Australia Moves to Expand Antarctic Marine Park

A handout photo taken on November 21, 2012 and released on October 8, 2024 by the Australian Antarctic Division shows a waddle of King penguins standing on the shores of Corinthian Bay in the Australian territory of Heard Island in the Southern Ocean. (Photo by Matt CURNOCK / AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC DIVISION / AFP)
A handout photo taken on November 21, 2012 and released on October 8, 2024 by the Australian Antarctic Division shows a waddle of King penguins standing on the shores of Corinthian Bay in the Australian territory of Heard Island in the Southern Ocean. (Photo by Matt CURNOCK / AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC DIVISION / AFP)
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Australia Moves to Expand Antarctic Marine Park

A handout photo taken on November 21, 2012 and released on October 8, 2024 by the Australian Antarctic Division shows a waddle of King penguins standing on the shores of Corinthian Bay in the Australian territory of Heard Island in the Southern Ocean. (Photo by Matt CURNOCK / AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC DIVISION / AFP)
A handout photo taken on November 21, 2012 and released on October 8, 2024 by the Australian Antarctic Division shows a waddle of King penguins standing on the shores of Corinthian Bay in the Australian territory of Heard Island in the Southern Ocean. (Photo by Matt CURNOCK / AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC DIVISION / AFP)

Australia moved Tuesday to protect a swathe of ocean territory by expanding an Antarctic marine park that is home to penguins, seals, whales and the country's only two active volcanos.

The marine reserve -- Heard Island and McDonald Island -- located 1,700 kilometers from Antarctica, will quadruple in size under the announcement.

This means 52 percent of the nation's seas will be protected, a government statement said, cementing Australia's place among leading countries safeguarding seas.

It will also see Australia blitz the global 30 percent United Nations target by 2030 that Australia signed up to in 2022, AFP reported.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said the announcement was a "huge environmental win.”

"This is a unique and extraordinary part of our planet. We are doing everything we can to protect it," she said.

Australia's remoteness and vastness means it is somewhat easier to protect oceans than in other countries, particularly in parts that are used less frequently for fishing.

For example, commercial fisheries are a vital part of Tasmania's economy -- the local abalone industry provides about 25 percent of the annual global harvest -- and only 1.1 percent of its waters are protected, government data show.

WWF-Australia's head of oceans Richard Leck said the country had a "significant amount of work to ensure our network of marine parks is comprehensive, adequate and representative.”

He added strong protections were still missing for many key ocean conservation areas.

"Australia is a global biodiversity hotspot and one of the world's largest coastal nations, so it's important that we do some of the heaviest lifting to care for our precious marine ecosystems and the species they call home," he said.

But Leck said the final plan did not protect "some of the islands' highest priority conservation areas,” including critical foraging habitat for king penguins and black-browed albatross.

"Without increased protection, these critical foraging grounds will remain exposed to pressures like commercial fishing," he said.



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
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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.