Welcome back to Natural News from The Field Museum.
We've got a one-armed Tyrannosaurus Rex,
some new research about fossil beardogs which are dog-like
things that look like bears
and the celebration of a really weird, tiny plant.
Let's go.
*music*
Sue lends a hand for science
Sue, our iconic social media happy Tyrannosaurus Rex
who boast the title of largest and most complete representative
of her species ever discovered
recently lent a hand in some new research.
Literally, her left arm was removed and
taken to Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois where paleontologist
Carmen Soriano is hoping it will help answer one of the biggest mysteries about these animals.
What did they use their impossibly small arms for anyway?
See, any fractures appear in bones that are used regularly and
although they heal over time those small
breaks can tell us about the extent of how the limb function using an
how the limb function using an
instrument a billion times more powerful than a regular CAT Scan.
Carmen will take micro CT scans of the arm in order to produce
a high-resolution image of its interior.
This will create a three-dimensional model so detailed
scientists will be able to examine the bone on a cellular level.
Illuminating microscopic details never seen before
including blood vessels and the point for
muscle attachments.
Having an internal map of Sue's arm bone
can tell us if she used them and how are they were used.
Like birds have hollow bones which aid
in flight and we know animals with
denser bones use them for strength-based reasons.
But even without looking at bone density,
I'm fairly certain we can rule
out Sue's flight ability using what
would have been the ittiest, bittiest little wings.
Although we're at the beginning of this research
perhaps soon we will finally
have an answer to the age-old question.
How did the T-rex use or didn't use their arms?
My guess?
Salsa dancing.
*music*
In 1913 graduate student Norma Pfeiffer
became the youngest person ever to earn
a doctorate from the University of Chicago at the age of 23,
at a time before women could even vote in the United States.
She had discovered a plant growing on the Chicago Southside that
would soon become one of the rarest in the world.
An odd, translucent blue flower she described
and named Thismia Americana.
How she spotted in the first place was remarkable.
Norma had been crawling around on the ground
collecting liverwort specimens when she saw this ethereal flower
poking out of the ground only about the size of
a pencil eraser.
Completely struck by its weirdness
she collected a few for study
and the odd plant became the subject of her graduate dissertation.
She began teaching at the University of North Dakota but returned every summer to look for
and study the rare plant
until in 1917 she was unable to locate it again.
Over the years
a barn was erected where
Thismia was last spotted and later a
factory was built on the site.
Over the course of her research
Norma realized the reason for its blue color is that
Thismia Americana was completely lacking
chlorophyll without chlorophyll it was unable to absorb energy via
photosynthesis instead relying on soil
nutrients that were digested by a fungus living in its roots.
Norma also discovered that this plant's closest living relative is called the Fairy Lantern
and is from the island of Tasmania.
Which begs the question
How did such a tiny plant
travel halfway across the world?
Later research speculated the plant
could hibernate underground
making a slow and steady journey across a land bridge to end up in modern-day Illinois.
But it's a mystery we may never solve.
Dr. Pfeiffer died in 1989 at the age of 100
but neither she nor her discovery will be forgotten.
She went on to publish 65 scientific articles primarily on lilies,
eventually moving to New York with her partner, Zella Colvin.
During her life she left maps and information about where she had
last seen Thismia Americana alive.
Today that area is a 119th and St. Torrence Avenue in Chicago.
And this year a group of field botanists
volunteers and and friends made a trek out to the area
in the hopes of finding another Thismia flower
a hundred years after it was last seen alive.
The group was unable to find Thismia this year
but botanist have not yet given up hope
that the weird, little blue flower may still be with us,
waiting beneath the surface to sprout again.
Beardogs! ... They're thing field museum
Field Museum postdoctoral researcher Susumu Tomiya
and colleague Jack Tseng from the State University of New York
recently published two new fossil discoveries in the Royal Society of Open Science.
But these weren't unearthed out in the field
like many exciting museum finds these fossils were laying in a specimen drawer
for 30 years waiting for the right person to notice their uniquness.
What Susumu and Jack were looking at were fossil beardogs,
which were ancient relatives of our modern-day wolves, weasels, and foxes.
And as the name indicates they pretty much resemble a mash-up of a bear and a dog.
Beardogs went extinct 5 to 10 million years ago
and the group changed a lot in the 44 million years they were around.
They evolved from being small, omnivorous insect and fruit eating animals
to larger more specialized meat-eaters.
Paleontologists often see this trend in the fossil record.
Earlier species of a group are small
and over time get larger as they're better able to take down prey and there are
fewer competitors stealing their food.
But by getting larger and limiting their food options,
they can't adapt as quickly to changes in their environment
then that often leads to the extinction of a species.
Well the species Susumu came across in the collection were already known and described
he realized they've been put in the wrong part of the Beardog tree.
For example, one of the fossils was tiny
like the size of a chihuahua.
Most of the beardogs from that time it was originally described were larger.
Leading Susumu to realize the specimen was much older than first suspected.
It's like you knowing what you think is your name
and later realizing the house you grew up in with your parents
isn't actually your house
and those aren't actually your parents because your parents live on another
continent and wouldn't be alive for another 15 million years
and also you are your parents parents.
These newly classified animals lived around 38 to 37 million years ago
in what's now Texas.
Now not only do we have a better understanding of the beardog family tree
but we can begin understanding what sorts of animals were thriving in North America at that time.
And that's another pieces place in the evolutionary tree of life.
Hey thanks for watching this episode of Natural News from the Field Museum!
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and... I'll see you later!
...smells like knowledge