Morocco hit by Magnitude 6.8 Earthquake, resulting in at least 632 deaths.

The United States Geological Survey recorded a Magnitude 6.8 Earthquake at a depth of about 18.5 km, roughly 56 km to the west of the ski resort of Oukaïmedene in Al Haouz Province, southern Morocco, slightly after 11.10 pm local time (slightly after 10.10 pm GMT) on Friday September 2023. The Earthquake has been described as the worst to hit Morocco in a hundred years, and is known to have resulted in at least 632 deaths, mostly in remote communities within the Atlas Mountains, where it is possible many more deaths are yet to be reported. A large number of buildings are known to have collapsed as a result the Earthquake, including some in the historic Old City area of Marrakesh. The event was felt across most of Morocco, as well as western Algeria, southern Iberia and the Canary Islands.

A collapsed building in Marrakesh. Getty Images.

Morocco lies on the northernmost part of the African Plate, while Spain to the north is part of Eurasia. Africa is pushing into Europe from the south, which causes Earthquakes around the Mediterranean Basin. These are most common in southeast Europe, but those in northwest Africa, while less frequent, are often larger and more deadly.

The approximate location of the 8 September 2023 Morocco Earthquake. USGS.

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Striped Hyenas spotted in the Dghoumes National Park, Tunisia, and the Moroccan High Atlas for the first time in decades.

Striped Hyenas, Hyaena hyaena, are medium-sized Carnivoran Mammals with a wide distribution from North and West Africa, through East Africa and the Middle East to the Caucasus region and South and Central Asia. They mate for life, with both members of a pair partaking equally in the raising of the young. Spotted Hyenas are primarily carrion feeders, although they will hunt small prey, and can be found in wide range of habitats. They are, however, seldom tolerated around farmland, because of their perceived threat to livestock, and have become locally extinct across parts of their range, while suffering major declines in population in others. As such they are currently classified as Vulnerable under the terms of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species.

A Striped Hyena, Hyaena hyaena, in the Jebel Akhdar uplands of northeastern Libya. Rushikesh Deshmukh/Wikimedia Commons.

The expansion of agriculture in Tunisia, and in particular the farming of livestock, has fuelled conflicts between Humans and carnivores, with only the African Wolf, Canis lupaster, and the Red Fox, Vulpes vulpes, remaining in many areas. The Striped Hyena is thought to have disappeared from most of Tunisia in the twentieth century, with the only twenty-first century records coming from camera traps in the Jebel Serj National Park in the north of the country.

In a letter to the journal Orynx published on 30 August 2022, Mohamed Khalil Meliane and Amira Saidi of Marwell Wildlife and the Research Laboratory of Biodiversity, Management and Conservation of Biological Systems at the University of Tunis El Manar, Marie Petretto and Tim Woodfine, also of Marwell Wildlife, and Philip Riordan and Tania Gilbert, again of Marwell Wildlife and of Biological Sciences at the University of Southampton, report camera trap observations of the Spotted Hyena in the Dghoumes National Park in southern Tunisia.

The observations were made as part of an assessment of biodiversity in the park following the re-introduction of the Scimitar-horned Oryx, Oryx dammah, Dorcas Gazelle, Gazella dorcas and North African Ostrich, Struthio camelus camelus. A total of 30 camera traps were deployed along Animal trails between April 2018 and March 2022. Striped Hyenas were spotted only during one month each during 2018 and 2019, but were spotted during six months each in 2020 and 2021. During this time 20 observations were made of at least two individual Hyenas. Camera traps placed in the Jbil National Park and Sidi Toui National Park in southern Tunisia failed to record any Spotted Hyenas.

In a second letter published in Orynx on the same day, Abderrazak Ek Alami and El Mustapha Bouzid of the Moroccan Ministry of National Education, and Abderrazak Fattah of the University of Hassan II in Casablanca, confirm the first observation of a Striped Hyena in the Central High Atlas Mountains of Morocco since 2000.

El Alami et al. were engaged in surveying the area for Carnivores between 2019 and 2022, although they did not observe any Striped Hyenas during this survey. However, on 20 April 2022 a Hyena was shot and killed by a local resident in the Faryata region north-east of the town of Beni Mellal, with photographs of the dead Animal being subsequently posted to social media, prompting local authorities to investigate, as the species is protected under Moroccan law.

This (unfortunate) incident confirms that Striped Hyenas are still present in the High Atlas, although the fact that the species was not detected by a survey which was able to located other elusive species suggests that their numbers are very low, leading El Alami et al. to conclude that more efforts are needed both to protect Carnivores in this region, and to promote education about conservation in order to reduce Human-wildlife conflicts.

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Hanusia sp. & Thoralicystis sp.: Soft tissue preservation in Stylophorans from the Ordovician of Morocco shed light on the affinities of this enigmatic Echinoderm group.

The Deuterostomes are the group of animals which include the Chordates (the wider group that includes the Vertebrates) and Echinoderms, and therefore are of great interest to palaeontologists and evolutionary biologists studying the origins of these groups. Unfortunately all living (and fossil) Chordates and Echinoderms are thought to be highly modified compared to the last common ancestor of the group, leading scientists to theorise that the earliest members of the group probably resembled most closely the third Chordate group, the Hemichordates. The Hemichordates are also highly derived, and comprise two major groups, the colonial, tube-dwelling Pterobranches and the burrowing Enteropneusts or Acorn Worms. Genetic studied have shown that the Echinoderms and Hemichordates are more closely related to one-another than either group is to the Chordates, which further supports the idea that the earliest Echinoderms may have been Hemichordate-like. The Stylophorans are an enigmatic group of Middle Cambrian-Late Carboniferous fossil interpreted as non-pentameral Echinoderms. They have a single, bilaterally symmetrical, appendage inserted into an asymmetric test made up of multiple calcitic plates. The nature of this appendage has important implications for the affinities of the Sytlophorans, and potentially the nature of the earliest Echinoderms. Two theories have emerged about the nature of this appendage, the first that it is a single feeding appendage similar to the five present in most modern Echinoderms, and the second, which suggests that it might be a segmented tail, containing a notochord and serially arranged muscle blocks, something which might have been seen in an ancestral Chordate- or Hemichordate-like Echinoderm (this has sometimes led to the group being called 'Calcichordates').

In a paper published in the journal Giobios on 26 November 2018, Bertrand Lefebvre of the Université Claude-Bernard Lyon, Thomas Guensburg of the Field Museum, Emmanuel Martin, also of the Université Claude-Bernard Lyon, Rich Mooi of the Department of Invertebrate Zoology and Geology at the California Academy of Sciences, Elise Nardin of Géosciences Environnement Toulouse at the Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, Martina Nohejlova and Farid Saleh, again of the UFeniversité Claude-Bernard Lyon, Khaoula Kouraïss and Khadija El Hariri of the Département des Sciences de la Terre at the Université Cadi-Ayyad, and Bruno David of Biogéosciences at the Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, and the Muséum National d’Histoire naturelle, describe a series of Sytlophorans from the Ordovician Fezouata Lagerstãtte of Morocco, which show preservation of the soft tissue of the appendage, shedding light on its nature and therefore the affinities of the Stylophorans.

The two current interpretations (H1 and H2) of Stylophoran morphology and their implications for soft tissue anatomy, based on the Cornute Phyllocystis blayaci (Lower Ordovician, France). (A)–(C). H1, Stylophorans as typical Echinoderms with a single feeding arm. (D)–(F). H2, Stylophorans as pre-radial Echinoderms with a Hemichordate-like stalk.
(A), (D). Basic anatomical features deduced from skeletal morphology. (B), (E). Reconstructions of soft tissue anatomy along a longitudinal section of the Stylophoran appendage. (C), (F). Three-dimensional reconstructions of the soft tissue anatomy in the distal part of the Stylophoran appendage. Lefebvre et al. (2019).

The Early Ordovician Fezouata Lagerstãtte outcrops on the western flank of Bou Izargane hill, about 18 km north of Zagora in the central Anti-Atlas, Morocco. The Fezouata Shale comprises a 1000 m thick, repetitive succession of argillaceous siltstones, deposited unconformably over the middle Cambrian sandstones of the Tabanite Group (the term 'deposited unconformably' implies that there was a gap in deposition between the strata being laid down, generally with some evidence of erosion in between). The fossil-bearing beds are about 270 m above the base of this sequence, and comprise three separate beds, each one recording a different fauna with excellent soft-tissue preservation, the lowermost bed being dominated by Marrellomorphs, the middle by Trilobites, and the upper bed by Stylophorans belonging to two taxa, Hanusia sp. and Thoralicystis sp.. The living organisms are thought to have lived on a shallow seafloor, and to have been buried rapidly during storm events.

 Geographic and geologic context of Bou Izargane locality. On the maps (left), Ordovician outcrops in northwestern Africa and in the Zagora area are indicated in green. The red star shows the location of Bou Izargane hill. On the right, partial stratigraphic column of the Fezouata Shale, showing the position of the Bou Izargane excavation. The left column indicates sea level changes. Numbers along the column indicate the height (in m) above the Cambrian/Ordovician boundary. The colors used in the log correspond to those of outcropping rocks. Lefebvre et al. (2019).

At least one specimen of Thoralicystis nov. sp. shows clear evidence of soft-bodied structures in the distal part of its appendage. Preserved soft tissues consist of two superimposed longitudinal canals housed in the continuous, median groove on the upper surface of ossicles, and extending from the stylocone cavity (proximally) to the distal end of the appendage, and numerous small, lateral tube-like extensions branching regularly from the external longitudinal canal and protruding outward from between widely open, hinged plates.

Thoralicystis sp. from the Fezouata Shale, Lower Ordovician, Morocco. (A)–(C) Complete specimen in lateral view. (A) Composite photographic reconstruction. (B) Composite SEM elemental map of Fe. (C) Composite reconstruction of soft part anatomy based on camera lucida drawings, SEM elemental maps (Fe) and back-scattered electron micrographs. (D)–(F) Magnified views of parts of the distal appendage outlined in pictures (A)–(C). (D) Back-scattered electron micrograph. The arrows indicate the position of tube feet. (E) SEM elemental map showing the distribution of Fe. (F) Reconstruction of the soft parts based on camera lucida drawings, SEM elemental maps (Fe) and back-scattered electron micrographs. Abbreviations: pr. cavity: proximal cavity; pr. rings: proximal rings; styl.: stylocone; wvs: water vascular system. Scale bars: 5 mm (A)–(C), 1 mm (D)–(F). Lefebvre et al. (2019).

Several specimens of Thoralicystis sp. and Hanusia sp. exhibit strong evidence of soft tissues preserved within the proximal part of their appendage. All these specimens display a spindle-shaped, elongate cavity extending throughout the proximal rings of the appendage from the stylocone cavity (distally), to the main body cavity (proximally).

Soft tissue preservation in the test and proximal appendage of the cornute Stylophoran Hanusia sp.; late Tremadocian (Lower Ordovician), Bou Izargane, Zagora area (Morocco). (A) Composite photographic reconstruction of the specimen in lateral view. (B) Composite reconstruction based on back-scattered electron micrographs. (C) Reconstruction of the soft parts based on camera lucida drawings and back-scattered electron micrographs. Abbreviation: bis. platelets: biserial platelets. Scale bars: 5 mm. Lefebvre et al. (2019).

Lefebvre et al. reject the idea that the appendage of these Stylophorans might represent a muscular tail on the basis that the presence of open plates that precludes a coelom, and the presence of lateral extensions that branch regularly from the external longitudinal canal and protrude externally in between the open plates. Instead the external longitudinal canal is interpreted as an ambulacral canal of the water vascular system, and the lateral, tube-like structures as ambulacral tube feet the morphology of which is strikingly similar to that of exceptionally preserved tube feet described from Paleozoic arm-bearing forms.

Soft tissue preservation in the proximal appendage of the cornute stylophoran Hanusia sp.; late Tremadocian (Lower Ordovician), Bou Izargane, Zagora area (Morocco). (A) Specimen in upper view. (B) Reconstruction of (A) based on camera lucida drawings. (C) Closer view of the proximal region of the appendage outlined in (A) (red rectangle). (D) Reconstruction of (C) based on camera lucida drawings. Abbreviations: pr. cavity: proximal cavity; pr. rings: proximal rings. Scale bars: 1 mm. Lefebvre et al. (2019).

Lefebvre et al. also reject the idea that the idea that the Stylophorans mighr represent an early group of Echinoderms that appeared before pentameral symetry evolved within the group, on the basis that feeding appendages similar to that of the Stylophorans seem to have appeared in other Echinoderm groups after pentameral symmetry, which would require such a structure to evolve twice, Lefebvre et al. therefore consider it more likely that the Sylophorans are descended from a pentameral ancestor with five feeding appendages, and have somehow lost their pentametal symmetry secondarily.

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