As Climate Changes, Sami Herders Need to Feed Reindeer as Rain Creates Ice Layer 

Reindeer that belong to Sami reindeer herder Nils Mathis Sara, 65, eat supplementary feed pellets near Geadgebarjavri, up on the Finnmark plateau, Norway, March 13, 2024. (Reuters)
Reindeer that belong to Sami reindeer herder Nils Mathis Sara, 65, eat supplementary feed pellets near Geadgebarjavri, up on the Finnmark plateau, Norway, March 13, 2024. (Reuters)
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As Climate Changes, Sami Herders Need to Feed Reindeer as Rain Creates Ice Layer 

Reindeer that belong to Sami reindeer herder Nils Mathis Sara, 65, eat supplementary feed pellets near Geadgebarjavri, up on the Finnmark plateau, Norway, March 13, 2024. (Reuters)
Reindeer that belong to Sami reindeer herder Nils Mathis Sara, 65, eat supplementary feed pellets near Geadgebarjavri, up on the Finnmark plateau, Norway, March 13, 2024. (Reuters)

Driving slowly on his snowmobile, reindeer herder Nils Mathis Sara spreads animal feed for hundreds of his reindeer gathered in the Finnmark mountain plateau in Arctic Norway - something he wished he did not have to do.

"This is an emergency situation," said the 65-year-old Indigenous Sami herder. "I am not supposed to feed them. They are supposed to feed me."

Normally reindeer find their own food, digging through the snow with their hooves to eat the lichen buried underneath.

But every winter for the past decade Sara has had to buy animal feed to supplement their diet so they can make it through winter, when temperatures can drop to minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit).

Until recently Finnmark experienced stable, below-freezing conditions, meaning precipitation came as snow only in winter. But in recent years, there have been milder periods, with temperatures rising above freezing.

That means rain, rather than snow, falling on the ground, which then freezes when it gets colder, creating a layer of ice that makes it tough for the reindeer to reach the lichen.

"It is especially hard for the younger reindeer as their hooves are not strong enough to break through," Sara said.

One morning in March when temperatures reached minus 10 C, Sara and his nephew Nils Olav Lango spread 1.6 metric tons of tiny brown pellets across the pastures where the family's herd graze. They have been doing it every other day since February.

"I should really be doing this every day but economically it does not make sense," said Sara.

Feeding the animals also leads to unintended consequences.

Later that day, Sara spots hundreds of reindeer that are not his family's on his district's pastures - each herding group has the right to use a specific area and each keep to their own.

Sara races on his snowmobile to talk to the herder in charge and ask him to move the animals away. They had been attracted by the smell of the feed that Sara had spread.

In addition, feeding the reindeer, which are semi-wild, turns them progressively into fully domesticated animals and thus turns herders into farmers, going against centuries-long Sami traditions.

"When we feed the reindeer, they change their behavior and become more accustomed to humans," Sara said. "This is not our way."



New T-Rex Ancestor Discovered in Drawers of Mongolian Institute

A life reconstruction of the newly identified dinosaur species Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, which lived 86 million years ago in Mongolia, is seen in this handout illustration released on June 11, 2025. (Julius Csotonyi/Handout via Reuters)
A life reconstruction of the newly identified dinosaur species Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, which lived 86 million years ago in Mongolia, is seen in this handout illustration released on June 11, 2025. (Julius Csotonyi/Handout via Reuters)
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New T-Rex Ancestor Discovered in Drawers of Mongolian Institute

A life reconstruction of the newly identified dinosaur species Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, which lived 86 million years ago in Mongolia, is seen in this handout illustration released on June 11, 2025. (Julius Csotonyi/Handout via Reuters)
A life reconstruction of the newly identified dinosaur species Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, which lived 86 million years ago in Mongolia, is seen in this handout illustration released on June 11, 2025. (Julius Csotonyi/Handout via Reuters)

Misidentified bones that languished in the drawers of a Mongolian institute for 50 years belong to a new species of tyrannosaur that rewrites the family history of the mighty T-Rex, scientists said Wednesday.

This slender ancestor of the massive Tyrannosaurus Rex was around four meters (13 feet) long and weighed three quarters of a ton, according to a new study in the journal Nature.

"It would have been the size of a very large horse," study co-author Darla Zelenitsky of Canada's University of Calgary told AFP.

The fossils were first dug up in southeastern Mongolia in the early 1970s, but at the time were identified as belonging to a different tyrannosaur, Alectrosaurus.

For half a century, the fossils sat in the drawers at the Institute of Paleontology of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences in the capital Ulaanbaatar.

Then PhD student Jared Voris, who was on a trip to Mongolia, started looking through the drawers and noticed something was wrong, Zelenitsky said.

It turned out the fossils were well-preserved, partial skeletons of two different individuals of a completely new species.

"It is quite possible that discoveries like this are sitting in other museums that just have not been recognized," Zelenitsky added.

They named the new species Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, which roughly means the dragon prince of Mongolia because it is smaller than the "king" T-Rex.

Zelenitsky said the discovery "helped us clarify a lot about the family history of the tyrannosaur group because it was really messy previously".

The T-Rex represented the end of the family line.

It was the apex predator in North America until 66 million years ago, when an asteroid bigger than Mount Everest slammed into the Gulf of Mexico.

Three quarters of life on Earth was wiped out, including all the dinosaurs that did not evolve into birds.

Around 20 million years earlier, Khankhuuluu -- or another closely related family member -- is now believed to have migrated from Asia to North America using the land bridge that once connected Siberia and Alaska.

This led to tyrannosaurs evolving across North America.

Then one of these species is thought to have crossed back over to Asia, where two tyrannosaur subgroups emerged.

One was much smaller, weighing under a ton, and was nicknamed Pinocchio rex for its long snout.

The other subgroup was huge and included behemoths like the Tarbosaurus, which was only a little smaller than the T-rex.

One of the gigantic dinosaurs then left Asia again for North America, eventually giving rise to the T-Rex, which dominated for just two million years until the asteroid struck.