Subscribe to our weekly newsletter
Ancient 'crazy beast' mammal classified as new species
It's likely the most complete skeleton that's ever been discovered of the strange Gondwanatheria mammal group, which roamed the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana alongside dinosaurs.
Krause et al.
- Gondwanatherians were mammals that roamed present-day Madagascar.
- The new species likely resembled a badger and was about the size of a cat, which was relatively big for its time.
- The discovery highlights how isolation often leads to strange, evolutionarily distinct creatures.
After discovering an extraordinarily well-preserved fossil, scientists have classified a new species of extinct mammal: Adalatherium hui, or "crazy beast."
It's likely the most complete Gondwanatherian skeleton that's ever been discovered. Gondwanatheria is an extinct group of mammals that roamed the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana in the Southern Hemisphere 70 million years ago, during the Maastrichtian age of the Late Cretaceous.
Today, the land that was Gondwana is Madagascar. Like many large and isolated islands, Madagascar is known for its unique flora and fauna that have evolved over the ages since it separated from the Indian Plate about 88 million years ago.
Krause et al
The newly reported "crazy beast" species is unique, in part, for its weight: about 3 kilograms, or 6.6 pounds. That may seem small. But this badger-like creature would've been relatively big for its time, when most mammals that coexisted with dinosaurs were about the size of a mouse.
"Long isolated places produce very unique results in biology," Guillermo Rougier, a paleontologist at the University of Louisville and co-author of the paper, said in a press release. "These fossils keep reminding us of the unexpected forms and shapes that evolution can take over long periods of time in an isolated place."
ANDREY ATUCHIN
One such unexpected feature: a bone in its snout that had disappeared millions of years earlier in the ancestors of modern mammals.
"Knowing what we know about the skeletal anatomy of all living and extinct mammals, it is difficult to imagine that a mammal like Adalatherium could have evolved," vertebrate palaeontologist David Krause from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, who helped discover the skeleton during an expedition in Madagascar in 1999, told Science Alert.
"It bends and even breaks a lot of rules."
Krause et al.
Adalatherium hui is also distinct for its teeth, which are arranged backward compared to all other mammals, suggesting the creature evolved from a remote ancestor uncommon to similar species.
Gondwanatherians were once thought to be related to modern sloths, anteaters and armadillos. But as lead study author Dr. David Krause told the New York Institute of Technology, this group of mammals is "now known to have been part of a grand evolutionary experiment doing their own thing, an experiment that failed and was snuffed out in the Eocene, about 45 million years ago."From Your Site Articles
- Scientists Suspect Genetic Underpinnings to Human Monogamy ›
- Animals are becoming nocturnal to avoid humans - Big Think ›
- Strange evolution: How ancient deer became whales - Big Think ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Popular
Scientists see 'rarest event ever recorded' in search for dark matter
The team caught a glimpse of a process that takes 18,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.
24 April, 2019
Image source: Pixabay
Surprising Science
- In Italy, a team of scientists is using a highly sophisticated detector to hunt for dark matter.
- The team observed an ultra-rare particle interaction that reveals the half-life of a xenon-124 atom to be 18 sextillion years.
- The half-life of a process is how long it takes for half of the radioactive nuclei present in a sample to decay.
</li></ul>
<p>Scientists have observed an extremely rare particle physics event using a detector that's hunting for dark matter, the mysterious material that physicists have yet to observe.</p><p>In a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1124-4" target="_blank">paper published in </a><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1124-4" target="_blank">the journal <em>Nature</em></a>, researchers with the XENON Collaboration said they'd observed the radioactive decay of a substance called xenon-124, an isotope of the element xenon — a colorless and odorless noble gas found in tiny amounts in the atmosphere. The event — a "two-neutrino double electron capture" — has eluded scientists for decades. </p><p>It happens when "two protons in a nucleus are simultaneously converted into neutrons by the absorption of two electrons from one of the atomic shells and the emission of two electron neutrinos." After this occurs, the event shoots out a predictable cascade of X-rays and Auger electrons that scientists look for using an ultra-sensitive detector, buried about 5,000 feet beneath Italy's Gran Sasso mountain where it's shielded from cosmic rays.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"We have shown that we can observe the rarest events ever recorded," Ethan Brown, a professor of physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and co-author of the study, told <em><a href="https://www.newsweek.com/dark-matter-hunters-observe-rarest-event-ever-recorded-1404823" target="_blank">Newsweek</a></em>. "The key finding is that an isotope formerly thought to be completely stable has now been shown to decay on an unimaginably long timescale."</p><p>How long is that timescale? The team estimated that xenon-124's half-life is about 18 sextillion years — or 18,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years — which is than one trillion times the age of our universe, according to the team. It's the slowest process ever measured directly, the team wrote in a statement. </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"It's an amazing to have witnessed this process, and it says that our detector can measure the rarest thing ever recorded," Brown told <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/dark-matter-rarest-ever-event-xenon-half-life-radioactive-discovery-breakthrough-latest-science-a8884896.html" target="_blank"><em>The Independent.</em></a></p>
<div id="31261" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="F55APY1568274781"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1121097717781028864" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">We are extremely excited to share with you that we have observed the rarest decay process ever measured! It is the… https://t.co/7ILxlSMGUf</div> — XENON1T (@XENON1T)<a href="https://twitter.com/Xenon1T/statuses/1121097717781028864">1556125499.0</a></blockquote></div><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"We designed the XENON1T experiment to look for dark matter, a new kind of matter that makes up 85 percent of the mass of the universe, but interacts so rarely that it's never been observed," Brown said. "This experiment is so sensitive to very rare events that we can make all kinds of other rare physics measurements. One of those is this decay of xenon-124. Although our primary goal was always the discovery of dark matter, we knew there was a good chance we could see this rare decay, so we set out to do so."</p><p>To get that good chance, the team had to expose their detector to a huge amount of xenon atoms by stocking it with 3.2 tons worth of liquid xenon.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"XENON1T is a giant vat of liquid xenon surrounded by light sensors," Brown said. "When dark matter collides in the xenon, or when a radioactive decay occurs inside, we get a tiny flash of light and a little bunch of charge out of the xenon. We measure these with the light sensors and reconstruct everything we can about the original event that caused the light and charge."</p><p>Although the team didn't observe dark matter — which is the primary purpose of the detector — the recent observations could help scientists learn more about neutrinos, one of the least understood fundamental particles in the universe.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"It proves that this XENON detector technology we use for dark matter is much more versatile," graduate student Christian Wittweg, Ph.D student at the University of Münster in Germany, told <em><a href="https://gizmodo.com/dark-matter-detector-makes-incredible-neutrino-observat-1834270148" target="_blank">Gizmodo</a></em>. "We get all these cool analyses... for free after having built an experiment sensitive enough to hunt for dark matter."</p><p>The team plans to use its newer XENONnT detector to continue hunting for dark matter, the elusive material that's estimated to comprise about <a href="https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/scientists-figure-out-how-to-trap-dark-matter" target="_blank">26.8 percent of all the content in the universe</a>.</p>
Keep reading
Show less
What we want from horror is a cardiac jump-start, study suggests
A study looks at the ingredients of a good scare.
28 October, 2020
Credit: Nathan Wright/Unsplash
Mind & Brain
<ul class="ee-ul"></ul>
<p class=""><br></p>
<p>There's been a fair amount of research into why people enjoy being scared by movies, haunted houses, and so on. A recent study looked at a good fright's capacity for creating a sort of arousal, a <a href="https://bigthink.com/mind-brain/science-explains-why-we-love-being-scared" target="_self">euphoria that lowers our brain's stress levels</a>. Of course, being genuinely frightened by actual danger isn't so much of a rush.</p><p>So, what's too frightening and what's just frightening enough to be enjoyable? A new study accepted for publication though not yet published in the journal Psychological Science from researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark attempts to scare up an answer. It comes from the school's <a href="https://cc.au.dk/recreational-fear-lab/" target="_blank">Recreational Fear Lab</a>.</p><p>"By investigating how humans derive pleasure from fear," lead author Marc Malmdorf Andersen of the school's Interacting Minds Center tells <a href="https://www.newswise.com/articles/haunted-house-researchers-investigate-the-mystery-of-playing-with-fear2" target="_blank">Newswise</a>, "we find that there seems to be a 'sweet spot' where enjoyment is maximized."</p>
Catching fear in a bottle
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDYyNzg1Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyOTQwMTcyMn0.WtpJ1E_dhK2o09fBpKARynj4_p5NXeklgsXsbd7xr9w/img.jpg?width=980" id="8ff51" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f10dd9188b173f4a36e85e9325507c6b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Credit: Photo Boards/Unsplash
<p>Previous studies have tracked physiological signs of fear arousal, but none have established a one-to-one correlation between that arousal and specific, actual fear events.</p><p>Andersen says that much of the research has been conducted in lab settings with weak fear stimuli, observing subjects as they experience things like scary videos. Scares in these situations tend to be weak and difficult to measure. Even harder to track in these situations is the link between enjoyment and fear. </p>Eyes everywhere
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/109695164" width="100%" height="480" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="267ba87cfb8591ed5830499574d2272a"></iframe><p>Andersen and his colleagues conducted their experiments at <a href="https://dystopia.dk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Dystopia</a> Haunted House, a commercial attraction in Vejle, Denmark constructed in an old, run-down factory. The Recreational Fear Lab has a long-standing partnership with the spook shack.</p><p>They outfitted 100 volunteers with heart monitors and sent them on their terrifying way through the 50-room horror mansion. The facility incorporates a number of fright mechanisms including frequent jump scares in which a sudden threat takes a visitor by surprise.</p><p>Researchers surreptitiously observed their participants on closed-circuit video as they made their way through the attraction. They tracked each individual's scares, scoring them for intensity according to their visible reactions. After exiting the attraction, individuals self-reported their experiences in the haunted house.</p><p>Combining these self-reports with observer notes and each participant's heart-rate data gave the researchers subjective, behavioral, and physiological insights into the ways in which fear is experienced, and when it's a good thing or not.</p>A pair of inverted U-shapes
<p>In analyzing their data, the researchers saw two separate inverted u-shape curves. One depicted participants' enjoyment based on their self-reports and observed behavior. A similar u-curve was detected in their heart rates showing that just the right amount of heartbeat acceleration is associated with fun, but too much is too much. It's the terror Goldilocks zone.</p><p>Says Andersen, "If people are not very scared, they do not enjoy the attraction as much, and the same happens if they are too scared. Instead, it seems to be the case that a 'just-right' amount of fear is central for maximizing enjoyment."</p><p>The research suggests that being scared is enjoyable when it represents just a quick minor physiological deviation from one's normal state. When it goes on too long, however, or triggers too severe a physiological change, it becomes disturbing. Game over.</p><p>Andersen notes that this is not dissimilar to the factors known to make interpersonal play enjoyable: just the right amount of uncertainty and surprise. These are, maybe not coincidentally, also the ingredients of a successful joke.</p>
Keep reading
Show less
Fireball meteorite offers clues to origins of life
A meteorite that smashed into a frozen lake in Michigan may explain the origins of life on Earth, finds study.
28 October, 2020
Security camera footage of the fireball in the sky over Toledo, Ohio. | Meteorite hunter Robert Ward shows the meteorite on Strawberry Lake by Hamburg, Michigan.
Credit: T. Masterson and the American Meteor Society | Robert Ward
Surprising Science
- A new paper reveals a meteorite that crashed in Michigan in 2018 contained organic matter.
- The findings support the panspermia theory and could explain the origins of life on Earth.
- The organic compounds on the meteorite were well-preserved.
<p>A meteorite that blasted through the night sky over Michigan and crashed into a frozen lake had another surprise in store. A new study found that it contained 2,600 "pristine" organic compounds of extraterrestrial origins and can provide clues about the beginning of life on our planet.</p><p>Researchers employed weather radar to track down the pieces of the space rock that landed on Strawberry Lake by Hamburg, Michigan on January 16, 2018. The meteorite hunters were able to gather up the scattered parts before they changed their chemical constitution by being exposed to liquid water.</p><p>The paper's lead author, Philipp Heck, a curator at the Field Museum and associate professor at the University of Chicago, shared that the meteorite was unique in that it fell onto a frozen lake and was quickly found. That kept it as close to how it was in space as we could hope.</p>
<p style="margin-left: 20px;">"We could see the minerals weren't much altered and later found that it contained a rich inventory of extraterrestrial organic compounds," said Heck. "These kinds of organic compounds were likely delivered to the early Earth by meteorites and might have contributed to the ingredients of life."</p><p>Check out this video of the meteorite streaking across the Michigan sky –</p>
Meteor streaks through Michigan sky
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="80b7f30820153b35fc515592d7475f53"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EPu2qnqMYBo?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>Where did the meteorite come from in the first place? The scientists think it broke off from an asteroid that was orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. While it started as a 6-foot rock above Earth, the part of it that hit the ground was just the size of a peach pit. </p><p><span style="background-color: initial;">As it got to Michigan, the scientists tracked the meteorite with NASA's weather radar, which can detect hail and rain. </span><span style="background-color: initial;">"These pieces of meteorite fell into that size range, and so weather radar helped show the position and velocity of the meteorite," explained Heck. This resulted in the meteorite being quickly located. It took meteorite hunter Robert Ward just two days to find the first piece of the celestial intruder on the frozen surface of the lake.</span></p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDYyNTk3NC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMjgwODIzMH0.kt9hv5S8SUOn1o7T8yrrx0ORqTG8HTFfbhN6gkeD0b4/img.jpg?width=980" id="ba656" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="709a74ae9fc9fedc51d3e14beb1c90e0" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
The meteorite that smashed into Strawberry Lake carried pristine extraterrestrial organic compounds.
Credit: Field Museum
<p>The finding of organic materials on the meteorite is certainly not quite like coming upon a full-fledged alien, but the presence of carbon-containing compounds supports the theory of <em>panspermia</em>. It proposes that ingredients necessary for life are spread throughout the Universe by such space rocks.</p><p>Check out the new paper in <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/maps.13584" target="_blank"><em>Meteoritics & Planetary Science.</em></a></p>
<p class=""><br></p>
Keep reading
Show less
Technology & Innovation
Should facial recognition software be banned on college campuses?
A heated debate is occurring at the University of Miami.
Scroll down to load more…
