One person missing after Swiss village burried beneath landslide.

One person has been reported missing following a landslide in the Swiss canton of Valais which has covered about 90% of the village of Blatten in the Lötschental Valley with rubble and debris on Wednesday 28 May 2025. The landslide occurred after a part of the Birch Glacier broke off, allowing rock held behind it to tumble onto the village. The village had been evacuated since 19 May, when geologists identified that part of the mountain behind the glacier had started to move, following a detected increase in movement from the glacier itself. The missing person has been identified as a man aged 64, but no further details have been given.

Debris covering the village of Blatten in the Lötschental Valley in the canton of Valais, Switzerland, following a landslide on 28 May 2025. Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone.

The village was evacuated on 19 May after geologists identified the potential for a major landslide hitting the village as a 'worst case scenario' following their assessment of movements on the Birch Glacier. However, despite this 'worst case scenario' having come true, there is now thought to be a significant risk of further problems, with the landslid having covered part of the Lonza River, causing the potential for water to build up behind the debris, which might in turn catastrophically fail, causing flood events further down the valley.

 All glaciers in Switzerland, and the wider Alps, are currently considered to be at risk due to rising global temperatures, with many recording increased flow rates similar to that seen on Birch Glacier. While it is not generally considered possible to say to what extent global warming has contributed to individual incidents, it is highly likely that Alpine regions will be subjected to more incidents of this kind in the future.

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Jinchuanloong niedu: A new species of Eusauropod Dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic of Gansu Province, China.

Sauropod Dinosaurs first appeared around the begining of the Jurassic, undergoing an extinction event at the end of the Early Jurassic, which has been linked to a period of intense global warming, which only a single lineage, the Eusauropods, survived. All subsequent Sauropod groups diversified from this single lineage. One group of Eusauropods, the Neosauropods, would eventually radiate and become the dominant Sauropods through the Late Jurassic and Cretaceous, but in the Middle Jurassic a variety of non-Neosauropod Eusauropods could still be found, particularly in East Asia.

In a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports on 23 May 2025, Ning Li of the School of Earth Sciences and Resources at the China University of Geosciences, Xiaoqin Zhang of Chuxiong Normal University, Xinxin Ren of the Key Laboratory of Stratigraphy and Paleontology of the Ministry of Natural Resources at the Institute of Geology of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, Daqing Li of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Gansu Agricultural University, and Hailu You of the Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the College of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, describe a new species of non-Neosauropod Eusauropod from the Middle Jurassic Xinhe Formation of Gansu Province, China.

The Xinhe Formation is a 120 m thick sequence exposed in the Jinchuan District of Jinchang City, which starts at its bottom with a succession of conglomerates, sandstones, and siltstones, becoming finer further up where it becomes a sequence of interbedded shales and mudstones. It is thought to have been laid down in an ancient lake environment, roughly 166-165 million years ago. the specimen from which the new species is described was found in the lower part of this formation.

The new species is named Jinchuanloong niedu, where 'Jinchuanloong' means 'Jinchuan-dragon', and 'niedu' means 'Nickel-city', in reference to the abundant nickel resources in Jinchang, where the metal is mined extensively. It is described from a single specimen, comprising an almost intact skull, lateromedially compressed on its left side, along with the five anteriormost cervical (neck) vertebrae, and, separately, a section of twenty nine articulated caudal (tail) vertebrae. These were confirmed to be from the same animal by impressions of the pelvic girdle and sacral vertebrae, which connect them to the cervical vertebrae. These caudal vertebrae have not been excavated, but remain in place with a protective fence around them.

Skull of Jinchuanloong niedu (JCMF0132) in left lateral view. Abbreviations: a, aperture; an, angular; aof, antorbital fenestra; d, dentary; en, external naris; f, frontal; fo, foramen; inf, infratemporal fenestra;j, jugal; l, lacrimal; m, maxilla; n,nasal; o, orbit; p, parietal; pf, prefrontal; pm, premaxilla; po, postorbital; pop, paraoccipital process; q, quadrate; qj, quadratojugal; sa, surangular; snf, subnarial foramen; sq, squamosal. Li et al. (2025).

A phylogenetic analysis recovered Jinchuanloong niedu as a non-Neosauropod Eusauropod outside the two major non-Neosauropod Eusauropod clades, the Mamenchisauridae and the Tauriasauria, forming a sister taxon to the Tauriasauria plus the Neosauropoda. Li et al. suggest that the status of Jinchuanloong niedu as an apparently separate lineage outside of any of the major clades lends support to the idea that East Asia was a significant centre for Sauropod diversification in the Middle Jurassic.

Phylogenetic relationships of Jinchuanloong niedu. Li et al. (2025).

Li et al. further note that the dentition of Middle Jurassic Sauropods from East Asia, and in particular taxa from western China, is extremely variable, which they take as a sign of niche partitioning (i.e. different species having different diets), which in turn could have driven a high rate of taxonomic diversification.

Caudal vertebrae of Jinchuanloong niedu (JCMF0132). Li et al. (2025).

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2017 OF201: A potential Dwaf Planet with an extremely wide orbit.

The majority of the known sub-planetary bodies of the Solar System are found within the Main Asteroid Belt, but the total mass of the bodies here is thought to add up to only about 0.04% of the mass of the Earth. The Kuiper Belt, located between 30 and 50 AU from the Sun (i.e. between 30 and 50 times as far from the Sun as the Earth) is thought to contain a total mass of about 2% that of the Earth, including large icy bodies such as the Dwarf Planet Pluto. Beyond this, at a distance of between about 2000 and 200 000 AU from the Sun, the Oort Cloud may contain several Earth masses of material, largely in the form of icy comets, but also including dwarf planets, and possibly unidentified planets.

Other than the Dwarf Planet Pluto, which was discovered in 1930, all of the 5000 plus known trans-Neptunian objects (Solar System bodies outside the orbit of the Planet Neptune) have been discovered in the past three decades. Most of these have been discovered by surveys concentrating on the elliptic plane of the Solar System, with higher latitudes very poorly mapped. The limitations of the instruments used also mean that few objects beyond 60 AU from the Sun have been discovered.

Cosmological surveys (i.e. surveys of the deeper cosmos, outside the Solar System) have also detected trans-Neptunian objects, most notably the Dark Energy Survey, which has already discovered about 800 such bodies.

In a paper published on the arXiv database at Cornell University on 22 May 2025, Sihao Cheng of the Institute for Advanced Study and the Perimeter Institute, and Jiaxuan Li and Eritas Yang of the Department of Astrophysical Sciences  at Princeton University, detail the discovery of  a large and exotic trans-Neptunian object from data collected by the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey.

Cheng et al. searched data collected by thee Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survy, which utilises the Dark Energy Camera on the 4-meter Blanco telescope at Cerro Tololoin Chile, discovering the same object had been detected at three wavelength bands on ten occasions between 2014 and 2018, and that it was possible to connect these sightings and calculate a tentative orbit for the object. This object, identified as 2017 OF201 (a name which implies it was the 5031st object discovered in the second half of July 2017) had an extremely wide and excentric orbit, was about 85 AU from the Sun was detected, and had an apparent magnitude of about 22.6, making it the second brightest object yet discovered with an orbital distance greater than 80 AU.

Armed with this data, Cheng et al. searched the data archives of the 3.6 m Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the Subaru Telescope, and Gemini-North Telescope, recovering images of 2017 OF201 at the predicted positions in  nine 3.6 m Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope images from 2011 and 2012, but not detecting it in data from the Subaru or Gemini-North telescopes.

Trajectory of 2017 OF201 on the sky from 2011 to 2018. Individual detections from 13 nights are shown on top of the predicted trajectory based on the best-fit orbit, which describes the detections very well with a scatter of 0.13 for the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) and 0.03 for the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) arcsec in each component, consistent with the estimated astrometric error. The insets show example images from DECam (r-band on 2017-09-17) and CFHT (r-band on 2011-08-31). Cheng et al. (2025).

2017 OF201 is calculated to have an orbital period of 24 256 years, with a perihelion distance (closest approach to the Sun) of 44.9 AU, an aphelion distance (furthest distance from the Sun) of 1632 AU, and a semi-major axis (average distance from the Sun) of 838.3 AU. The last perihelion of 2017 OF201 was in 1930, the year in which Pluto was discovered, however, even at perihelion 2017 OF201 would have been about four orders of mangnitude fainter than Pluto (i.e. roughly a ten thousandth as bright), quite beyond detection by the telescopes of the day. The orbit of 2017 OF201 is tilted at 16.2° to the plane of the Solar System.

The orbits & current positions of Neptune, Pluto, and 2017 OF201. Jiaxuan Li & Sihao Cheng/Institute for Advanced Study.

2017 OF201 has a longitude of perihelion of 306° (i.e. it reaches perihelion at an angle of 306° relative to the First Point of Aries, taken as a celestial reference point). This is noteworthy, as many previously discovered trans-Neptunian objects have longitudes of perihelion clustered around 60°, something which has been postulated to imply the presence of a ninth planet (termed 'Planet X') in the Outer Solar System, the gravity of which is pushing the orbits of trans-Neptunian objects towards a similar trajectory. The orbit of 2017 OF201 not only shows no signs of such influence, it appears to be incompatible with such an object existing at all. This suggests that the similarity seen in the orbits of trans-Neptunian objects discovered to date is due to sampling bias - we have discovered more objects with longitudes of perihelion close to 60° because we have been looking at that part of the sky.

Plan view of the orbits of trens-Neptunian objects (TNOs) with extremely wide orbits, including our newly discovered 2017 OF201, which has a distinct orbit is an outlier to the apsidal clustering of the others. For reference, the most probable orbit of Planet X is shown in black. Cheng et al. (2025).

Analysis of light from 2017 OF201 suggests that it has a reddish hue, within the colour range of other trans-Neptunian objects, but possibly one of the redder objects. 2017 OF201 is calculated to be about 700 km in diameter, at which size it is presumed that it would be roughly spherical in shape. It is estimated to have a density of about 1.7 grams per cm squared, which would give it a total mass of about 300 000 000 000 000 megatons, or roughly one twenty thousandth the mass of the Earth.

2017 OF201 forms part of the Scattered Disk, an area between the Kuiper Belt considered to contain far less mass than either. However, if 2017 OF201, and other Scattered Disk objects, such as 90377 Sedna, represent an examples of a population of similar objects (which is a more likely explanation than all such objects currently being on the inner part of their orbits where we can detect them), then it is likely that the total mass contained in the Scattered Disk may be as high as 10% of that of the Earth, compared to 1-2% for the Kuiper Belt.

The orbits and positions of 2017 OF201 and 90377 Sedna. Wikimedia Commons.

2017 OF201 is unlikely to have formed on its current, highly eccentric, orbit. Rather, Cheng et al. estimate that it formed closer in to the Sun, on a more circular orbit, and has been moved onto its current orbit by encounters with other bodies. This orbit isnot consistent with the 'Planet X' hypothesis which has been used to explain the highly eccentric orbits of other trans-Neptunian objects.  Instead, Cheng et al. suggest that 2017 OF201 was initially knocked onto a less eccentric orbit by one or more encounters with the planet Neptune, and that that orbit has subsequently been further modified by the action of the Galactic Tides, and possibly close encounters with other steller systems.

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Duplexium jatobensis & Anhapoa munizi: Freshwater Mussels from the Early Cretaceous of northeastern Brazil.

Freshwater Mussels, Unionida, are the only order of Bivalves found exclusively in freshwater. There are about 900 species today, found on every continent, with some species considered economically significant, due to their use as food, their ability to produce pearls, their ability to modify environments, or their impact upon Fish stocks. Unionids have a unique life cycle among Bivalves, with a larval stage which lives commensually or parasitically on the skin, fins, or gills of a Fish host.

In a paper published in the Journal of South American Earth Sciences on 20 May 2025, Débora Eliza Baumann of the Laboratório de Paleontologia de Macroinvertebrados at São Paulo State University, Luiz Ricardo Simone of the Laboratório de Malacologia at the Museu de Zoologia of the Universidade de São Paulo, Rafael Costa da Silva of the Museu de Ciéncias da Terra of the Serviço Geológico do Brasil, and Renato Pirani Ghilardi, also of the Laboratório de Paleontologia de Macroinvertebrados at São Paulo State University, describe two new species of Unionid Freshwater Mussels from the Early Cretaceous Salvador Formation of Pernambuco State, Brazil.

The Salvador Formation outcrops in the Jatobá Basin of Pernambuco State, and records a fan delta laid down within a palaeolake in the Late Berriasian age (roughly between 140 and 137 million years ago). Both new species are described from specimens collected at a site designated BL-42 within the city of Floresta, and held within the collection of the Museu de Ciéncias da Terra of the Serviço Geológico do Brasil.

Location of Jatoba Basin (08◦30′ to 9◦06′ S; 37◦06′ to 38◦30′ W) in Northeast Brazil, location where the fossils are collected (8◦41′48.60″S 38◦16′34.30″W) and stratigraphy of the Jatoba Basin. Baumann et al. (2025).

The first new species is named Duplexium jatobensis, where 'Duplexium' refers to the fact that it has two types of teeth on its hinge, and 'jatobensis' means 'from Jatobá' in reference to the Jatobá Basin where it was discovered. The species is described from four specimens, which are between 47 and 50 mm in length, 18-19 mm in width, and 6-8 mm in thickness, with three teeth on the hinge, the central one of which is distinctly larger than the other two.

Holotype, MCT.I.7202. Duplexium jatobensis; Salvador Formation (Berriasian), general morphology and muscle scars. Abbreviations: aa, anterior adductor; pa, posterior adductor; pl, pallial line; ht, heterodont teeth; tt, taxodont teeth; pp, pedal protractor; apr, anterior pedal retractor; pe, pedal elevator; S1, posterior pedal retractor? S2, posterior adductor? or S1 + S2, slow and fast components of the posterior adductor? Scale bar is 10 mm. Baumann et al. (2025).

The second new species is named Anhapoa munizzi, where 'Anhapoa' derives from 'Anhapoā', which means 'canine tooth' in the Tupi-Guarani indigenous language of Brazil, in reference to a well-pronounced cardinal tooth on the hinge of the right valve of the shell. Anhapoa munizzi is described from five specimens, which range from 43 to 52 mm in length, 23 to 27 mm in width, and from 8 to 14 mm in thickness. The hinge of the right valve has a large cardinal tooth between two pits, and small lateral teeth.

Holotype, MCT.I.7147, Anhapoa munizi, Salvador Formation (Berriasian), general morphology and muscle scars. Abbreviations: aa, anterior adductor; pa, posterior adductor; pl, pallial line; ht, heterodont teeth; tt, taxodont teeth; pp, pedal protractor; apr, anterior pedal retractor; pe, pedal elevator, S1, posterior pedal retractor? S2, posterior adductor? or S1 + S2, slow and fast components of the posterior adductor? Scale bar is 10 mm. Baumann et al. (2025).

Both Duplexium jatobensis and Anhapoa munizi lack any form of ornamentation, have smooth beak, lack a prodissoconch, have a heterodont hinge and an additional taxodont hinge, have an elevator muscle scar, and lack a pallial sinus, all traits consistent with assignment to the Family Iridinidae within the Superfamily Etherioidea, one of the two major subdivisions of the Unionida.

The oldest members of the Family Iridinidae described to date come from the Middle Cretaceous of Africa, with some possible Iridinid fossils from the End Cretaceous of South America. Modern Iridinids are restricted to Africa, leading malacologists toconclude that the genus originated there, after the continents of Africa and South America split apart, between 140 and 120 million years ago. The Salvador Formation of the Jatobá Basin, however, was laid down during the earliest part of this rifting process, when Africa and South America were still joined, raising the possibility that the Iridinidae originated in South America, but died out there during the End Cretaceous Extinction.

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Ten miners confirmed dead, and a further ten missing following landslide in West Papua Province, Indonesia.

The bodies of ten miners have been recovered, and further ten are missing, following a landslide in the remote Arfak Mountains of West Papua Province, Indonesia, following a landslide on Friday16 may 2025. The landslide, which occurred at about 9.00pm, and is believed to have been triggered by heavy rains associated with the onset of the southwest monsoon, and struck a camp being used by artisanal gold miners. A further four miners were injured by the event, and rescue efforts are being hampered by the remote location of the site, which is ten hours travel from the nearest town, and ongoing heavy rains in the area.

Rescue workers battling floodwaters while recovering a body from a mining camp hit by a landslide in the emote Arfak Mountains of West Papua Province, Indonesia, on 16 May 2025. Indonesia Search and Rescue Agency/AFP).

Indonesia's large size, mineral richness, and poor population make unlicensed mining a widespread problem in the country, with illegal mines typically dug with hand tools and located in remote locations where authorities are unlikely to spot them (though some such operations are larger and more blatant in nature). Such mines tend to take few health and safety precautions, and are often dug by people with only a limited understanding of the structural geology of the area, making accidents extremely common, in many cases without help ever arriving due to the hidden nature of the mines. Such mines also present an environmental threat, producing waste which is often toxic, and contributing to deforestation, which can destabilise hillslopes, placing the miners at further risk.

Monsoons are tropical sea breezes triggered by heating of the land during the warmer part of the year (summer). Both the land and sea are warmed by the Sun, but the land has a lower ability to absorb heat, radiating it back so that the air above landmasses becomes significantly warmer than that over the sea, causing the air above the land to rise and drawing in water from over the sea; since this has also been warmed it carries a high evaporated water content, and brings with it heavy rainfall. In the tropical dry seasons, the situation is reversed, as the air over the land cools more rapidly with the seasons, leading to warmer air over the sea, and thus breezes moving from the shore to the sea (where air is rising more rapidly) and a drying of the climate.

Diagrammatic representation of wind and rainfall patterns in a tropical monsoon climate. Geosciences/University of Arizona.

West Papua has two distinct Monsoon Seasons, with a Northeast Monsoon driven by winds from the South China Sea that lasts from November to February and a Southwest Monsoon driven by winds from the southern Indian Ocean from March to October. Such a double Monsoon Season is common close to the equator, where the Sun is highest overhead around the equinoxes and lowest on the horizons around the solstices, making the solstices the coolest part of the year and the equinoxes the hottest.

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