Plus, fire orbs in space, battles at the livestock auction, and this week’s celestial wonders.
| Wednesday, August 31, 2022 | |
 | | ILLUSTRATION BY ANDREY ATUCHIN | | The long-necked dinosaurs known as sauropods were the biggest animals ever to walk on land—and a new fossil underlines that the giants had humble beginnings. Today, researchers funded by the National Geographic Society have unveiled fossils they discovered in northern Zimbabwe, in rocks more than 230 million years old.
As Nat Geo’s Michael Greshko reports, the findings include the oldest definitive dinosaur bones ever found in Africa. Among these remains is a stunningly complete skeleton of an early sauropod relative (below a researcher holds a fossilized ilium–or upper pelvis bone—from the species). Called Mbiresaurus, (illustrated above) the animal was mostly mature when it died—and stood less than two feet tall at the hip.
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY MURPHY ALLEN | | | |
| To fly before a solar eclipse: Paraglider pilot Rafael Goberna traveled to Facundo, Argentina, with this mission in mind. Photographer Marcelo Maragni guided Goberna via a radio on the pilot’s helmet to find the perfect alignment. With the sun 94 million miles away, the moon almost 239 thousand miles away, and the athlete just one mile away, Maragni had only a few seconds to capture the moment when they all met.
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY BENJAMIN RASMUSSEN | | | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY BALAZS GARDI | | Business and activism collide: Held the first weekend of every month at a sprawling barn complex about an hour’s drive northwest of Dallas, the Bowie Texas Livestock sale (above, locals and traders pack the auction stands) has grown into one of the largest auctions of its kind in the U.S. It's also a clearinghouse for animals at the bottom rung of the livestock business: hundreds of horses and donkeys that pass through its gates each month will end up being processed in Mexican slaughterhouses. Rescuers attend alongside seasoned traders, bidding to save the animals and find them new homes, Jason Motlagh reports for Nat Geo.
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 | | ILLUSTRATION BY ANDREW FAZEKAS | | Moon gaze ahead of Artemis: As we watch with anticipation for NASA’s Artemis I mission, sky-watchers can follow the moon as it pays a visit to notable bright stars. Tonight, the crescent moon is positioned near the brightest star in the constellation Virgo—Spica, a stunning blue-white star about 260 light years from Earth. By Friday and Saturday night, look for the first quarter moon to dance with the orange-hued Antares, which marks the eye of Scorpius. Classified as a red giant star, this stellar monster is a hundred times the diameter of our sun.
On Sunday, catch a glimpse of Mars, the ultimate destination for human exploration in the coming decade. It’ll appear beside another giant red star, Aldebran, at dawn in the east.
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA | | ‘Otherworldly’ flames: NASA program Advanced Combustion via Microgravity Experiments (ACME) conducted experiments with flames for years on the International Space Station to help improve spacecraft fire safety and computer models of combustion. Researchers found that without gravity, hot air lacks the buoyancy to whip flames into their familiar, dancing forms. In microgravity they can swell into ethereal domes and orbs that burn at a surprisingly cool 900 degrees Fahrenheit (above, a composite image shows flames generated from these tests).
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| This newsletter has been curated and edited by Jen Tse, Heather Kim, Alissa Swango, Amy McKeever, Allie Yang, Anne Kim-Dannibale, Sydney Combs, and Janey Adams. Have an idea or a link? We'd love to hear from you at david.beard@natgeo.com. Thanks for reading. | |
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