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Whale graveyard dating back five million years discovered
An enormous whale graveyard around 1,200km (745 miles) long has been discovered in the south-eastern Indian Ocean.
The site, which is 7km (four miles) deep, has been found in the Diamantina fracture zone, a range on the sea floor of ridges and trenches.
But it is the age of the remains – some from 5.3 million years ago – that has prompted huge excitement in the scientific community.
The underwater necropolis, which was discovered by a team of researchers from China, Italy and New Zealand, is teeming with organisms and species that “may be new to science”, according to journal Nature.
One of the study’s authors Xiaotong Peng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said: “Discovering a necropolis of this scale was completely unexpected.
“The size of distribution, the depth and the age range were far beyond anything we had imagined.”
During 32 dives to the site, explorers collected samples from 485 whale-fossil sites and active whale falls, and found a treasure trove of remains, including one extinct whale’s skeleton.
The beaked Pterocetus benguelae, which is 5.3 million years old, was discovered to be one of the fossilised skulls in the graves.
A five-metre long Antarctic minke whale’s carcass was the largest discovery made.
A new species which the team has called Pterocetus diamantinae, after the site, was also uncovered.
Jellyfish, worms and crustaceans are among the community of creatures living off the huge spread of carcasses.
“Peng and colleagues’ encounter with a vast fossil graveyard is a truly unique discovery,” Stephen J Godfrey of the Calvert Marine Museum wrote in Nature.
“Although the site has limited accessibility, it seems likely to hold many other exciting finds, and it will no doubt inspire more submersible dives in similar environments.
“Peng and colleagues’ paper reminded me of a trailer for the first in a series of epic movies. I hope that there will be many more of these blockbusters to come.”
[BBC]
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American teenager Cooper Lutkenhaus produced a stunning performance to hold off Olympic champion Emmanuel Wanyonyi in the men’s 800m at the Diamond League meeting in Norway.
The 17-year-old crossed the line in a personal best of one minute and 42.08 seconds to edge out the Kenyan by one hundredth of a second in Oslo, despite Wanyonyi recording his fastest time of the season (1:42.09).
Lutkenhaus was unbeaten in his five previous 800m finals this year, having claimed gold at the World Indoor Championships and become the Diamond League’s youngest ever winner on his debut in Stockholm last weekend.
“This boy [Lutkenhaus] is in a good shape,” said the 21-year-old Wanyonyi, who missed the event in Sweden following the birth of his first child.
“Can you believe that as an Olympic champion, you are trying to knock down a 17-year-old boy?
“I started the race in front and after 600m to go, I tried to see who is coming to push me. Then I saw him passing me so then I tried to respond. But my target today was to run my season best, to improve.”
British sprinter Amy Hunt placed second in the women’s 100m in 10.99 seconds, with St Lucia’s Olympic champion Julien Alfred taking victory in a time of 10.76.
Amber Anning was fourth in the women’s 400m as Norway’s Henriette Jaeger enjoyed success, while her fellow Briton, Jake Wightman, finished fifth in the Dream Mile behind Kenya’s Timothy Cheruiyot.
There was Ethiopian dominance in the women’s 3,000m race, with Freweyni Hailu, Likina Amebaw, Senayet Getachew and Hawi Abera occupying the top four positions.
Hailu recorded the fastest time in the world this year, crossing the line in 8:24.22, while GB pair Megan Keith and Innes Fitzgerald finished seventh and ninth respectively.
In the final event of the evening, home favourite Karsten Warholm’s time of 47.40 was only enough to earn the Swede second place behind Brazilian rival Alison dos Santos (46.89) in the men’s 400m hurdles.
[BBC Sports]
President Donald Trump has said on Wednesday that the US will hit Iran “hard” , after the two sides exchanged strikes overnight.
“We hit them hard yesterday and we’re going to hit them hard again today,” he said, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office.
Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian said in a post on X following Trump’s briefing that Iran “will stand firm against any pressure or threat”.
US Central Command (Centcom) said on Wednesday night that forces had begun launching strikes at 17:15 Eastern Time (22:15 BST) against “multiple targets” in Iran.
It added in a post on X that the strikes were “in response to Iran’s unwarranted and continued aggression”.
The US also launched strikes on Iran on Tuesday after Trump said Iran had downed a US Army helicopter.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it responded with strikes on US bases in the region.
Trump reiterated a call for Iran to “sign a deal” during his briefing on Wednesday, while US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters later that day that bombs would be “dropping on key facilities in Iran”.
He added: “President Trump said we will be hitting Iran hard and we will be”.
Earlier on Wednesday Trump wrote on his social media account: “They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!”
He said Iran had been “completely defeated” militarily.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqai meanwhile accused the US of “damaging this diplomatic process through the contradictory messages it sends, its repeated shifts in positions and demands, and, worst of all, through repeated violations of the ceasefire”.
He said Iran needed to re-assess the situation, adding that any diplomatic process required a minimum of stability.
Separately on Wednesday, the US military said it had struck an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman that had “violated the ongoing blockade by attempting to transport oil from Iran”.
The Indian government said three Indian sailors were missing and 21 crew had been rescued after an attack on the Settebello off the coast of Oman.
The US is blockading Iranian ports after the key Strait of Hormuz shipping route was effectively closed by Iran in response to the US and Israeli attacks on Tehran in February. The Settebello is the eighth ship the US has fired on.
Tuesday’s US strikes on Iran targeted Iranian defence systems, ground control stations and radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz, Centcom said.
Iranian state media said US strikes had hit two reservoirs in the area, leaving thousands of people in the southern port town of Sirik without access to drinking water for 12 hours.
Iran’s IRGC said it had launched strikes on 21 targets at American bases in the region, one in Bahrain and the other in Jordan, while Kuwait’s army said it was also intercepting an attack.
Reuters cited a US official on Wednesday as saying nearly all of the Iranian missiles and drones launched at US bases in the Middle East in response were intercepted, with no reported casualties.
On Tuesday, Centcom described its strikes on Iran as “a proportional response” for the Apache helicopter downing on Monday.
Trump previously said on Truth Social that the helicopter had been “shot down” as it was patrolling the Strait of Hormuz. Fox News quoted Trump on Wednesday as saying that an Iranian drone had hit the helicopter without exploding as it flew “very low” .
The two crew members survived and were rescued by an American sea drone.
Iran’s semi-official Iranian Mehr News Agency reported that Iran had not claimed responsibility for downing the aircraft.
The war began on 28 February, after the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran that killed the country’s supreme leader.
Iran responded by launching attacks on Israel and US-allied states in the Gulf. The fighting escalated quickly across the region, with Lebanon drawn into the conflict in March.
In April, the US and Iran agreed to a ceasefire that was initially meant to last for a period of two weeks.
Both sides have since exchanged intermittent fire, without returning to full-scale hostilities.
Meanwhile, the countries’ representatives have engaged in fraught negotiations, including a meeting in Pakistan, in an attempt to find a lasting solution to the conflict.
Trump said during his press briefing on Wednesday that the deal being offered to Iran “doesn’t give them a right to have a nuclear weapon, in fact it totally prohibits them from ever having a nuclear weapon”.
Separately on Wednesday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – the UN nuclear watchdog – approved a US-backed resolution telling Iran to provide details on its uranium stockpile and production facilities.
The Iran Mission to the UN in Vienna, where the IAEA is based, criticised the move, saying “the resolution hypocritically expresses support for a diplomatic solution, while the US simultaneously engages in further acts of aggression including against Iranian civilian infrastructure”.
Iran’s nuclear programme is central to negotiations between it and the US and Israel, who have both led Western opposition to the programme, claiming Iran is seeking to develop a nuclear bomb.
Iran insists its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful and denies it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
[BBC]
Lutkenhaus, 17, upsets Olympic champion Wanyonyi in Oslo
An Everest guide’s miraculous survival raises questions for tourism industry
Whale graveyard dating back five million years discovered
Trump says US will hit Iran ‘hard’ again today
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