Briefly

INNER MONGOLIA

World's earliest flower bud fossil discovered

Chinese researchers have discovered the world's earliest fossil of a flower bud in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region. The fossil contains a stem, a leafy branch, a bulbous fruit and a tiny flower bud, around 3 square millimeters in size, said Wang Xin, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology in East China's Jiangsu province. The flower bud is less than 4 millimeters long, he said. Scientists said the fossilized flower bud lived during the Jurassic Period, about 160 million years ago.

GANSU

871 whooper swans wintering in province

A total of 871 whooper swans have been recorded during the ongoing wintering season in Northwest China's Gansu province, according to a recent survey. Among the total, 157, or 18 percent, are adolescent swans, the highest ratio seen since 2019. Since 2020, the number of wintering whooper swans in Gansu has exceeded 800 each year, said Zhang Lixun from the School of Life Sciences at Lanzhou University, who led the survey. There are five major habitats in Gansu for the swans－two along the Yellow River, and the rest along three other rivers.

Xinhua