Scientists have stumbled on a rare dinosaur fossil from Antarctica, tucked away for decades in a drawer.
The bone comes from the tail of a long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur called a titanosaur. Scientists haven’t yet identified the species it belongs to.
It was discovered in 1985 during an expedition to Antarctica’s James Ross Island and collected by geologist Mike Thomson. Working with the British Antarctic Survey, Thomson was mapping the area’s rock layers and collected marine reptile fossils to help with future dating efforts. He recorded the find as a large reptile.
Decades later, paleontologist Mark Evans spotted the bone in the British Antarctic Survey’s collections and wondered whether it might be a dinosaur. He and other researchers analyzed the shape of the bone and compared it to other more complete dinosaur remains, confirming their discovery. The findings were published on Monday in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.
Dinosaur fossils are rare to find in Antarctica because of the unforgiving ice caps. But millions of years ago, when this dinosaur lived, the region was populated by lush forests — a “rather different and much more hospitable place than we think of today,” said study co-author Paul Barrett with the Natural History Museum in London.
At about 23 feet (7 meters) long, the dinosaur was small for its group and may have been young when it died. Scientists don’t know how the creature met its end, but they think its body floated away from the coast and sank to the sea floor, becoming fossilized in marine rock.
Technology has come a long way since the dinosaur tail bone was first found, allowing researchers to peer inside bones and gain even more detailed information about ancient creatures. Thomson died in 2020 before the fossil was identified as belonging to a dinosaur.
“If he were still with us, he would be delighted to know what this was,” Evans, a study co-author, said.
The world’s oceans just experienced their hottest June on record and could set fresh highs in the months ahead as El Nino and climate change drive temperatures even higher, scientists said Wednesday.
Global average sea surface temperatures in June were 20.98C, beating the previous records of 2023 and 2024, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Marine Service.
The record capped six months of near unprecedented ocean warmth in 2026, with prolonged marine heatwaves, the service said. Average sea temperatures in the first half of the year were 20.04C, slightly below the high set in the same period in 2024.
And scientists said the onset of a potentially powerful El Nino weather pattern could boost global heat in the oceans and atmosphere even further in 2026 and into next year.
“Current conditions could indicate the beginning of a new phase, leading, once more, to uncharted territory,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus Climate Change Service, the EU’s climate monitor.
“With ocean temperatures at these levels and El Nino on the horizon, we are likely to see more temperature records fall in the coming months,” Buontempo said in a statement.
El Nino is marked by unusually warm waters in parts of the Pacific Ocean, releasing more heat into the atmosphere and influencing wind, cloud and weather patterns around the globe.
This can raise the risk of weather extremes ranging from floods in Peru to droughts in parts of Africa and wildfires in Australia.
But it can also cause a temporary spike in global temperatures, compounding the long-term warming caused by humanity’s burning of fossil fuels.
Land and sea temperatures reached an all-time high in 2024 at the tail end of the last El Nino.
“With the arrival and the onset of an El Nino year … we can expect that 2026 will be amongst the warmest (ever) recorded,” Simon Van Gennip, lead Oceanographer for the Copernicus Marine Service, said in a news briefing.
“This is due to El Nino … but also from the warming due to the greenhouse gas emissions we continue to provide for the atmosphere,” Van Gennip said.
– ‘Deepening crisis’ –
The report follows a warning issued in a major UN scientific assessment last month which declared that the world’s oceans were in a “deepening crisis” as seas were warming and rising faster.
Oceans are a key regulator of Earth’s climate because they absorb some 90 percent of the excess heat caused by humanity’s release of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.
Warmer oceans increase moisture in the atmosphere, providing fuel for tropical cyclones and destructive rainfall.
Hotter seas also directly contribute to sea level rise — water expands when it warms up — and create unbearable conditions for tropical reefs, whose corals can bleach and die during prolonged marine heatwaves.
The first six months of the year were marked by widespread marine heatwaves that affected around 82 percent of the world’s oceans, the second-largest extent after 2024, according to Copernicus Marine Service.
Marine heatwaves — prolonged periods of unusually high sea temperatures — can affect weather, trigger coral bleaching and prove fatal for marine wildlife.
– Global heat –
Global sea surface temperatures varied in the first half of the year, according to the service, which is run by Mercator Ocean International, an EU-backed non-profit organization.
The Mediterranean broke its June record at 24.3C, surpassing the previous highs set in 2023 and 2025. Marine heatwaves hit 98 percent of the basin during the first six months of the year.
A marine heatwave affecting the northwestern Mediterranean broke a record intensity measurement on Monday after a week that saw temperature records tumble in Europe, a Spanish climate institute said.
The tropical Pacific also had its hottest June ever at 27.26C.
The region matched its 2016 record for the January-to-June period, with the strongest and most persistent warming in the western equatorial Pacific and off the coasts of Peru and California.
In a tiny Tokyo restaurant filled with the smell of Nepalese dumplings, Budhathoki Samjhana surveys the business she built from scratch but may now have to give up as Japan tightens visa rules.
Even though Japan has a rapidly ageing population and is suffering labor shortages in many sectors, opposition to immigration is growing and the new rules for business manager visas were introduced by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in late 2025.
Nepalese national Budhathoki, who spent a decade away from her young daughter to create a new life for them in Tokyo, faces expulsion from the country because she may not be able to meet the specifications.
“I always wanted to become a bridge between Japan and Nepal… but my dream is broken,” the 38-year-old told AFP from the capital’s Okubo district, where her restaurant is nestled alongside Vietnamese cafes, Indian curry houses and Korean barbecue joints.
The stricter rules come as some residents complain of overtourism and soaring land prices in part due to foreign investment, prompting a push by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi for tighter regulations on foreign nationals.
Her government announced last month a sharp increase in visa fees for some tourists for the first time in nearly 50 years, hiking the cost for single and multiple entry permits five-fold.
And while business manager visa holders have a three-year grace period to meet the new conditions, some thriving businesses — including many popular eateries in Okubo — fear they won’t manage.
“The biggest problem is the increase in capital requirement to 30 million yen ($185,000) from 5 million ($30,000),” said Budhathoki, leafing through receipts as the scent of freshly cooked Nepalese momos wafts in from the kitchen.
“It’s impossible”.
Budhathoki came to Japan as a student in 2016 and saved for years to open her first restaurant in 2023.
After opening her third eatery in January, she finally brought her 14-year-old daughter from Nepal following a decade of separation and she is now enrolled in a Japanese school.
“Now, I’m very worried not about myself but about my daughter… What did I do to her?” she said.
“My heart pounds when I think about the next visa renewal.”
– ‘Zero illegal’ residents –
Indian restaurant owner Manish Kumar, who has lived in Japan for three decades, has already been told his business manager visa won’t be renewed, in spite of the grace period.
He doesn’t know exactly why but visa experts say immigration officials have become more rigorous, demanding more documentation including tax receipts and social insurance premiums.
“My children only speak Japanese… and we’re told to go back to India,” Kumar tearfully explained at a gathering about the visa issue last month.
More than 67,800 people have signed a petition calling for the suspension of the new rules.
“What happened to him was shocking,” petition organizer Taro Tsurugashima said of Kumar, who ran a restaurant in Saitama, near Tokyo, for 18 years.
“He is one of my friends, and he is a trusted member of a business community”, Tsurugashima told AFP.
The tightening of regulations comes after the justice ministry in May last year announced a “zero illegal foreign residents” plan to address public concern.
Super-ageing Japan has one of the world’s lowest birth rates, and increasing immigration could help reverse its falling population.
But foreigners were a major issue in last year’s upper house election which saw the sharp rise of the “Japanese-first” Sanseito party, which describes immigration as a “silent invasion”.
Since taking office in October, Takaichi has pledged stricter screening.
The business manager visa, meant to attract entrepreneurs, had become an easy route for would-be immigrants without real business plans, said Kazuki Yuda, an administrative affairs advisor.
The visa’s popularity surged, with around 46,000 holders by mid-2025 — up 70 percent from 2020. About half were Chinese nationals, according to government data.
“We also started to see unscrupulous real estate agents telling people that they could secure a visa simply by purchasing property in Japan,” he said.
Daisuke Komori, another advisor on administrative affairs, told AFP that he had declined potential clients, “many of whom were Chinese”, seeking to move chiefly for their children’s education or to leave China.
However Yuda and Komori both warned that the tougher measures were impacting “small restaurant owners” and “young entrepreneurs”, as well as the system’s abusers.
At an April parliament session, Justice Minister Hiroshi Hiraguchi said he had no plan to review the rules, but his ministry intends “to respond based on individual circumstances”.
Among other new requirements, a business manager visa holder must employ a Japanese national or long-term resident.
But with the shrinking population, “there’s not enough Japanese workers”, a 30-year-old Bangladeshi man who runs a trading business in Tokyo told AFP.
Under these circumstances, “who will apply for a job at a company whose manager’s status is unstable with a visa that has to be renewed every year?”
As much as a third of the world’s population could be infected with a parasite from cats that might lead to retina-damaging eye infection and permanent vision loss, a groundbreaking new study warns.
Although the disease, toxoplasmosis, is preventable and treatable, researchers call for it to be formally recognized as a neglected tropical disease (NTD) by the World Health Organization (WHO), according to The Independent.
“Toxoplasmosis is a leading eye infection and a major cause of vision loss worldwide, yet it receives limited attention in global health agendas,” said Justine Smith, an author of the study published in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.
With WHO’s recognition, we can make substantial progress in prevention and management of this infection,” said Dr Smith, an ophthalmologist from Flinders University in Australia.
People may be infected with the parasite either through eating undercooked meat, contaminated produce or water, or exposure to cat feces.
Cats themselves may get infected from eating raw meat, birds, or rodents.
Curbing the disease spread would require integration of veterinary strategies, improved farm health safety, management of stray cats, and safe disposal of animal waste, scientists say.
It occurs mainly in communities with limited access to healthcare, safe food, clean water and prenatal care.
In most severe cases, infection with the parasite may lead to inflammation of the retina and permanent blindness; scientists warn.
Researchers warn that currently there is less research funding and policy attention for toxoplasmosis than diseases with similar or lower impacts.
A formal WHO recognition as an NTD would unlock funding for research, prevention and treatment.
“Without this recognition, we can expect limited progress in the prevention and management of toxoplasmosis to continue,” researchers warn.
