The brightest take on this week’s science
Welcome back! I am very excited to introduce you to a dinosaur like none you have ever seen.
I’m also here to spill the tea on your ancestors, who were doing the hanky-panky with their closely related cousins more than 140,000 years ago.
Also in this issue:
🤯 A mind-blowing science fact
🔬 A microscope mystery
Let’s see where the science takes us!
LOOK OUT
You’ve never seen a dinosaur quite like this
A life reconstruction of Spicomellus afer. (Matthew Dempsey/Natural History Museum)
Feast your eyes on a dinosaur like nothing the world has ever seen. But don’t get too close…
Some of those spikes are the length of golf clubs.
“I've spent my career working on armored dinosaurs but I'd never seen anything like this," paleontologist Susannah Maidment of the London Natural History Museum told ScienceAlert.
Spicomellus afer is the earliest ankylosaur ever found, more than 165 million years old, and it is the first to be discovered on the African continent.
Its latest remains, uncovered in 2023, have absolutely blown scientists away.
"It was immediately clear that it was jaw-droppingly weird," said paleontologist Richard Butler of the University of Birmingham.
In the words of our head journalist, Michelle Starr, Spicomellus is spikier than a punk rave.
HEADLINES
What else we're watching
🏅This week’s most read: One form of exercise improves sleep the most
LOOK IN
Ancient skull hides secret Neanderthal fling
The child died between 3 and 5 years of age, of unknown causes. (Tel Aviv University)
More than 140,000 years ago, a human and a Neanderthal met and ‘sealed the deal’.
Their affair led to a daughter, and her bones have now become the oldest physical evidence of mating between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals.
The skeleton was discovered nearly a century ago in what is now Israel, but it’s taken this long to confirm the child’s heritage.
The shape of her skull is like our own, but her lower jaw, inner ear, and intracranial blood vessels look more typical of a Neanderthal.
The discovery confirms what scientists have found in our modern genes: a rich history of interbreeding going back as far as 250,000 years ago.
Once upon a time, our closely related cousins were close to us indeed.
ZOOM ZONE
Microscope mystery: What do you see?
(Salah Uddin/Getty Images)
A) Microplastics
B) Salt crystals
C) Diatoms
D) Kidney stones
Answer at the bottom.
LOW-KEY GENIUS
OCD has a unique brain marker
(Akinbostanci/E+/Getty Images)
Electrodes that were implanted into the brains of 11 people with chronic OCD have revealed a clear biological marker of the disorder for the first time.
During compulsive acts, either mental or physical, researchers noticed two prominent brain waves that surged across all brain regions.
"In psychiatry, it is almost never possible to link a symptom so directly to brain activity," says neuroscientist Tara Arbab of the University of Amsterdam.
"This study shows that it is possible."
More effective treatments could soon be on the way.
WOW FACTOR
Science fact of the week
(Nicky Dowling/Moment/Getty Images)
The deadliest animal Down Under is not a venomous snake. Or a crocodile. Or a shark.
It’s not even a native Australian species.
It’s a horse…
Between 2001 and 2021, nearly a third of Australia’s animal-related deaths involved horses, and falling was the most commonly cited reason.
DOPAMINE HIT
Before you go…
Check out this crab riding a jellyfish.
Microscope answer: Kidney stones.
Even though kidney stones are often invisible to the naked eye, they can still cause enormous pain on their way out of the body. Some people say that passing crystals of uric acid is the most painful experience of their lives. 😬
That’s all for today… see you next week!
Over and out,
- Carly
