Page Type: Elementary

Blue whales are huge. These giants of the sea are known to reach lengths of 98 feet (about 30 meters). One blue whale can weigh about as much as 30 elephants! But are blue whales the largest animals ever? Maybe not. Scientists say that an ichthyosaur that lived about 200 million years ago might have been even bigger.

Ichthyosaurs were a group of reptiles that lived in the sea between 250 million years ago and about 65 million years ago. They were meat-eaters, so they would have hunted other animals in the sea. Although ichthyosaurs are extinct (no longer around), they’re related to today’s lizards and snakes. Scientists have found a lot of fossils of ichthyosaurs. Many of these fossils show that the animals had fins, long jawbones, and many sharp teeth. 

There were different types of ichthyosaurs. Scientists have long known that some of them were large—but they didn’t know how large they could be. Recently, scientists studied a fossil that they think was once part of an ichthyosaur. Based on the size of the fossil, they think this ichthyosaur may have been up to 115 feet (35 meters) long. That’s as long as three school buses lined up front to back! 

And it’s a lot longer than the blue whale!

Martin Luther King, Jr., Day will be observed in the United States on January 16, 2023. You may already know that Martin Luther King, Jr., was an important leader in the civil rights movement. Today, King’s daughter is continuing his work.

Bernice King is the youngest daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King. The Kings taught their children what was important to them. They taught them that everyone should be treated equally and that laws should be fair. Martin Luther King, Jr., led marches and gave many speeches. He worked to change racist laws and wanted to help end poverty. The Kings believed that people could work for change in a peaceful way. 

In 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed. Shortly after, Coretta Scott King started the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. She wanted the King Center to be a place that continued her husband’s work and promoted his beliefs. 

Today, Bernice King is the head of the King Center. The center gives people the skills they need to change unfair laws and actions. Under Bernice King’s leadership, the center is working to make the world a fairer, more equal place. 

Like her father, Bernice King wants to spread her message as far as possible. She gives many speeches. In 2022, she co-wrote a children’s book called It Starts With Me. The book is about how everyone should love and care about others.

“Now more than ever, I believe that my father would encourage [all people] to join together in love,” Bernice King wrote in The Atlantic in 2021. 

He may not be as old as Yoda from Star Wars, but Jonathan the giant tortoise has been around for a long time. In December 2022, Jonathan celebrated his 190th birthday! He’s the oldest-known land animal in the world.

Experts can’t be sure of Jonathan’s exact age. They’re guessing he was born around 1832, but his birth year may be even earlier. That’s because he was fully grown when people found him in the wild in 1882—and giant tortoises don’t stop growing until they are 40 or 50 years old!

Can you guess how many ants there are in the world? The number is almost too big to imagine! Researchers believe that there are 20 quadrillion ants. That’s 20,000,000,000,000,000.

It’s not possible to count every single ant, so researchers had to make an estimate. To come up with that giant number, they looked at information gathered from researchers who studied ants all over the world. From there, they were able to come to another amazing conclusion. If you could gather all the ants in the world onto a huge scale, they would weigh 12 million tons (11 million metric tons)!

Scientists say it’s important to study ants because the insects help to keep the planet healthy. Ants are found on every continent except Antarctica. Ants eat other insects and their eggs, keeping insect populations under control. They also eat dead insects, so they play a big part in keeping the planet clean. Ants are even important for plant growth because they turn the soil as they move through it. This allows plant roots to grow through the soil and get the nutrients they need.

So, what does it mean that there are so many ants? Scientists say it means ants are super valuable. Researchers want to keep an eye on all the world’s ants. If the ants’ numbers go down, this will be a sign that the environment has become less healthy for living things.

On December 2, 2022, Prince William of the United Kingdom awarded five people with an important prize. The Earthshot Prize isn’t for music, movies, or sports. It’s for working to save Planet Earth.  

The Earthshot Prize is given to people who are working on solutions to climate change and other environmental problems. Awards are given in five categories. Winners are chosen based on how effective or wide reaching their ideas are. This year’s winners each received 1 million pounds (about $1,200,000 in U.S. money). 

The 2022 award ceremony took place in Boston, Massachusetts. The five winners were honored for working to protect the planet in different ways, from creating less pollution to protecting crops from severe weather. There were some big stars on hand to entertain them, including musicians Billie Eilish, Chloe and Halle Bailey, and Annie Lennox. 

Prince William started the Earthshot Prize in 2020. He has often spoken about the importance of the environment. In a speech he gave in 2021, he spoke directly to young people. 

“We are going to find solutions to repair our planet,” said Prince William. “Please keep learning, keep demanding change, and don’t give up hope. We will rise to these challenges.”

November 15, 2022, was a big day for the entire planet. On that day, the world population reached eight billion!

How big is eight billion? If you write it out, it looks like this: 8,000,000,000. That’s a lot of people! Experts say the world population has grown by one billion in just the past 12 years. 

What’s causing the population to grow? Experts say people are living longer than ever before. That’s because more people have clean drinking water and other resources to help them stay healthy. Plus, many diseases have become easier to treat. Overall, the world population is healthier than ever. 

Another thing that can cause the population to grow is the birth of many babies. But experts say families have fewer children than they used to. So the birth rate (the number of babies born each year) is slower than it once was. The United Nations (UN) believes that the population will continue to grow until about the year 2080, when there will be a little more than 10 billion people in the world. 

The UN says it’s important for everyone around the world to help make sure that the planet is healthy, safe, and peaceful. That way, all eight billion people can live happy, healthy lives.

Alejandro Buxton is pretty busy. Like any 12-year-old, he goes to school every day. Alejandro is also an entrepreneur (a person who starts a business). Before and after school, he runs his company, Smell of Love Candles. 

Alejandro began making candles to help his mom. She likes to light candles, but the scents were giving her headaches. Alejandro learned which ingredients might be causing those headaches, and he made candles with different ingredients. His mom felt so much better that Alejandro decided to start a candle business. Today, Smell of Love Candles makes candles with 26 different scents. They’re available online and at a kiosk (a stand) located in a mall near Alejandro’s home in Virginia. Alejandro’s mom helps him with the business side of things, and his younger sister, Valentina, assists with packing up candle orders.

It’s not always easy for people to explore the ocean. So scientists studying seagrass (grass that grows in the sea) decided recently to get some helpers. They attached cameras and other equipment to tiger sharks!

The team of scientists wanted to know how much seagrass is growing in an area of ocean near a group of islands called the Bahamas. They attached cameras or tracking equipment to 15 tiger sharks. The sharks were then released and swam around as they normally would. The cameras and equipment were designed to fall off the sharks within about 24 hours.

The pictures and other information captured by the equipment show that the patch of seagrass near the Bahamas is as large as 35,521 square miles (92,000 square kilometers). It might be the largest patch of seagrass on the planet!

Scientists say it’s important to know where there’s seagrass. Like forests, seagrass takes in carbon dioxide, which means it plays a big part in controlling climate change.

Before the study, scientists didn’t know how large the patch of seagrass was. In fact, there is still a lot that humans don’t know about the ocean because it can be hard to explore. Thanks to the sharks, we’re learning more. The size of the seagrass patch is good news for the climate.

Scientists in Europe have invented a robot that looks and flies just like a large bird called a falcon. The robot is an awesome flier, but it also has an important job. 

Scientists invented the robot to solve a serious problem. Flocks of birds often fly and land in and around airports. Sometimes the birds get hit by planes that are taking off and landing. Airport workers have tried different ways to scare away the birds. They’ve tried training real falcons to fly toward the birds. Falcons hunt smaller birds, so it makes sense that birds would be afraid of them. But falcons are expensive and hard to train. 

So scientists decided to create a robot that looks like a falcon. They studied a bird called the peregrine falcon to see how it moves when it flies. They made sure their robot could fly in the same way. They even painted the robot to match the colors of a real falcon. Then, they tested it with flocks of birds.

Is that lion made of LEGO bricks? It sure is!

The giant LEGO lion was built to sit at one entrance to the Chain Bridge, a famous crossing in the city of Budapest, Hungary. Normally, there are two stone lions at either entrance to the bridge, which was completed in 1849. In fact, the four roaring lions are a big part of why the Chain Bridge is famous. 

But in 2021, the bridge became lion-less. That’s when workers temporarily removed the stone lions from their posts so that they and the bridge could be repaired. The LEGO lion was a perfect substitute for one of the four lions because it looks just like the stone statues!