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THE MYTH ABOUT PONIES THAT MIGHT BE TRUE

Thursday, July 28, 2022

In today’s newsletter, we examine new evidence to back up a romantic myth about the ponies of Chincoteague, disclose secrets of the world’s oldest cities, investigate the origins of COVID-19 … and find the mother lode of fossils in Brazil. Plus, how the ‘wickedest city on Earth’ met its downfall.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMES L. STANFIELD, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

It was a myth that tourists were told for decades, popularized in a best-selling 1947 novel, that the graceful wild ponies of Virginia’s Chincoteague Island came from a shipwrecked Spanish galleon.

Or was it? A new DNA analysis of a 450-year-old horse molar found in a Spanish settlement in Hispaniola shows close matches to the Virginia ponies, made famous in Marguerite Henry’s Misty of Chincoteague.

The DNA of the Caribbean and Virginian horses shows that both originated from an ancestor in Bronze Age Spain, giving greater credence that the Chincoteague ponies weren’t descended from more modern renegade livestock, as some historians had claimed. The serendipitous discovery gives researchers impetus to explore other murky episodes of our past, zooarchaeologist Nicolas Delsol tells us.

Read the full story here.

PHOTOGRAPH BY NICOLAS DELSOL, FLORIDA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

At top, ponies wrestle on Chincoteague Island; above, the 450-year-old horse molar fragment from ruins of a Spanish settlement in the Caribbean. Read more about the ponies—and the shrinking population of mustangs in the American West.

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STORIES WE’RE FOLLOWING

PHOTOGRAPH BY GREG GIRARD, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION

New secrets from world’s oldest cities revealed (pictured above, Tel Megiddo in Israel)

Two new studies point to Chinese ‘wet market’ as COVID-19 springboard

How ‘the wickedest city on Earth’ was sunk by an earthquake

Researchers find mother lode of fossils in southern Brazil

Little-known ‘twilight asteroids’ could pose threat to Earth

Murder hornet gets new, less dramatic, name

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

THIS ANIMAL EXISTS ONLY IN INDONESIA.
CAN YOU GUESS WHAT IT IS?

CLICK TO SEE IF YOU'RE RIGHT!

Quiz: This animal exists only in Indonesia. What is it? Click here to find out.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

PHOTOGRAPH BY @TIMLAMAN

Flamboyant, indeed: Nat Geo Explorer Tim Laman was near the end of a night dive off Indonesia when he encountered this inch-long, highly poisonous creature, the aptly named flamboyant cuttlefish. “I spent as much time as I could photographing it but eventually had to surface because I was running out of air,” Laman said. His image has more than 100,000 likes on our Instagram page. Nat Geo has reported on why poisonous animals don’t poison themselves.

FASCINATING—AND DANGEROUS

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID GOLDMAN, AP

Rising seas: The Gullah Geechee, descendants of some of the first enslaved Africans in the U.S., have lived and farmed along the coastline from Jacksonville, North Carolina, to Jacksonville, Florida, for generations. The latitude of the land and its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean make it among the most climate threatened in the world. And the rapid pace and placement of new homes and businesses mean the Gullah Geechee risk losing their land and their culture. Learn how they’re fighting back. (Pictured above, Jonathan Wilson, 6, waits for the ferry from Sapelo Island, Georgia.)

IN A FEW WORDS

QUOTE

It is clear that the defense of the city of Venice and of the inhabited centers from high waters is an indispensable issue, and not under discussion. We don’t question this need.

Andrea D’Alpoas

Environmental engineer

From: Saving Venice from flooding may destroy the ecosystem that sustains it

LAST GLIMPSE

LEFT: PHOTOGRAPH BY SZ PHOTO/BRIDGEMAN/ACI; RIGHT: PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVAR ARDALAN

Recognized in Congress: A statue of Amelia Earhart, the pioneering woman aviator whose disappearance over the Pacific in 1937 launched a still-unsolved mystery, was dedicated Wednesday on Capitol Hill. Hear her story and the efforts to maintain her legacy on a special Overheard podcast out today. (Pictured, above left: Earhart stands before the plane in which she disappeared; above right, the Capitol statue of Earhart.)

THE MYSTERY OF AMELIA

A note from a reader: Discoveries come in all shapes and sizes. Yesterday, Rebecca Capone wrote us about moving to northern New Jersey and seeing hummingbird moths for the first time. She was entranced. “It’s like what you’d get if a shrimp and a hummingbird found a way to make a baby,” she wrote. Here’s an image.

What discoveries are you up to? Let us know. Today’s newsletter was curated by David Beard, Monica Williams, Jen Tse, and Heather Kim. Happy trails!

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