عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Varieties

Andrea Bocelli Stars in Opera Night at Saudi’s Winter Tantora Festival

Tenor Andrea Bocelli. (Reuters)
Tenor Andrea Bocelli. (Reuters)
TT
20
TT

Andrea Bocelli Stars in Opera Night at Saudi’s Winter Tantora Festival

Tenor Andrea Bocelli. (Reuters)
Tenor Andrea Bocelli. (Reuters)

Tenor Andrea Bocelli held on Friday his first-ever concert in Saudi Arabia as part of the Winter at Tantora festival that is underway in the al-Ula region.

The sold-out concert was conducted by Marcello Rota at the head of a 140-piece orchestra.

The concert featured a variety of performances by Bocelli and his companions, soprano Maria Aleida Rodriguez, violinist Anastasiya Petryshak and guest singer Ilaria Della Bidia.

Bocelli performed several of his acclaimed hits and during one of the segments, appeared on stage dressed in traditional Saudi garb much to the delight of the audience.

Hosted by the residents of al-Ula, the festival runs from December 20, 2018 until February 9, 2019.

During a series of themed weekend events, festival visitors experienced a range of activities including a celebration of the winter planting season, weekly cultural events, a spectacular Fursan equine experience and premiere musical performances from some of the world’s greatest musicians.

They included music performances by Mohamed Abdo, Majida El Roumi and Renaud Capuçon.

Fans are in store for a concert by Kadim Al-Saher and Ilham al-Madfai on February 15.

On February 22, the festival will honor Abdul Karim Abdul Qader with performances by Majid al-Muhandis and Rashed Al-Majed.

Most Viewed

 
Varieties

Oldest-known Ant Preserved in 113 Million-year-old Brazilian Fossil

A 113-million-year-old fossilized ant preserved in limestone unearthed in northeastern Brazil, the world's oldest-known ant specimen is seen in this photograph released on April 24, 2025. Anderson Lepeco/Current Biology/Handout via REUTERS
A 113-million-year-old fossilized ant preserved in limestone unearthed in northeastern Brazil, the world's oldest-known ant specimen is seen in this photograph released on April 24, 2025. Anderson Lepeco/Current Biology/Handout via REUTERS
TT
20
TT

Oldest-known Ant Preserved in 113 Million-year-old Brazilian Fossil

A 113-million-year-old fossilized ant preserved in limestone unearthed in northeastern Brazil, the world's oldest-known ant specimen is seen in this photograph released on April 24, 2025. Anderson Lepeco/Current Biology/Handout via REUTERS
A 113-million-year-old fossilized ant preserved in limestone unearthed in northeastern Brazil, the world's oldest-known ant specimen is seen in this photograph released on April 24, 2025. Anderson Lepeco/Current Biology/Handout via REUTERS

Scientists have identified the fossilized remains of the oldest-known ant - a winged insect with fearsome scythe-like jaws that lived about 113 million years ago during the age of dinosaurs and was preserved in limestone unearthed in northeastern Brazil.
The species, called Vulcanidris cratensis, is part of a lineage called hell ants - named for their demonic-looking jaws - that prospered in a wide geographical range during the Cretaceous Period but have no descendants alive today, Reuters reported. A previously discovered Cretaceous hell ant was named Haidomyrmex in honor of Hades, the ancient Greek god of the underworld.
A medium-sized ant about a half-inch (1.35 cm) long, Vulcanidris possessed highly specialized jaws that would have enabled it to pin down or impale prey. Like some ants alive today, it had wings and appears to have been a capable flier. It also had a well-developed stinger like a wasp.
"It would probably be confused with a wasp by an untrained eye," said entomologist Anderson Lepeco of the Museum of Zoology of the University of São Paulo, lead author of the study published this week in the journal Current Biology.
"They probably used their mandibles (mouthparts) to handle their prey in a specific way," Lepeco said.
Its mandibles moved up and down and not side to side, as they do in today's ants.
"Currently, many odd mandible shapes can be found in ants, but they usually articulate horizontally," Lepeco said.
This ant is roughly 13 million years older than the previous oldest-known ants, specimens found in France and Myanmar that were preserved in amber, which is fossilized tree sap.
The Vulcanidris anatomy is remarkably well preserved in the limestone, which was excavated decades ago in the Crato geological formation in the Brazilian state of Ceará, probably in the 1980s or 1990s, according to Lepeco. It was held in a private collection before being donated to the São Paulo museum about five years ago.
"I was looking for wasps among the fossils of the collection and was shocked when I recognized this one as a close relative of a hell ant previously described from Burmese amber," Lepeco said, referring to the fossil from Myanmar.
The specialized nature of the Vulcanidris anatomy and the fact that two hell ants lived so far from each other during this part of the Cretaceous suggest that ants as a group emerged many millions of years before this newly identified species existed.
"According to molecular estimates, ants originated between 168 million and 120 million years ago. This new finding supports an earlier age within these limits," Lepeco said.
Ants are believed to have evolved from a form of wasp. Their closest living relatives are wasps and bees.
Vulcanidris inhabited an ecosystem teeming with life. Fossils from the region show that Vulcanidris lived alongside other insects, spiders, millipedes, centipedes, various crustaceans, turtles, crocodilians, flying reptiles called pterosaurs, birds and dinosaurs including the feathered meat-eater Ubirajara. The ant's predators may have included frogs, birds, spiders and larger insects.
Ants have colonized almost everywhere on Earth, and research published in 2022 estimated that their total population is 20 quadrillion globally. That dwarfs the human population of about 8 billion.
"They are one of the most abundant groups in most environments on Earth," Lepeco said.
"They play many roles where they occur, such as predation and herbivory, controlling populations of other organisms. They also have intrinsic relationships with specific plants and insects, protecting them from other animals. Subterranean and litter ants help in soil health, and they may also act as decomposers, feeding on dead organisms," Lepeco said.