16 | New Scientist | 17 August 2019SpaceAncient parrot was
the world’s biggestHEFTY parrots a metre tall stalked
New Zealand 19 million years ago.
Trevor Worthy at Flinders
University, Australia, and his team
made this discovery by analysing
leg bones found on South Island.
They have named the bird, which
probably weighed 7 kilograms,
Heracles inexpectatus, and it is
the biggest parrot ever found.
The species is likely to have been
flightless, like several other giantGlow from snow is
brighter than moonLIGHT pollution is a problem in
many built-up areas, but certain
weather conditions can
dramatically amplify it: freshly
fallen snow and thick cloud.
A study has discovered that this
combination can make the night
sky more than twice as bright as
when there is a full moon, which
may confuse nocturnal animals.
That was the finding of Andreas
Jechow and Franz Hölker at IGB
Berlin. They took images of the
night sky in various locations and
in different weather conditions
to measure its brightness. The
aim was to check the impact of
“snowglow”, the illumination
of the sky when snow reflects
artificial light, such as from
street lamps, onto clouds above.
They took pictures in a suburb
of Berlin, villages within the
Arctic circle in Finland and on
the Courland peninsula in Latvia.Light pollution PalaeontologyA HOARD of 39 previously hidden
galaxies from the early universe has
been discovered. Dating to the first
2 billion years of the cosmos, they
represent a missing link to some
of today’s most massive galaxies.
Until now, astronomers have
been unable to find enough large
galaxies in the early universe to
account for the number of massive
ones that we see today – those that
are five to 10 times the mass of the
Milky Way.
The reason, as revealed by Tao
Wang at the University of Tokyo
in Japan and his colleagues, isn’t
that they aren’t there, but that
the progenitors of today’s large
galaxies are so dusty that they
are invisible to optical telescopes
(Nature, doi.org/c88p). We can only
see them in radio wavelengths, as
observed by the Atacama LargeMillimeter/submillimeter Array in
Chile (pictured).
We have previously seen galaxies
in the early universe that are more
massive than these, with star
formation rates of more than 1000
solar masses per year. But the 39
newly unearthed galaxies still have
formation rates of about 200 solar
masses per year, and represent a
class of galaxy rarely seen.
While several members of this
class have been found before,
this is the first time such a large
population has been tracked down.
The discovery poses some questions
about our early universe, namely
how were so many large galaxies
able to form when it was so young?
“The next step will be to figure out
the missing physics in producing so
many massive galaxies that early,”
says Wang. Jonathan O’CallaghanMissing giants of the early
universe revealed at last
birds known to have evolved on
islands. New Zealand was once
home to nine species of moa, a
now-extinct group of large birds
resembling ostriches and emus,
and it is thought H. inexpectatus
would have lived alongside these.
While moa typically ate leaves, the
parrot probably ate fruit and nuts.
Analysis of the bones suggests
links to the kakapo, a large,
flightless parrot still found in New
Zealand. H. inexpectatus may have
moved like a kakapo, mainly on
foot but possibly gliding downhill
(Biology Letters, doi.org/c88r).
New Zealand has been a hotspot
for bird evolution – including
flightless species – due to a lack of
predatory mammals. But Worthy
says that a 3-metre-long, land-
dwelling ancestor of the crocodile
would probably have hunted the
giant parrot. A giant eagle may
also have preyed on younger birds.
The bones were unearthed at
fossil-rich St Bathans, where at
least 40 species of bird have been
discovered. Ruby Prosser ScullyIn the suburb of Berlin, the
researchers found that on a
cloudy, snowy night, the sky was
188 times brighter than on a clear
night. It was so bright, in fact, that
the snowglow was measured to
be more than twice as bright as
during a full moon at the equator,
where the moon is brightest.
Similar measurements were
recorded in the other locations
examined (Journal of Imaging,
doi.org/c9bf).
The results are eye-opening, says
John Barentine at the International
Dark-Sky Association. This
excessive illumination could harm
nocturnal creatures by confusing
their circadian rhythms, meaning
their normal pattern of day to night
responses changes, he says.
We may be able to mitigate
the problem with better outdoor
lighting policies and designs,
such as dimming lights or using
fewer street lights during the
weather conditions that promote
snowglow, says Barentine.
Chris BaraniukAL
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SITYNews In brief