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An artist's reconstruction of what the newly described bird-like dinosaur (Norellraptor barsboldi) would have looked like. (Image credit: Mr. Zhao Chuang)A predatory bird-like dinosaur with four wings discovered in China adds evidence to the idea that flight evolved several times in different dinosaur groups.
The exceptionally well-preserved feathered dinosaur, which has been named Norellraptor barsboldi, was 3 years old when it died and measured just 21 inches (57 centimeters) long. It was found in the Early Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation in northeastern China, which dates to between 145 million and 100 million years ago.
N. barsboldi had the sharply curved predatory teeth and claws you'd expect of a little, generalist predator and was probably eating early mammals, lizards, amphibians and juvenile dinosaurs, said Scott Hartman, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who wasn't involved in the study. "It wouldn't have been attacking any large dinosaurs. That would be like mosquitoes attacking battleships," he told Live Science.
N. barsboldi was a microraptor. Microraptors were close relatives of birds but not their ancestors; birds belong to a neighboring clade called Avialae. Fossils show that both microraptors and early bird-winged animals in the Avialae clade — such as Archaeopteryx, which lived in the Late Jurassic, about 150 million years ago — had feathers. The puzzle has been whether flight originated in an ancestor of both of these groups or if feathers — and potentially flight — evolved more than once.
Researchers found a series of fossilized remains of a four-winged dinosaur in northeastern China. (Image credit: Andrea Cau et al., Nature Communications (2026))The description of N. barsboldi by Andrea Cau, a paleontologist at the OPHIS Paleontological Museum and Herpetological Center in Italy, and his colleagues adds evidence to the latter theory. The team's analysis found that around 30% of the 194 anatomical changes identified across microraptor evolution also evolved in the bird lineage. Aside from feathers, these changes included the fusion of bony projections to the ribs that created a rigid torso, forelimb bones that were relatively robust compared with the hind limbs, and an ulna (the primary weight-bearing bone for a wing) that was longer than the humerus.
However, the team's comparisons with other fossils revealed that the order in which these shared features evolved was different in the two groups. They reported the findings Tuesday (Sept. 29) in the journal Nature Communications.
"This demonstrates that microraptors acquired traits convergent with the early evolutionary stages of true birds, albeit through a distinct evolutionary pathway, supporting the hypothesis that flapping flight evolved independently in non-avialan dinosaurs and birds," said Rui Pei, a paleontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who wasn't involved in the work.
"I'm very happy that they've come to the conclusion that there were probably independent origins of flight amongst various groups," Hartman said. "I strongly agree with them."
Even though microraptors had four wings, many of their features were similar to those of modern flying birds. Therefore, "it is reasonable to expect that these non-avialan theropods were capable of behaviors comparable to those of modern avian species," Pei told Live Science by email.
Hartman suggested that microraptors might have done a mix of gliding and flapping. "I doubt they could climb trees like a squirrel to gain height because their forelimbs don't have that range of motion," he said. However, they might have been able to take off after running down a slope, and rather than gliding down from trees, they might have leapt from hills or cliffs, Hartman added.
"There are a bunch of features, like a large well-ossified [bony] sternum or breastbone that could allow for larger pectoral muscles, so they probably have a pretty solid downstroke, which is what generates the thrust to keep it going forward," Hartman said.
The hind wings would have been held directly under the body for stabilizing flight, braking and allowing for rapid control of tight turns. "These are clearly little predatory buggers," he said. "If you're leaping onto things or dropping onto things, that kind of control would be pretty important. It's always best to surprise animals by landing where you planned to rather than somewhere you didn't plan to."
It's also possible that the wings had other purposes, such as demonstrating fitness to mates or warming eggs on a nest, he said.
'> Remarkably preserved feathered dinosaur discovered in China reveals new secrets of flying predator evolution
The largest defensive wall at Oued Beht. Archaeologists think its base was constructed about 4,000 years ago. (Image credit: G. Lucarini, Oued Beht Archaeological Project)Archaeologists have unearthed 4,000-year-old defensive walls in Morocco that are the oldest structures of their kind in North Africa outside the Nile Valley.
The discovery expands what's known about the human development of this region of northwestern Mediterranean Africa, known as the Maghreb, particularly about the adoption of agriculture.
"For more than a century, the Maghreb was treated as a blank space in the story of Mediterranean later prehistory," Giulio Lucarini, an archaeologist at Italy's National Research Council, told Live Science in an email.
But the new research shows that the gap resulted from a lack of scientific knowledge about the region. ("Maghreb" is Arabic for "the West" and refers to Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.) For instance, only recently did ancient DNA research reveal that hunter-gatherers from Europe may have voyaged across the Mediterranean to the Maghreb around 8,500 years ago.
"Four thousand years ago, communities here were reshaping their landscape and building defences on a scale never documented before in the region, at a time when societies across the Strait of Gibraltar were also changing," he said. "We are only beginning to understand how these developments on the two shores [the Maghreb and Europe] relate to each other.”
The Oued Beht archaeological site surrounded by defensive structures, with the modern Moroccan village of Aït Siberne in the background. (Image credit: A. Garcia-Molsosa and T. Wilkinson, Oued Beht Archaeological Project)Lucarini is the first author of the new research, which describes the latest discoveries at Oued Beht in Morocco, in a river valley about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of the capital, Rabat.
Many of the same researchers were involved in last year's discovery of the remains of a prehistoric village at Kach Kouch, about 120 miles (190 km) north, in Morocco's Rif Mountains near the Strait of Gibraltar.
"A work like this is not improvised"
The study, published Sept. 7 in the journal Libyan Studies, describes the discovery of an ancient defensive system of ditches and ramparts at Oued Beht by archaeologists from Italy, Morocco and England.
Key to the system are several defensive walls — in particular, a heavily fortified wall on the southern side of the site. The archaeologists think the base of the wall was built between 3,500 and 4,000 years ago, from clay, ash, silt and stones, to defend a settlement there from attacks.
The defenses imply the settlement was worth defending, and the archaeologists suggested it was an early farming hub with livestock, cultivated crops and large storage facilities. Their discoveries at the site include dozens of bell-shaped pits that the team thinks were used to store grain.
"A work like this is not improvised," Lucarini said. "It requires planning, choosing the right spot in the topography, and mobilising and coordinating labour over time."
The region is an ancient river valley that connected inland areas with the Atlantic Ocean. (Image credit: A. Garcia-Molsosa and T. Wilkinson, Oued Beht Archaeological Project)The number of pits indicate that the site's storage capacity was much larger than the needs of the people living there. "These facilities may have served a much wider community, perhaps drawing on a whole surrounding territory," he said.
But who might have attacked the site is unclear. "We don't know exactly what they were protecting themselves from," Lucarini said. "Rather than 'invaders,' it may reflect growing competition over land and resources, control of movement through the landscape, and perhaps more formalised leadership."
Links between North Africa and Europe
The discoveries at Oued Beht are important for the reconstruction of prehistory in this part of the world, representatives from Italy's National Research Council said in a statement.
They show that "the communities of the north-western Maghreb in the second millennium BC were … capable of conceiving and carrying out major construction works on a scale that had not previously been documented," Lucarini said in the statement.
The recent archaeological discoveries in Morocco reflect finds from prehistoric Iberia, on the northern side of the Strait of Gibraltar: "There, African ivory and ostrich eggshell have long pointed to contacts with North Africa, and now we are beginning to see the African side of that relationship," Lucarini told Live Science.
Yet there were differences. Contemporary sites in Iberia are large, fortified hilltop settlements with planned architecture, abundant bronze metalwork and rich burials that reveal marked social hierarchies. But the defensive system at Oued Beht seems to have been much smaller.
"What the discovery shows is not that the two shores looked alike," Lucarini said. "It shows that communities in the north-western Maghreb were also investing in large collective works and in the control of strategic places at a time when the western Mediterranean was changing."
The discoveries at Oued Beht are important because they demonstrate the complexities and capabilities of early North African peoples, said Iman Nagy, a northeast African landscape archaeologist at UCLA who was not involved in the study.
"Oued Beht is especially interesting because it challenges us to reconsider the Maghreb's place in Mediterranean prehistory," Nagy told Live Science in an email. "Discoveries like this challenge diffusionist models that assume substantial architecture or social complexity must have arrived from elsewhere."
'> Africa's oldest known defensive wall outside Egypt discovered, and it's 4,000 years old
A giant, sponge-like dome towering above its surroundingsWhich satellite took the photo? Landsat 9
When was it taken? May 19, 2025
This striking satellite snap shows a giant, "sponge-like" dome towering over central Brazil. The dark monolith and the rare biome that covers it are key to the region's famed hot springs.
The imposing oval structure, which is around 12 miles (20 kilometers) long and 7 miles (12 km) across, is known as the Caldas Novas dome, or Serra de Caldas, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. It is located in southeast Goiás state and towers up to 1,000 feet (300 meters) above the surrounding landscape, although an optical illusion known as relief inversion may cause some viewers to see the raised land as a bowl-like depression.
The monolithic feature, which one 2004 study predicted could be at least 600 million years old, gets its name from the town of Caldas Novas, which is visible in the satellite image, sandwiched between the dark-green dome and Lake Corumbá, an artificial reservoir created by a nearby hydroelectric dam. The town is home to around 100,000 people but receives hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, many of whom travel there to bathe in its famous hot springs.
The dome is blanketed by savanna known as the Cerrado, which covers around a quarter of Brazil and is the second-most-abundant biome in South America, behind rainforests like the Amazon.
This biome is a tropical savanna. It is much more ecologically diverse than most savannas and is often described as a mix of woodland, grassland and wetland.
The Cerrado is a tropical savanna biome that covers around one-quarter of Brazil. This photo shows a section of the Cerrado elsewhere in Goiás state. (Image credit: Angeladepaula/Wikimedia)The Cerrado readily soaks up rainwater, making the dome act like a giant sponge. The collected liquid percolates through the monolith's inner structure, refilling submerged groundwater reservoirs that help feed the nearby hot springs with a regular supply of warm water, even throughout the region's dry season, according to the Earth Observatory.
The Cerrado is often called the "cradle of waters" in Brazil because of its role in recharging groundwater and feeding major rivers across the country. It also helps to feed several waterfalls around the dome's edges (see below).
Unlike most thermal baths, the hot springs surrounding Caldas Novas are not heated by volcanic activity. Instead, water within deep fractures in the rock is "heated by Earth's naturally higher temperatures at depth before it circulates back to the surface," Earth Observatory representatives wrote.
Many experts previously thought the monolith was formed by an ancient "magmatic intrusion," in which molten rock burst through the planet's crust. However, a 2021 study largely disproved this theory, suggesting instead that the structure was most likely created by other geological processes, instead.
While the dome readily soaks up rainwater, it also has several waterfalls around its edge. (Image credit: Sueley Firmino Cavalcante)The dome and its surroundings are protected as part of Caldas Novas State Park, which was established in 1970. It is home to several unique species, including the red-legged seriema (Cariama cristata) birds, the pequi tree (Caryocar brasiliense), and the wolf's plant (Solanum lycocarpum), according to the Earth Observatory.
But the park's main purpose is to protect the Cerrado covering the dome. In recent decades, large swaths of the biome have been cleared across South America to make way for more agricultural land, similar to the deforestation that plagues the Amazon rainforest.
You can see this issue in the satellite photo. The region surrounding the dome was likely once covered with the Cerrado, but it is now a patchwork of farms and fields.
Ghana's 'lake of souls' glitters
A 2015 satellite photo shows a series of golden tendrils surrounding Ghana's Lake Bosumtwi. The lake and its surroundings were shaped by a massive meteor impact around 1 million years ago.
Ghostly lakes merge in Australia
A 2024 satellite photo shows a series of ephemeral lakes that merged into a single emerald structure in Australia's Northern Territory following two years of extreme rainfall.
Indonesia's 'Twin Peaks' volcanoes
A 2021 astronaut photo shows the surprising similarities between Mount Sundoro and Mount Sumbing, which lie at the heart of Java, Indonesia.
'> Towering 'sponge' dome in Brazil is the secret source of nearby hot springs
could be record-breaking and
fuel extreme weather across the globe. Earlier this month, the U.K. Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs urged people in Britain to stock up on food, bottled water and other basic supplies to prepare for potential severe storms this winter.
"We're about to experience probably the largest El Niño that has ever been seen," Dame Angela Eagle told The Guardian on Sept. 3. "If you’ve got a store of a bit of food that can keep you going for a while before the emergency services can get to you, you’re going to be a lot better off than if you haven't."
But could extreme weather really limit access to food in the U.K., and should people in the U.S. heed the same advice?
In the U.K., El Niño typically brings wetter-than-average conditions in the fall and early, cold winters. The latest forecasts suggest the U.K. will be stormy from November to January, and parts of the U.S. could also see heavy rainfall throughout winter, so it may be sensible to store enough food to last a few days at home in case of flooding or power outages, experts told Live Science. But that effort to stock up could be complicated by another problem: El Niño could cause a surge in food prices, experts added.
"El Niño events are typically associated with food price inflation in the historical record," Michael Hinge, a senior economist at the nonprofit organization Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED), told Live Science in an email. "Keeping reasonable household stocks is one sensible step to offset short-term disruption, but becomes more difficult if food becomes less affordable."
Unprecedented conditions
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), this year's El Niño has reached "super" status. As of Sept. 27, sea surface temperatures in a region of the Pacific Ocean known as Niño 3.4 have risen 5.7 degrees Fahrenheit (3.15 degrees Celsius) above average and are continuing to rise. A typical El Niño increases temperatures in the Niño 3.4 region by 2.8 to 3.6 F (1 to 2 C) above average, tops.
El Niño is the warm phase of a multiyear natural climate pattern. It occurs when warm water in the western tropical Pacific Ocean migrates eastward along the equator toward the coast of South America. This boosts global temperatures, triggering deluges of rainfall and floods in regions like southwestern Europe, the southern U.S. and East Africa, while places such as northern South America, southern Africa and Indonesia are more likely to experience drought.
El Niño typically brings wetter-than-normal conditions to the southern U.S. during winter. (Image credit: NOAA/Climate Prediction Center)This year's El Niño will be the strongest that's ever been recorded, because it is piling extra heat onto unparalleled levels of human-driven global warming. Estimates show that sea surface temperatures in the Niño 3.4 region, located in the central equatorial Pacific Ocean, could reach 7.2 F (4 C) above average by November.
El Niño is expected to peak by early 2027 and persist until at least March. As a result, unusually stormy conditions seem likely in the U.K. and the southern U.S., so the suggestion to stock up on essentials is likely good advice for Americans, Hinge said.
Hinge said it is common advice to stock 1 gallon (4 liters) of water per person per day, ideally for a week. For food, it's good to collect a few cans per person of beans, fish, vegetables and fruit, as well as pasta, rice, oats, peanut butter and preserved milk. Additionally, people should have on hand a manual can opener and a camping stove with fuel, he said.
"All of the above will depend upon dietary needs, local prices and consumer preferences," Hinge added. "These can be consumed if not needed towards the end of their shelf life, and then restocked, to minimize the cost and waste."
Impact on food prices
The main El Niño-related threat to food access in high-income countries like the U.K. and the U.S. is not extreme weather happening locally. Rather, people in these countries may be limited in what they can afford due to El Niño's impacts on agriculture in other regions, Hinge said.
El Niño can benefit crops in some areas, such as the southern U.S. and Peru, but it has a devastating influence on yields in many other places, including the Indian subcontinent and West Africa, where the weather pattern affects the monsoon. The impact is already visible in India, which is now on course for its weakest monsoon in two decades and about 15% less rain than average.
Given that this year's El Niño is unprecedented there is a high risk of serious large regional shocks which could seriously impact food access
Michael Hinge, senior economist at ALLFED
Lower crop yields in countries like India raise food prices around the world. For example, dry conditions in India triggered by the 2023 El Niño prompted a temporary restriction on exports of rice, which boosted the cost of this staple food globally. And food prices will jump again this year, adding to the increases caused by the Russia-Ukraine and Iran wars, Hinge said.
Many of the outcomes of this year's El Niño won't be felt until after it has peaked, so the effect on food prices could be drawn out. "Given that this year's El Niño is unprecedented there is a high risk of serious large regional shocks which could seriously impact food access" for months or even years to come, Hinge said.
The U.S. is less vulnerable to surging food prices than the U.K., because the U.S. is the biggest exporter of food globally. Overall, unless a serious catastrophe occurs, food imports won't fall in high-income countries, but hunger and poverty will likely rise worldwide, Hinge said.
El Niño's impact on the U.K. and other similar countries will be mostly economic, said Richard Allan, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading in the U.K. However, the humanitarian consequences in more vulnerable regions should remind us that climate change is making the world less safe for everyone, he said.
"It is only possible to prepare and adapt to a certain degree to mounting damage from weather extremes, melting ice and sea level rise in a warming world, that heighten during El Niño," Allan said. The sure-fire way to mitigate these effects is to ramp up collective efforts to transition away from greenhouse gas emissions, he said.
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'> The super El Niño could cause torrential rainstorms. Americans may need to stock up on food to prepare, experts say.
The researchers discovered the iron minerals, called iron oxyhydroxides, by squishing mineral samples between two tiny diamond anvils while zapping them with a laser.
The two iron minerals are stable at the conditions found at the boundary between Earth's core and its mantle (the planet's middle layer), which is under "more than a million times the pressure we feel at the surface," Steve Jacobsen, a mineralogist and professor of Earth science at the University of Colorado Boulder who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email.
The new minerals contain as much as 15% water by weight. "If you add up all the H and O atoms in the formula and combine them into H2O, just a five-pound piece of the stuff would contain a pint of liquid water," Jacobsen added. "If this material existed in the early Earth, spread out across the base of the mantle, even just a few percent of it would potentially be enough to supply the formation of the oceans."
A tectonic mystery
Earth contains multiple layers, like an onion. The crust is the thinnest layer (the onion skin), and it moves around very slowly on top of a giant ocean of molten rock called the mantle (the juicy part of the onion). Deep in the heart of that ocean is the planet's core, like an onion's center, if the center of the onion were made of superheated iron and nickel crushed under the weight of a planet.
Water in the mantle makes the molten rock stretchier, which means the mantle can change its shape and convect. That's a big part of why Earth has plate tectonics — without water in the mantle, the material is too stiff to move around and drag the planet's crust with it. We know there's water in the mantle; however, we don't know exactly what the water in the mantle is doing.
There are two main theories for how water gets into Earth's mantle. The first is through subduction: When one tectonic plate sinks under another, it brings water from the surface into the mantle. The second is primordial water, left over from the planet's formation, that's stored near the boundary between Earth's core and the lower mantle.
The newly discovered minerals match both major theories for how Earth got its mantle water. They're dense enough to sink all the way to the bottom of the mantle, which fits with subduction and provides a way for water to enter Earth's core. The iron minerals are also strong enough to withstand the extremely high-energy impacts that they would have experienced if they were present while Earth was forming.
The mantle's convection could bring these minerals from near the core to close to the surface in large mantle plumes, where the minerals would melt and release their water, thus completing the water cycle in the mantle and contributing to volcanic hotspots at the surface. This process has implications for water cycles and theories of how other rocky planets and exoplanets — especially the weird ones that are mostly molten rock — formed.
Although the study, published Sept. 8 in the journal Nature Geoscience, doesn't prove that these minerals are taxiing water around the mantle, knowing that the iron minerals exist provides a pathway for the first time. The newly discovered minerals might also explain mysterious, extremely dense regions deep inside Earth —the "ultra-low seismic velocity patches we see sitting on top of the core-mantle boundary," Jacobsen added.
What is Earth made of? Find out with our inside Earth quiz!
'> Newly discovered iron minerals might hold primordial water from when Earth formed