A formerly unknown relative of the most iconic of all dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex, has been newly identified, according to a study released Thursday. The revelation adds a new clue that could help paleontologists unravel another step in the evolutionary chain that ended with the massive predatory tyrannosaur, T. rex.

Called Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis, the creature likely roamed Earth up to 7 million years before T. rex emerged. The bones have been dated to 72 million to 73 million years old during the late Campanian-early Maastrichtian Period.

But Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis’ bones were discovered decades before the creature officially got its scientific name. About one-quarter of its fossilized skull was found over the course of the 1980s and early ’90s in an area now known as Elephant Butte, New Mexico. Because of the size of the specimens, the bones were originally categorized by the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science as T. rex, which grew up to 39 feet (12 meters) long and 10 tons in weight.

T. rex vs. its relative

There were two big differences between T. rex and T. mcraeensis.

“The lower jaw in a Tyrannosaurus rex is actually quite robust. Our jaw is obviously big and toothy, but it’s more slender than what we normally see in a Tyrannosaurus rex,” said Anthony R. Fiorillo, coauthor of the study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports. The robust jaw of T. rex meant it “could do whatever it wanted. A more slender jaw, even with the big teeth, means that it would have less bite force.”

The other big difference was that, unlike T. rex, T. mcraeensis didn’t have a prominent ridge over its eyes. Scientists believe T. rex’s ridge was used to help attract mates, much like antlers on deer or elk, said Fiorillo, who is executive director of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science in Albuquerque. In T. mcraeensis, the ridge is much more subtle.

Why go large?

Massive tyrannosaurs probably emerged as an evolutionary adaptation to the availability of large herbivores, the authors wrote. However, exactly why giant plant-eating dinosaurs evolved is still an unexplained mystery, according to the study.

Fiorillo emphasized that it’s a “highly speculative” idea for now, but he added that, unlike the pygmy tyrannosaur found in the Arctic — called Nanuqsaurus hoglundi — T. mcraeensis probably didn’t experience dramatic shifts in temperature and light in southern North America so it was able to continue to grow. Arctic conditions may have played a role in N. hoglundi’s distinctly diminutive size, but in general other tyrannosaurids from the same time period were much smaller than T. mcraeensis.

The research team will now return to the rock formation where the specimen was unearthed to see whether they can find more bones.

“Then, because it’s so big, we need to actually shift some of our investigation to try to understand the paleoecology and environment in which this animal lived so we can begin to understand what was it about New Mexico that was so special that this animal’s adaptation to life was to get big,” Fiorillo said.

A tyrannosaur sleuth

When the lower jaw was first found, there weren’t many T. rex specimens out there, Fiorillo said.

The identity of T. mcraeensis was revealed all these decades later thanks to Sebastian G. Dalman, the study’s first author who is an associate researcher at the museum as well as a paleontological consultant with the Springfield Science Museum in Massachusetts. 

While studying the bones starting in 2013, Dalman was the first person to suggest that they “might be something different,” Fiorillo said.

As the largest apex predator of its time, T. rex has had near constant attention from the paleontological community, both professional and amateur, for decades. Fascination with the ferocious giant and outsize roles in popular films such as “King Kong” and “Jurassic Park” have upped the enthusiasm of scientists and amateur fossil hunters alike in their search for more T. rex bones, according to Fiorillo.

“And that improved our sample size,” he said. “That set the table for when Sebastian started to look at our specimen and say, ‘Hey, these don’t actually look the same as the famous Tyrannosaurus rex specimens from places like Montana.’”

Taiwan goes to the polls on Saturday in a closely watched election that could reverberate far beyond its shores after years of growing threats from Beijing, which warned this week the island’s future is at a “crossroads.”

The self-governing island of 24 million people will choose both a new president and parliament at a time of heightened tension with China, which under leader Xi Jinping has become much more powerful – and increasingly belligerent toward Taiwan.

The boisterous election campaign, itself an illustration of Taiwan’s vibrant democratic credentials, has been fought over a mixture of livelihood issues as well as the thorny question of how to deal with its authoritarian neighbor to the northwest.

China’s ruling Communist Party claims Taiwan as its territory, despite having never controlled it. And Xi has called Taiwan’s unification with the mainland “a historical inevitability.”

The results, expected to come Saturday night, will not only decide Taiwan’s future, but could also reshape its relations with Beijing and pose a test to the latest efforts by the United States and China to stabilize rocky ties.

Beijing, which routinely sends fighter jets and warships close to Taiwan’s skies and waters, has framed the vote as a choice between “peace and war, prosperity and decline.” On Wednesday, it warned Taiwan’s voters to “make the right choice at the crossroads of cross-strait relations” while railing against the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which has won Taiwan’s last two presidential elections.

In the final days leading up to the vote, candidates toured major cities around the island to stage nightly campaign rallies, featuring rock music, emotional speeches and the rhythmic chanting of slogans by large crowds.

Three men with different visions

Three men are vying to succeed President Tsai Ing-wen, the island’s first female leader.

Over the last eight years, Tsai has raised Taiwan’s global profile, strengthened its ties with democratic powers and pursued progressive policies at home, including making Taiwan the first place in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage – though her party has also come under criticism over economic issues.

Relations with China nosedived after Beijing cut off most communications with Taipei in response to her 2016 election win, and further stepped up economic and military pressure following her landslide re-election four years later.

Tsai’s current vice president, Lai Ching-te, is hoping to win a third term for the ruling DPP, which champions Taiwan’s de-facto sovereignty and separate identity from China. That would be unprecedented in the island’s nearly three decades of democratic history and represent a further rejection by Taiwanese voters of Beijing’s strongarm tactics.

Hou Yu-ih, a mayor and former police chief, is the candidate for the main opposition party Kuomintang (KMT), which traditionally favors closer cross-strait ties. A victory for the KMT would be welcome to Beijing and signal that voters might want to deescalate tensions.

The third contender, Ko Wen-je, hails from the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), which he founded in 2019 to challenge the island’s political duopoly. Ko also favors closer ties with China but says he will be less deferential to Beijing than the KMT.

The race is tight. Final polls before the 10-day blackout period showed Lai had a slight edge over Hou, followed by Ko.

Beijing, which openly loathes the DPP and Lai and favors a win by the KMT’s Hou, has stepped up pressure on Taiwan ahead of the vote.

It slapped sanctions on Taiwanese exports, flew spy balloons over the island, and showed off a new aircraft carrier, the Fujian, named after the mainland province closest to Taiwan.

Taipei has also accused Beijing of ramping up disinformation campaigns and magnifying talking points favorable to China-friendly candidates as part of its election interference.

China has long used a mixture of carrot and stick to woo Taiwan but over the last eight years it has mostly been stick. That increasingly bellicose stance – and the country’s authoritarian turn under Xi – has pushed Taiwan’s public further away: Less than 10% now support an immediate or eventual unification, and less than 3% identify primarily as Chinese.

A 33-year-old writer, who only gave his surname Tsang, said he cared the most about cross-strait relations and Taiwan’s democratic values.

But relations with China is not the only thing on Taiwan voters’ minds.

Despite the growing threats from Beijing, some people, especially younger voters, say China is not their biggest concern in this election – because they don’t think the status quo will change in the short term anyway, despite Xi’s rhetoric.

Instead, they care more about the economy and livelihood issues, from Taiwan’s notoriously stagnant wages to its unaffordable homes.

Analysts say that is an area where the TPP – which advertises itself as a “pragmatic” “middle-way” party – has attracted young voters.

“The leaders often say that our economy has improved. But we really don’t feel that on a local level,” a transport sector worker and father of two children surnamed Wu said at a TPP rally Thursday.

“What we see is that housing prices and cost of living have been going up, so people have to be really careful about how they spend their money,” he added.

The whole island has been on the move since Friday – Taiwan doesn’t allow absentee ballots, meaning voters must travel to their home counties to cast their ballots.

Almost all high-speed train tickets leaving Taipei for the southern part of the island during daytime Friday and Saturday have been sold out days in advance.

Some voters have also traveled back from overseas.

Dan Chang, 36, who works in finance in Hong Kong, flew to back to Taipei on Friday. For him, the most important issue is Taiwan’s sovereignty – he never trusted China, and Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong has only strengthened his belief, he said.

“If Taiwan didn’t have China as a neighbor today, I might not be so motivated to go back and vote,” he said.

Israel on Friday rejected what it called the “grossly distorted” accusation of genocide leveled against it by South Africa, telling the United Nations’ top court the case was an attempt to “pervert the meaning” of the term.

In the second and final day of hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Israel argued its war in Gaza was fought in self-defense, that it was targeting Hamas rather than Israeli citizens, and that its leadership had not displayed genocidal intent.

South Africa on Thursday had alleged Israel’s leadership was “intent on destroying the Palestinians as a group in Gaza,” and that its aerial and ground assaults on the enclave were intended to “bring about the destruction of its Palestinian population.”

Israel said the case was “a concerted and cynical effort to pervert the meaning of the term ‘genocide’ itself.” It asked the court, which sits in The Hague, the Netherlands, to dismiss the case as groundless and refuse South Africa’s request for the court to order a halt to the war.

In a statement issued after the second day of hearings at the ICJ, a German government spokesperson said that Germany “expressly rejects” allegations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit said Germany acknowledges diverging views in the international community on Israel’s military operation in Gaza but said that “the German government decisively and expressly rejects the accusation of genocide brought against Israel before the International Court of Justice.”

The ICJ was established in 1945 in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust. It hears cases brought by states accusing others of violating their UN treaty obligations. South Africa and Israel are signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention, meaning they are obliged not to commit genocide and to prevent and punish it.

In its opening remarks, Israel said it was “singularly aware” of why the genocide convention was adopted. “Seared in our collective memory is the systematic murder of 6 million Jews, as part of a premeditated and heinous program for their total annihilation,” said Tal Becker, a lawyer representing Israel.

But Israel argued the convention was adopted only to “address a malevolent crime of the most exceptional circumstances,” and was “not designed to address the brutal impact of intensive hostilities” on civilians during warfare.

“We live in a time when words are cheap,” said Becker. “But if there is a place where words should still matter, where truth should still matter, it is surely a court of law.” He said South Africa’s case was an “attempt to weaponize the term ‘genocide’ against Israel.”

The UN defines genocide as an act “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” and says the term was developed in response to the Nazis’ systematic murder of Jewish people during the Holocaust.

A final ruling on the case will take years, and this week’s hearings relate only to South Africa’s request for “provisional measures,” which act like a restraining order to stop a dispute from escalating while the court considers the full case based on its merits, which could take years.

For provisional measures the court need only decide if prima facie, or “at first glance,” the acts complained of – including Israel’s use of 2,000-pound bombs and its restriction of food and water to Gaza – could fall foul of the genocide convention. “It is necessary to establish only whether at least some of the acts alleged are capable of falling within the provisions of the convention,” South Africa argued Thursday.

South Africa has asked the court to order Israel to suspend its military campaign in Gaza. But even if the court does find it has prima facie jurisdiction, the provisional measures it decides would not necessarily be those requested by South Africa.

The ICJ has in the past granted similar requests. In January 2020, the court granted The Gambia’s request for provisional measures to protect the Rohingya people remaining in Myanmar from genocide. The court has granted similar measures to protect Ukrainians from ongoing Russian aggression, and to Bosnians during the Balkan Wars in the 1990s.

The court’s rulings are final and binding, but in practice it has no way of enforcing them. A 2022 report by Human Rights Watch found continued abuses against the Rohingya remaining in Myanmar, despite the provisional measures. And, despite the court in March 2022 ordering Russia to immediately suspend its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow’s war rages nearly two years later.

Genocidal acts ‘perpetrated against Israel’

Israel said it felt “compelled” to share with the court a “fraction of the horror” meted out on Israeli civilians by Hamas during its murderous rampage, when more than 1,200 people were killed and 240 hostages were taken back to Gaza.

Becker, the lawyer, said Israel wanted to share evidence of Hamas’ atrocities “not because these acts, however sadistic and systematic, release Israel of its obligations to uphold the law as it defends its citizens and territory,” but because it was necessary to understand “the nature of the threat Israel is facing.”

Legal experts warned ahead of the trial that focusing excessively on Hamas’ October 7 attacks would not benefit Israel’s case because it would be beside the point. South Africa had stressed that “nothing can ever justify genocide, no matter what some individuals within the group of Palestinians in Gaza may have done.”

Nonetheless, Israel shared multimedia evidence of the “carnage and sadism” committed by Hamas militants and of the “genocidal intent” its leadership “proudly declared.” Hamas’ founding charter mandates the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel.

The court was shown a video of an interview shortly after October 7, in which Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas leader, told a Lebanese TV channel: “We will do this again and again.” He said the attack was “just the first time and there will be a second, a third, a fourth.”

“If there have been acts that may be characterized as genocidal, then they have been perpetrated against Israel,” said Becker.

No ‘genocidal intent’

Much of South Africa’s argument focused on the alleged genocidal intent of Israeli leadership, which it said was echoed in the actions of its military. Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 23,000 people since October 7, according to Palestinian officials.

South Africa cited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Israeli forces on October 28, ahead of the imminent launch of its ground offensive in Gaza. “Remember what Amalek did to you,” Netanyahu said in his address, which South Africa said was a biblical reference to the divine command from God for the retaliatory destruction of the Amalekites.

Malcolm Shaw, representing Israel, said the language was merely “rhetorical” and pointed instead to other statements by Netanyahu, which he said “demonstrates the precise opposite of genocidal intent.”

“Any careful review of the official and binding policy decisions made by the relevant authorities in Israel clearly evidence that such decisions lack any genocidal intent. The contrary is true,” he said.

Israel stressed it was complying with international humanitarian law and attempting to minimize civilian casualties, despite Hamas’ embedding its military operations in buildings like schools and hospitals.

South Africa on Thursday said the evacuation order issued by Israel on October 13 to residents in northern Gaza was “genocidal,” since it “required immediate movement… while no humanitarian assistance was permitted.”

Israel said it was “astonishing” that “a measure intended to mitigate harm to the civilian population” had been taken by South Africa as proof of the country’s genocidal intent.

‘Absurd’ provisional measures

Israel concluded its hearing by asking the court to refuse South Africa’s request for provisional measures, since it said these would constrain Israel’s ability to defend itself while allowing Hamas to continue attacks.

If “resort to force in self-defense against an enemy hiding behind civilians can be portrayed as genocide and trigger provisional measures,” then “an inevitable tension will be created between the genocide convention and states defending themselves against the ever-increasing capacities of terrorist organizations,” argued Gilad Noam, an Israeli lawyer.

Christopher Staker, another of Israel’s lawyers, said provisional measures ought to be a “temporary shield” to preserve rights, but were in this case being used as “a sword to give an advantage to one party in a conflict over another.”

“It’s absurd to suggest that the only way to ensure observance of the genocide convention in a military operation is to prevent the operation from being conducted at all,” he said.

Staker also argued that, in ordering Israel to “desist” from committing genocidal acts, South Africa had implied that “violations of the convention by Israel are occurring” and so sought “an implied ruling on the merits” of the full case.

It could be days or weeks before the ICJ’s 15-judge panel – expanded by an additional judge from each side in this case – issues a decision on the emergency measures.

Correction: This story has been corrected to reflect that the case is before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), not the International Criminal Court (ICC).

A brown and arid scrubland of a lawn is not something many gardeners would brag about.

But that is exactly the kind of yard competition organizers in Sweden were looking for when they launched the prize for the “World’s Ugliest Lawn.”

People from around the world were invited to post pictures of their dehydrated grass to social media in a bid to scoop the dubious accolade.

The intention, according to those behind the project, was to raise awareness of “saving water on a global scale by changing the norm for green lawns.”

The competition was launched in collaboration with Hollywood actress and environmentalist Shailene Woodley, who called the contest “an excellent way to influence people to use less water.”

Lawns, which can require large amounts of water to maintain, are coming under increasing scrutiny as climate change makes periods of drought more frequent and more intense.

The global initiative was launched on the official website for Gotland in Sweden. Explaining the rationale on its website, it said: “Huge amounts of water are used to water lawns for aesthetics. As the world gets warmer, water scarcity is a growing problem.”

Water scarcity in urban areas is projected to affect up to 2.4 billion people by 2050, according to UNESCO data.

“By not watering lawns for aesthetic reasons, we can protect the availability of groundwater,” the competition organizers said.

The unlikely title has been awarded to Kathleen Murray who lives in Sandford in Tasmania, Australia.

According to organizers, Murray’s lawn “boasts deep, dry divots created by three wild bandicoots (small marsupials endemic to Australia) and not one dust-covered decimeter is wasted on watering.”

Murray said in the press release about her triumph: “I am terribly proud! I knew I would have my 5 minutes of fame; even if it was for having the ugliest lawn on the planet! I am now liberated of ever mowing my lawn again.”

Murray is now in possession of a certificate and a recycled T-shirt proclaiming her as “proud owner of the world’s ugliest lawn.”

Organizers added: “Gotland aims to save water by changing the green lawn norm and showing Sweden and the world that sustainable behavior doesn’t have to be dull.”

The competition followed a similar one for the ugliest lawn in Gotland in 2022.

The world’s oldest known fossilized skin belonged to a species of reptile that lived before dinosaurs roamed the Earth, a new study has found.

The fragment of fossilized reptile skin was found in a limestone cave in Oklahoma, United States, and is at least 130 million years older than the oldest previously known skin fossil.

Researchers from the University of Toronto Mississauga identified a skin fragment with a pebbled surface which is similar to crocodile skin, according to a press release published Thursday.

Dating from around 289 million years ago, it is the oldest known sample of a preserved epidermis, which is the outside layer of skin on terrestrial reptiles, birds and mammals. The epidermis “was an important evolutionary adaptation in the transition to life on land,” reads the release.

“Every now and then we get an exceptional opportunity to glimpse back into deep time,” said first author Ethan Mooney, a paleontology graduate student at the University of Toronto, in the release.

“These types of discoveries can really enrich our understanding and perception of these pioneering animals,” he added.

“It decomposes very easily after the animal dies,” said Reisz, who explained that this sample was preserved due to the unique features of the Richards Spur limestone cave system, where many of the oldest examples of early terrestrial animals have been found.

Animals that fell into the cave system would have been buried in fine clay sediments, slowing decomposition, and then interacted with hydrocarbons in oil that seeped through the site, preserving the skin. The cave was also likely an oxygenless environment, according to researchers.

The team found epidermal tissues during microscopic examination of the tiny skin fossil, which is smaller than a fingernail.

“We were totally shocked by what we saw because it’s completely unlike anything we would have expected,” said Mooney. “Finding such an old skin fossil is an exceptional opportunity to peer into the past and see what the skin of some of these earliest animals may have looked like.”

Lizard-like animal

Researchers say that the pebbled skin surface is similar to crocodile skin, and that hinged regions between scales are similar to those found in snakes and worm lizards.

Despite these features, it is not possible for researchers to say what animal or body region the sample came from, because the fossil is not associated with any other remains.

And he believes that the skin could have belonged to a small reptile named Captorhinus, fossils of which have been found in the cave system far more commonly than any other such animal.

However, the fact that the sample shares some similarities with living reptiles shows the importance of skin for animals living on land.

“The epidermis was a critical feature for vertebrate survival on land,” said Mooney. “It’s a crucial barrier between the internal body processes and the harsh outer environment.”

In addition, the sample may be an example of a skin structure that eventually evolved into bird feathers and mammalian hair follicles, according to the release.

The study was published in the journal Current Biology.

After repeated warnings, United States and British forces have followed through on threats to retaliate against Iran-backed Houthi rebels for their attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea.

Under the cover of darkness they launched missiles and bombs on targets in Yemen from air and sea overnight Friday. Here’s what we know about the weapons and military hardware employed by the US and the UK.

Tomahawk missiles

The US Navy’s Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAM) are low-flying cruise missiles capable of delivering a 1,000-pound conventional warhead hundreds of miles inland.

Launched from either surface ships or submarines, Tomahawks fly at subsonic speeds on “evasive” or non-linear routes that can beat air defense systems, according to a US Navy fact sheet.

The Tomahawks are highly accurate, and as they are GPS-guided, they can change targets or courses after launch depending upon needs, it says.

The “missile is capable of loitering over a target area in order to respond to emerging targets or, with its on-board camera, provide battle damage information to warfighting commanders,” the fact sheet says.

The US first used Tomahawks in combat in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm against the forces of then-Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and they’ve been used in several other conflicts since.

Guided-missile submarine USS Florida

The submarine USS Florida is one of four nuclear-powered guided-missile submarines (SSGNs) in the US Navy fleet.

Originally an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine – which carry nuclear warheads – the Florida and its sister boats USS Ohio, USS Michigan and USS Georgia, were converted to guided-missile subs between 2005 and 2007, according to a Navy fact sheet.

The submarine’s comparatively large size and power allow it to carry 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles, 50% more than US guided-missile destroyers pack and almost four times as many as the US Navy’s newest attack subs.

“One-hundred and fifty-four Tomahawks accurately deliver a lot of punch. No opponent of the US can ignore the threat,” he said.

While the Navy could amass a larger number of destroyers to deliver missiles in even greater numbers, as a standalone, hard-to-detect unit, the Ohio-class guided missile submarine is in an ocean by itself in America’s arsenal, Bradley Martin, a former Navy captain turned naval researcher at the RAND Corp think tank, also said in 2021.

“The SSGN remains the platform with the single largest ability to deliver conventional missile payloads,” Martin said.

The magnitude of that firepower was shown in March 2011, when the USS Florida fired almost 100 Tomahawks against targets in Libya during Operation Odyssey Dawn. That attack marked the first time the SSGNs were used in combat.

The Florida is driven by a nuclear reactor providing steam for two turbines, which turn the sub’s propeller. The Navy calls its range “unlimited,” with its ability to stay submerged constrained only by the need to replenish food supplies for its crew.

US Navy guided-missile destroyers

The Pentagon said, besides the Florida, US surface ships also launched Tomahawks against the Houthis.

The backbone of the US Navy surface fleet is the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, with almost 70 in commission.

With a displacement of up to 9,700 tons, the Burke-class carries a range of armaments, both defensive and offensive.

The destroyers deploy Tomahawk cruise missiles with their Vertical Launching System (VLS), with each destroyer having 90 to 96 VLS cells, depending upon when it was built.

The Pentagon has not said which specific destroyers were involved in the attacks on Yemen, but several of the warships have been in the Red Sea in the past two months defending commercial vessels against Houthi drone and missile attacks.

Typhoon fighters from Britain

The single pilot, twin-engine jets are a mainstay of the UK’s air fleet.

They fly at speeds as fast high as Mach 1.8 and as high as 55,000 feet, according to a Royal Air Force fact sheet.

Developed by a consortium of defense firms to provide multiple NATO nations with a multirole fighter, they are also robust weapons platforms, capable of carrying a range of air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles as well as precision-guided bombs.

The UK Defense Ministry said the four involved in the attack on Houthi targets delivered Paveway IV munitions, bombs with 500-pound warheads.

The Paveway IV has tail fins that help guide it to its target based on directions the weapon receives either from laser marking or by GPS coordinates transmitted to it.

The British Typhoons were supported by a Voyager air refueling tanker which allows the jets to fly longer distances. The UK Defense Ministry did not say where the jets took off from. But video footage posted by Defense Minister Grant Shapps showed a Typhoon taking off at night from a land-based runway.

A probe designed to scour the sky for bursts of X-rays that could help illuminate mysterious phenomena linked to black holes and merging stars, took flight this week.

The Einstein probe, named for the famous German-born theoretical physicist, launched aboard one of China’s Long March 2C rockets on Tuesday, according to a news release from the European Space Agency.

China ’s Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, which operates the nation’s Long March rockets, confirmed the successful launch on social media.

The spacecraft was constructed as a collaborative effort involving the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, and the European Space Agency.

Spotting signs of X-ray bursts could help scientists develop a better fundamental understanding of high-energy processes in space, such as supernova explosions, neutron star collisions and black holes spewing matter after devouring magnetic fields, according to the ESA.

Hunting for X-ray blasts

The Einstein probe uses two instruments to detect blasts of X-ray light that these phenomena emit: a Wide-field X-ray Telescope (WXT) and the Follow-up X-ray Telescope (FXT).

The WXT is designed to make broad scans of the sky, hunting for X-ray beams. The instrument is modeled after the eyes of lobsters, which have thousands of square pores that funnel light into a circular center. Using a similar design on the telescope allows the WXT to capture one-tenth of the entire sky in a single snapshot, according to the ESA.

After the WXT instrument detects an X-ray, the more sensitive FXT instrument is designed to quickly gather more in-depth information.

“Thanks to (WXT’s) uniquely wide gaze, we will be able to catch the X-ray light from collisions between neutron stars and find out what is causing some of the gravitational waves we detect on Earth,” said Erik Kuulkers, ESA’s Einstein Probe project scientist, in a statement. “Often, when these elusive space-time ripples are registered, we cannot locate where they are coming from. By promptly spotting the burst of X-rays, we will pinpoint the origin of many gravitational wave events.”

The Einstein probe is expected to operate in Earth’s orbit, about 600 kilometers (370 miles) above ground. The spacecraft is expected to be able to monitor the entire night sky for X-rays in just three orbits around the Earth, or roughly every four and a half hours.

The largest ape on record stood almost 10 feet tall (3 meters) and weighed nearly twice as much as a gorilla. Why and when the legendary colossus — which has captivated the popular imagination as “the real King Kong” — disappeared is one of the biggest mysteries in paleontology.

German-Dutch paleontologist G.H.R. von Koenigswald first identified Gigantopithecus blacki about a century ago from large teeth sold as medicinal “dragon bones” at a Hong Kong apothecary. Some 2,000 fossilized teeth and four jawbones from the extinct species have since been unearthed in caves in southern China.

Now, new research on many of these rare fossils and the caves where they were found builds on preliminary evidence, revealing a timeline that sheds more light on the elusive circumstances surrounding the demise of Gigantopithecus.

“I think the child in us wants to know about these amazing creatures and what happened to them,” said Renaud Joannes-Boyau, a coauthor of the study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Joannes-Boyau is a professor in the faculty of science and engineering at Southern Cross University in Australia.

The authors believe the massive creature went extinct between 295,000 and 215,000 years ago, after the climate became more seasonal and the plant-eating primate struggled to adapt to changing vegetation.

Before Gigantopithecus populations dwindled due to climate change, the species flourished starting from about 2 million years ago in a rich and diverse forest environment, primarily eating fruit, said study coauthor Kira Westaway, a professor and geochronologist at Macquarie University in Australia.

“Around (700,000 or) 600,000 years ago we start to see large environmental changes and during that period we see a decline in the availability of fruit,” she explained.

“Giganto (ate) less nutritious fall-back foods. We’ve got evidence from looking at the teeth structure,” Westaway added. “Pits and scratches on the teeth suggest it was eating really fibrous food such as bark and twigs from the forest floor.”

Detailed timeline

Over the course of nearly a decade, the team of Chinese and Australian scientists took sediment samples from 22 caves over a wide area of the Guangxi region in southern China that borders Vietnam. Half of the caves contained Gigantopithecus fossils, while half did not.

First, the researchers obtained accurate dates for the fossils and the sediment using several techniques. Luminescence dating revealed when sediment was last exposed to sunlight and deposited in a cave, and U-series dating pinpointed when uranium was taken up into bone specimens after the animal died. This analysis helped the team put together a detailed timeline of the species’ existence.

“The early caves at 2 million years old have hundreds of teeth, but the younger caves around the extinction period — there are only 3-4 … teeth,” Westaway said.

Next, the team analyzed pollen traces in the sediment samples to understand what plants and trees dominated the landscape. Isotope analysis of elements such as carbon and oxygen contained in the Gigantopithecus teeth helped the researchers understand how the animal’s diet may have changed over time.

The team found that the giant ape did not adapt well to changing environmental conditions and displayed chronic stress and dwindling numbers, Westaway said.

“We have a much more robust timeline for their life and when they went extinct — rather than being based on evidence from one or two caves, we have sampled 22 caves over a wide area and employed six dating techniques to make sure that the timeline is accurate,” she said.

Questions remain

No Gigantopithecus fossils from the neck down have ever been found and documented. Given that Gigantopithecus roamed parts of Asia for some 2 million years, Westaway said that was surprising.

The giant apes never lived in caves, according to the authors. It’s thought that rodents carried their remains into them, often through small rock fissures in the region’s distinctive rocky karst terrain, said study coauthor Wang Wei, a professor at Shandong University’s Institute of Cultural Heritage in Qingdao, China.

“The teeth or mandibles of great apes (based on the fossil evidence that has been found) went through an extremely complex process of death, decomposition, weathering, transport and deposition before they were embedded in cave sediments,” he explained via email.

“As a result, only a very small number of the hardest parts of Gigantopithecus’ body would have become fossils during geological history.”

Given the lack of non-cranial fossils, it’s hard to know exactly what Gigantopithecus would have looked like. Its upper molars are 57.8% larger than a gorilla’s and the lower molars are 33% larger, suggesting its body weight would have been 440 to 660 pounds (200 to 300 kilograms).

The ape’s mammoth size indicates that it most likely lived on the ground, walking on its fists. A November 2019 analysis of proteins found in a Gigantopithecus fossil suggested its closest living relative is the Bornean orangutan.

Homo erectus, an early human ancestor, is known to have lived in northern China and farther south in Indonesia at the same time the giant ape lived in forests of what’s now southern China.

Wang noted that at the Bose Basin, near a cave where Gigantopithecus fossils were found, archaeologists have uncovered a large number of stone tools dated to about 800,000 years ago. While scientists have no direct fossil evidence of H. erectus and the giant ape coexisting in the region, it was possible that these human ancestors may have had an encounter “with the big guy,” he said.

Voters will head to the polls in Taiwan on January 13 to elect a new president and parliament amid increasing tensions between the self-governing island and China, which has ramped up its military presence in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea in recent years.

Taiwanese voters will chose a new leader to succeed Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s first female president who is finishing her second term after winning elections in 2016 and 2020. Tsai is a member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which is loathed by China’s Communist leaders because it views Taiwan as a sovereign nation – instead of being part of China as claimed by Beijing. She cannot run again due to term limits.

The candidates

Voters will be choosing their president from three candidates. A fourth potential contender, billionaire Terry Gou, the founder of Apple’s major supplier Foxconn, withdrew hours before the deadline to formally register as a candidate.

The opposition comprises Kuomintang (KMT), the Chinese nationalist party that fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war and ruled the island with an iron fist for almost 40 years, and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), a centrist alternative party founded only in 2019. They failed to join forces to run against the ruling DPP after their leaders quarreled on live television and ended up registering separate presidential bids.

Past elections

After shaking off decades of KMT-imposed martial law, Taiwan held its first direct presidential election in 1996. Since then, only candidates from the two major parties – the KMT and the DPP – have captured the presidency.

Taiwan’s presidential elections are won by simple majority of votes and take place every four years. The presidency has a two-term limit.

On Saturday, citizens will choose their president for the eighth time in a three-way race without a clear favorite.

Taiwanese election base

Nearly 20 million people in Taiwan are eligible to cast their ballots in the presidential election across almost 18,000 voting stations. Around 1 million will be first-time voters.

The issue of identity – tied to Taipei’s tense relationship with Beijing – has been one of the most significant political divisions on the island, and studies show it was closely linked to voting patterns in previous elections.

China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) views Taiwan as part of its territory, despite having never controlled it. The CCP has long vowed to “reunify” the island with the Chinese mainland, by force if necessary.

Since 1992, the National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center conducted polls asking adult residents about their national identity. Over the past decade, a growing majority of respondents have identified solely as Taiwanese.

South Africa accused Israel of genocide in an unprecedented case at the United Nations’ top court, saying the country’s leadership was “intent on destroying the Palestinians in Gaza” and calling for the court to order a halt to Israel’s military campaign in the enclave.

On the first of two days of hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), South Africa on Thursday argued that Israel’s air and ground assaults on Gaza were intended to “bring about the destruction” of its Palestinian population, and that comments made by Israeli leaders signalled their “genocidal intent.”

Israel declared war on Hamas after the militant group’s murderous rampage on October 7, when more than 1,200 people were killed and 240 hostages were taken back to Gaza. South Africa condemned Hamas’ attacks but said “nothing” could justify Israel’s response, which has killed more than 23,000 people in Gaza.

“The point is not simply that Israel is acting disproportionately. The point is that the prohibition on genocide is an absolute,” said Vaughan Lowe, one of the lawyers representing South Africa. “Nothing can ever justify genocide.”

Israel dismissed the case as “absurd blood libel,” and government spokesperson Eylon Levy said it is “tragic that the rainbow nation that prides itself on fighting racism will be fighting pro-bono for the anti-Jewish racists.”

Israel is scheduled to deliver its response in court on Friday. Israeli President Isaac Herzog said the country would make the case that the war was one of self-defense, and would show that Israel is doing its “utmost” under “extremely complicated circumstances” to avert civilian casualties.

The ICJ, based in The Hague in the Netherlands, was set up in June 1945 and hears cases brought by states accusing others of violating their UN treaty obligations. South Africa and Israel are signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention, meaning they are obliged not to commit genocide and to prevent and punish it.

Experts say it is the first time that the Jewish state is being tried under the Genocide Convention, which was drawn up after World War II in light of the atrocities committed against the Jewish people during the Holocaust.

Countries are unable to appeal the rulings but the ICJ has no way of enforcing them, and other countries who are party to the court have ignored its rulings in the past.

In an 84-page filing to the ICJ, South Africa argued that Israel is committing genocide by killing Palestinians in Gaza, causing serious mental and bodily harm, forced evacuation, widespread hunger, and by creating conditions “calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” It also accused Israel of failing to stem incitement to genocide in the public pronouncements of its officials.

During three hours of oral argument, lawyers representing South Africa asked the ICJ to order a suspension of Israel’s campaign in Gaza to protect the rights of Palestinians in Gaza “from imminent and irreparable loss.”

Such “provisional measures,” as they are known, function as a kind of restraining order to stop a dispute from escalating while the court considers the full merits of the case, which could take years. For provisional measures the court need only decide if prima facie, or “at first glance,” the acts complained of could fall foul of the genocide convention.

“It is not necessary for the court to come to a final view on the question of whether Israel’s conduct constitutes genocide. It is necessary to establish only whether at least some of the acts alleged are capable of falling within the provisions of the convention,” argued Adila Hassim, one of the lawyers representing South Africa.

In its opening remarks, South Africa said it “places Israel’s genocidal acts and omissions within the broader context of Israel’s 25-year apartheid, 56-year occupation, and 16-year siege imposed on the Gaza Strip.”

South Africa operated under a system of apartheid from 1948 until the early 1990s, and its governing African National Congress has long championed the Palestinian cause.

Ahead of the hearing South Africa was accused by Israel and others of hypocrisy for not also bringing a charge of genocide against Hamas, whose founding charter mandates the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel.

South Africa explained during the hearing that “Hamas is not a state and cannot be a party to the genocide convention,” and said the group would be accountable to “other bodies” such as the International Criminal Court, which tries individuals – rather than states – for crimes including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a grouping of 57 Muslim countries, as well as Jordan, Turkey and Malaysia have so far backed South Africa’s case, while Israel’s allies have fiercely opposed it.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the case as “meritless,” and said it was “particularly galling given that those who are attacking Israel – Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, as well as their supporter of Iran – continue to openly call for the annihilation of Israel and the mass murder of Jews.”

‘A pattern of genocidal conduct’

South Africa presented widely reported evidence that it said showed a “systematic pattern of conduct” by Israel “from which genocide can be inferred.” The UN defines genocide as an act “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

“South Africa believes that the publicly available evidence of the scale of the destruction resulting from the bombardment of Gaza, and the deliberate restriction of food, water, medicines and electricity available to the population of Gaza, demonstrates that the government of Israel… is intent on destroying the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, and is doing nothing to prevent or punish the actions of others who support that aim,” said Lowe.

“The use of 2,000-pound bunker-busting bombs and dumb bombs in residential areas, and the relentless bombardment of Gaza… tell another story.”

Israel has repeatedly stressed that it is targeting Hamas – which has long been known to station military operations inside civilian buildings – rather than civilians in Gaza.

South Africa argued that the evacuation order issued by Israel to residents of northern Gaza on October 13 – the first of its kind – was itself “genocidal,” since “it required immediate movement… while no humanitarian assistance was permitted.” Israel said at the time that, by notifying the civilian population of a planned military attack, it was complying with international law.

Court risks ‘treating Palestinians differently’

As well as detailing the actions of the Israeli military, South Africa also cited public pronouncements by Israeli officials it alleged were genocidal in nature.

“Israel’s political leaders, military commanders, and persons holding official positions, have systematically and in explicit terms declared their genocidal intent,” argued Tembeka Ngcukaitobi.

Ngcukaitobi cited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Israeli forces on October 28, ahead of the imminent launch of its ground offensive in Gaza.

“Remember what Amalek did to you,” Netanyahu said in his address, which Ngcukaitobi told the court “refers to a Biblical command by God to Saul for the retaliatory destruction of an entire group of people known as the Amalekites.”

There is precedent for the court to grant the kind of emergency orders South Africa is calling for.

In January 2020, the court granted The Gambia’s request for provisional measures to protect the Rohingya people remaining in Myanmar from genocide. The Court has granted similar measures to protect Ukrainians from ongoing Russian aggression, and Bosnians during the Balkan Wars in the 1990s.

Max du Plessis, another of South Africa’s lawyers, said if the court failed to do so it risked treating Palestinians “differently, as less worthy of protection than others.”

Countries are unable to appeal the rulings but the ICJ has no way of enforcing them. A 2022 report by Human Rights Watch found continued abuses against the Rohingya remaining in Myanmar, despite the provisional measures. Similarly, despite the court in March 2022 ordering Russia to immediately suspend its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow’s war rages on nearly two years later.

While an ICJ ruling against Israel may fail to constrain its military action, it could land a serious blow to Israel’s international reputation.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry accused South Africa of “functioning as the legal arm of Hamas” in furious comments on Thursday.

“Today we were witness to one of the greatest shows of hypocrisy in history, compounded by a series of false and baseless claims,” Lior Haiat, a spokesperson for the ministry, said on X.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also hit out at South Africa.

“Today, again, we saw an upside-down world, in which the State of Israel is accused of genocide at a time when it is fighting genocide,” he said during a televised speech Thursday.

“South Africa’s hypocrisy screams to the high heavens.”