Chinese scientists have unearthed a fossil of the earliest known flightless bird, offering compelling evidence that not all early birds evolved to take to the skies. The discovery could also challenge long-held assumptions – including ideas dating back to evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin – that flightlessness in birds arose only as a secondary adaptation after earlier species had mastered flight. The 150 million-year-old fossil of the Late Jurassic avialan Yuezhuornis yangyuanensis found in...

Chinese scientists have unearthed a fossil of the earliest known flightless bird, offering compelling evidence that not all early birds evolved to take to the skies. The discovery could also challenge long-held assumptions – including ideas dating back to evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin – that flightlessness in birds arose only as a secondary adaptation after earlier species had mastered flight. The 150 million-year-old fossil of the Late Jurassic avialan Yuezhuornis yangyuanensis found in...

A China-led international team has reported a new pre-earthquake phenomenon that has shown strong predictive potential for major earthquakes since 2022 with minimal failures. The anomalous seismic, magnetic and ionospheric resonance signals they observed – termed “seismo-ripples” by the researchers – are ringlike disturbance patterns triggered before earthquakes happen. Their findings challenge the long-standing scientific belief that these events are unpredictable, opening up a promising new...

A China-led international team has reported a new pre-earthquake phenomenon that has shown strong predictive potential for major earthquakes since 2022 with minimal failures. The anomalous seismic, magnetic and ionospheric resonance signals they observed – termed “seismo-ripples” by the researchers – are ringlike disturbance patterns triggered before earthquakes happen. Their findings challenge the long-standing scientific belief that these events are unpredictable, opening up a promising new...

Chinese researchers have built a self-propelled crawler robot that harvests iron from sand and have tested the device in the dunes of the vast Taklamakan Desert – an area the size of Germany – in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. In Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel Dune, mobile factories traverse the sands of the fictional planet Arrakis to extract the drug melange, also known as “spice”. The real-world device similarly travels across the desert, extracting...

Chinese researchers have built a self-propelled crawler robot that harvests iron from sand and have tested the device in the dunes of the vast Taklamakan Desert – an area the size of Germany – in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. In Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel Dune, mobile factories traverse the sands of the fictional planet Arrakis to extract the drug melange, also known as “spice”. The real-world device similarly travels across the desert, extracting...

A former director of a state-owned museum at the centre of a rare high-profile art scandal was sentenced to three years in prison, Chinese state media said on Wednesday. Xu Huping was found to have abused his position at the Nanjing Museum in eastern Jiangsu province and taken bribes, including money and property, for helping others secure projects and business collaborations. He was sentenced to prison for three years and fined 200,000 yuan (US$29,800), according to state news agency...

Police in Guangzhou said on Monday they had apprehended a man in the southern Chinese city’s university town district after receiving reports that he was wielding a knife and injuring pedestrians. Emergency services started receiving calls around 5.20pm local time about multiple stabbings in front of a hotpot restaurant in the Xiaoguwei Island area of Panyu district, according to an alert sent out by the district branch of the Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau. The bureau said in a...