
Yesterday, Pope Francis didn't miss an opportunity to press for support for the environment while speaking at Saint Peter’s Basilica. As part of the first celebration of "World Day for Prayer for the Care of Creation," which the pontiff organized, the Pope called on the rich and powerful to take care of the Earth.
.@Pontifex: 9/1 is a #WorldDayOfPrayer for Creation Care. Are you taking part? http://t.co/a9itCId9xU #ActOnClimate pic.twitter.com/0k7XBZlypW
— Sierra Club (@sierraclub) September 1, 2015
The pontiff, speaking at St. Peter's Basilica, asked God to enlighten "those who hold power and money so that they avoid the sin of indifference ... and take care of the world we inhabit."
The Pope's encyclical is still making waves around the world and many are eagerly awaiting his first visit to the U.S. later this month, where he will meet with members of the UN in New York, attend the Vatican-sponsored World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia and speak to President Obama and Congress in Washington, DC.
There has been much speculation that the Pope will use the opportunity to urge world leaders, particularly the President and Congress, to take urgent action to address climate change and make a strong commitment at the UN climate talks in Paris in December.
Today is the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. Let us work and pray. — Pope Francis (@Pontifex) September 1, 2015
A great challenge: stop ruining the garden which God has entrusted to us so that all may enjoy it. — Pope Francis (@Pontifex) July 2, 2015
Many things have to change course, but it is we human beings above all who need to change.
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) June 19, 2015
We know how unsustainable is the behaviour of those who constantly consume and destroy.
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) June 19, 2015
What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up?
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) June 19, 2015
The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) June 18, 2015
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A chance discovery of a beautifully preserved fossil in the desert landscape of Morocco has solved one of the great mysteries of biology and paleontology: how starfish evolved their arms.
The Pompeii of palaeontology. Aaron Hunter, Author provided
<h2></h2><p>Although starfish might appear very robust animals, they are typically made up of lots of hard parts attached by ligaments and soft tissue which, upon death, quickly degrade. This means we rely on places like the Fezouata formations to provide snapshots of their evolution.</p><p>The starfish fossil record is patchy, especially at the critical time when many of these animal groups first appeared. Sorting out how each of the various types of ancient starfish relate to each other is like putting a puzzle together when many of the parts are missing.</p><h2>The Oldest Starfish</h2><p><em><a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/216101v1.full.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Cantabrigiaster</a></em> is the most primitive starfish-like animal to be discovered in the fossil record. It was discovered in 2003, but it has taken over 17 years to work out its true significance.</p><p>What makes <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> unique is that it lacks almost all the characteristics we find in brittle stars and starfish.</p><p>Starfish and brittle stars belong to the family Asterozoa. Their ancestors, the Somasteroids were especially fragile - before <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> we only had a handful of specimens. The celebrated Moroccan paleontologist Mohamed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2016.06.041" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ben Moula</a> and his local team was instrumental in discovering <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031018216302334?via%3Dihub" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">these amazing fossils</a> near the town of Zagora, in Morocco.</p><h2>The Breakthrough</h2><p>Our breakthrough moment came when I compared the arms of <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> with those of modern sea lilles, filter feeders with long feathery arms that tend to be attached to the sea floor by a stem or stalk.</p><p>The striking similarity between these modern filter feeders and the ancient starfish led our team from the University of Cambridge and Harvard University to create a new analysis. We applied a biological model to the features of all the current early Asterozoa fossils in existence, along with a sample of their closest relatives.</p>Cantabrigiaster is the most primitive starfish-like animal to be discovered in the fossil record. Aaron Hunter, Author provided
<p>Our results demonstrate <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> is the most primitive of all the Asterozoa, and most likely evolved from ancient animals called crinoids that lived 250 million years before dinosaurs. The five arms of starfish are a relic left over from these ancestors. In the case of <em>Cantabrigiaster</em>, and its starfish descendants, it evolved by flipping upside-down so its arms are face down on the sediment to feed.</p><p>Although we sampled a relatively small numbers of those ancestors, one of the unexpected outcomes was it provided an idea of how they could be related to each other. Paleontologists studying echinoderms are often lost in detail as all the different groups are so radically different from each other, so it is hard to tell which evolved first.</p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
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