic recess. Arrow indicates point of histological sampling. Scale bars are 50 mm (a); and 10 mm (b)–(f). Wang et al. (2026).

Norellraptor barsboldi has a skull triangular in lateral view, with an elongated snout, a vaulted area between the eyes, and very enlarged fenestra (skull openings). Its teeth are differentiated, with the premaxilary teeth being small and unserrated, while the maxilary teeth are larger, particularly so towards the back of the mouth, serrated, and hooked. Preserved plumage can be seen close to the right humerus and the synsacrum, ventral to the proximal caudal vertebrae, attached to the distal caudal vertebrae, ventral to the right tibiotarsus, and lateral to the right tarsometatarsus. However, the preservation of this is poor, preventing a detailed assessment of its structure.

Plumage of Norellraptor barsboldi (130108-MHGU-F4281). (a) whole specimen. (b) Distal tips of primary feathers. (c) Tibial plumage. (d) Distal tip of metatarsal feathers. (e) Plumage adjacent to humerus and thorax. (f) Plumage adjacent to ilium and tail base. (g) Distal tail feathers. Scale bars are 10 mm. Wang et al. (2026).

An osteological sample was taken from the distal portion of the mid-diaphysis of the left radius of specimen 130108-MHGU-F4281, and serial sectioned to give a view of its bone-structure. This section of bone had been crushed post-mortem, due to the weight of overlaying sediment. The bone is less than half a millimetre in diameter, and has a large medullary cavity lacking any internal structures, suggesting that the bone was heavily pneumatized in life. This is surrounded by a layer of laminated endosteal bone, making up 8-15% of the total bone thickness, then a thicker layer of periosteal bone, split into three layers by two lines of arrested growth (such lines typically form as an animal grows, with slowed growth in a season with less favourable conditions, such as winter or a dry season). This might be taken to mean the living Microraptor had lived at least two years after hatching. However, the large size of the inner cavity probably implies some total reabsorption of bone as the Dinosaur grew, making it several years older.

Histology of the left radius of 130108-MHGU-F4281. (a)–(c) Close-up of the left radius midshaft microstructure (d), (e). Physical transversal sections in transmitted (a), (d) fluorescent (b) and elliptically polarised light (c), (e). In (a)–(c) note an irregular interface between the inner periosteal bone and the endosteal bone (red arrow); a high difference in fluorescence between well-developed primary osteons of the zone 1 and of the inner group of osteons of the zone 2 (blue arrow); and ill￾developed primary of the outer group of osteons of the zone 2 (yellow arrow); a low fluorescence in the secondary osteonal bone (orange arrow). Compare the higher birefringence of the endosteal bone, an annulus-like tissue (white arrow), and early bone deposited to form zone 3 (black arrow). In (d), (e) note the occurrence of more organised osteocyte lacunae in the outer region of zone 1 and throughout the zone 2; increased birefringence in primary osteons of zone 1 (green arrow); in an annulus associate with Layer of Arrested Growth 1 (white arrow) and zone 3 (yellow arrow); and highly birefringent endosteal bone tissue (orange arrow). Abbreviations: ?ans, putative annulus; avbl, avascular layer; avr, avascular region; END, endosteal bone; FLB, fibro-lamellar bone; ICL, inner circumferential line; LAG, line of arrested growth; LAG-nvc, LAG crossing neurovascular canal; LAG1, inner circumferential layer; LAG2, outer line of arrested growth; ipos, ill developed primary osteon; lanvc, laminar neurovascular canal; lonvc, longitudinal neurovascular canal; meca, medullary cavity; onvc, neurovascular canal open on outer surface; osla, osteocyte lacuna; PER, periosteal bone; PFBM, parallel-fibered bone matrix; pos, primary osteon; pnvc, primary neurovascular canal; prpos, partially resorbed primary osteon; prsos, partially resorbed secondary osteon; ranvc, radial neurovascular canal; rel, resorption line; rupt, postfossilization rupture; snvc, secondary vascular canal; sos, secondary osteon; z1-3, first through third zone. Scale bars are 200 microns (a)-(c) and 100 microns (d), (e). Wang et al. (2026).

Norellraptor barsboldi shares many features with early Birds, but this appears to be a case of convergent evolution, with a phylogenetic reconstruction recovering it as a highly derived Microraptorine, and the Microraptors as the earliest branching group within the Paraves, i.e. the most distantly related group to the Birds within that larger group. This phylogeny shows the Microraptorines progressively acquiring 'Bird-like' traits over their history, apparently in response to similar evolutionary stimuli, something which Wang et al. interpret as evidence for the independent evolution of flight.

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Dwarf Planet 136199 Eris approaches opposition.

The dwarf planet 136199 Eris will reach opposition (i.e. be directly opposite the Sun seen from Earth) on Sunday 18 October 2026 at 6.32 pm GMT. This means that it will both be at its closest to the Earth this year, about 94.47 AU (94.47 times the average distance between the Earth and the Sun, or about 14, 133 000 000 km), and completely illuminated by the Sun. While it is not visible to the naked eye observer, the planets have phases just like those of the Moon; being further from the Sun than the Earth, 136199 Eris is 'full' when directly opposite the Sun. 

The orbit and position of 136199 Eris and selected Solar System planets at 7.00 pm GMT on Sunday 18 October 2026. JPL Small Body Database Browser.

Although this coincides with a First Quarter Moon, the prospects for viewing without a very powerful telescope are not as good. The dwarf planet will be in the constellation of Cetus and will be at its highest point in the sky at about midnight local time, from anywhere on Earth (this is because the rising and setting of objects in the sky is caused by the Earth's rotation, not the movement of the object). (Even at it's very brightest 136199 Eris will only have a Magnitude of 18.6, making it almost impossible to see with any but the largest of Earth-based telescopes, and where resolvable it will only be possible to see it as a point of light indistinguishable from a faint star.

136199 Eris orbits the Sun on an eccentric orbit tilted at an angle of 44.1° to the plane of the Solar System, which takes it from 35.9 AU from the Sun (35.9 times the average distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun) to 97.5 AU from the Sun (97.5 times the average distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun. With an average distance of 67.74 AU, 136199 Eris completes one orbit around the Sun every 558 years. This means that the planet is almost stationary compared to the faster moving Earth, so that it reaches Opposition only four days later each year than the year before, and reaches Solar Conjunction (when it is directly on the opposite side of the Sun to the Earth), roughly six months later.

136199 Eris was discovered on 5 January 2005 by a team led by Mike Brown of the Palomar Observatory in California. With a diameter of 2326 km it is considered to be the second largest dwarf planet in the Solar System (after 134340 Pluto) as well as the sixteenth largest body in the Solar System, excluding the Sun (though several moons, including our own, are larger). It is also the largest body in the Solar System never to have been visited by a spacecraft (again, with the exception of the Sun). 136199 Eris has a single moon, Dysnomia, which has a diameter of about 700 km and obits at a distance of about 37 350 km.

Labelled Hubble Space Telescope Image of 136199 Eris, showing its satellite Dysnomia. Captured on 12 June 2007. Mike Brown/NASA/European Space Agency/Wikimedia Commons.

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Trachoma eliminated in Timor-Leste.

The elimination of Trachoma, a transmissible Bacterial disease which is thew world's leading infectious cause of blindness, in Timor-Leste (East Timor) has been confirmed by the World Health Organization, according to a press release issued on 3 September 2026. This conformation also marks the elimination of Trachoma across the Southeast Asia Region, with all other countries in that region either having previously eliminated the disease or never having suffered from it. The conformation is therefore a significant step on the way to the World Health Organization's goal of eliminating the disease worldwide by 2030.

The flag of Timor-Leste. Isabel Nolasco/Wikimedia Commons.

The announcement is the result of a campaign of screening which began on Atauro Island in 2015, and which has been rolled out to every region of the country. In 2025, a total of 4949 children aged 0-5 in all 13 municipalities of Timor-Leste did not find a single case of Trachoma, leading to the conclusion that the disease had been eliminated. The country does, however, plan to continue to monitor for Trachoma, and retain the ability to treat the disease.

Trachoma is caused by the Bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis, and spread through contact with mucus emitted from the eyes and nose during infection, and can be spread by Flies. Infections are most common among children, and the disease can spread rapidly in overcrowded environments, particularly where sanitation is poor and access to clean water is limited. The Bacterium infects the inside of the eyelid, causing a roughening which can in turn lead to damage to the surface of the eye. Eventually the disease can lead to the eyelids turning inwards, blinding the patient. Infections are generally fought off fairly quickly, particularly in adults, but having been infected does not offer protection against future infections, and the damage caused by each infection is cumulative. Chlamydia trachomatis is vulnerable to the antibiotics azithromycin and tetracycline.

McCoy cell monolayer micrograph reveals a number of intracellular Chlamydia trachomatis inclusion bodies; Magnified 200 times. The intracellular inclusion body represents the replication phase of the Chlamydia spp. organisms, whereupon, the reorganised reticulate body multiplies through binary fission into 100-500 new reticulate bodies, which mature into elementary bodies. Eugene Arum/Norman Jacobs/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Wikimedia Commons.

Timor-Leste is the 33rd country to eliminate Trachoma as a public health risk, with the other countries being Algeria, Australia, Benin, Burundi, Cambodia, China, Egypt, El Salvador, Fiji, The Gambia, Ghana, India, Iraq, Iran, Laos, Libya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Togo, Tunisia, Vanuatu and Vietnam. Trachoma is one of twenty Neglected Tropical Diseases identified by the World Health Organization's Road Map for Neglected Tropical Diseases 2021–2030, with 68 countries now having eliminated at least one of these diseases. 

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Over 300 flights cancelled following series of eruptions on Anak Krakatoa.

Over 300 flights have now been cancelled since Anak Krakatoa, a volcanic island located in the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java, began erupting on Friday 4 September 2026. The volcano has produced a series of volcanic columns, some of which have reached over 15 000 m above sealevel. This has led to ash falls across the region, with all flights from Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta, which is a little over 100 km to the east of the volcano, being cancelled. The Indonesian Ministry of Health is recommending people avoid going outside without dust masks due to the health hazard presented by the ash, which can cause severe breathing problems, and fishing fleets in the area are reportedly avoiding going to sea because of the poor conditions.

Drone footage of an ash column emerging from Anak Krakatoa on Saturday 5 September 2026. Reuters.

Volcanic ash is extremely hazardous to aircraft in a number of ways. At its most obvious it is opaque, both visually and to radar. Then it is abrasive, ash particles physically scour aircraft, damaging components and frosting windows. However the ash is most dangerous when it is sucked into jet engines, here the high temperatures can melt the tiny silica particles, forming volcanic glass which then clogs engine. When this happens the only hope the aircraft has is to dive sharply, in the hope that cold air passing through the engine during the descent will cause the glass to shatter, allowing the engine to be restarted. Obviously this is a procedure that pilots try to avoid having to perform.

Anak Krakatau is a volcanic island located in the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java. The volcano (then known simply as Krakatoa) famously exploded in 1883, killing over 36 000 people (possibly over 120 000), largely through a series of tsunamis. This explosion more-or-less completely destroyed the island, but since then a new volcano, Anak Krakatau (meaning the 'son of Krakatoa'), has grown in its place. Anak Krakatau is almost never completely quiet, but goes through periods of greater and lesser activity. An eruption on 22 December 2018 triggered a tsunami which tsunami caused over 430 fatalities, injured 14 000 people, and displaced 33 000 more along the Sunda Strait. The tsunami risk of this area is particularly high as the coast is very popular with both locals and tourists and is home to over 20 million people within a 100 km distance from the volcano.

Anak Krakatau is located to the north of the Sunda Trench, along which the Australian Plate is being subducted beneath the Sunda Plate, on which the island sits. As the Australian Plate is subducted it is partially melted by the friction and the heat of the planet's interior. Some of this melted material then rises through the overlying Sunda Plate, fuelling Krakatau and the volcanoes of Sumatra and Java.

The Subduction zone beneath Sumatra. NASA/Earth Observatory.

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The Alpha Aurigid Meteor Shower.

The Alpha Aurigid Meteor shower occurs each year between 25 August and 6 September, and is expected to peak between 1.00 am and dawn on 1 September (this should be roughly the same wherever you are, as our 24 hour clock is derived from the motion of the Earth). However the shower is notoriously hard to observe, having been recorded only in the years 1911, 1929, 1930, 1935, 1979, 1980, 1986, 1994 and 2007 (some of these observations occurred before the 'official' discovery of the shower by Cuno Hoffmeister and Artur Teichgraeber in 1935, but have subsequently been linked to the shower). To make matters worse, the peak of the shower will fall slightly after the New Moon on 28 August, which would hamper the viewing of any meteors that do appear. The shower has its radiant point (the point from which the meteors appear to radiate) in the constellation of Auriga, close to the star Alpha Auriga (hence the name), which is a circumpolar star, permanently above the horizon in the Northern Hemisphere, but difficult to spot from the Southern Hemisphere.

The radiant of the Alpha Aurigid Meteors. Copper Mountain Mesa.

Meteor showers are thought to be largely composed of material from the tails of comets. Comets are composed largely of ice (mostly water and carbon dioxide), and when they fall into the inner Solar System the outer layers of this boil away, forming a visible tail (which always points away from the Sun, not in the direction the comet is coming from, as our Earth-bound experience would lead us to expect). Particles of rock and dust from within the comet are freed by this melting (strictly sublimation, transforming directly from a solid to a gas due to the low pressure on it's surface) of the comet into the tail and continue to orbit in the same path as the comet, falling behind over time.

The Earth passing through a stream of comet dust, resulting in a meteor shower. Not to scale. Astro Bob. 

The Aurigid Meteors are made by the Earth passing through the trail of Comet C/1911 N1 (Keiss),  and encountering dust from the tail of this comet. The dust particles strike the atmosphere at speeds of over 200 000 km per hour, burning up in the upper atmosphere and producing a light show in the process.

How the passage of the Earth through a meteor shower creates a radiant point from which they can be observed. In The Sky.

Comet C/1911 N1 (Keiss) was discovered on 6 July 1911, by astronomet Carl Clarence Keiss, at the Lick Observatory on the summit of Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California. The name C/1911 N1 (Keiss) implies it was the first (1) comet (C/) discovered in the first half of July 1911 (period 1911 N), and that is was discovered by Keiss.

A photograph of Comet C/1911 N1 (Keiss) taken by French Astronomer Ferdinand Quénisset at the Camille Flammarion Observatory to the south of Paris on 29 July 1911. The photograph is a single 78 minute exposure which tracked the comet; the elongated objects are stars which moved during the course of the exposure. Wikimedia Commons.

Comet C/1911 N1 (Keiss) completes one orbit every 2497 years on an eccentric orbit tilted at 148° to the plane of the Solar System, that takes it from 0.68 AU from the Sun (68% of the average distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun, and slightly inside the orbit of the planet Venus) to 367 AU from the Sun (367 times as far from the Sun as the Earth, and more than three times the distance at which the planet Neptune orbits the Sun). The comet last visited the Inner Solar System in 1911. As a comet with an orbital period of more than 200 years it is considered to be a Long Period Comet.

The current position and orbit of C/1911 N1 (Keiss). JPL Small Body Database.

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