This week’s biggest stories
It’s been a week for overturning certainties, and the latest discovery of 300,000-year-old remains in Moroccan mine is no exception. Scientists believe that these are the oldest Homo sapiens bones ever found and they challenge the very foundations of our understanding of human evolution. Put that alongside the discovery of Kelt-9b, the hottest known giant planet (found using Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescopes, made with off-the-shelf components, which in itself is pretty amazing) and this week’s been pretty damned interesting even without the distraction of a general election. But there were also a couple of quirkier excitements in store, not least a fossil mushroom from the era of the dinosaurs (yes, a dino-spore! I’ll get my coat) a unique find, believed to be 115m years old. Surprisingly, it’s similar to today’s fungi. And if your romance has bombed as badly as my jokes, help may be at hand. Cambridge University neuropsychologist Barbara Sahakian thinks that brain training might help you to avoid humiliation after heartbreak, by building up willpower that will prevent late-night ex-texting and other regrettable lovelorn behaviour. Finally, this is serious, kids. “Fake news” has become a bit of a buzzphrase, but we really need to start taking action against it. Former Nasa chief scientist Ellen Stofan, who left the US space agency in December, has warned that Americans are “under siege” from climate disinformation. She says that fake news spread by those with a profit motive is leaving many people oblivious to the threat of climate change, despite the science being unequivocal. Time for us all to arm ourselves with facts, research and trustworthy sources of information. Right, lecture over, you may go.
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Most endangered creature of the week
Vaquitas are a type of small porpoise whose already small numbers are dropping at an alarming rate - conservationists fear that there could be just 15 left by the end of the year. 15. In the whole world. So will the audacious and unprecedented plan to save the remaining vaquitas work?
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Straight from the lab – top picks from our experts on the blog network
Feather furore: T rex may not have been fluffy after all, skin study suggests | Lost Worlds Revisited
Since the well-publicised discoveries of exquisitely-preserved feathered dinosaurs from China, the debate has shifted from ‘did dinosaurs have feathers?’ to ‘which dinosaurs had feathers, what sort of feathers did they have, and where did they have them?’. We can even look at changes in feathers through the lifetime of a dinosaur, from juveniles to older individuals. The species that have been described with true feathers are all theropods: the bipedal, carnivorous dinosaur group. There is no evidence for feathered sauropods (the enormous, long-necked, four-legged herbivores), but there is some evidence for feather-like filaments in other dinosaur groups, which some researchers have interpreted as evidence that dinosaurs as an entire group may have possessed feathers as an ancestral condition. Against this is the fact that most dinosaur integument impressions show scaly, ‘reptilian’ skin.
Did children build the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna? | The Past and the Curious
In 2015 we began excavating another non-elite cemetery in a wadi behind a further set of courtiers’ tombs at the northern end of the city, and here the tale takes a stranger turn. As we started to get the first skeletons out of the ground it was immediately clear that the burials were even simpler than at the South Tombs Cemetery, with almost no grave goods provided for the dead and only rough matting used to wrap the bodies. As the season progressed, an even weirder trend started to become clear to the excavators. Almost all the skeletons we exhumed were immature; children, teenagers and young adults, but we weren’t really finding any infants or older adults. Our three excavation areas were far apart, spaced across the length of the cemetery, but comparing notes all three areas were giving the same result. This certainly was unusual and not a little bit creepy.
Could Paris Syndrome explain Theresa May’s campaign meltdowns? | Brain flapping
Have you heard of Paris Syndrome? It’s a surreal phenomenon whereby Japanese tourists in particular arrive in Paris and seem to undergo some sort of mental collapse, experiencing raised anxiety, delusions, irrational feelings of persecution and hostility, even hallucinations, or vomiting. The main theories as to what’s happening here is that Japanese tourists have an incredibly romanticised belief in what Paris is like thanks to countless media and film portrayals. The reality of it being, you know, mostly a normal city, coupled with the tangible differences in behaviour and manners between Japanese and Parisian culture, induces an intense and debilitating form of culture shock.
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Alex Bellos’s Monday puzzle
I know you’re clever because you’re a Lab Notes reader. But are you really clever? Like, top 10% clever? Better check the answers to see if you’re as smart as you think you are ...
Visit Alex Bellos’s Adventures in Numberland blog for more marvellous maths
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Science Weekly podcast
Nicola Davis is joined by mathematical physicist Professor Robbert Dijkgraaf to discuss The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge. What is “useless” knowledge? Can it ever become useful? And how can this approach to scientific research be applied further afield?
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Eye on science – this week’s top images
Arachnophobes look away now - this gallery celebrates the publication of A Field Guide to Spiders of Australia, and glories in fabulously named species like sparklemuffins, the alien butt spider, disco mirror ball spiders and dancing peacock spiders. Apologies to those who do not dig eight-legged scuttlers - I’ll make it up to you, I swear.
