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ABC Listen. Hello my friends, it's Ruby here and you're listening to News Time.
Hi Ruby. Hello. Every week on News Time I count down five awesome news stories, with your help of course, and this week it is Choc -a -block.
We've got dino droppings, we've got adventuring puppies and we have some circus superstars.
What do you think? Are you ready?
Yeah for sure. Story number five!
Paleontologists are scientists who work with fossils.
They look at ancient bones or plants and they try to understand what Earth was like before humans arrived.
Yep, bones, plants and sometimes dinosaur poo.
Gross, very gross. You saw dinosaur poo in the museum and it's awesome.
I can't believe they would study such a thing.
How can it not smell?
Is it a fossil or is it still poop?
Ah but it is both my friend, a fossil and a poo.
It's fossilized poo and it's called coprolite.
Studying it can be really useful for scientists to help them understand dinosaurs, what they ate, where they lived and how they functioned.
I think it's an amazing job discovering bones.
A team of scientists in Europe looked closely at some dinosaur poo, sorry coprolites, to try to answer the question of how dinos rose to the top of the food chain.
How they beat out other animals like birds or fish millions of years ago.
It was a bit of a puzzle figuring out which coprolite belonged to which dinosaur.
They had to connect them to footprints and bones that were the same age in the same area.
Or they had to guess by the size of the poo itself.
They figured out that dinosaurs that ate lots of different types of food survived because they could change their diet as the plants around them changed.
That would be amazing.
Imagine if they could eat plant -style more poisonous for us.
They probably did. These poo -focused paleontologists looked at coprolites from the country Poland and they hope that their research will inspire more work around the world.
At the very edge of Western Australia, halfway between Perth and Broome, sits the coastal town of Carnarvon.
Up the road past the netball courts and a café, you'll find the Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum and of course the overseas telecommunication commission dish.
Satellite. Satellite dish.
This is a dish. A satellite dish is a giant...
Well, a giant dish.
It looks a bit like a big cereal bowl with an antenna in the middle pointed up at the sky.
Satellite dishes can be positioned to point in whichever direction we need them to, to send information up into space or to capture information coming down into the dish.
The OTC satellite dish in Carnarvon has helped out some amazing missions in its time.
It's captured signals that helped NASA send spacecrafts to the moon.
The dish sat around gathering dust for almost 40 years and then it was almost demolished.
But a company in Canada stepped in and decided to fix it up and get it working again.
Do more stuff with it.
Maybe build an even better satellite.
I really want to know what happens.
After scraping off years and years of pigeon poop and giving the dish a good oil to stop it squeaking, last week, the OTC dish in Carnarvon received its first signal since the year 1987.
Now that the team knows it still works, they're going to get it into tip -top shape and then get it working to help communicate with more satellites in space.
I think it's good if they rebuild it because then they can see further alien life forms or, like, different planets.
The solar system and the galaxy.
It's going to be a few years before the dish is performing at its best again, but soon Australia will have another coastal connection to outer space.
Story number three.
There are lots of ways we can help out our environment and one of them is by recycling.
Where you use items and you use them over and over again.
You put them in the recycling bin to make them new again.
Put it into the yellow bin.
They take it to a factory and make it into new things.
Yep, that's about right.
But here's the thing.
Not every person in Australia has a recycling bin outside their front door.
For Australians who live in regional or remote areas, not every council has a recycling program set up.
Some young people who've made the move from big cities to small towns, well, they've found this a little bit frustrating.
They think it's important to recycle no matter where you are.
Keep it in an area and they...
..eventually, when the area is full up, they just, like, take it in their car over to a city and get it in a yellow bin too.
Ah, that is exactly what some people do.
25 -year -old Calum loads up the back of his car with empty tins and containers and he takes them somewhere else to be recycled because they can't be recycled in his hometown of Geraldton in Western Australia.
He drives hundreds of kilometres to where his parents live in Perth and deposits his recycling there.
It's a lot more effort than putting the tins in the normal bin, but Calum says it's worth it.
To keep their country clean and healthy for them and their friends.
Because they love the world!
Recycling is expensive, and that's why some small councils haven't got the process set up properly.
But young people, like Calum and Geraldton and Maz in Broken Hill, think people should work together to make recycling easier.
They hope the government will help out these smaller councils so that all Aussies can recycle.
You're the best people in the world.
Keep it up. Thank you for taking care of our world.
Keep protecting and keep saving the animals and us.
Story number two. Roll up, roll up.
Welcome to the News Time Circus.
They do amazing acrobatics and sometimes they ask you to go on the stage.
They do fun games. There's, like, many acts like people shooting out of cannons.
Juggling and magic.
A trip to the circus can be a lot of fun.
Watching all those tricks and skills, it almost makes me want to run off and join the circus.
One person who is following their high -flying dreams is Lucia Richardson.
The Imangu and Wulanju performer from the Yamaji nation is 17 years old and already on track to achieve her dream.
Lucia moved from Geraldton in Western Australia all the way to New South Wales just so that she could join the Flying Fruit Fly Circus.
That's a circus that features Aussie kids.
She looks amazing. It probably makes her have butterflies in her tummy.
Lucia works really hard on her craft.
She does acrobatics, like jumps and flips and contortions.
That's where you safely twist your body into different shapes, like backbends.
Sometimes contortionists can make themselves look like twisty pretzels.
It would be amazing if I could bend like that.
Then I would be able to shoot a bow and arrow with my feet.
Lucia says being on stage is where she feels alive and that hearing the audience react makes it feel like magic.
Lucia's performed all over the country, including at the Sydney Opera House.
She says she's proud of how far she's come and how much her confidence has grown.
Her advice to other kids, especially Indigenous kids, is follow your passion no matter how big or small it seems.
Wise words, Lucia. Keep following your dream and never give up.
And now, my friends, it is time for...
Wild of the Week. This story made me grow wild because the doggy was cute.
Elise Smith loves hiking.
She's travelled around the world doing special walks, including the Inca Trail in Peru.
Pretty fun because you get to see, like, nature.
I saw lots of animals.
I've climbed Mount Cuzioska.
I've climbed to the top of a volcano.
Wow, that's amazing!
I love hiking, too, so I totally understand Elise's passion.
But a few years ago, Elise became unwell.
She wasn't able to go for long walks or hike by herself anymore.
And that is where Lenny came in.
Lenny is a miniature labradoodle.
He's got curly white fur and a pink nose, and he's Elise's assistant's dog.
Lenny is always with Elise.
He keeps her company, and he can also let her know when she's likely to faint so that she can sit down and take it easy.
Lucky for Elise, Lenny also loves long walks.
They go all over the place together, and Lenny knows not to disturb any of the wildlife that he comes across.
I do report amazing and very kind.
They have, like, a bond of some kind, and they're meant to be together.
Recently, Elise and Lenny took on their biggest challenge yet.
They wanted to walk the Overland Track.
That's a famous hike in Tasmania.
It takes about six days to get from one end to the other.
After all their practice on little walks closer to home, Elise and Lenny completed the Overland Track.
No problem. I think they had the best time because it was the thing they were meant to do together.
Elise and Lenny loved it so much that they're already planning their next hike.
Happy travels! And with that, my friends, we have hiked our way to the end of this week's Countdown.
Thank you, Ruby. Thanks, Ruby.
No worries. I'll catch you next time.
Bye, Ruby! See you, Ruby.
See you later. Or, as they say in Waringeri Wai Wurrung, twagunin.
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