Reader's Digest Oct/Nov

shops in Seremban. ‘Jim’ coaxed the dog to a spot out of the rain where he had left some food, all the while filming it. Well-known to his follow- ers for his animal posts, he upload- ed the video which went viral. For- tunately, Vaani’s sister saw the post, and recognised Bairava. The family reached out to Jim and then jumped in the car, driving to the location where the dog was filmed – about four kilometres from where she went missing. Although the dog had been lost for seven months, the shop owner said Baira- va had appeared in front of her shop just four days earlier. Arriving at the shop, Vaani called out Bairava’s name. Hearing her name, the dog was quickly reunited with the family she had been searching for. “We were all crying and hugging Bairava,” said Vaani. The Editors WELL-KNOWN TO HIS TIKTOK FOLLOWERS FOR HIS ANIMAL POSTS, ‘JIM’ UPLOADED THE VIDEO WHICH WENT VIRAL New Zealand’s Ancient ‘Sea Dragon’ An international team of scientists has identified the oldest fossil of a sea-going reptile from the Southern Hemisphere – a nothosaur vertebra found on New Zealand’s South Island. At the beginning of the Age of Dinosaurs, 246 million years ago, New Zealand was located on the southern polar coast of a vast super-ocean called Panthalassa.The New Zealand sea dragon-like nothosaur was discovered during a geological survey in 1978, but its importance was not fully recognised until palaeontologists from Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, Australia and East Timor joined their expertise to examine and analyse the vertebra and other associated fossils. “The nothosaur found in New Zealand is over 40 million years older than the previously oldest known sauropterygian fossils from the Southern Hemisphere,” explains Dr Benjamin Kear, lead author on the study published in Current Biology . Scientists estimated its length at seven metres and noted it had sharp teeth and paddle-like limbs. UPPSALA UNIVERSITY; SCIENCEDAILY.COM rdasia.com 13 Home At Last