Learn about the “Monkeydactyl” fossil; whether it’s safe to eat food with freezer burn; and post-death “zombie genes.” Newly discovered "Monkeydactyl" fossil has the oldest known opposable thumb by Grant Currin New Jurassic flying reptile reveals the oldest opposed thumb. (2021). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-04/uob-njf041221.php Zhou, X., Pêgas, R. V., Ma, W., Han, G., Jin, X., Leal, M. E. C., Bonde, N., Kobayashi, Y., Lautenschlager, S., Wei, X., Shen, C., & Ji, S. (2021). A new darwinopteran pterosaur reveals arborealism and an opposed thumb. Current Biology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.03.030 Fox, A. (2021, April 16). A Prehistoric Flying Creature Nicknamed “Monkeydactyl” May Have Climbed Trees Using Opposable Thumbs. Smithsonian Magazine; Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/monkeydactyl-may-have-climbed-using-opposable-thumbs-180977531/ Specktor, B. (2021, April 16). Tiny Jurassic “Monkeydactyl” has the oldest pair of thumbs on Earth. Livescience.com; Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/pterosaur-monkeydactyl-oldest-animal-thumbs.html Is It Safe to Eat Food That Has Freezer Burn? Originally aired April 26, 2018 https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/freezer-burn-science-a-giant-flying-reptile-and-ho Some genes activate in your brain after you die by Cameron Duke Dachet, F., Brown, J. B., Valyi-Nagy, T., Narayan, K. D., Serafini, A., Boley, N., Gingeras, T. R., Celniker, S. E., Mohapatra, G., & Loeb, J. A. (2021). Selective time-dependent changes in activity and cell-specific gene expression in human postmortem brain. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 6078. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-85801-6 “Zombie” genes? Research shows some genes come to life in the brain after death. (2021). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-03/uoia-gr032321.php?s=09 Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer — for free!
Learn about the “Monkeydactyl” fossil; whether it’s safe to eat food with freezer burn; and post-death “zombie genes.”
Newly discovered "Monkeydactyl" fossil has the oldest known opposable thumb by Grant Currin
Is It Safe to Eat Food That Has Freezer Burn? Originally aired April 26, 2018 https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/freezer-burn-science-a-giant-flying-reptile-and-ho
Some genes activate in your brain after you die by Cameron Duke
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer — for free!
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/the-worlds-oldest-thumb-belongs-to-a-dinosaur
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about the newly discovered, record-breaking “Monkeydactyl” fossil; whether it’s safe to eat food that has freezer burn; and some genes that activate in your brain after you die.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Researchers working in China have found the oldest pair of thumbs ever documented by scientists. And guess what was attached to them: a dinosaur! A new kind of dinosaur, in fact. They call it Monkeydactyl—because of the thumbs. They think it could climb trees and fly.
The 160-million-year-old fossil came from an ancient forest in China that was flush with evergreens, ginkgo trees, and dinosaurs. Lucky for us, remains from the forest were preserved in volcanic rock. Monkeysaurus is one of more than a hundred fossils that have been recovered from the formation so far.
The researchers used micro-CT scans to examine the fossil while it was still embedded in the rock. Those observations, combined with other techniques, told the paleontologists a ton about the little dino. It had a wingspan of about three feet (or a bit less than a meter), and at the end of each wing was a hand. A hand with two fingers and an opposable thumb.
Thumbs are a big deal because they’re pretty rare. Some mammals have them, like primates, and so do a lot of tree frogs. As for reptiles, only one has the magic digit: chameleons!
The big question now is, what were the thumbs for? A rare trait like this probably wouldn’t have developed unless it was useful. It’s possible those fancy phalanges came in handy for grabbing insects and other sources of food. The paleontologists behind the find think the thumbs were mostly used to help these dinos climb around on trees.
They did some extra work to support that claim. They compared Monkeydactyl’s skeleton with a bunch of others: 25 skeletons from similar dinosaurs and 150 from other species that are known to climb trees. The researchers say that Monkeydactyl’s muscles and joints strongly suggest that it was, in fact, a tree-climber.
But, for the record, not every paleontologist is convinced. One reason is that a single fossil just doesn’t offer that much data. Does this fossil contain enough evidence to justify making a generalization about the whole species? Well, that’s where science becomes a judgement call.
Skeptics of the tree-climbing hypothesis have a second argument: not every creature with opposable thumbs uses them to climb. Just look at otters!
Paleontologists are sure to spend years debating what it was that Monkeydactyl used its ancient thumbs to do.
But there’s no debating whether this 160-million-year-old fossil was a choice find. I, for one, give it...two thumbs up!
ASHLEY: Is it safe to eat food that has freezer burn? It seems like people ask this question a LOT, and fortunately, we looked into it back in 2018. So here’s that story, remastered just for you.
[ASHLEY: 2:00 clip]
A lot of people picture death like flipping a lightswitch. We go from alive to, well, not. But in fact, death, even when it’s quick, is more complicated than that. Some things turn off immediately, but others keep working for a while. Even weirder, there are genes that become more active in our brains after we die. And studying them could help us develop new life-saving treatments for certain conditions.
A team of researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago discovered this by harvesting samples of brain tissue during routine brain surgery. See, when scientists study brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia, they use dead brain tissue to do it. But we don’t know a ton about what happens to the brain during death, and these researchers wondered if dead brain tissue was even a reliable stand-in for living tissue. To find out, they’d have to watch what happened to live tissue after it was removed.
So, they harvested samples from living people during brain surgeries performed to treat neurological disorders. The researchers observed the harvested brain tissue at room temperature for a period of 24 hours. All the while, they watched to see which genes were active.
The genes involved in memory and cognitive function went dark pretty quickly. But not all of the genes followed suit. Roughly 80 percent of the genes they were interested in stayed active as if nothing was amiss. The researchers referred to these genes as “housekeeping genes,” and expected them to continue about their business until the cells totally ran out of energy.
But there was a third category that actually ramped up their activity after death. They were basically zombie genes.
These “zombie genes” didn’t activate in all cells. Their activity was limited to a specific type of cell called a glial cell. There are several types of glial cells, but their main job is to act like a maintenance crew: they support and protect other brain cells, and clean things up after injury. These genes caused the glial cells to grow and become more active while everything around them was shutting down. That makes sense, since these cells exist to help in times of crisis.
Understanding the way genes are activated in the brain will help scientists better understand neurological disorders that cause tissue damage to the brain. Eventually, they hope this type of research can lead to cures for degenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s disease.
Hopefully, we can take advantage of these bizarre genetic behaviors to develop new treatments. By studying death, we might eventually save lives.
Let’s recap today’s takeaways
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ASHLEY: Today’s writers were Grant Currin and Cameron Duke.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: Go ahead, eat that 6-month-old ice cream. It’s just a little freezer burn! ...I’m just kidding, that’s gross, just go get a milkshake literally anywhere instead. Then, join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!