Nicky Cardwell

A quick recap. Romeo is the oldest manatee in captivity in the world. At 2,000 pounds, he's also the biggest. He used to share his tank with Juliet, the mother of his babies, but they were separated after decades of companionship.

He ended up alone in a small crumbling tank and might have died there had Philip Demers from the pressure group Urgent Seas not drawn the world's attention with a social media post. He was moved to Zoo Tampa, who immediately invited Phil to come and see Romeo in his new home with his new friends.

That was a year ago, but how is he doing now? I went to Zoo Tampa to see for myself. I'm standing at the edge of the pool and I'm looking at what is, frankly, a massive pile of manatees. There's about ten of them, all on top of one another. Some are cuddling each other with their fins. And I think that that is Romeo at the bottom. He's much bigger than everyone else, so he's quite easy to spot.

He really seems to be enjoying his new life. But what do the experts think? Molly Lippincott heads the team at Sioux Tampa responsible for Romeo's care.

Because he's quite an old gentleman, isn't he? How long do manatees live for?

Romeo will, for the time being, stay at Zoo Tampa because manatees are endangered. The zoo prioritises getting young manatees back out into the wild, where hopefully they'll breed. For Phil Demers at Open Seas, this is still a win. He says the moment he saw Romeo at Zoo Tampa, he knew they'd done the right thing.

In November 2023, in utter desperation, Adri Pendleton went on TikTok to ask for help. Originally from California, she'd been living in the Netherlands with her boyfriend for six years, but they'd broken up.

Her border collie was too sick to fly in the cargo hold, but according to the airlines, too big for the cabin. This is how Adri Pendleton met Niklas Druteval.

The cosmos, in its infinite complexity, has once again defied astronomers' expectations. Teams of scientists have been examining photos of the most distant galaxy ever detected that were taken by the European Southern Observatory and the ALMA telescope in Chile. Because of the length of time it takes for light to reach Earth...

The images portray what happened in this star system 13.4 billion years ago at the beginning of the cosmic dawn, not long after the Big Bang. Scientists had thought that at just 300 million years old, the galaxy was very early in its life. It should not have contained oxygen because this only usually appears after the collapse of stars within the system.

Carol Haswell is a professor of astrophysics at the Open University. She says this discovery is important because oxygen is one of the building blocks of life.

The discovery challenges current theories about how chemicals evolve and how early galaxies are formed. It appears they develop much faster than had previously been thought. The photos themselves and this discovery are a rare glimpse into the infancy of the universe.