Melting Everest glaciers throw up climbers’ bodies
Kathmandu: With the melting of glaciers and snow due to high temperatures, Mount Everest expedition operators are finding more and more bodies of climbers on and around the world’s highest peak.
More than 200 mountaineers have died on the peak since 1922, when the first climbers’ deaths on the Everest were recorded. Most bodies have remained buried under glaciers or snow, CNN has reported.
“Due to climate change and global warming, snow and glaciers are melting fast, and bodies are being exposed and discovered by climbers,” said Ang Tshering Sherpa, former President of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.
“Since 2008, my company has brought down seven bodies, some dating back to a British expedition in the 1970s,” he said.
According to studies, glaciers in the Everest region are melting and thinning.
“It’s a serious issue. We are concerned about this as it’s getting worse,” said Sobit Kunwar, an official of the Nepal National Mountain Guides Association. “We are trying to spread information to have a coordinated way to deal with it,” he said.
The association’s Treasurer, Tenzeeng Sherpa, said climate change was affecting Nepal with glaciers, in parts, melting by a meter every year. (IANS)
Over 500 million years old fossil trove unearthed in China
Beijing: Scientists in China have discovered a “stunning” trove of well-preserved thousands of fossils estimated to be about 518 million years old on a river bank in the country’s central Hubei province.
The fossils are particularly unusual because the soft body tissue of many creatures, including their skin, eyes, and internal organs, have been “exquisitely” well preserved.
Palaeontologists have called the findings “mind-blowing” – especially because more than half the fossils are previously undiscovered species, the BBC reported.
The fossils, known as the Qingjiang biota, were collected near Danshui river in Hubei province. More than 20,000 specimens were collected, and a total of 4,351 have been analysed so far, including worms, jellyfish, sea anemones and algae.
They will become a “very important source in the study of the early origins of creatures”, one of the fieldwork leaders, Prof Xingliang Zhang from China’s Northwest University, told the BBC. (PTI)