Reuters Science News Summary

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

Otter-like critter swam lakes and rivers in the age of dinosaurs

About ​165 million years ago, a furry critter that swam like a platypus, hunted ​like an otter and had a tail similar to ‌a beaver's ​frolicked in the lakes and rivers of what is now China pursuing fish and salamanders, the oldest-known example of a semiaquatic lifestyle in mammalian evolutionary history. Researchers are describing a fossil unearthed in the Inner Mongolia region of a mammalian species named Megacauda ‌sungei that lived during the Jurassic Period in the age of dinosaurs.

A 194-year-old tortoise, world's oldest land animal, may hold clues to longer life

The world's oldest-known terrestrial animal, an Aldabra giant tortoise named Jonathan and estimated to be about 194 years old, may owe his extraordinary longevity to a combination of genetic traits and an ability to keep key cellular systems functioning ‌in a more youthful way, according to scientists. Members of this species are known to live more than 100 years, but Jonathan has far exceeded that. Brought to ‌the remote South Atlantic island of St Helena as a fully grown animal in 1882, likely from the Aldabra Atoll or the Granitic Seychelles, the tortoise now resides in a paddock at Plantation House, the governor's residence.

US FAA looks to streamline rules for commercial space launches

The Federal Aviation Administration said on Tuesday it is proposing to streamline regulations for commercial space launches and re-entries. The moves include allowing operators to submit launch applications electronically, offering greater ⁠flexibility in ​demonstrating equivalent levels of safety and combining three required ⁠safety analyses into a single submission.

NASA rover takes striking image of dawn's early light on Mars

NASA has released a striking image of dawn on the Martian surface taken by its Curiosity rover, showing sunlight bathing jagged ⁠crags formed billions of years ago as the car-sized vehicle continues to explore Earth's planetary neighbor. Curiosity landed in 2012 in Gale Crater near the Martian equator, and since 2014 has been climbing Mount ​Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-km-tall) mountain rising from the crater floor. The image was taken by the six-wheeled rover's Mastcam camera about an hour after the sun rose above ⁠a landscape featuring wind-carved cliffs in the distance.

Trump to appear at White House science event on Thursday

US President Donald Trump will speak at a White House event on scientific discovery on Thursday, according to a social ⁠media post ​from his tech adviser Michael Kratsios. The event will highlight the Trump administration's plan to overhaul how federal scientific research funding is managed and distributed, according to an invitation seen by Reuters. Kratsios first released the plan in July. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will also speak at the event, according to the invitation and a ⁠post from Kratsios on the social media platform X.

Scientists in Vienna and Beijing create world's first nuclear clocks

Scientific teams working separately in Vienna and Beijing have developed the world's first ⁠two operating nuclear clocks in what they are ⁠calling an important advance in timekeeping that promises wide-ranging practical applications and offers a new tool to investigate fundamental physics. The two devices represent the next generation of atomic clocks, the ultra-accurate timekeeping machines first created in 1949. The two research teams, describing their achievements on ‌Wednesday in scientific papers published in ‌the journal Nature, said nuclear clocks have the potential to outperform the best conventional atomic ​clocks, but do not do so yet.