Over 2000 feared to have died in New Guinea landslide.

More than 2000 people are now feared to have died in a landslide that hit a remote area of Enga Province, Papua New Guinea on Friday 24 May 2024. Initial reports placed the estimated number of dead at about 100, then were revised upwards to around 670 on Sunday 26 May as rescue workers began to reach the area. It has new been revised upwards again to over 2000, as it has become clear that several villages appear to have been covered by as much as 8 m of sediment and boulders.

The scene of a major landslide which took place in Enga Province, Papua New Guinea, on Friday 24 May 2024, which is feared to have killed more than 2000 people. Kindupan Kambii/Facebook/ABC News.

The cause of the landslide is unclear, though it is likely to have been related to recent heavy rainfall in the area. Landslides are a common problem after severe weather events, as excess pore water pressure can overcome cohesion in soil and sediments, allowing them to flow like liquids. Approximately 90% of all landslides are caused by heavy rainfall. It is also possible that the activities of miners destabilised the hillslope where the slippage occurred.

Aerial view of the 24 May 2024 Enga Province landslide. Al Jazeera.

The monsoon season in Papua New Guinea typically lasts from December to March, but like many other countries has been suffering unseasonal heavy rains due to the exceptionally high global temperatures in the past year, linked to a combination of anthropogenic global warming, driven by emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, with an El Niño - Southern Oscillation climate system over the Pacific Ocean, a natural phenomenon which also tends to drive temperatures upwards. However, the El Niño system appears to have been weakening over the past months, with sea surface temperatures over the eastern equatorial Pacific actually being lower than the average for 1990-2020, while global temperatures have continued to rise, suggesting that the El Niño system may be playing as large a role in driving this year's high temperatures as previously assumed.

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Metropolitan Museum returns stolen artworks to Thailand.

The Metropolitan Museum in New York has returned two 11th century bronze statues to Thailand after learning that they had been smuggled out of the country illegally in the 1970s. The statues, a 129cm high statue of the God Shiva known as the 'Golden Boy' and a 43 cm high statue of a kneeling woman, were handed over in a ceremony in Bangkok on Tuesday 21 May 2024, following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Metropolitan Museum and the Kingdom of Thailand in April.

The two statues returned to the Kingdom of Thailand by the Metropolitan Museum. Fine Arts Department of the Ministry of Culture of the Kingdom of Thailand/Bangkok Post.

The statues are believed to have been smuggled out of the country in 1975 by Douglas Latchford, a British-born, Bangkok-based antiquities dealer who had been under investigation by the United States Department of Homeland Security Investigations from 2019 until the time of his death in August 2020. The items came into the possession of the Metropolitan Museum in 1998, and were on display until 2023, when the museum became aware of their provenance, and contacted the Thai authorities. Latchford's records showed that the Golden Boy statue was excavated in the village of Ban Yang Pongsadao in Buri Ram province, though the origin of the Kneeling Woman is unclear.

The two artworks will be displayed in the National Museum in Bangkok, alongside a larger bronze statue that shows similarities in execution to the Golden Boy, This statue, thought to be of King Surayavaraman I, was excavated at Prasat Sa Kamphaeng Yai in Sri Sa Ket Province, 120 km to the east of the site where the Golden Boy statue was unearthed. This statue has been on display in the Phimai National Museum in Nakhon Ratchasima until now. All three items will later be moved to the Phra Nakhon National Museum.

The Metropolitan Museum has also returned fourteen objects associated with Douglas Latchford to Cambodia, and the Government of Thailand has approved the return of another 20 artefacts from its museums to the same country. These were part of a collection of 43 items smuggled into Thailand via Singapore in 2000. The other 23 items were returned between 2009 and 2015.

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Fireball over northern Portugal.

Witnesses across Portugal, Spain, and France have reported observing a bright fireball meteor slightly before 11.50 pm local time Saturday 18 May 2024 (slightly before 10.50 pm on Saturday 4 May, GMT). The fireball is described as having moved from southeast to northwest, appearing to the northwest of Columbus and disappearing to the east of Fort Wayne. A fireball is defined as a meteor (shooting star) brighter than the planet Venus. These are typically caused by pieces of rock burning up in the atmosphere, but can be the result of man-made space-junk burning up on re-entry.

The 18 May 2024 fireball seen from Cáceres in Spain by a camera operated by the European Space Agency's Planetary Defence Office, which forms part of the AllSky7 Fireball Network. European Space Agency.

On this occasion the fireball was also observed from space, by a Meteosat Third Generation weather satellite in a geostationary orbit 35 000 km above the Earth. The satellite imaged the meteorite with its Lightening Imager, which is usually used (as its name suggests) to detect lightning, but which was able to track the meteor as a series of bright flashes, as the surface of the body ablated away, due to the high speed (about 160 000 km per hour) at which it was passing through the atmosphere.

The 18 May 2024 fireball meteor as seen by a Meteosat Third Generation weather satellite. European Space Agency.

Objects of this size probably enter the Earth's atmosphere several times a year, though unless they do so over populated areas they are unlikely to be noticed. They are officially described as fireballs if they produce a light brighter than the planet Venus. The brightness of a meteor is caused by friction with the Earth's atmosphere, which is typically far greater than that caused by simple falling, due to the initial trajectory of the object. Such objects typically eventually explode in an airburst called by the friction, causing them to vanish as a luminous object. However, this is not the end of the story as such explosions result in the production of a number of smaller objects, which fall to the ground under the influence of gravity (which does not cause the luminescence associated with friction-induced heating).

Heat map showing areas where sightings of the meteor were reported (warmer colours indicate more sightings), and the apparent path of the object (blue arrow). American Meteor Society.

These 'dark objects' do not continue along the path of the original bolide, but neither do they fall directly to the ground, but rather follow a course determined by the atmospheric currents (winds) through which the objects pass. Scientists are able to calculate potential trajectories for hypothetical dark objects derived from meteors using data from weather monitoring services.

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Douglassarachne acanthopoda: A spiney Arachnid from the Mazon Creek Fauna of Illinois.

The Late Carboniferous appears to have been a time of remarkable Arachnid diversity, with known fossils including long-established Arachnid groups such as the Scorpions and Harvestmen, as well as the first appearance of other groups such as the Spiders, Whip Spiders, Whip Scorpions, Tick Spiders, and Camel Spiders. In addition to these living groups, Carboniferous deposits have yielded fossils of a number of entirely extinct groups such as the Trigonotarbids, Phalangiotarbids, and Haptopods. A number of Carboniferous fossil 'Spiders' are also likely to represent extinct, non-Spider groups, as they do not possess spinneretes (silk-producing organs) which are considered to be the diagnostic organ for Spiders by modern Arachnologists. 

In a paper published in the Journal of Paleontology on 17 May 2024, Paul Selden of the Department of Geology at the University of Kansas, and the Natural History Museum in London, and Jason Dunlop of the Museum für Naturkunde at the Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, describe a new species of Arachnid from the Late Carboniferous Mazon Creek Fauna of Illinois.

The Mazon Creek Fossil-Lagerstätte produces a wide range of terrestrial and shallow-marine fossils preserved in ironstone concretions collected from the spoilheaps of coal strip mines around Braidwood in northeastern Illinois. These deposits have provided a valuable insight into the flora and fauna of the Late Carboniferous, including a wide range of Arachnids, with every known order found here, with the exception of the Haptopoda, which is known only from the Late Carboniferous of the UK. 

The new species is described from a single specimen which came from a concretion found in the 1980s by fossil hunter Bob Masek on the spoil heap of Pit 15 Northern Mine near Essex in Kankakee County, Illinois. Masek split the concretion by leaving it outside in water during the winter, which enables frost to enter natural cracks in the hard ironstone and widen them, then striking it with a hammer to get it to split along  a single plain. The specimen was acquired from Masek by David Douglass of the Prehistoric Life Museum, where it was displayed until 2023, when the importance of the fossil was realised, and it was donated to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

The new species is named Douglassarachne acanthopoda, where 'Douglassarachne' means 'Douglass's Arachnid' in honour of David Douglass for donating the fossil, and 'acanthopoda' means 'prickly legs' in reference to the numerous spines on the legs of the specimen.

Douglassarachne acanthopoda, holotype and only known specimen FMNH PE 91366. (1) Photograph of part; (2) explanatory drawing of part; (3) photograph of counterpart; (4) explanatory drawing of counterpart; 1–4, leg numbers; a t, anal tubercle; e t, eye tubercle; fe, femur; t, tergite. Scale bars are 5 mm. Seldon & Dunlop (2024).

Douglassarachne acanthopoda has a bodylength of about 15 mm, and a body roughly divided into two parts, interpreted as an anterior prosoma and a posterior segmented opisthosoma. The prosoma is covered by a subtriangular dorsal shield, which is divided, and has a slight anterior projection. The chelicerae and pedipalps cannot be seen. The legs are robust, and of roughly even length, with a notable covering of spines. The connection between the prosoma and the opisthosoma is broad, represented by only a slight narrowing of the body. The opisthosoma has at least eight visible tergites, and lacks any form of s spines or large tubercles, with the exception of what appears to be a terminal anal tubercle.

Douglassarachne acanthopoda, reconstruction of the possible appearance of the animal in life. Seldon & Dunlop (2024).

Douglassarachne acanthopoda does not clearly belong to any described order of Arachnids, living or extinct. The spiney legs of the species are similar to those seen in Armoured Harvestmen, Podoctidae, but there is no other indication of a close relationship, and spines have arisen numerous in numerous Arthropod groups as an anti-predation measure. 

Seldon and Dunlop note that there is a precedent for naming Carboniferous Arachnid orders from a single specimen, the Haptopoda having been described in this way, but decide against doing this, on the basis that the discovery of another specimen of Douglassarachne acanthopoda with preserved chelicerae and pedipalps might reveal a closer relationship to another Arachnid group than is currently obvious, and the need for a revision of the numerous Carboniferous 'Spiders' now thought not to belong to that group. For the time being they settle for assigning the new species tentatively to the clade Pantetrapulmonata, which united the extant Spiders, Whip Spiders, and Whip Scorpions, with the extinct Trigonotarbids.

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Four dead and at least 35 injured as Iowa town hit by tornado.

Four people have been confirmed dead and at least 35 have been injured after a tornado hit the town of Greenfield in Adair County, Iowa, on Tuesday 21 May 2024. The tornado carved a 1.6 km path through the town, damaging or destroying 153 homes, including the the town's hospital, and leaving much of the town without power. Volunteers have come from across the State of Iowa to bring emergency supplies and help with the clean-up effort.

Damage caused by a tornado that hit the town of Greenfield in Iowa on Tuesday 21 May 2024. Cody Scanlan/Des Moines Register.

The tornado is estimated to have been a four on the enhance Fujita scale (or an EF-4 tornado); such a tornado will produce sustained windspeeds of 333–418 km per hour, potentially strong enough to damage even well-built structures, with frame homes completely destroyed and cars thrown like missiles. 

Tornadoes are formed by winds within large thunderstorms called super cells. Supercells are large masses of warm water-laden air formed by hot weather over the sea, when they encounter winds at high altitudes the air within them begins to rotate. The air pressure will drop within these zones of rotation, causing the air within them so rise, sucking the air beneath them up into the storm, this creates a zone of rotating rising air that appears to extend downwards as it grows; when it hits the ground it is called a tornado. 

Tornadoes can occur anywhere in the world, but are most common, and most severe, in the area of the American mid-west known as 'Tornado Ally', running from Texas to Minnesota, which is fuelled by moist air currents from over the warm enclosed waters of the Gulf of Mexico interacting with cool fast moving jet stream winds from the Rocky Mountains. Many climatologists are concerned that rising temperatures over the Gulf of Mexico will lead to more frequent and more severe tornado events.

Simplified diagram of the air currents that contribute to tornado formation in Tornado Alley. Dan Craggs/Wikimedia Commons/NOAA.

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