Dinosaur Age on Earth Ended during Springtime, New Study https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3497541/dinosaur-age-earth-ended-during-springtime-new-study
Dinosaur Age on Earth Ended during Springtime, New Study
About 66 million years ago, a giant asteroid slammed into Earth, leading to one of the biggest extinction events on the planet, and ending the age of dinosaurs during springtime in the Northern Hemisphere, Agence France Press (AFP) reported.
Melanie During, lead author of a recent study, said pinning down the season of the impact may help us understand “how the remaining species survived and how they prospered later.”
However, determining the precise date of the impact, which occurred in Chicxulub, currently Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, is scientifically impossible.
According to a recent study, the asteroid’s impact, or a part of it, caused a series of disasters that were followed by climate turbulences.
These incidents ended the Cretaceous age and killed all the non-avian dinosaurs, and then the pterosaurs. The research team led by paleontologist Melanie During and vertebrate paleontologist Dennis Voeten, both from the Uppsala University in Sweden, sought to shed light on the impact and its consequence by examining fish fossils.
The Tanis site in North Dakota preserved traces of this massive extinction. According to the study, it features a collection of fossils found under the sediment of a flooding riverbed. The researchers suggest that during this phenomenon (the impact), the seiche waves crossed over 3,000 kilometers in around 10 minutes, raised the water of an inland sea in the region that has become America, and uprooted almost all types of living species.
In Tanis, the team studied fossils of three paddlefish and three sturgeons used high-resolution synchrotron X-ray scans at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Grenoble, France.
According to the researchers, the fish died from seiche waves accompanied by a flow of glass-like balls known as spherules that were created under the impact’s heat and rained over large distances on Earth.
The fish died within 15 to 30 minutes after the impact, said Melanie During.
Rare Sahara Floods Bring Morocco’s Dried-up South Back to Lifehttps://english.aawsat.com/varieties/5075299-rare-sahara-floods-bring-morocco%E2%80%99s-dried-south-back-life
Tourists camp on the shores of Erg Znaigui, a seasonal lake in the village of Merzouga in the Sahara desert in southeastern Morocco on October 20, 2024. (AFP)
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Rare Sahara Floods Bring Morocco’s Dried-up South Back to Life
Tourists camp on the shores of Erg Znaigui, a seasonal lake in the village of Merzouga in the Sahara desert in southeastern Morocco on October 20, 2024. (AFP)
In Morocco's southeastern desert, a rare downpour has brought lakes and ponds back to life, with locals -- and tourists -- hailing it as a gift from the heavens.
In Merzouga, an attractive tourist town some 600 kilometers (370 miles) southeast of the capital Rabat, the once-parched golden dunes are now dotted with replenished ponds and lakes.
"We're incredibly happy about the recent rains," said Youssef Ait Chiga, a local tour guide leading a group of German tourists to Yasmina Lake nestled amidst Merzouga's dunes.
Khalid Skandouli, another tour guide, said the rain has drawn even more visitors to the tourist area, now particularly eager to witness this odd transformation.
With him, Laetitia Chevallier, a French tourist and regular visitor to the region, said the rainfall has proved a "blessing from the sky".
"The desert became green again, the animals have food again, and the plants and palm trees came back to life," she said.
Locals told AFP the basin had been barren for nearly 20 years.
A man leads his camels along the shores of Yasmina lake, a seasonal lake in the village of Merzouga in the Sahara desert in southeastern Morocco on October 20, 2024. (AFP)
Last year was Morocco's driest in 80 years, with a 48 percent drop in rainfall, according to an October report from the General Directorate of Meteorology (DGM).
But in September, torrential rains triggered floods in southern parts of Morocco, killing at least 28 people, according to authorities.
The rare heavy rains come as the North African kingdom grapples with its worst drought in nearly 40 years, threatening its economically crucial agriculture sector.
Neighboring Algeria saw similar rain and flooding in early September, killing six people.
North African countries currently rank among the world's most water-stressed, according to the World Resources Institute, a non-profit research organization.
The kingdom's meteorological agency described the recent massive rainfall as "exceptional".
It attributed it to an unusual shift of the intertropical convergence zone -- the equatorial region where winds from the northern and southern hemispheres meet, causing thunderstorms and heavy rainfall.
The sun sets behind the dunes at Yasmina lake, a seasonal lake in the village of Merzouga in the Sahara desert in southeastern Morocco on October 20, 2024. (AFP)
- 'Climate change' -
"Everything suggests that this is a sign of climate change," Fatima Driouech, a Moroccan climate scientist, told AFP. "But it's too early to say definitively without thorough studies."
Driouech emphasized the importance of further research to attribute this event to broader climate trends.
Experts say climate change is making extreme weather events, such as storms and droughts, more frequent and intense.
In Morocco's south, the rains have helped partially fill some reservoirs and replenish groundwater aquifers.
But for those levels to significantly rise, experts say the rains would need to continue over a longer period of time.
The rest of the country is still grappling with drought, now in its sixth consecutive year, jeopardizing the agricultural sector that employs over a third of Morocco's workforce.
Tourists take pictures at Yasmina lake, a seasonal lake in the village of Merzouga in the Sahara desert in southeastern Morocco on October 20, 2024. (AFP)
Jean Marc Berhocoirigoin, a 68-year-old French tourist, said he was surprised to find Yasmina Lake replenished. "I hadn't seen these views for 15 years," he said.
Water has also returned to other desert areas such as Erg Znaigui, about 40 kilometers south of Merzouga, AFP reporters saw.
While the rains have breathed life into Morocco's arid southeast, Driouech warns that "a single extreme event can't bring lasting change".
But last week, Morocco's meteorological agency said such downpours could become increasingly frequent, "driven partly by climate change as the intertropical convergence zone shifts further north".
