In Rancho Palos Verde, California, the disassembled Wayfarers Chapel designed by Lloyd Wright, the son of Frank Lloyd Wright, has been stored away since last July, following damage from landslides. A potential site for the ecclesiastical structure has been found. The proposed site would expand the footprint of the serene property and protect its structures from further damage caused by land movement.  In the 1970s, a landslide at the site destroyed the chapel’s visitor center, and the geologic movement was inactive for a while. However, in the past few years activity began accelerating at an unprecedented rate. In February 2024, the Wayfarers Chapel announced that it would close its doors due to land movement in the area. The shuttering left a displaced congregation and devastated brides in its wake, but there was still hope of a return. Then, in May 2024, it was announced that the only way to maintain the structure was to disassemble it. Land movement had caused glass panels to shatter, the metal framing to warp, and cracks to form in the concrete. Though leadership initially wanted to rebuild on site, the worsening conditions proved this was no longer a viable option. In July 2024, with the help of Architectural Resources Group, the church was meticulously disassembled with each part numbered and labeled. Many of the irreplaceable materials used to construct the original chapel were salvaged. The pieces have since been kept in storage, waiting to be rebuilt.  The chapel was disassembled and stored for preservation. (Architectural Resources Group) The chapel’s new site must carry similar characteristics to the old one to uphold its National Historic Landmark designation. The prospective site, Battery Barnes, shares the original site’s coastal views of the Pacific, while situating the reassembled chapel outside the Portuguese Bend. Built in 1943 as part of the U.S. Army’s coastal fortification plan, the Battery Barnes’s connection to World War II could also be highlighted throughout the use of the land.  The glass chapel will be reconstructed using the salvaged original materials. (Architectural Resources Group/Courtesy Wayfarers Chapel) Wayfarers Chapel also plans to take advantage of the expanded footprint of the proposed site. During an episode of “RPV City Talk,” the chapel’s communications director Stephanie Cartozian shared that the organization hopes to rebuild the chapel along with the lost visitor center, as well as constructing a museum, archival center, and restaurant. The campus would also see the addition of public restrooms for hikers, expanding on its community accessibility.   Currently, Wayfarers Chapel is fundraising to cover the rebuild, with part of the funds going toward securing the site. Unlike wildfires, earthquakes, or flooding, landslides are not considered disasters in the State of California. Thus, along with fundraising efforts, local lobbying efforts are being made to add landslides to the list of covered emergencies, which could create a path to governmental assistance.

Johan Helberg is a retired museum director living out his days on the idyllic shores of Trondheim Fjord in Central Norway.That relaxation was interrupted early Thursday morning, when he awoke to discover the bow of a 9,990-ton cargo ship had rammed through his backyard garden.The vessel, registered as the NCL Salten out of Cyprus — a common legal tactic for shipping companies — was passing through the Trondheim when its helmsman allegedly fell asleep on the job, according to The New York Times.Helberg slept soundly as the 135-meter ship ran aground, missing the cabin he calls home by mere meters. He didn't even realize what had happened until a neighbor woke him up."I was sleeping soundly, deeply," Helberg told local press, "and then I heard a dinging sound, which I wondered might be my doorbell. I thought, who in the world rings the doorbell at 5:45 in the morning? I looked out the window, and he said: 'Haven’t you seen the ship?'""It's completely surreal," the retiree reflected.Luckily, the ship was at a crawl when it ran aground. No one was hurt on land, and the ship's crew — a complement of 16 Russian and Ukrainian sailors, along with one Norwegian captain — were no worse for the wear."There [was] some commotion, but a slow rumble and not a bang," Halberg told Norsk rikskringkasting AS (NRK), a Norwegian state media company.The Salten is what's known as a Baltic "feeder," a short-range cargo vessel meant to navigate narrow waterways that larger ships can't.Of course, even feeders tend to stick to the deeper portions of the fjord, according to Helberg. "We don't usually see ships right outside our living room window, so this is especially strange," he said.The ship's second mate, a Ukrainian man, has been charged with negligence, according to NRK. The ship's captain is also being questioned as a criminal suspect.The Salten remains grounded at the time of writing, and maritime authorities say they're working with geological engineers to assess the prospects of freeing it from the muddy shore. An evacuation notice was issued to three residents nearby, as the ships crash triggered landslides.As the grounding happened at high tide, refloating the Salten will be easier said than done. A tugboat pull has already failed to make a dent, and authorities are reportedly considering whether to offload the cargo for the beginning of a long-term operation."It's stood on the land quite emphatically, it went ashore at high tide, and it's not close to being lifted off. There will be no higher tide," Helberg told NRK of the situation. "So here it will stay."Still, the retiree was in high spirits, all things considered."No irreparable damage has been done, so I can enjoy the absurdity of the situation," he said. "It's not often you see a ship stuck on the shore where you've been swimming your whole life."More on Maritime Disasters: After Elon Musk Promised Cybertrucks Could Function as Boats, One Fell Into a Harbor for a Perfect TestShare This Article

Over the past few weeks, a once-obscure manga has been making headlines in Japan and overseas. In “The Future I Saw” (Watashi ga Mita Mirai), author Ryo Tatsuki claims that Japan will be hit by a massive natural disaster in July 2025. This prediction has been cited as a reason some holiday-makers are abandoning their summer plans to travel to Japan, and has exploded across Japanese social media platforms. Why are some people apparently believing Tatsuki’s predictions? And how has an upcoming Japanese horror movie become mixed up in this panic?Ryo Tatsuki’s manga “The Future I Saw” was first published in 1999. It features Tatsuki as a character and is based on the dream diaries she has been keeping since 1985. The cover of the 1999 edition shows Tatsuki’s character with a hand up to one eye, the postcards above her head referencing various “visions” she claims to have seen. One of them reads “March 2011: A Great Disaster.” After the devastating Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami which hit Japan in March 2011, Tatsuki’s manga was rediscovered, with the resulting attention causing copies of the out-of-print book to command high prices on auction sites.People pray as they take part in a minute's silence to remember the victims on the 14th anniversary of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster. Photo by STR/JIJI PRESS/AFP via Getty Images.In 2021, a newer version of Tatsuki’s manga was published, “The Future I Saw: Complete Edition.” In this printing, Tatsuki added another premonition: that in July 2025 an even bigger natural disaster will occur. According to her, a tsunami triple the size of the March 2011 one will hit Japan. With Tatsuki’s previous prediction about March 2011 being “right,” information about her July 2025 forewarning quickly spread across social media in Japan.As reported by other media outlets, it seems that Tatsuki’s July 2025 prediction may have also caused some superstitious people to avoid travelling to Japan this summer. However the scale of this drop in numbers is unclear and seems to be most prominent in Hong Kong, where the manga is available in translation. According to the Sankei Shimbun and CNN, Hong Kong based fortune-teller and TV personality Master Seven has added to Tatsuki’s prediction, claiming that Japan’s earthquake risk will be higher between June and August this year.Japan’s domestic TV reporting on this has centred on Hong Kong-based airlines’ responses to these premonitions. As reported by ANN News and other TV stations earlier this month, Hong Kong Airlines has cancelled its three weekly flights to the Japanese city of Sendai, which was greatly impacted by the March 2011 earthquake. Likewise, Greater Bay Airlines is reducing its direct flights from Hong Kong to the Japanese cities of Sendai and Tokushima between May and October, citing a sudden decline in demand for travel to Japan. Proposed reasons for this include the July disaster predictions and growing economic uncertainty. In a press conference at the end of April, Yoshihiro Murai, the governor of Miyagi Prefecture (where Sendai is located) commented on the “unscientific foundations” of the disaster predictions spreading on social media and urged holiday-makers to ignore them.Naturally, this increased mainstream media coverage of “The Future I Saw” and its alleged impact on tourism has brought the manga into the spotlight again. On May 23, it was reported that the Complete Edition has sold over 1 million copies. This increased interest also coincides with an upcoming movie called “July 5 2025, 4:18 AM," which starts screening in Japanese theaters on June 27. Strange things start happening to the main character in the movie, who has her birthday on July 5, and the film uses the July 2025 earthquake prediction from “The Future I Saw” as inspiration. All this media coverage of the manga and its disaster prediction are likely helping draw attention to the film.However, some of the Japanese social media discourse and video content created about Tatsuki’s premonition misreport that the movie title refers to the date that the disaster is predicted to happen, and blend scientific information about earthquakes with alarmist warnings. This caused the publisher Asuka Shinsha to issue a clarifying statement: “We would like to emphasize once again that the author (Tatsuki) did not refer to the specific date and time mentioned in the movie title. We would appreciate it if people could take care not to be misled by fragmented information in the press and on social media etc.”From earthquakes and tsunamis to floods and landslides, natural disasters frequently occur in Japan. Although it may be unscientific, Tatsuki’s premonition and its coverage taps into a bigger, science-backed fear. According to seismologists, there’s a 70-80% chance that a Nankai Trough megaquake will hit Japan in the next 30 years (sources: Asahi News, Kobe University). This has also been back in the Japanese news again this year, as the government published revisions to its projected death toll for such a quake at the end of March 2025. A Nankai Trough megaquake could hit a huge area of Japan, impacting many major cities and resulting in around 300,000 fatalities. It also has the potential to generate huge tsunamis, hence why fear-stirring posts and content combine Tatsuki’s premonition with scientific estimates about worst-case scenario Nankai Trough quakes. However, it is currently not possible to accurately predict the exact date and location of a major earthquake and tsunami ahead of time- and the Japan Meteorological Agency refers to such predictions as “hoaxes” on its homepage. It seems that with Japan being such a natural disaster-prone country, Tatsuki may have gotten lucky with her March 2011 premonition matching up.Over the past few weeks, many Japanese-speaking commenters on X have been critical of the media coverage and panic surrounding Tatsuki’s prediction. “It’s stupid to believe in disaster predictions from a manga. The Nankai Trough quake could happen today or tomorrow.” said one user. Tatsuki herself has responded to the attention, saying that while she is pleased if interest in her manga has increased peoples’ disaster preparedness, she urges people not to be “overly influenced” by her premonition and to “act appropriately based on expert opinions” (Mainichi Shimbun).Photo by STR/JIJI PRESS/AFP via Getty Images.Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications.

In May 2015, prominent right-wing intellectual Charles Murray published a book calling on the superrich to fund an American rebellion against their government.Titled By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission, the book argued that the growth of the regulatory state was worse than dangerous: It was an existential threat to the American way of life. For this reason, federal authority had become fundamentally illegitimate. The normal political process — most notably elections — was hopelessly compromised, to the point where no candidate promising to roll back the size of the state could hope to win.The best solution, in Murray’s eyes, was for wealthy donors to fund a legal defense designed to facilitate a mass campaign of civil disobedience against the regulatory state. This so-called Madison Fund would defend people accused of noncompliance in court and pay any assessed fines if they lose. With enough donations, the Madison Fund could ensure that nearly anyone could disobey regulations with impunity.By the People has largely been forgotten today. It was published one month before Donald Trump descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower, announcing a presidential bid that would alter the course of history. Trump’s rejection of old GOP orthodoxies, including its libertarian hostility to programs like Social Security, suggested that Murray’s anti-government radicalism might belong to an era of the past.But the events of the second Trump term, most notably DOGE’s lawless gutting of the federal government, suggest that the book deserves a second look. Its extreme hostility to the very idea of liberal governance, its skepticism of democracy, and its faith in the primacy of the wealthy over the law all prefigured the way that Trump and Elon Musk would assail key functions of government in 2025.Moreover, it helps us understand why mainstream conservatives — the sort who pledge unending fealty to the Constitution and the founders — have been so okay with all of this. It’s not only that people on the right fear crossing Trump; it’s also, in part, that they share his belief that the American government is no longer worthy of respect.For if the state has become too big to command legitimacy, to the point where ordinary citizens are justified in disobeying it, then why should anyone care if the duly elected government breaks laws in pursuit of shrinking itself?By the People, explainedCharles Murray has been a leading intellectual figure on the right for a very long time. Generally speaking, his work has focused on class and race inequality in the United States — and, more specifically, with the idea that welfare programs either do little to fix these problems or actually make them worse.His most (in)famous book, 1994’s The Bell Curve, argues that much of America’s class and racial stratification can be explained by gaps in IQ — suggesting, in one of its most provocative chapters, that white people have higher IQs than Black people due to their superior genes. The book made theorizing about genetic differences between the races acceptable among certain corners of the mainstream right, paving the way for scientific racism’s resurgence in the Trump era.By the People is, in some ways, a more ambitious book than The Bell Curve. Moving away from social policy, Murray strays into the realm of political theory — arguing not just that liberal policies have bad consequences, but that that they are fundamentally illegitimate uses of state power. The concept of “legitimacy,” generally speaking, refers to the principle used to assess whether a particular government is morally justified in exercising political power. In Murray’s view, the key principle is government non-interference in personal affairs. The modern regulatory state, and its involvement in life ranging from setting education policy to licensing barber shops, has become so corrosive of American liberty that it cannot be seen as legitimate.“It is part of our national catechism that government is instituted to protect our unalienable rights, and that when it becomes destructive of those rights, the reason for our allegiance is gone,” he writes. “At that point, revolution is not treason, but the people’s right.”Charles Murray speaking at the 2013 FreedomFest in Las Vegas. Gage Skidmore/Flickr Creative CommonsTo support this claim, he quotes a list of luminaries — ranging from Alexis de Tocqueville to Grover Cleveland — to argue that Americans have almost always believed in a state whose legitimacy is grounded in self-limitation.“The federal government lost its legitimacy in theory during the constitutional revolution of 1937-1942, lost its legitimacy in practice during the 1960s, and it has been downhill ever since,” he writes. “It is by that historical understanding that many of us who are devoted to limited government have thought of ourselves as living in a post-American country, governed by people who mouth the clichés about America as the land of the free without understanding what freedom means.”It may occur to you, at this point, that Murray has a democracy problem. Very few Americans actually agree with this libertarian vision of the American state, and they express that disagreement by electing non-libertarian politicians. In a democracy, the key principle of legitimacy is not libertarian theories of rights but rather popular sovereignty. It is the people, collectively, who decide on the limits of power — under conditions of free debate and exercised within constitutional constraints. If the people think the regulatory state is legitimate, why should Charles Murray and his libertarian friends get to ignore the laws that everyone else voted for?By the People offers two contradictory answers to this question. The first is that the people really have turned on the government, a big claim Murray supports with data showing a consistent decline in trust in government over the years. But this is measuring something different than basic legitimacy. Moreover, Murray once again has a democracy problem. If voters really were so furious about big government that they believed the entire state was illegitimate, then why aren’t radical anti-government politicians winning in landslides? To this, we have Murray’s second answer: that the people are bought off. They have become so dependent on government goodies that there is no hope for a return to pre-New Deal America.“The proportion of Americans who depend on the federal government to put food on the table, whether through welfare, Social Security, a government paycheck, or a paycheck financed by a federal contract, will continue to increase, and it will push the Republican Party to the center in all presidential elections,” he writes.Here Murray betrays himself: admitting, implicitly, that he does not really care about popular sovereignty. He admits that people routinely choose, in democratic elections, to authorize and reauthorize an expansive state — but dismisses their right to make a choice he personally finds antithetical to liberty. He is certain his libertarian view of legitimacy is true, regardless of what the people think, and thus is convinced that people like him are justified in ignoring the law.But how could anyone ever hope to win a fight against the federal leviathan when the people have been bought off by Social Security? This is where his “Madison Fund” financing civil disobedience comes in: Murray believes that successfully defending people who ignore regulations will help others realize that a better future without government interference could actually be possible.And it all starts, in his mind, with one good billionaire.“The Madison Fund could get started,” he writes, “if just one wealthy American cared enough to contribute, say, a few hundred million dollars.”By the People as Trumpist urtextMurray’s specific vision for a “Madison Fund” was certainly idiosyncratic. But his broader argument about legitimacy was widely shared on the 2010s right, heard often among the Tea Party types who dominated conservative politics for most of the Obama presidency.Indeed, By the People was received warmly among traditional conservatives, some of whom described its wild arguments as helpfully restrained. “If you want a book that will crisply outline what has happened to Madisonian America since the Great Depression, without scaring the neighbors, it’s your lucky day,” Charles C.W. Cooke writes in National Review. Some even suggested it didn’t go far enough. Writing in Law and Liberty, Lenore Ealy argued that Murray gave short shrift to the concerns of social conservatives. And that liberal America “created for itself a soft despotism” where people from various “identity groups” wield power to silence “men and women unwilling to subsume their identity in the will of the State.” Rolling back the state is not far enough, Ealy says — there needs to be a revolution in “cultural mores” that beats back identity liberalism.By the People remains useful as an unusually clear explanation of how widely shared premises on the establishment right led the country to Trumpist perdition.It is striking that, even before Trump, the idea that the modern American state was fundamentally illegitimate was such a prevalent view among conservative activists and intellectuals. The question was not whether the right must always defer to the democratic process, but how far it might have to go to get around it.In Trump’s second term, we are seeing the fruits of this vision. In many ways, you can draw a straight line between the basic premises of By the People and Trump’s assault on the federal government. The mechanisms are very different, but the ends are strikingly similar.During the 2024 election, Elon Musk became the billionaire anti-government donor Murray dreamed of, contributing “a few hundred million dollars” to the Trump campaign. His alignment with Trump got him appointed the head of a government-slashing committee that we now know as DOGE; once in power, he and his allies attempted to gut the functioning of various different federal agencies (to various degrees of success).Elon Musk at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2025 in Maryland. Andrew Harnik/Getty ImagesDOGE was not an effective cost-cutting mechanism. Nor has it turned up significant evidence of fraud. What it has accomplished, rather, is make federal agencies less capable of implementing duly authorized regulations. Effectively, it’s done what Murray wanted from the opposite end: decreasing the scope of the regulatory state not by resistance from the bottom, but a top-down effort to strip its capabilities. (Nor is Musk alone in this; look at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s firing of large chunks of America’s public health officials).The legal authority for all of this is dubious at best. Trump and DOGE have simply asserted the power to mass-fire employees and redirect congressionally appropriated funds, even though there are good reasons to believe that they do not have the legal authority to do either. Like Murray, they do not see the law as morally binding. These aren’t just simple parallels. The influence of ideas like By the People’s helps us understand why a conservative movement that once claimed to stand for the constitutional order has become comfortable with Trump wrecking it.The essential idea of Murray’s book, and much of pre-Trump conservatism, was that the federal government had become hostile to founding American ideals: that the administrative state represents an unconstitutional cancerous growth on a brilliant governing framework.“We have overseen and sanctioned the growth of an administrative system that concentrates the power to make laws and the power to enforce them in the hands of a vast and unaccountable administrative apparatus that finds no comfortable home in our constitutional structure,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a 2015 concurrence. “The end result may be trains that run on time (although I doubt it), but the cost is to our Constitution and the individual liberty it protects.”If you take this position, thinly veiled comparisons to fascism and all, then the fact that Trump and Musk have frequently exceeded legal boundaries starts to look a lot less problematic. Through this lens, the administration is trying to rescue the Constitution’s original design from a liberalism that has corrupted it. Any legal violations along the way are offenses against a political order that at present does not deserve citizens’ allegiance. In February, the news outlet NOTUS asked Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) about the lawfulness of the Trump/Musk agenda. Tillis conceded that it “runs afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense.” However, he added, “nobody should bellyache about that” — because “it’s not uncommon for presidents to flex a little bit on where they can spend and where they can stop spending.”Thom Tillis is not a firebreather: He’s a purple state senator widely seen as a moderate. That he would take such a permissive position on what even he admits is lawbreaking shows the corrosive influence of Murray-style thinking on the right today.By the People, on its own, may be a mostly forgotten book. But it remains useful as an unusually clear explanation of how widely shared premises on the establishment right led the country to Trumpist perdition.This story was adapted for the On the Right newsletter. New editions drop every Wednesday. Sign up here.Correction, May 21, 9:20 am ET: A previous version of this story misdescribed Trump’s 2015 descent down the golden escalator at Trump Tower.See More:

Martian mystery Tuesday Telescope: Finally, some answers on those Martian streaks Alas, these probably are not reservoirs of life. Eric Berger – May 20, 2025 6:45 am | 0 This image covers an area of approximately 50 square km on Mars. Credit: European Space Agency This image covers an area of approximately 50 square km on Mars. Credit: European Space Agency Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Welcome to the Tuesday Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light—a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’ll take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder. One of the longest-standing mysteries about Mars has been the presence of dark and light streaks on the rolling hills surrounding Olympus Mons. This week's image, from the European Space Agency, shows some of these streaks captured last October. This massive mountain rises about 22 km above the surface of Mars, more than twice as high as Mount Everest on Earth. It is bordered by hummocky deposits, called aureoles, that were formed by landslides from the mountain. A striking feature of these aureoles is the periodic appearance of bright and dark streaks—sometimes for days and sometimes for years. For decades, scientists have wondered what they might be. The streaks look remarkably like flowing water. Initially, scientists believed these features might be flows of salty water or brine, which remained liquid long enough to travel down the aureole. This offered the tantalizing possibility that life might yet exist on the surface of Mars in these oases. However, it now appears that this is not the case. According to new research published Monday in Nature Communications, these slopes are dry, likely due to layers of fine dust suddenly sliding off steep terrain. To reach this conclusion, the researchers used a machine learning algorithm to scan and catalog streaks across 86,000 satellite images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They created a map of 500,000 streaks across the surface of Mars. In doing so, the researchers found no evidence of water. The image in today's post comes from the European Space Agency's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, and it has been slightly modified to enhance the appearance of the streaks. It looks like art. Source: European Space Agency Do you want to submit a photo for the Daily Telescope? Reach out and say hello. Eric Berger Senior Space Editor Eric Berger Senior Space Editor Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston. 0 Comments

An environment conference opened in Nepal on Friday to discuss global climate change, including the impact on the highest Himalayan peaks where snow and ice are melting.The three-day conference in Kathmandu titled, “Climate Change, Mountains and the Future of Humanity,” is expected to include discussions of critical climate issues.“From the lap of Sagarmatha (Everest), the world’s highest peak, we send this message loud and clear that to protect the mountains is to protect the planet. To protect the mountains is to protect our seas. To protect the mountains is to protect humanity itself,” Nepal Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli told participants at the opening meeting.Nepal is home to eight of the tallest mountains in the world including Mount Everest. A high level of glaciers melting in the Himalayan mountains because of global warming has raised signficant concerns. Melting snow and ice have exposed the mountains and increased the risk of rock slides, landslides and avalanches.Scientists have warned the Himalayan mountains could lose up to 80% of their glaciers if the Earth warms in coming decades or centuries. They say flash floods and avalanches also could become more likely in coming years, in part because of climate change.“The tragedy is that the Himalayas are facing an unprecedented stress test in real time today, exposing not only the fragile nature of our mountain ecosystems but also a glaring evidence of the lack of meaningful global climate action,” Nepal Foreign Minister Arzu Rana Deuba said. “As a mountainous country with high disaster risk vulnerability, Nepal faces a stark predicament.”Nepal has experienced a series of severe weather events in the recent past with devastating impacts on people and their livelihoods, Deuba said.“Floods and glacial lake outbursts have caused large-scale destruction and damage, and droughts, water scarcity and forest fires have brought untold suffering to the people across the country,” she said.Ministers from neighboring India, Bhutan, and Maldives are attending the conference.Organizers have said they intend to publish a Kathmandu declaration after the discussions end Sunday. —Binaj Gurubacharya, Associated Press

It’s difficult to pin the destruction of a tsunami to a tsunami — that is, unless someone was around to witness the devastation. But a new study shows that there are some surprising geological sources that scientists can consult as an archive of ancient tsunami occurrences, many millions of years after they occur. Turning to Hokkaido Island in Japan, the Scientific Reports study suggests that deposits of amber in deep-sea sediments on the island may reveal tsunamis that occurred there between 116 and 114 million years ago. At that time, the study authors say, one or more tsunamis may have swept this fossilized tree resin — then still soft — from the island’s forests to the ocean floor, where it settled and solidified, preserving its particular method of deposition within its structure.“We describe extraordinarily rich amber concentrations in Early Cretaceous deep-sea deposits,” the study authors write in their study. “The most plausible cause for the presence of this enigmatic amber in a deep-sea setting is large-scale tsunamis.” The Ancient Traces of TsunamisAmber concentration in Hokkaido deep-sea sediments. (Image Courtesy of Aya Kubota, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) from Kubota, A., Takeda, Y., Yi, K. et al. Amber in the Cretaceous Deep Sea Deposits Reveals Large-Scale Tsunamis. Sci Rep 15, 14298 (2025). This work is openly licensed via CC BY 4.0.)Despite their immediate devastation, tsunamis don’t leave a distinctive or long-lasting trace on the landscape. “Large-scale tsunamis destroy coastal areas and rapidly transport huge amounts of plants and other debris over long distances,” the study authors write. “However, due to their poor preservation potential and the lack of unequivocal identifying features, tsunami deposits are rarely recognized in the geological record.”One part of the problem is that the traces of ancient tsunamis are deposited along the coast, a dynamic landscape that’s constantly changing due to the crashing of continuous waves. Another is that distinguishing between tsunami deposits and storm deposits is incredibly difficult, with tsunamis leaving some of the same signs as hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons.The new study suggests, however, that records of ancient tsunamis may be found in the form of amber and other terrestrial material deposited in deep-sea sediments. Indeed, studying sediments that were once buried beneath the open ocean on Hokkaido, the study authors found that soft amber was moved, in water, so rapidly from land to sea between 116 and 114 million years ago, that it was probably transported by a tsunami. Read More: 5 Worst Tsunamis in HistoryAmber ArchivesTo arrive at their results, the study authors focused on amber-filled silica deposits from Hokkaido’s Shimonakagawa Quarry, which were deposited when the area was still covered with water. Fluorescence imaging found that “flame structures,” or distinctive flame-shaped deformations, were preserved within the deposits. Forming in amber that is still soft at the time of its deposition, these distortions suggest that the fossilized resin on Hokkaido traveled from land to open ocean in water, without popping up for air, only to sink to the ocean floor and solidify. “These resin deformations occurred underwater, implying their direct transport,” the study authors write. “Such rapid and direct transport of terrestrial materials from land to ocean could be driven by a tsunami.”According to the study authors, there are signs that landslides (and, thus, earthquakes) may have occurred on Hokkaido at around the same time in the Early Cretaceous, adding additional support to the tsunami theory. There are also displaced masses of mud, tree trunks, and other plant material that appear to have been deposited rapidly within the sediment between 116 and 114 million years ago — a deposition that is also more indicative of a tsunami than a storm. Similar deposits of amber in deep-sea sediments may reveal other tsunamis at other sites, the study authors say. And these archives aren’t limited to amber alone, as other material that starts on land and travels to open ocean may also signal the occurrence of ancient tsunamis, many millions and millions of years ago. “Large-scale tsunamis may not be recorded in coastal areas due to the destruction of such settings,” the study authors write, but deep-sea sediments and the terrestrial deposits within can still “serve as significant archives for large-scale destructive events.”Read More: Here’s How Earthquakes Cause TsunamisArticle SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:Scientific Reports. Amber in the Cretaceous Deep Sea Deposits Reveals Large-Scale TsunamisSam Walters is a journalist covering archaeology, paleontology, ecology, and evolution for Discover, along with an assortment of other topics. Before joining the Discover team as an assistant editor in 2022, Sam studied journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

During an excavation, amidst the Patagonian winds and hard rock, a fossil began to turn green. It was an unexpected reaction: the adhesive applied to protect the bones, fragile after millions of years beneath the ice, had interacted with plant matter trapped in the rock’s cracks. This greenish hue earned the fossil the nickname Fiona, like the ogre from Shrek.But Fionais much more than a ogre-themed name. It is the first complete ichthyosaur ever excavated in Chile and, even more remarkably, the only known pregnant female from the Hauterivian — a stage of the Early Cretaceous dating back 131 million years. Her skeleton, discovered at the edge of the Tyndall Glacier in Torres del Paine National Park — an area increasingly exposed by glacial retreat — belongs to the species Myobradypterygius hauthali, originally described in Argentina from fragmentary remains.The discovery, led by Judith Pardo-Pérez, a researcher at the University of Magallanes and the Cabo de Hornos International Center (CHIC), and published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, offers an unprecedented glimpse into ancient marine life — from how these majestic reptiles reproduced to how they adapted to oceans vastly different from those of today.An Ichthyosaur Maternity Ward in Patagonia(Image Courtesy of Irene Viscor)So far, 88 ichthyosaurs have been found on the Tyndall Glacier. Most of them are adults and newborns. Two key facts stand out: food was abundant, and no other predators were competing with them.Fiona, who measures nearly 13 feet long, is still encased in five blocks of rock. Despite the challenge, she was transported to a local clinic, where CT scans allowed researchers to study her skull and body. Her species was identified thanks to one of her fins. “There’s no other like it in the world,” says Pardo-Pérez. The limbs were remarkably elongated, suggesting this animal was built for long-distance swimming.Inside her, there were more surprises. One of them was her stomach contents, which revealed what may have been her last meal: tiny fish vertebrae. But the most striking find was a fetus, about 20 inches long, already in a position to be born.“We believe these animals came to Magallanes — the southern tip of Chilean Patagonia — from time to time to give birth, because it was a safe refuge,” Pardo-Pérez says. “We don't know how long they stayed, but we do know that mortality was high during the first few days of life.”One of the big unanswered questions is where they went next, as there are no records of Myobradypterygius hauthali, apart from a piece of fin found in Argentina. The most abundant remains come from southern Germany, but those date back to the Jurassic period, meaning they’re older.Palaeontologist Erin Maxwell suggests, “In many modern ecosystems, species migrate to higher latitudes during the summer to take advantage of seasonally abundant resources and then move to lower latitudes in winter to avoid harsh conditions,” she explains. “We believe Mesozoic marine reptiles may have followed similar seasonal patterns.”Sea Dragon GraveyardThe environment where Fiona was discovered — dubbed the "sea dragon graveyard" — also has much to reveal.According to geologist Matthew Malkowski of the University of Texas at Austin, the Hauterivian age is particularly intriguing because it coincided with major planetary changes: the breakup of continents, intense volcanic episodes, and phenomena known as "oceanic anoxic events," during which vast areas of the ocean were depleted of dissolved oxygen for hundreds of thousands of years.One such poorly understood event, the Pharaonic Anoxic Event, occurred around 131 million years ago, near the end of the Hauterivian, and still raises questions about its true impact on marine life. “We don't have a firm grasp of how significant these events were for marine vertebrates, and geological records like that of the Tyndall Glacier allow us to explore the relationship between life, the environment, and Earth’s past conditions,” Malkowski notes.Evolution of IchthyosaursReconstruction of Fiona. (Image Courtesy of Mauricio Álvarez)Don't be misled by their body shape. “Ichthyosaurs are not related to dolphins,” clarifies Pardo-Pérez. Although their hydrodynamic silhouettes may look nearly identical, the former were marine reptiles, while the latter are mammals. This resemblance results from a phenomenon known as convergent evolution: when species from different lineages develop similar anatomical features to adapt to the same environment.Ichthyosaurs evolved from terrestrial reptiles that, in response to ecological and climatic changes, began spending more time in the water until they fully adapted to a marine lifestyle. However, they retained traces of their land-dwelling ancestry, such as a pair of hind flippers — absent in dolphins — passed down from their walking forebears. They lived and thrived in prehistoric oceans for about 180 million years, giving them ample time to refine a highly specialized body: their forelimbs and hindlimbs transformed into flippers; they developed a crescent-shaped tail for propulsion, a dorsal fin for stability, and a streamlined body to reduce drag in the water. Remarkably, like whales and dolphins, “ichthyosaurs had a thick layer of blubber as insulation to maintain a higher body temperature than the surrounding seawater and gave birth to live young, which meant they didn’t need to leave the water to reproduce,” explains Maxwell.Whales and dolphins also descend from land-dwelling ancestors, but their transition happened over a comparatively short evolutionary timespan, especially when measured against the long reign of the ichthyosaurs. “Their evolution hasn't had as much time as that of ichthyosaurs,” notes Pardo-Pérez. “And yet, they look so similar. That’s the wonderful thing about evolution.”Read More: Did a Swimming Reptile Predate the Dinosaurs?Fossils on the Verge of DisappearanceOne of the key factors behind the remarkable preservation of the fossils found in the Tyndall Glacier is the way they were buried. According to Malkowski, Fiona and her contemporaries were either trapped or swiftly covered by underwater landslides and turbidity currents — geological processes that led to their sudden entombment.But the good fortune that protected them for millions of years may now be running out. As the glacier retreats, exposing fossils that were once unreachable, those same remains are now vulnerable to wind, rain, and freeze-thaw cycles, which crack the surrounding rock. As vegetation takes hold, roots accelerate erosion and eventually conceal the fossils once again.“While climate change has allowed these fossils to be studied, continued warming will also eventually lead to their loss,” Maxwell warns. In Fiona’s story, scientists find not only a record of ancient life, but also a warning etched in stone and bone: what time reveals, climate can reclaim.Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:María de los Ángeles Orfila is a science journalist based in Montevideo, Uruguay, focusing on long-form storytelling. Her work has appeared in Discover Magazine, Science, National Geographic, among other outlets, and in leading Uruguayan publications such as El País and El Observador. She was a fellow in the 2023 Sharon Dunwoody Mentoring Program by The Open Notebook and often explores the intersections of science, culture, and Latin American identity.