Photos: How climate change is unearthing new histories
Dino footprints exposed in a drying riverbed, sunken cities, once-submerged idols. See how a warming Earth is impacting ancient sites around the world.
In Texas, USA, a mega-drought has revealed 113 million-year-old footprints of an acrocanthosaurus in the dried-up riverbed of the Paluxy River. The massive footprints, ironically situated within the Dinosaur Valley State Park, have not been seen since 2000.(Image Courtesy: Paul Baker)
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The trail is most likely the work of a single acrocanthosaurus, most likely 15 ft tall, weighing seven tonnes, archaeologists say. The two-legged, three-toed apex predator lived in the Early Cretaceous period, about 50 million years before its more famous cousin, the tyrannosaurus rex.(Image Courtesy: Paul Baker)
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China is experiencing its most extreme heatwave in six decades. Rainfall along the basin of the Yangtze, the world’s third-largest river, has been 45% lower than usual. Lower parts of the basin are now in full view.(Thomas Peter/REUTERS)
At the Foyeliang island reef, three 600-year-old Buddhist statues, carved into a boulder, are now visible. They date to the Ming and Qing dynasties. The largest is about 1 metre high and depicts a monk sitting on a lotus pedestal, flanked by two junior monks, presumably blessing boats as they pass by.(Thomas Peter/REUTERS)
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As droughts drop Spain’s Valdecañas reservoir to less than 30% of its capacity, an ancient funerary mound is now visible. Some 144 megalithic stones from 5000 BCE, arranged like a sort of Stonehenge, are being studied at close range.(Susana Vera/REUTERS)
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Modus Vivendi (1000 people – 1000 Homes), 2000: In this self-portrait, a work of mixed media on canvas, Kallat appears as a swaggering, bespectacled juggler of heart and brain. The painting is an exploration of selfhood in the city of Mumbai, where he grew up and lives. The individual, lost in the multitudes, wanders in a state of perpetual disorientation, as reflected in the work. The radiating streaks of red, orange and green, reminiscent of thermal imagery, were achieved by texturing the canvas with layers of paint or canvas and then peeling off some parts to attain the desired visual effect.
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Sheer delight: While out surveying the remote Phoenix Islands Archipelago, Schmidt Ocean Institute scientists captured rare footage of a “glass octopus”, named so because it is completely see-through. What one does see when one shines a light on it is its optic nerve, eyeballs, and digestive tract. Even though this species has been known to science since 1918, scientists were forced to study about this animal through specimens found in the guts of predators, before this sighting.
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Herald / Harbinger is a permanent public art installation by Ben Rubin and Jer Thorp. It broadcasts the sounds of the Bow Glacier cracking and breaking 200 km away, to the centre of Calgary, one of Canada’s largest cities, almost in real time. The sounds and imagery shaped by data from a glacial observatory are broadcast through 16 speakers and seven LED arrays.
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Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022): The movie explores the many dimensions of parenthood and love through the story of a Chinese-American immigrant named Evelyn Wang (played by Michelle Yeoh) who, while struggling to run a failing laundromat business, uses her newfound powers to travel across multiple realities to save the world and work on her strained relationships with her loved ones. It’s a family drama that’s fast-paced, funny and, above all, tackles earnestly the idea of healing from intergenerational trauma.
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At first sight: For centuries, sunspots were thought to be Mercury passing across the Sun. By the early 17th century, with the invention of the telescope, astronomers could get a clearer look. In 1610, Galileo Galilei (who first used the telescope to observe space) in Italy and his British contemporary Thomas Harriot identified these as spots on the Sun. Seen here are 35 drawings of sunspots created by Galileo between June 2 and July 8, 1612.
