'Oh my God, you're my brother': Man in his 70s discovers 6 unknown siblings
After receiving a DNA kit one Christmas from his son-in-law, Hugh McCormick soon discovered that he had six unknown siblings, with whom he shared the same birth parents.
Rock samples from Quebec's Anticosti Island are offering new clues about Earth's first major mass extinction event, suggesting that it may have been caused by a cooling climate.
A team of scientists from the U.S., China, France and the University of Ottawa published a paper in the journal Nature Geoscience exploring the Late Ordovician mass extinction event, which took place around 445 million years ago. It is the oldest among the "big five" mass extinction events and saw around 85 per cent of marine species disappear during that time.
“If you had gone snorkeling in an Ordovician sea you would have seen some familiar groups like clams and snails and sponges, but also many other groups that are now very reduced in diversity or entirely extinct like trilobites, brachiopods and crinoids,” said study co-author Seth Finnegan in a news release.
But when these species disappeared, they didn't die off suddenly, like how the dinosaurs did during the Cretaceous extinction 65 million years ago. Instead, the Late Ordovician mass extinction event played over a period of 500,000 to two million years.
The researchers sought to investigate whether a lack of oxygen in the seawater, also known as anoxia, played a part in the mass extinction. Anoxia and global cooling are two of the prevailing hypotheses on the cause of the extinction event.
Measurements of iodine concentration in carbonate rocks from that period were taken from Anticosti Island as well as the Copenhagen Canyon in Nevada. These samples, combined with computer modelling simulations, would offer clues regarding the oxygen levels at various oceanic depths.
The data showed no evidence that oxygen levels decreased in the shallow ocean, where most organisms lived.
"Upper-ocean oxygenation in response to cooling was anticipated, because atmospheric oxygen preferentially dissolves in cold waters,” said lead author Alexandre Pohl in a news release.
These findings show that a cooling climate, rather than a lack of oxygen in the ocean, was the likely cause of the mass extinction event, the researchers say.
However, researchers were also surprised to find a lack of oxygen in the lower ocean, an outcome that would normally have been associated with volcano-induced global warming.
The researchers say their findings show that no simple relationship exists between temperatures and oxygen levels in the water.
“For decades, the prevailing school of thoughts in our field is that global warming causes the oceans to lose oxygen and thus impact marine habitability, potentially destabilizing the entire ecosystem,” co-author Zunli Lu said in a news release. “In recent years, mounting evidence points to several episodes in Earth’s history when oxygen levels also dropped in cooling climates.”
After receiving a DNA kit one Christmas from his son-in-law, Hugh McCormick soon discovered that he had six unknown siblings, with whom he shared the same birth parents.
Four years on, the controversy over whether airlines owed refunds to passengers after cancelling hundreds of thousands of flights during the pandemic continues to simmer, aggravated by a sluggish, opaque complaints process.
Many foods fall under the category of ultraprocessed foods, depending on their exact ingredients. This type of food has been studied a lot lately, and the results aren’t great.
Dozens of Ontarians are expressing frustration in the province’s health-care system after their family doctors either dropped them as patients or threatened to after they sought urgent care elsewhere.
A new study projecting declining rates of cancer cases and deaths in Canada demonstrates the success of prevention and early detection programs, but also highlights areas where more work is needed to save and prolong lives, researchers say.
The star prosecution witness in Donald Trump's hush money trial is set to take the stand Monday with testimony that could help shape the outcome of the first criminal case against an American president.
Brock Boeser had two goals and an assist, and the Vancouver Canucks hung on for a 4-3 win over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 3 of their second-round Stanley Cup playoff series.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
Police are searching for a male suspect after a man was “slashed in neck” on Sunday morning in downtown Toronto and died.
English, history, entertainment, math and geography: high school trivia teams could be quizzed on any of it when they compete at the Reach for the Top Nationals in Ottawa in June.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.
A small Ajax dessert shop that recently received a glowing review from celebrity food critic Keith Lee is being forced to move after a zoning complaint was made following the social media influencer’s visit last month.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum is inviting visitors to explore their poop. A new exhibition opens at the Ottawa museum on Friday called, 'Oh Crap! Rethinking human waste.'
The Regina Police Service says it is the first in Saskatchewan and possibly Canada to implement new technology in its detention facility that will offer real-time monitoring of detainees’ vital health metrics.
Just as she had feared, a restaurant owner from eastern Quebec who visited Montreal had her SUV stolen, but says it was all thanks to the kindness of strangers on the internet — not the police — that she got it back.