Gigantic beaver sculptures from FIFA World Cup up for auction, including Barrie artist’s - CTV News

D. rex's fruiting bodies were discovered in the forests of Yunnan Province. (Song et al., Frontiers in Fungal Biology, 2026) Yunnan Province in China is famous for its mushrooms and fungi, but somehow, scientists have only just come across a new species that has rightly earned the name 'king'. Named Dianjunus rex (or D. rex for short), its gigantic, club-like fruiting bodies can grow up to 50 centimeters tall, which is about one and a half feet, or the height of a traffic cone. A researcher holds up two D. rex fruiting bodies to show off their impressive size. (Provided by Indunil Senanayake) But its impressive size is not the only exciting thing about this fungus. Its genes also contain clues about a major moment in the history of life on Earth. Mycologist Indunil Senanayake of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and her colleagues describe the new species in a paper published in Frontiers in Fungal Biology. D. rex is the only known member of its family, Dianjunaceae. "This remarkable species… provides a rare window into the evolution of extreme fungal body forms," says Senanayake.

A colossal prehistoric snake that lived in India about 47 million years ago may have been one of the largest snakes ever to exist. Known as Vasuki indicus, the ancient reptile could have reached an extraordinary 15.2 meters (50 feet) in length, putting it in the same league as Titanoboa, the enormous extinct snake long regarded as the largest ever discovered. The remarkable discovery, described in 2024 in the journal Scientific Reports, came from fossils unearthed in Gujarat, western India. Researchers estimate that Vasuki measured between 10.9 and 15.2 meters (36 and 50 feet) long, although its exact size remains uncertain. Its enormous body and unusual evolutionary history offer a glimpse into a time when giant snakes inhabited the warm, tropical landscapes of ancient India.

Israeli settlers have attacked European diplomats, including a French mayor, near the Palestinian village of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank. The delegation was visiting Palestinian olive harvesters on Saturday when the Israeli attackers confronted the group. The attack comes a day after settlers assaulted a US journalist north of Ramallah. In Saturday’s incident, the settlers targeted Belgium’s consul general, French and Polish diplomats and Catholic representatives, Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot said. “A French mayor was assaulted and a Belgian vehicle damaged,” Prevot said, linking the attack to what he called Israel’s “illegal settlement policy” and pledging to push for further European Union sanctions. French mayor Bernard Baudoux, who was assaulted, told the AFP news agency that the violence suggests that “there is a tolerance on the part of the Israeli government” towards settler violence. Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah, said the settlers surrounded the diplomats’ vehicles, pelted them with stones and smashed their windows.

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