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Endangered Sumatran Rhino Born in Indonesia 

A handout picture released by the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry on October 1, 2023, shows a female Sumatran rhino calf, born on September 30, 2023, with its mother Ratu, a 23-year-old female Sumatran rhino, at the Way Kambas National Park Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary (SRS TNWK). (Photo by Handout / Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry / AFP)
A handout picture released by the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry on October 1, 2023, shows a female Sumatran rhino calf, born on September 30, 2023, with its mother Ratu, a 23-year-old female Sumatran rhino, at the Way Kambas National Park Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary (SRS TNWK). (Photo by Handout / Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry / AFP)
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Endangered Sumatran Rhino Born in Indonesia 

A handout picture released by the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry on October 1, 2023, shows a female Sumatran rhino calf, born on September 30, 2023, with its mother Ratu, a 23-year-old female Sumatran rhino, at the Way Kambas National Park Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary (SRS TNWK). (Photo by Handout / Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry / AFP)
A handout picture released by the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry on October 1, 2023, shows a female Sumatran rhino calf, born on September 30, 2023, with its mother Ratu, a 23-year-old female Sumatran rhino, at the Way Kambas National Park Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary (SRS TNWK). (Photo by Handout / Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry / AFP)

An endangered Sumatran rhinoceros, the smallest and hairiest of the4 five extant rhino species, was born in Indonesia last week in a conservation area, the government said on Monday.

Weighing about 27 kilograms (59.52 lb), the yet-to-be named female calf, was born on Saturday at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary (SRS) facility in Way Kambas National Park, Lampung province in the tropical Southeast Asian country.

Covered in black hair, the newborn stood about 45 minutes after her birth. On the next day, she began to walk around the jungle, the environment ministry said in a statement.

The mother, 22-year-old Ratu, was in a healthy condition, the ministry said.

Ratu is a native of Lampung, while her mate, Andalas, aged 23, was born at the Cincinnati Zoo, United States, but has since moved to the same park as Ratu.

The pair previously had Delilah in 2016 and Andatu in 2021.

"This is a happy news, not only for Indonesia but for the world," environment minister Siti Nurbaya said in the statement.

There were just 80 Sumatran rhinos left in the world, based on a 2019 assessment of threatened species by the Indonesian government.

The mammal, Dicerorhinus sumatrensis, is the only Asian rhino with two horns and can grow up to 1.5 meters-tall, weighing between 500 to 960 kg.

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The Surprising Reason Why There Are No Human Remains in the Titanic

The RMS Titanic sank at 2:20 am Monday morning on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
The RMS Titanic sank at 2:20 am Monday morning on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
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The Surprising Reason Why There Are No Human Remains in the Titanic

The RMS Titanic sank at 2:20 am Monday morning on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
The RMS Titanic sank at 2:20 am Monday morning on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

The Titanic, a symbol of hubris and human tragedy, has been a source of fascination for more than 112 years.

But the fact is, the sunken ocean liner was more than just movie fodder or a deep-sea explorer’s holy grail, it was a very real ship on which more than 1,500 people died.

And yet, whilst experts, using the most sophisticated submersible and underwater filming equipment, have found some extraordinary relics from the wreckage, they have never found any skeletons or bones.

“I’ve seen zero human remains,” James Cameron, director of the iconic 1997 film, told the New York Times back in 2012.

“We’ve seen clothing. We’ve seen pairs of shoes, which would strongly suggest there was a body there at one point. But we’ve never seen any human remains.”

Given that Cameron has visited and explored the wreck some 33 times (and claims to have spent more time on the ship than the ship’s captain), if he hasn’t seen any human remains we can assume that there really aren’t any there. So why is this?

It’s a question that has recently been perplexing Reddit users but, luckily, it has some relatively simple answers.

Whilst there was a notoriously insufficient number of lifeboats on the ship, many passengers and crew members still managed to put on life jackets. This means that they remained buoyant even after they succumbed to the freezing cold waters of the Atlantic.

And so, when a storm followed the sinking of the “unsinkable” ship, they were likely swept away from the site of the wreckage and carried further away over subsequent weeks and years by ocean currents.

“The issue you have to deal with is, at depths below about 3,000 feet (around 914 meters), you pass below what's called the calcium carbonate compensation depth,” deep-sea explorer Robert Ballard explained to NPR back in 2009.

“And the water in the deep sea is under saturated in calcium carbonate, which is mostly, you know, what bones are made of. For example, on the Titanic and on the Bismarck, those ships are below the calcium carbonate compensation depth, so once the critters eat their flesh and expose the bones, the bones dissolve,” he said.

Nevertheless, some people believe that there may still be some preserved bodies in sealed off parts of the ship, such as the engine room.

This is because fresh oxygen-rich water that scavengers rely on may not have been able to enter these areas.

Nevertheless, more than a century since the tragedy, it seems likely that such searches for remains would be fruitless.