Swamp skink (
Lissolepis coventryi), which is probably the living lizard most similar to the new fossil. Photograph: Dr Mark Hutchinson/SA Museum / Flinders University
A tiny fossil pulled from the edge of a scorching salt lake in the South Australian outback is the oldest known remains of a skink ever found on the continent and may provide a vital clue to the lizard’s evolution.
The team of palaeontologists and volunteers from Flinders University and the South Australian Museum found the 25m-year-old specimen during an excavation in 2017.
The researchers found the fossil while digging in Lake Pinpa, a site on the 602,000 square hectare Frome Downs station about 600km north of Adelaide that is littered with remains of animals that lived a millennia ago.
The sheer volume of utilities committed to reducing or eliminating their carbon emissions by 2050 has made it easy to take this feat for granted. But two years ago, one of the country s largest investor-owned utilities set this wave in motion, and much of the sector s successive action is in part thanks to leadership at that utility, according to observers.
Ben Fowke, who has led Xcel Energy as chairman and CEO since 2011, is credited with setting a precedent when in 2018 Xcel became the first multi-state U.S. utility company to commit to phasing out carbon emissions entirely. Many utilities and many states have followed that initiative, and it s become more accepted wisdom that that s where America is headed. So I give Ben Fowke a lot of credit, said Michael Noble, executive director of Minnesota-based clean energy advocacy group Fresh Energy.