Month: June 2023

Climate Change Strikes Home for Me as Smoke from Canadian Wildfires causes the worst Air Quality ever seen in Philadelphia and the Mid-Atlantic region in General.

As I have mentioned on occasion in these posts I live in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the eastern United States. I consider that to be rather fortunate due to the growing problems caused by Global Warming. It’s true that here in Philly our summers are getting a bit hotter and dryer but the most noticeable change in our weather has been the milder winters, which I’m not going to complain about.

Thanks to Global Warming Philadelphia had no measurable snow this past winter so none of this for me!!!! (Credit: MPR News)

In Philadelphia we don’t have to worry about the increasing threat of hurricanes like the people in Miami or New Orleans do. Nor have we been subjected to the ever greater number of tornadoes like the people living in the Great Plains or Deep South have had to. And while each of the past few summers have been quite dry, we are in a slight drought situation right now, it’s nothing like out west where rivers and reservoirs are at historic lows and water shortages are starting to impact everyday life for millions of people. No, all in all Philadelphia has been lucky, the weather here has hardly been showing the effects of global warming.

Here in the Mid-Atlantic region we don’t get Hurricanes either. So far for us, climate change has had few harmful effects. (Credit: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute)

That was until the second week of June this year. It actually started a couple of weeks earlier when we began hearing about the huge number of wildfires burning in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and especially Alberta, I even mentioned them in my post of 10 June 2023. Over a million acres of trees were consumed and the amount of smoke produced so massive that it traveled for over a thousand kilometers, a small amount even reaching the US east coast giving Philadelphia a few days of beautiful red sunsets.

Beautiful red sunset on the 10th of June. Beautiful that is until you consider the millions of trees in Alberta that were burning in Alberta to cause this in Philadelphia. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Before the fires out west could begin to quiet down more wildfires started burning in the northern part of Quebec, as many as 65 separate fires destroying as much as another two million acres of forest. Meanwhile, as the fires burned up north, the Mid-Atlantic region of the US was experiencing an unusual weather condition known as an Omega block, so named because the way that the jet stream flowing across the US resembles the Greek letter omega (Ω).

The Omega block weather pattern used to be a fairly rare phenomenon but thanks to climate change it’s becoming more common. (Credit: The Weather Channel)

During an omega block two separate low pressure systems set up. One in the northwest region of the US while the other is in New England and the maritime provinces of Canada. In the middle between two low pressure systems a massive high pressure system stretches from Texas all the way up to Minnesota. Although unusual once set up an omega block can last several weeks or more, this year’s lasted though most of the month of May and into June. Here in the Mid-Atlantic the counterclockwise flow around the low pressure system to the northeast coupled with the clockwise flow around high pressure system to the west to funnel cool air down from Canada giving Philadelphia the nicest spring we’ve had in many years.

During May that Omega black brought some really nice spring weather to Philadelphia, but every silver lining has a cloud around it! (Credit: Venture Philly Group)

Until the 6th of June that is, because the omega block began bringing down the huge amounts of smoke generated by the Canadian wildfires. It was on the evening of the 6th that a distinct smell of smoke could be noticed in the air and the weather forecasts were predicting that things were going to get worse, much worse over the next few days.

In June the wildfires in Canada spread to Quebec sending massive amounts of smoke at Pennsylvania and New York. (Credit: The BBC)

Despite the fact that the night was quite cool and promised to be perfect sleeping weather we decided to close up our house and turn on the AC so as to keep the smoke outside. The next day the smell was everywhere and Philadelphia got its first air quality alert, code orange. By the evening of the 7th the air was quite thick and everything looked as if it were in a fog except that the air was very dry.

On the afternoon of the 6th you could begin to smell the smoke but the air was still fairly clear (left). On the 8th the smoke was so thick the city itself seemed to disappear. (Credit: WHYY)

The worst day of all was Thursday the 8th of June as the air quality was declared hazardous and everyone in the city was urged to stay indoors. In the early morning hours the 24-hour news channels were declaring that New York City had the third worst air quality of any large city on Earth but by lunch NYC was officially the worst. Around three P.M. it was Philadelphia’s turn as the worst in the world as the air outside turned a dull, rusty orange and visibility dropped below a kilometer.

The pale sun in the middle of the afternoon on the 8th. The air was so thick I could only stay outside for a minute to take a few pictures. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

As the afternoon news came on the meteorologists, reporters and anchors all stared dumbfounded at the cameras as they described the conditions in the city. In a return to the days of the Covid pandemic the outside reporters were all wearing masks to protect themselves from breathing in the noxious smoke. Those meteorologists and anchors who had lived in Philadelphia for decades could only repeat, “this kind of thing doesn’t happen here!”

The worst air quality in Philly history had our local meteorologists proclaiming, “This sort of thing doesn’t happen here!” (Credit: WPVI)

Time for a little science, this is a science blog after all. Solid particles floating in the air are obviously a nuisance and can easily cause breathing problems especially for anyone who has problems breathing to start. Particulate Matter (PM) as it’s known is classified by its size because different sized particles have different characteristics in the air and in our bodies when we breathe them in.

Different classes of Particulate Matter (PM) are based on size. Big particles like sand grain are bigger than PM10, Dust and mold are PM10 while fine smoke particles are PM2.5. These particles are so small they can get deep into your lungs and stay there. (Credit: Environmental Protection Agency)

We all know how a strong wind can blow sand particles into the air and in desert regions of the world sand storms can even be deadly. At a size of around 10 micrometers sand particles along with dust, pollen and mold particles are designated as PM10. These particles are so large and heavy that they cannot stay in the air for long without a strong wind and at 10 micrometers in size they cannot penetrate deep into our lungs.

Dust storms can be very hazardous but because of the large size of the particles they require strong winds and don’t last long. (Credit: Windy.app)

Smoke particles on the other hand, like those brought down from the Canadian wildfires, are classified as PM2.5 meaning that they are smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. Such small particles can remain suspended in the air for days or even weeks and can travel on the winds for thousands of kilometers before finally falling to the ground. Even worse, PM2.5 particles are so small that they can get deep into a person’s lungs and remain there. Breathing air heavy in PM2.5 is very much like smoking a cigarette, and the long term effects on our health very similar.

Smoke particles however are so small that they can stay aloft for days and travel thousands of kilometers, all the way from northern Quebec to the Delaware valley. (Credit: Washington Post)

Get used to hearing the phrase PM2.5 because not only is more and more of such pollution being produced by the ever growing number of wildfires but the exhaust generated by burning fossil fuels also produces PM2.5. Indeed as the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere grows so does the amount of PM2.5 and it’s becoming an ever larger problem in cities with a lot of smog days like Delhi and Beijing.

Philly may have had bad air quality for one day but for cities like Delhi (above) dangerous air quality can go on for weeks and happen dozens of times a year. (Credit: Brooking Institute)

Philadelphia never used to have such smog problems but the climate is changing and long term models show that the conditions that caused the smog on June the 8th are likely to reoccur with increasing frequency. The air quality alerts of June 6-8 are just one more example of how fossil fuels are making every part of our planet a much less healthy place to live. 

Space News for June 2023: Space, it’s starting to get a bit crowded up there and likely to get even more so in the years ahead.

There was a time, not so long ago that the USA and Russia, we called it the USSR back then, had a complete monopoly on manned spaceflight. From the flight of Yuri Gagarin back in 1961 to the Soyuz 28 mission in 1978 only Americans and Russians went into outer space and only on rockets paid for and completely controlled by the space agencies of those two countries.

Vladimir Remek (r), a citizen of Czechoslovakia became the first non-Russian, non-American to travel into space aboard Soyuz 28. (Credit: Radio Prague International)

During the 1980s and 90s both the US and the USSR began taking a few astronauts who were citizens of friendly countries into space. Even then those astronauts rode into space aboard rockets and spacecraft owned and controlled by either the US or the USSR. Then, following the collapse of the Soviet Union the Russian space agency Roscosmos needed money to keep their program going so they even arranged to take a few paying tourists into space.

American millionaire Dennis Tito became the first space tourist in 2001, traveling to the Russian Mir space station aboard a Soyuz spacecraft. (Credit: Indiatimes)

It was only in 2003 that a third player, China joined the space party with their own launch vehicle and manned capsule. At about that same time the US space agency NASA decided that it no longer wanted to be in the business of just launching astronauts into Low Earth Orbit (LOE). What NASA wanted to concentrate on was exploration, manned missions to the Moon and Mars, not just back and forth to the International Space Station (ISS). So began the Commercial Crew Program where NASA helped fund two private companies, Boeing and Space X to develop launch systems and manned capsules to handle the now routine chore of simply getting people to LOE.

Yang Liwei became China’s first astronaut in 2003 making China only the third country to successfully launch a man into space. (Credit: CGTN)

In May of 2020 Space X became the first private company to launch astronauts into space. Since that time the company has carried out six NASA missions to the ISS, one every six months maintaining about half of the ISS’s crew assignments, the other half being taken care of by the Russians. The unique thing about having a private business handling space flights however is that, once their commitment to NASA is fulfilled Space X can offer their space services to anyone who wants to, and can pay to get into outer space.

One Space X crew dragon capsule docking at the International Space Station (ISS) while another is already docked! The success of Space X has done much in making travel to and from LOE a routine effort. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The first entirely commercial space mission took place in September of 2021 as billionaire Jared Isaacman paid for him and three of his friends to spend four days in LOE aboard Space X’s Dragon capsule, they did not go to the ISS, see my post of 2 October 2021. The success of that ‘Inspiration Four’ mission inspired Space X to partner with another company, Axiom space to arrange further entirely commercial space missions. The agreement was that Space X would take care of the rockets and capsules while Axiom would handle the human end, finding customers and getting them trained and ready for space. Potential customers where envisioned to be corporations wanting to conduct research in zero gee and small countries that cannot afford a space program but which could pay to send one or more astronauts into space for the sake of national pride.

Axiom is planning a ‘Space Hotel’ to begin construction in just a year or two. Other space stations are also planned by other commercial corporations. (Credit: Cool Hunting)

The first AX-1 space mission took place in April of 2022. Commanded by former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria the mission took three millionaire-scientists for a seventeen day stay aboard the ISS. Originally the mission was only scheduled to last 10 days but bad weather at the spacecraft’s landing site caused AX-1 to be extended.

Launch of the Ax-1 mission to the ISS on 8 April 2022. Neither a national nor tourist flight Ax-1 took three commercial scientists to the ISS to carry out research in what could soon become the most common type of space mission. (Credit: Space.com)

Which brings us up to the latest space mission, AX-2 that was launched into orbit aboard a Space X Dragon capsule on the 22nd of May and which successfully docked with the ISS the next day. The four astronauts who manned AX-2 are all private citizens, although the mission commander Peggy Whitson is a former NASA astronaut. In addition to her duties as mission commander for AX-2 Whitson is also the company’s Director of Human Spaceflight.

Former NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson (l) is now working for Axiom as their Director of Human Spaceflight and the mission commander for the Ax-2 mission. Also aboard are (l to r) John Shoffner, Ali AlQarni and Rayyanah Barnawi. (Credit: Space.com)

Joining Whitson as pilot was John Shoffner, a founder of Dura-Line Corporation that specializes in developing fiber-optic cables. Rounding out the four person crew were two astronauts from Saudi Arabia, Ali AlQarni and the first Arab woman to travel into space Rayyanah Barnawi. Both AlQarni and Barnawi served as mission specialists on the mission. The purpose of the AX-2 mission was officially to perform more than 20 experiments including investigations into DNA based nano-materials and microgravity effects on messenger RNA decay. To be honest however the flight was really the Saudi government’s way of establishing a presence in space in order to show themselves as the technological leader of the Arab world.

With all of their oil money the Saudi’s are trying to buy their way into many aspects of society, LIV golf anyone! By the way that is Donald Trump with the red MAGA cap on! (Credit: NY1)

After their scheduled eight days aboard the ISS the AX-2 Dragon capsule was undocked from the ISS and returned safely to Earth with her four member crew on the 30th of May. The AX-2 mission proved to be entirely uneventful which is the whole point, only when we have made travel to and from LOE can we push on further, missions to and eventual colonization of the Moon and Mars.

By turning over missions to LOE to companies like Space X and Axiom NASA hopes to go farther, one day in the near future to Mars. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Going forward the Axiom missions to the ISS are expected to become more common, more routine. The AX-3 flight to the ISS is currently scheduled for later this year so it appears that the station is going to become a busy place with 2 NASA crew missions, 2 Russian Soyuz missions along with 2 Axiom missions each year. Also later this year Boeing’s first manned flight of its Starliner capsule is scheduled to go to the space station.

Still waiting its first manned mission Boeing’s Starliner was intended to compete with Space X’s Dragon capsule. It hasn’t worked out that way. (Credit: Geekwire)

And all of that is only to the ISS, there’s also China’s Tiangong space station along with NASA’s Artemis program, scheduled next year for the first manned mission beyond LOE since 1972. Plus there’s talk of another Space X mission to the Hubble space telescope to perform needed maintenance that will allow the telescope to continue operation.

With the James Webb Space Telescope now operational NASA had planned on simply allowing Hubble to run out of fuel and become useless but Space X has developed a plan to send their Dragon capsule to the space telescope to refurbish it and keep it running. (Credit: NASA)

Then, in the years to come there will be more space stations. A California based company called Vast Space is partnering with Space X to launch into orbit an initial station module designated as Haven-1. The first flight is scheduled for sometime in 2025 with Haven-1 being crewed by Space-X’s Dragon capsule. Eventually the Haven-1 module will be joined by other modules to form a fully functioning space station.

Another company planning on getting into the space station ‘business’ is Vast Space with their Haven-1 module. (Credit: Satnews)

Meanwhile Axiom space is building several modules that will be lifted into space and connected to the ISS. Then, when the ISS is de-commissioned, expected to be around the year 2030, the Axiom modules will be detached to form a new, independent space station. Other companies are also working on other space station designs.

Bigelow Aerospace is also working on a commercial space station concept. Which of these companies will be successful is still a question but the real colonization of LOE has finally begun. (Credit: SpaceNews)

So all in all it looks as though space travel is finally starting to really take off. One day, very soon on the cosmic time scale, we humans will be living on many worlds, some as yet unknown.

As our Planet continues to get hotter so is the rhetoric of Climate Change deniers who are now insulting and even threatening scientists on social media.

The evidence for climate change just keeps piling up. High temperature records are being set on an almost daily basis. Severe storms seem to be ravaging half of the world while the other half is suffering from drought. The weather on planet Earth is simply becoming more extreme with each passing year.

The wildfires ravaging Canada right now are only the latest sign of our environment going out of wack. More and more of the news is being devoted to climate change but is anybody paying attention? (Credit: ABC)

To give a few details, in early May Southeast Asia endured a weeklong heat wave that broke the all time temperature records of three countries. In the northern Tuong Duong district of Vietnam the temperature reached 44.2ºC, the hottest temperature ever recorded in that country. Just next door in Laos the city of Loang Prabang saw a temperature of 43.5ºC again surpassing that nation’s previous all time record of 42.7ºC, a record that had been set only a month before. Finally the capital of Thailand, Bangkok saw its highest ever recorded temperature of 41ºC. Millions of human beings, many living in third world conditions suffered through greater heat than they had ever experienced and remember, deaths due to overheating exceed all other weather related deaths combined.

This year has been a record setter for high temperatures throughout all of SE Asia. (Credit: Living ASEAN)

Here in North America a similar scenario is occurring in the Pacific Northwest stretching from the states of Oregon and Washington up through the Canadian province of Alberta. While not as extreme as the heat wave in Southeast Asia daily records in many cities and towns were broken with the temperature on the 13th of May in Seattle reaching 32.2ºC, a new record for that day and the hottest temperature ever that early in the year.

The heat wave in the Pacific NW hasn’t been setting all-time records, just daily ones! (Credit: Fox 13 Seattle)

Of greater concern is the effect the heat wave had on the dozens of wildfires burning in Alberta, fires that had already destroyed more than a million and a quarter acres of forest before the heat wave arrived. It almost seems as though the devastating wildfires that torched the western states of the US over the last decade are now moving north into western Canada, exactly what you would expect due to global warming.

And if thinking of escaping global warming by moving up to Canada think again, the province of Alberta is basically on fire. (Credit: St. Albert Gazette)

By the way a new study from the Union of Concerned Scientists and published in the journal Environmental Research Letters concludes that more than a third, 37% of all of the forest land burned by wildfires in western North America since 1986, that’s a total of 19.8 million acres, is due to the burning of fossil fuels. The study was carried out by comparing the real life data of wildfires to an idealized model of fires in a world without fossil fuel emissions.

The study by the Union of Concerned Scientists details just now the amount of forest being destroyed by wildfires continues to grow decade by decade. (Credit: Union of Concerned Scientists)

Those are just two snapshots out of many extreme weather events already this year. I could have discussed all of the tornadoes across the south and central US so far in 2023. Or I could have discussed the continuing drought in Spain and France, even war torn Ukraine has seen an unusually early spring thaw that has allowed the fighting there to intensify.

Every cloud has a silver lining. If droughts like the one in France continue we won’t have to build so many bridges! (Credit: Forbes)

With all of the extreme weather events occurring across the world you’d think that the debate over climate change would be over by now. You’d think that any sensible person would see that things are getting bad and are going to get much worse if we don’t deal with the problem of CO2 emissions. But in fact the fight over global warming is actually getting even uglier. 

I was quite surprised to discover that the US is not the world leader in Climate Change denialism. We’re #2 but I know if we put some effort into it we can take the top spot. C’mon America! (Credit: Statista)

A big change for the worst has recently taken place since Elon Musk took over control of twitter. Musk’s firm commitment to ‘Free Speech’, any kind of speech, has opened the door to vicious attacks on climate scientists. On top of that Musk also laid off nearly half of Twitter’s work force including most of those assigned to finding and eliminating hate speech from the platform.

One think ya gotta say about Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, it hasn’t been boring. (Credit: CNBC)

The result has been a enormous increase in misinformation about climate change as well as outright threats on Twitter against climate scientists. According to Professor of Earth Science Mark Maslin at University College London, who is also the author of popular books on climate change such as ‘How to Save Our Planet’, “There’s been a massive change. I get so much abuse and rude comments now. It’s happening to all of us, but I challenge the climate deniers so I’ve been really targeted.”

Conversations with: Professor Mark Maslin – Conversations in Human Evolution
Professor Mark Maslin out where he likes to be, in the environment. (Credit: Conversations in Human Evolution)

Not all climate scientists are as feisty as Professor Maslin however. Doug McNeall is a statistician studying climate change at the MET Office Hadley Center of Exeter University who asserts that the constant abuse has become nerve wracking. “I got to the point where it was definitely affecting my mental health.”

Typical hate message being sent to people who are only trying to learn the truth. By the way most climate scientists get paid around $100,000 dollars a year, which they’d still get even if the climate was getting better! We’d still want to know more about Earth’s climate even if there was no global warming. By the way if you want to know how much money the oil companies are making by causing climate change just keep reading. (Credit: Inside Climate News)

Many of the climate deniers even pay subscriptions to Twitter in order to get their attacks higher up in the list of replies to a scientist’s tweet. Which makes you wonder who is paying these people to be climate deniers. Perhaps worst of all however is the fact that a recent survey of 468 international climate scientists has found that one in eight female climate scientists has received online threats of sexual violence from climate deniers.

Fear of sexual violence a special kind of hell just for woman. The threat of it in a political argument is a special kind of evil. (Credit: UN Women Asia and the Pacific)

How much of this abusive climate denialism is actually being paid for by the oil and gas industry we’ll probably never know. But remember, Exxon-Mobile made a record $55.7 billion Dollars in profit last year, Shell made $39.9 billion profit while Chevron made $35.5 billion profit and poor little BP had to make do with only $27.7 billion, in profit! That’s more than enough to pay a few hundred, or a few thousand computer geeks to spread lies and distortions about what the petroleum industry is doing to our world.

So Exxon-Mobile got $11.4 billion in one quarter while the average climate scientist got around $100,000 per year. Those greedy scientists! (Credit: Statista)

The fate of our world depends on whether we listen to the climate scientists or the climate deniers. There isn’t much time left to decide.

Paleontology News for June 2023: Giant Ants and a very important Plant Fossil.

I don’t often discuss fossil plants very often in these posts, which is a mistake on my part because without plants using photosynthesis to convert sunlight into food there would be no life here on Earth. In this post I will be reporting on a very important plant fossil, one that pushes the age of a whole order of vital food plants back into the age of the Dinosaurs. With that in mind I will reverse my usual procedure of starting with the oldest fossils and going forward in time so that I can make Palaeophytocrene chicoensis the top story for this post.

They may not get as much press coverage as Dinosaurs or Trilobites but Paleobotany, the study of fossilized plants is every bit as important a subject. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Everyone pretty much knows that there are three basic types of land plants; in order of when they first evolved there are the ferns, the conifers or evergreens and finally the flowering plants that are the type most familiar to us today. One order of the flowering plants are the Lamiids, a group of some 40,000 species and includes some well known and very important crop species such as the potato, tomato and coffee. The chief characteristics that the Lamiids share are a woody, vine-like structure that allow them to naturally inhabit rainforest type environments.

The Lamiid family of plants, at top, include some of our most valuable crops so a better understanding of their evolution an important discovery. (Credit: Chegg)

In the fossil record the Lamiids are a fairly diverse group that appears shortly after the mass extinction that ended the time of the dinosaurs. In fact the group is so diverse so shortly after the extinction that paleobotanists have long speculated that the Lamiids must have first evolved during the cretaceous period, the last period when dinosaurs still ruled. The smoking gun of an unmistakable Lamiid fossil from the cretaceous could not be found however.

Fossilized fruit of Palaeophytocrene chicoensis from the Cretaceous period discovered near Sacramento California. (Credit: Eureka Alert)

Until now, for Brian Atkinson, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas has, after seven years of searching, succeeded in finding a Lamiid fossil from the cretaceous. The fossil has been given the name Palaeophytocrene chicoensis, the species name coming from the Chico Formation of cretaceous age about 80 million years ago in north-central California near Sacramento.

Professor Atkinson didn’t discover his Lamiid fossil in the ground however. As often happens Atkinson found the specimen lying unrecognized in a collection of fossils, in this case the collection of the Sierra College Museum of Natural History. The fossil was one of a number of specimens that were originally unearthed during the construction of a housing project near Granite bay in Sacramento during the 1990s by Richard Hilton and Patrick Antuzzi of Sierra College.

The Natural History Museum of Sierra College, California. Looks like a fun place to visit. (Credit: Sierra College)

The instant that Professor Atkinson saw the fossil fruit Professor he was certain that it was the fruit of a Lamiid of the family lcacinaceae but like every good scientist the professor made a thorough examination using the latest technology. Based on his findings Atkinson finally assigned the specimen to the genus Palaeophytocrene, members of which are well known from the period shortly after the extinction.

The asteroid that struck the Earth 66 million years ago killed more than just the dinosaurs, whole groups of plants also went extinct. (Credit: ThoughtCo)

The discovery of Palaeophytocrene chicoensis is important not only because of what it can tell us about the evolution of the Lamiids but also because of what we can learn from it about the way that ancient forests changed from being dominated by conifers to consisting mostly of flowering plants, one of the most critical ecological changes in the history of life. Palaeophytocrene chicoensis is yet another example, not just of how a single fossil can teach us so much but of how the ability to recognize something important, something other people don’t see, often leads to major discoveries that can change the world of science.

80-90 million years ago the world’s forests consisted exclusively of evergreens like these spruces. Studying plant fossils like that of Palaeophytocrene chicoensis can tell us a lot about how flowering plants came to dominate the forests of the Earth. (Credit: Colorado State Forest Service)

Giant insects are usually something out of a grade B movie from the 1950s. In reality Ants of the genus Titanomyrma may not have been as large as the ants in 1954’s ‘Them’ but with a length of as much as 10cm and a wingspan of 15cm they were certainly among the largest of their kind. Titanomyrma lived some 50 million years ago and specimens have been found in both Western Europe, England and Germany, and also in western North America, which is something of a puzzle to paleontologists. How did a genus of ant, big ones but still ants, get across the Atlantic ocean in order to populate both continents? At that time there was still a land bridge connecting Europe and North America but it was in the cold Artic, not the sort of environment ants prefer.

With a length of as much as 10cm Titanomyrma was a ‘giant’ ant indeed. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Now a new fossil specimen of a queen ant of the genus Titanomyrma has been unearthed outside the town of Princeton in British Columbia in Canada by an amateur fossil collector named Beverly Burlingame and is now being kept at the local museum. This specimen is the first of its kind ever found in Canada and the fact that Titanomyrma was found so far north is forcing researchers to consider the possibility that the ants did actually migrate through the polar regions.

Princeton British Columbia, see arrow, is not too far inland from Vancouver, but it is a lot colder than most species of ant would prefer. (Credit: Google Maps)

It might not have been so cold however, nowadays we’re used to the idea of climate change and in particular a reduction in size of the polar ice caps due to a global temperature rise. The idea that brief periods of ‘Hyperthermals’ as they’re called could have allowed Titanomyrma to cross the Artic region is gaining evidence; indeed the fossil queen herself is now some of that evidence.

Hyperthermals, brief periods greater than average temperatures,are usually caused by increased CO2 emitted by volcanic activity. They are subjects of considerable study right now because of our CO2 emissions. (Credit: CP)

That’s how science works, specimens and evidence generate puzzles. More evidence then not only allows the puzzle to be solved but gives a more accurate, fuller picture of the whole system of which that puzzle was just a small part.