Learn about how your ancestors’ work habits might be influencing your own; the first evidence of an underwater dinosaur; and how an aquarium successfully reproduced coral in captivity for the first time.
Learn about how your ancestors’ work habits might be influencing your own; the first evidence of an underwater dinosaur; and how an aquarium successfully reproduced coral in captivity for the first time.
Societies with a history of hard farming labor tend to work more hours today by Kelsey Donk
Scientists have discovered the first unambiguous evidence of a water-dwelling dinosaur by Grant Currin
An aquarium successfully reproduced coral in captivity for the first time by Grant Currin
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/your-ancestors-may-influence-your-work-hours-coral-reproduced-in-captivity-and-the-first-known-water-dwelling-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 how your ancestors’ work habits might be influencing your own; the first evidence of an underwater dinosaur; and how an aquarium successfully reproduced coral in captivity for the first time.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Your ancestors’ work habits might be influencing your own. That’s according to a new study published in The Economic Journal. It found that in European regions with a history of farming labor-intensive crops, the residents prefer to work longer hours today.
That means a whole society's work ethic could depend on what kind of labor it valued in the past.
Researchers on the study used data collected every two years by the European Social Survey, which gathers data on social attitudes and cultural values, among other things. The researchers zeroed in on three measures: how many hours the people surveyed worked per week, how much work they wanted to do per week, and the difference between those numbers.
They found that in European countries where the land was better for farming more labor-intensive crops — that is, crops like potatoes and beans that require a lot of work to farm — people worked more hours. They also seem to want to work more hours and think about work as central to their lives. That’s compared to countries with a history of farming less labor-intensive crops, like wheat and barley.
The researchers were able to reach a few conclusions about how work ethic develops. First of all, they say it’s mostly passed from parents to children. And it’s strongest in societies that have been based in agriculture the longest.
This isn’t the first time a society’s work ethic has been linked to its cultural history. Maybe the most famous version of this is the so-called “Protestant work ethic,” or the idea that because Protestant religions emphasize hard work, societies founded by Protestants tend to work longer and harder generations later. A 2017 study that compared hours worked in areas of Germany that were historically Protestant with those that were historically Catholic found that people in historically Protestant areas worked longer hours for similar hourly wages. Some even say this explains why people in the U.S. work long hours, although Americans actually worked less than Europeans up until the 1960s, so that wouldn’t explain it.
But in the end, your daily life is shaped by a lot of factors you probably never think about. If you find yourself wanting to work a few extra hours this evening, you just might have your ancestors to blame.
Scientists have the first unambiguous evidence of a water-dwelling dinosaur. And that’s set to rewrite dinosaur evolution all over again.
When you think “dinosaur,” you might think of huge reptiles that lived pretty much everywhere — on land, in the air, or in the water. But in fact, those air- and water-dwelling dinos weren’t dinos at all. Pterosaurs were flying lizards, and the long-necked plesiosaur was a marine reptile. A real dino nerd would tell you that non-avian dinosaurs were exclusively land-dwelling creatures. That is, until last month, when an international team of researchers announced that Spinosaurus was an aquatic dinosaur.
Scientists only have one Spinosaurus skeleton. It was found in the Kem Kem region of the Moroccan Sahara in 2008. Researchers thought it lived an amphibious lifestyle, only venturing into the water to eat fish. That’s because it has short hindlimbs, wide feet, dense bones, and elongated jaws. There was some talk that it might’ve been fully aquatic, but most paleontologists were skeptical because the skeleton was so incomplete — there wasn’t any evidence that it had a way of moving its body through the water.
That started to change in 2015 when paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim and his team returned to the site where the skeleton was found. They recovered a lot more fossils from the same individual, including a large tail with long spines that made it look a lot like a fin.
Once they were back in the lab, researchers took 3D images of the fin and used those data to create a physical model out of plastic. They attached the plastic tail to a robot and measured how it performed compared to tails belonging to other species of dinosaur, along with modern swimmers like crested newts and crocodiles. The results supported their argument that Spinosaurus was aquatic.
There’s still a lot we don’t know about the dino, but the evidence suggests that it was a bonafide river monster. It probably spent its life in the relatively deep water of a massive river system, deftly swimming through the depths in pursuit of prey.
This discovery didn’t just rewrite the history of dinosaurs — it’s also rewriting the history of academic research. In the past, fossils found in places like Morocco would end up in collections in Europe, Asia, or the U.S. But building infrastructure in North Africa was one big goal of this project, and the team succeeded. Now they have what one researcher says is the best collection of Kem Kem fossils, and it’s staying right there in Morocco. It’s one more way to make science accessible to everyone.
Getting endangered species to reproduce in captivity isn’t easy — just ask the giant panda. But it’s even harder when that species is tiny, aquatic, and doesn’t really move. Which is why this is so impressive: For the first time ever, aquarists have successfully reproduced ridged cactus coral in captivity. This breakthrough may help save the Florida Reef Tract, one of the world’s largest coral reefs and the only one in the United States.
Coral across the world are under threat for a huge number of reasons, but these coral specimens came to the Florida Aquarium in 2014 as a result of a disease that’s threatening the Florida Reef Tract. The aquarium hopes to use future generations of the species to repopulate the reef after the outbreak subsides.
The birth of the baby corals isn’t just a win for conservation — it’s also a huge scientific accomplishment since researchers didn’t know much about the species or its reproductive biology to begin with.
Coral reefs can be massive structures, but they’re made up of many, many individual animals called coral polyps. And just like many animals, coral polyps reproduce using sperm and eggs. Ridged cactus coral in particular reproduce by releasing sperm into the water all at once, usually over just a few nights in August. They achieve this synchronized spawning event by timing the release to the autumn moonrise. The eggs, meanwhile, stay inside the parent corals and begin developing into larvae once they’re fertilized. When the baby coral has developed, it’s released from the parent and it hits the ground running — I mean, swimming — in search of the right place to start its life.
The key for the aquarists was mimicking natural conditions as closely as possible. One of their most important tasks was recreating the cycles of light and dark that tell wild corals when to spawn. They used programmable lights to mimic the rising and setting of the sun and the moon, which they simulated with an LED mounted inside a Ping-Pong ball. Getting these cues just right was critical, because coral have evolved for millions of years to simultaneously release their sperm according to changes in light.
The project came to fruition on August 17, 2019, when the first generation of lab-raised ridged cactus coral spawned. This breakthrough brings scientists one step closer to saving the Florida Reef Tract — and corals around the world.
Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Starting with
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CODY: Today’s stories were written by Kelsey Donk and Grant Currin, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!