Archaeologists in Saudi Arabia have discovered ancient human remains buried alongside hundreds of scattered animal bones inside a 7,000-year-old desert monument, a ritual site used by a prehistoric cult.

The remains of an adult male around the age of 30 were found inside a mustatil, a structure whose name comes from the Arabic word for rectangle. The ruins are one of more than 1,600 mustatils discovered in Saudi Arabia since the 1970s. The structures, mostly buried in sand, were built when The Arabian desert was a lush meadow where elephants roamed and hippos bathed in lakes.

A free raft of kelp, about twice the width of the United States, is moving slowly across the Caribbean Sea. Currently, buckets of floating algae are washing up on Florida’s east coast beaches earlier than usual, raising scientists’ concerns about what the coming months will bring.

Seaweeds are made up of species of algae of the genus sargassum. These species grow as a mat of clumps of algae that are kept afloat by small air-filled sacs attached to leafy structures. The algae form a belt between the Caribbean Sea and West Africa in the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic Ocean and then drift westward with the currents. Scientists say reports of a huge algae crashing into the coastline are exaggerated because sargassum algae are scattered throughout the ocean, and most of the algae will never reach the sandy shores of the coast. But in recent years, researchers have routinely observed larger so-called sargassum blooms. And once the algae starts to wash up on the beaches and rot, it can cause serious problems, locals say.

Among the annual sargassum census in the Atlantic Ocean, “2018 was a record year and we’ve had some big years since then,” says Brian Lapointe, an oceanographer at Florida Atlantic University who has been studying seaweed for decades. “This is the new normal and we will have to adapt to it.”

The “droplet” of algae has been dubbed the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, and although it is spread out, the algae in the belt only covers about 0.1 percent of the water’s surface, says Chuangmin Hu, an oceanographer at the University of South Florida who used satellites to study sargassum for nearly 20 years.

Hu and colleagues use data collected by NASA satellites, including Terra and Aqua, to estimate the total mass sargassum in the Atlantic every month, tracking the annual cycle, which usually peaks in June. Last year, seaweed broke the record for the largest amount ever recorded in the Atlantic, with about 22 million metric tons of the substance found throughout the ocean, the team calculated.

Hu says the team has estimated that the Atlantic contains about six million metric tons. sargassum in February and that he is confident that the March mass will be higher. “There should be more this month. There is no doubt,” says Hu. “Even in the first two weeks, I saw an increase in numbers.”

In the ocean, Hu says sargassum is an important habitat for fish and turtles, among other marine life. He calls the belt a “moving ecosystem”. And only a small fraction of the algae present in the Atlantic will ever be washed up on beaches, Hu adds.

But beaches in Fort Lauderdale and the Florida Keys are already reporting sargassum Deposits this year, Lapointe says, and it’s on beaches that algae can be problematic. There, he says, the algae rots and releases chemicals like hydrogen sulfide gas that smells like rotten eggs. If inhaled, the gas can also cause headaches and irritate the eyes, nose, and throat. People with asthma or other breathing problems may be more sensitive to this effect. Florida Department of Health. The early appearance of algae is raising concerns about what this summer could bring.

“It’s pretty early sargassum season to see so much, so I think it’s also fueling some fears about what’s coming next,” says Lapointe.

Hu says that sargassum Volumes cannot be predicted more than two or three months in advance, so this summer’s seasonal peak is still too far away to predict. However, the researchers expected that this year could be rich in algae, because even during the winter calm there were more than average.

And the Atlantic reliably produced much more sargassum in recent decades than historically. Lapointe says it’s high sargassum Levels in recent years are likely due in part to nutrient-rich water flowing off land into rivers and oceans, where it can fertilize seaweed. But understanding and solving the problem remains confusing, he adds.

“This has been going on for over 10 years, and we haven’t made much progress in better understanding all of these factors that affect nutrients and climate,” he says. “That’s what we’re working on as scientists.”