Three problems plastics treaty could solve
This week, delegates from more than 150 countrie
s are expected to meet in Uruguay to begin negotiations for a historic global agreement to
end plastic pollution. Negotiators will have the daunting task of devising and agreeing t
o rules and strategies ahead of finalizing a legally binding treaty by the end of 2024. Tr
eaty negotiators will have to deal with competing opinions about how to resolve pollution,
increase recycling and phase out chemicals in plastic that are known to harm human health
Exciting ancient skull uncovered in China
A rare, well-preserved ancient human skull found
in central China could be a million-year-old Homo erectus. As excavation of the fossil con
tinues, archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists anticipate that the skull could give a fu
ller picture of the diverse family tree of archaic humans living throughout Eurasia in pre
historic times. It lies 35 metres from where two significant finds — dubbed the Yunxian Ma
n skulls — were unearthed in 1989 and 1990 but, unlike them, it has not been crushed and d
istorted after millennia underground.
Palaeoclimatologist Chenxi Xu traces the sources of water
in annual growth rings to identify periods of heavy rainfall or drought over centurie
s. “We can learn so much from trees about how the climate is changing," he says. “So far,
I have built a 700-year record of droughts in Southwest China. Before global warming start
ed in the mid-nineteenth century, droughts were very similar to each other. But once the p
lanet started to warm, notably in the past 50 years, there have been bigger and more-frequ
ent droughts."