Welcome back to the Abstract! 

In the spirit of catching up with relatives over the holidays, I’d like to introduce you to a member of your extra-extended family: The Saber-toothed Gorgonopsian from Mallorca. Get acquainted with your great-great-great (insert about 100 million greats here) grandmother’s cousin. It’s probably not going to behave well at the dinner table. 

Then, the grim prognoses of Disney princesses are outlined in one of the world’s premiere medical journals. Next, I’m back on the cannibalism beat; I just can’t help myself. Finally, an archaeological adventure a world away.

Happy winter solstice to all who thrive in darkness. If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, say hi to the Sun for us.

Wet Hot Pangean Summer

Matamales-Andreu, Rafel et al. “Early–middle Permian Mediterranean gorgonopsian suggests an equatorial origin of therapsids.” Nature Communications.

If you trace your lineage far back enough, you will eventually reach therapsid ancestors. Mammals sprouted out of this ancient group of creatures some 225 million years ago, around the same time that dinosaurs were ascending to world domination. But though therapsids were abundant during the Permian era, the period before the emergence of mammals and dinosaurs, gaps in the fossil record have made it difficult to reconstruct the origins of this ancestral group.

Enter: DA21/17-01-01, a fossil specimen that dates back at least 270 million years, making it likely the oldest therapsid ever found. The dog-sized animal was a “gorgonopsian,” a group of therapsid carnivores with saber-like teeth reminiscent of later mammals, but that still maintained more reptilian features, including oviparity (they laid eggs rather than birthing live offspring). 

Paleontologists were surprised to discover this gorgonopsian on the Spanish island of Mallorca, which was located in the equatorial region of the supercontinent Pangaea during the Permian. Almost all other gorgonopsian remains are preserved in locations like Russia and South Africa that would have been at higher latitudes, nearer to the poles. Previous work has suggested that therapsids originated at higher latitudes and then radiated into equatorial regions, but DA21/17-01-01 hints that the reverse may be true.

“The gorgonopsian from Mallorca provides the first unequivocal evidence that therapsids were indeed present in the summer wet biomes of equatorial Pangaea during the early–middle Permian transition, suggesting that the group may have originated in lower, tropical latitudes, rather than in the higher latitudes where nearly all of their fossils are known,” said researchers led by Rafel Matamales-Andreu of the Museu Balear de Ciències Naturals. 

“If therapsids originated in the tropics, this has implications for metabolic evolution in the clade,” the team added.

First off, let’s acknowledge that “the gorgonopsian from Mallorca” is a sublime phrase. It should be the title of a Criterion Collection classic. But more importantly, the discovery of this “unambiguously early” therapsid in the Pangean tropics offers a fleeting glimpse of a “ghost lineage” of mammal precursors. Ghost lineages are branches of the evolutionary tree that are presumed to exist based on circumstantial evidence, but that didn’t leave direct traces in the fossil record. Therapsid fossils proliferate in the middle and upper Permian, but scientists have long suspected that they originated much earlier, more than 300 million years ago.

“We confirm the traditional understanding that there was a relatively long ghost lineage of about 15 million years between the origin of ‘total-group’ therapsids and the radiation of the major therapsid clades,” around 278 million years ago, the team said. 

“This discovery opens the door for findings that may fill in the early therapsid fossil gap in the lower Permian, not in high latitude sites as traditionally thought, but in the so far poorly explored lower–middle Permian areas of palaeoequatorial Pangaea. Those locations hold the potential to elucidate the early evolution of therapsids and the origins of mammalian features.”

In other words, it’s worth searching for more of these early therapsids at overlooked sites, like the Balearic Islands. Some features that distinguish us as mammals today have their roots in what the study describes, somewhat luxuriously, as the “ancient summer wet biome of equatorial Pangaea.”

Death Becomes Disney Princesses 

Van Dijk, Sanne et al. “Living happily ever after? The hidden health risks of Disney princesses,” The British Medical Journal.

Every December, the British Medical Journal publishes a Christmas issue filled with parody studies and light-hearted editorials. My favorite example this year confronts the pressing health problems of Disney princesses, such as Cinderella’s risk of respiratory illness, Belle’s exposure to rabies, and Pocahontas’ bone-shattering penchant for diving off high cliffs.

But perhaps the best case study is Jasmine, whose social isolation is described in these devastating terms: “While the Genie might sing ‘you ain’t never had a friend like me,’ the truth is that Jasmine has no friends at all,” according to researchers led by Sanne van Dijk of the University of Twente. 

Wow, the medical consensus about Jasmine is pretty harsh. To add insult to injury, the editorial notes that Jasmine’s one companion, the tiger Rajah, “poses a risk of zoonotic infection as well as craniofacial and cervical spinal injuries” adding that “although Rajah seems like a sweet tiger, its natural instincts could lead to a dangerous and potentially fatal situation—a true Arabian nightmare.”

Please Disney, listen to these experts and start showing the real-life consequences of the princess lifestyle. We need a rabid Belle foaming at the mouth, Pocahontas in a full body cast, and Rajah brutally mauling Jasmine. Otherwise, we are sending a message to young people that it is safe to hang out with captive tigers and chimeric beasts while jumping off Niagara Falls. 

I will note that the study has nothing to say about Moana, who I will hereafter conclude is the healthiest Disney princess. We salute a physiologically robust chief.

Massacre at Charterhouse Warren

Schulting, Rick et al. ‘The darker angels of our nature’: Early Bronze Age butchered human remains from Charterhouse Warren, Somerset, UK.” Antiquity.

Steel yourself for some bad vibes, because this is a story about an unhinged cannibalistic massacre that occurred 4,000 years ago. Archaeologists working at Charterhouse Warren, an English Bronze Age burial site, have discovered evidence of a grotesque attack designed to “other” its many victims through butchery and consumption of flesh.

“Some 37 men, women and children—and possibly many more—were killed at close quarters with blunt instruments and then systematically dismembered and defleshed, their long bones fractured in a way that can only be described as butchery,” said researchers led by Rick Schulting of the University of Oxford. “Body parts were deposited in what was probably a single event between 2210 and 2010 BC, in a partly infilled shaft that was still 15 meters deep.”

“While evidence for interpersonal violence is not unknown in British prehistory, nothing else on this scale has been found,” the team noted.

It’s unlikely that these acts were motivated by either “culinary cannibalism,” embodied by Hannibal Lecter, or “survival cannibalism,” the desperate acts of starvation typified by tragedies like the Donner Party. The cruel and unusual treatment of the victims, even after their deaths, suggests a deliberate attempt at dehumanization.

The events “may be best interpreted as an extreme form of ‘violence as performance,’ in which the aim was to not only eradicate another group, but to thoroughly ‘other’ them in the process,” according to the study. “While the remains themselves seem to have been removed from view soon afterwards (to judge from the paucity of carnivore scavenging), an event of this scale could not be hidden, and no doubt resonated across the wider region and over time. In this sense it was a political statement.”

My advice is to steer clear of political statements that demand ritualistic cannibalism, but I’m open to the marketplace of ideas.

It Belongs in a Marseum

Holcomb, Justin A et al. “The emerging archaeological record of Mars.” Nature Astronomy.

Let’s close out with an archaeology story that doesn’t involve dehumanizing bloodbaths; we will need to travel to another planet to accomplish this task. No massacres have occurred on Mars at the time of this writing, but the red planet is home to plenty of archaeological sites and artifacts, which I shall hereafter refer to as Martifacts. 

Technological relics on Mars, such as dead rovers or spent heat shields, are part of the human archaeological record, raising questions about the culture and heritage value of Martifacts.      

“Some scientists have referred to this cultural material as ‘space trash’ or ‘galactic litter,’ implying that it may have limited scientific value and could cause environmental problems and put future missions at risk,” said researchers led by Justin Holcomb of the Kansas Geological Survey. 

“We agree that these concerns warrant further investigation, but we argue that the objects need to be evaluated as important cultural heritage in need of protection because they record the legacy of space exploration by our species,” the team said. 

The article reminds me of the heartrending xkcd comic that portrays NASA’s Spirit rover coming to terms with its abandonment on Mars. Space archaeology can seem esoteric but it is relevant to consider values about our off-Earth heritage at a time when visions of Martian colonization are culturally ascendent. There is more to this extraterrestrial archaeological record than the sum of its dusty metal parts. 

Also, I’m calling dibs on the remains of the Opportunity rover right now and we all know that dibs are legally binding.

Thanks for reading! See you next week.

Welcome back to the Abstract! 

How are you? Do you feel emotionally stable? Just checking because our main story this week is about the odds that our dear blessed Sun will release a superflare that wipes out global infrastructure—or worse! TW: Heliophysics.

Then, a palate cleanser with the Firefly Sparkle, its Best Friend, its New Best Friend, and the Canadians we met along the way (it will make sense, I promise). Next, a spotlight on the small but consequential poops that could help fight climate change. Last, there’s a party at tortoise rock, but your RSVP is 35,000 years too late. There’s some real hair-raisers and heart-warmers this week. Enjoy!

Can the Sun Produce Apocalyptic Superflares? IMO Might Be GTK!

Vasilyev, Valeriy et al. “Sun-like stars produce superflares roughly once per century.” Science.

Once again, it is time to salute the almighty Sun. This week, scientists made new strides in addressing a longstanding and rather unsettling mystery: Does the Sun ever produce “superflares,” which are stellar outbursts that are thousands of times more destructive than a typical solar flare? It’s a great question to ask if you are interested in the odds that the Sun might obliterate civilization, and perhaps a whole lot else, within our lifetimes.

Now, new research based on observations of more than 56,000 Sun-like stars suggests that they produce superflares around once every century on average, which is a much higher rate than previous estimates. But before you start drawing up blueprints for a subterranean fortress, let me emphasize that the study does not conclude that the Sun necessarily shares this predilection for carnage. We just do not yet know enough about the risk of solar superflares, which was one motivation for the new study.

“Solar flares have been observed for less than two centuries,” said researchers led by Valeriy Vasilyev of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research. The team noted that the strongest impact in this brief record is the Carrington Event, a massive solar storm in the year 1859 that reached a total energy exceeding 10³² erg (an erg is a very small unit in the centimetre-gram-second system for measuring energy; there are 10 million ergs in one joule). 

The Carrington number falls well below the threshold of superflares observed around other main sequence stars like the Sun, which range from 10³⁴ erg to 10³⁶ erg. I don’t have a handy comparison here, but this is the type of energy that could potentially mess with a planet’s atmosphere, wreak havoc on ecosystems, and melt the ice on outer solar system moons.

“It is unknown whether the Sun can unleash [...] superflares, and if so, how frequently that could happen,” the researchers said. “The period of direct solar observation is too short to reach any firm conclusions.”

One window into this mystery is the cosmogenic isotope record, which is an earthly archive of solar activity that shows up in natural sources like ice cores and tree rings (for more details about this record, check out the lead story in a previous column). This record has exposed five confirmed (and three candidate) extreme solar events over the past 10,000 years that would have caused major technological disruptions if they happened today. But there’s no recent evidence that the Sun has unleashed superflares powerful enough to trigger, for instance, an extinction event.  

In their study, Vasilyev and his colleagues amassed a huge dataset of Sun-like stars observed by NASA’s retired Kepler space telescope. The team is not the first to plumb the Kepler archive for superflares around Sun-like stars. But the new study is based on a larger observation set  that includes objects left out of previous work, such as stars with unknown rotation periods and stars that are not in isolated positions in the sky. 

The 56,000+ stars in this sample flare at frequencies that are approximately two orders of magnitude higher than previous measurements, averaging out at once a century. But it will take more research to understand whether the Sun shares this propensity with members of its stellar class, or if superflares only occur in certain circumstances that (hopefully) don’t currently apply to the Sun.

“We cannot exclude the possibility that there is an inherent difference between flaring and non-flaring stars that was not accounted for by our selection criteria,” Vasilyev and his colleagues said. “If so, the flaring stars in the Kepler observations would not be representative of the Sun.” 

“If, instead, our sample of Sun-like stars is representative of the Sun’s future behavior, it is substantially more likely to produce a superflare than was previously thought,” they concluded.

There’s one possible solution to the Fermi paradox. Hahaha…sleep tight! 

The Adventures of the Firefly Sparkle and Friends 

Mowla, Lamiya and Iyer, Kartheik et al. “Formation of a low-mass galaxy from star clusters in a 600-million-year-old Universe.” Nature.

Once upon a time, there was a baby galaxy called the Firefly Sparkle. It sounds like it hails from the My Little Pony universe, but the Firefly Sparkle was born during cosmic dawn, an era that unfolded a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have revealed incredible details about this galactic infant, including the presence of two neighboring galaxies called Firefly-Best Friend and Firefly-New Best Friend. 

“The Firefly Sparkle exhibits traits of a young, gas-rich galaxy in its early formation stage,” said researchers co-led by Lamiya Mowla of Wellesley University and Kartheik Iyer of Columbia University. “These observations provide our first spectrophotometric view of a typical galaxy in its early stages, in a 600-million-year-old Universe.”

Because looking deep into space means looking back in time, we can only observe the version of the Firefly Sparkle and its Best Friends that existed at cosmic dawn. In this early era, the Firefly Sparkle was about 10,000 times less massive than the present Milky Way, but it’s possible that it has ultimately evolved into a galaxy similar to our own somewhere out there beyond our observational limits.

In addition to being a mind-boggler, the study gets extra points for its basis on the Canadian Unbiased Cluster Survey, or CANUCS, which is a specialized JWST experiment run by Canadian researchers. We stand on guard for a top-tier acronym. o7

The Tiny Poops that Could Help Save the World

Sharma, Diksha et al. “Organoclay flocculation as a pathway to export carbon from the sea surface.” Scientific Reports.

I never would have expected the phrase “fecal pellet density” to lift my spirits, but research into the salvatory power of zooplankton poop has managed to do just that this week. 

Zooplankton, a diverse group of tiny aquatic animals, are a key valve in the so-called “biological pump” that removes greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and stores it in seafloor sediments. One speculative solution to the climate crisis is to make this pump more efficient in order to lock away more of the gasses that are contributing to global warming. 

Now, scientists have discovered that sprinkling a little bit of clay dust over an algal bloom, which is a food source for zooplankton, provides some heft to the animals’ excrement. As a consequence, more carbon gas gets pulled down by the clay poop anchors to ocean depths conducive to sequestration.

One zooplankton species produced “denser fecal pellets with 1.8- to 3.6-fold higher sinking velocity compared to controls,” said researchers led by Diksha Sharma of Dartmouth College. “These findings provide insights into how atmospheric dust-derived clay minerals interact with marine microorganisms to enhance the biological carbon pump, facilitating the burial of organic carbon at depths where it is less likely to exchange with the atmosphere.”

And that’s why my vote for Time’s Person of the Year is: Fecal Pellets.

There’s a Party at Tortoise Rock and Your Ancestors Are Invited

Barzilai, Omry et al. “Early human collective practices and symbolism in the Early Upper Paleolithic of Southwest Asia.” Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences. 

Some 35,000 years ago, dozens of people gathered for communal rituals around an engraved tortoise in a hidden chamber of Manot Cave in Israel. That’s the conclusion reached by archaeologists who discovered what they believe is a concealed “ritual compound…in the deepest and darkest part of Manot Cave” that was centered around a geometric depiction of a tortoise on a dolomite boulder.  

“Thus far, Manot Cave is the only site in the Levant to yield clear evidence for the existence of a communal ritual compound in the Upper Paleolithic,” a period that spans approximately 50,000 to 12,000 years ago, said researchers led by Omry Barzilai of the University of Haifa. 

“The reasoning behind the Manot artist’s choice to represent the tortoise in a semi-abstract and symbolic manner remains unknown,” the team added. “Beyond their dietary importance, tortoises probably played a major role in the spiritual world of the Paleolithic people, possibly because of the resemblance in form and function between the shell and the cave, both providing shelter and protection. In the Epipaleolithic period, tortoise remains have also been associated with burial practices.”

The study is worth a look for the images, as well as the slick 3D reconstruction of Manot Cave. This site was discovered quite recently, in 2008, after a bulldozer broke through its roof, but it has already yielded major finds about its human occupants as far back as 55,000 years ago.

Move over, tinsel and string lights: This holiday season, we’re bringing back ritual engraved tortoises. Sometimes, the old ways are best.

Thanks for reading! See you next week.

Welcome back to the Abstract! This week, mammoth is the main item on the menu—or at least, it was 13,000 years ago in Montana. Scientists reconstructed the diet of a mother who ate like a scimitar-tooth cat and nursed her infant, whose bones are the last human remnant of a once expansive population.

Then, a team delivers a blow to the dream of a habitable Venus, even as another team demonstrates that the early solar system was awash in watery mist. Last, there are spiders using their webs as slingshots, and you ought to know about it. Enjoy! 

The Son of the Mammoth-Eaters

Chatters, James and Potter, Ben et al. “Mammoth featured heavily in Western Clovis diet.” Science Advances.

Some 13,000 years ago, a group of dynamic hunter-gatherers rapidly swept south across North America, which was then a landscape of receding glaciers and gigantic game, like mammoths and American camels. These peoples, known today as the Clovis culture, left behind a wealth of archaeological remains, such as camps filled with tools, sharp weapons, and the butchered remains of their prey (including the Wyoming site mentioned in last week’s story about bone needles). 

But though signs of this enterprising culture are scattered across the continent, only one Clovis individual has been discovered and identified so far in the archaeological record. Anzick-1, who is named after the Montana burial site where he was carefully interred by his people, was between the ages of one and two when he died some 12,900 years ago. His remains have inspired a series of discoveries, especially once he became the first ancient Native American to have his genome fully sequenced about a decade ago. In the wake of that major breakthrough, Anzick-1 was laid to rest again as part of an intertribal burial ceremony during the summer of 2014.

Now, scientists have resolved a major question about the Clovis culture from samples of Anzick-1’s skull, a project that was conducted “in consultation with and support of regional Native American tribes in Montana and Wyoming” according to a new study. It’s clear that these ancient peoples hunted mammoths, but scientists have sparred about the extent to which the Clovis diet centered on extinct proboscideans compared to other available food sources.

“Some researchers contend that Clovis populations were megafaunal specialists to some extent, focusing particularly on mammoth (Mammuthus columbi), while others have argued that such an adaptation was not viable, and thus, Clovis populations were more likely broad-spectrum foragers, regularly incorporating in their diet small game, plants, and perhaps fish,” said researchers co-led by James Chatters of McMaster University and Ben Potter at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“The resolution of this debate has profound implications for reconstructing the adaptive strategies that allowed rapid expansion of Paleoindians throughout the Western Hemisphere and assessing the impact of that expansion on megafaunal extinctions during the terminal Pleistocene,” the team said.

In other words, the Clovis diet can shed light on how these people managed to spread across immense distances within a few centuries, while also helping to resolve the controversy over the role played in megafaunal extinctions that occurred across the Americas at the tail end of the last Ice Age.  

To that end, the team analyzed the elemental composition of Anzick-1’s bones for clues about what he ate before his early death. The results reveal that he was mostly breastfed, while eating some supplementary meat, a discovery that amazingly opens a window into his mother’s diet while she was nursing him. 

As it turns out, Mama was a mammoth-eater. Subtle isotopic differences in the skull sample indicate that her meals overwhelmingly consisted of mammoth meat, though she likely also ate elk, bison, and Camelops, an extinct North American camel. Her diet is a close match to scimitar-tooth cats that still prowled the continent at this time, according to the study.

“Anzick-1’s maternal diet can be directly compared with diets of other secondary consumers that occupy specific niches and have preferred prey,” the team said. “She is most similar to Homotherium, the scimitar-tooth cats, widely interpreted as juvenile mammoth specialists.”

“While we do not interpret the results from this one individual as bearing directly on the cause(s) of widespread megafaunal extinctions in the Americas at the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary, we do suggest that predation of some megafaunal species by Clovis populations with effective distance weapons may have played a role,” the researchers added. “The loss of this taxon may have played a role in behavioral shifts and the end of Clovis as a distinct cultural tradition in the Americas.”

It is incredible that tiny isotopes in the fragmented skull of a small child can expose macro insights about the sudden obliteration of ancient colossal creatures. But this study also presents an intimate image of a mother nursing her child more than a dozen millennia ago, a timeless act of bonding that left elemental traces of her milk in his bones. Anzick-1 sadly didn’t get to live a long life, but he does have an extraordinary afterlife as the sole corporeal representative of a vast and sprawling culture. 

It reminds me of the following quote from the archaeologist Kathryn Denning, which speaks to the limitations we face in connecting with people of the past.

“What can be said from the vantage point of archaeology is that there is wisdom in knowing the empty spaces—in knowing the difference between what we might someday recover and what we never will ” Denning said in her essay “Impossible Predictions of the Unprecedented.” 

“We will never see an ancient parent’s smile or hear their child’s laugh, except in a dream. We must simply live with that silence. Once in a long while, we discover small red handprints on a cave ceiling that tell us that long ago, a 5-year-old was once lifted up on someone’s shoulders to reach up high, or we find a carefully made toy which bears the marks of baby teeth. Those traces of love and laughter have to be enough.”

Visions of a Venusian Ocean Fade into a Mirage

Constantinou, Tereza et al. “A dry Venusian interior constrained by atmospheric chemistry.” Nature Astronomy.

Bad news this week for anyone invested in the dream of a once-habitable Venus (ahem: me). Scientists studied the atmospheric composition of Venus’s atmosphere to search for clues about water content in its interior. Their results suggest that Venus is internally desiccated, and probably has been for most of its history, casting doubt on longstanding hopes that our neighboring world hosted liquid water oceans billions of years ago.

“A dry Venusian interior is not consistent with Venus having had surface oceans or, by extension, a conventionally habitable climate,” said researchers led by Tereza Constantinou of the University of Cambridge. “These results indicate that Venus probably never experienced conditions conducive to ocean condensation.” 

“Consequently, Venus-like exoplanets or planets within the Venus zone, which the James Webb Space Telescope can characterize, are unlikely to be cool enough to condense liquid water if they formed in situ,” the team added. “This makes these planets improbable candidates for liquid-water habitable conditions.”

You have to hand it to Venus: It seems really committed to inhospitality. 

A Giant Misty Splash Park in the Early Solar System  

Kral, Quentin et al. “An impact-free mechanism to deliver water to terrestrial planets and exoplanets.” Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The Venus story was the shot, but here’s a watery chaser. Another study this week tackled the unsolved mystery of how Earth, and worlds like it, end up hosting liquid water, which is the most essential catalyst for life as we know it. 

One major hypothesis is that Earth received its water primarily from hydrated asteroids that struck its surface more than four billion years ago. But scientists have now proposed an alternate mechanism; as icy asteroids warmed in the early solar system, they sloughed off clouds of sublimated gas that soaked Earth and other worlds, with no need for direct impacts.

“We propose that primordial asteroids were icy and that when the ice sublimated, it formed a gaseous disk that could then reach planets and deliver water,” said researchers led by Quentin Kral of the Paris Observatory. “Our model shows most of the water being delivered between 20 and 30 million years after the birth of the Sun, when the Sun’s luminosity increased sharply.”  

“This offers a new mechanism capable of transporting water to the inner planets in the Solar System,” the team added. “It may even be universal across all exo-planetary systems with respect to habitable-zone planets.”

If this hypothesis is confirmed by future observations, it would certainly boost the odds that watery worlds are common in the universe. The study also gets extra points for the phrase “ten terrestrial oceans of water” which sounds like an ingredient you’d find in a major deity’s recipe book.  

A Test of Real-Life Spidey Senses  

Han, Sarah et al. “Directional web strikes are performed by ray spiders in response to airborne prey vibrations.” Journal of Experimental Biology.

Spiders are well-known for their web-spinning talents, which allow them to catch prey in their deadly silk threads. Most web-spinners lie in wait for a catch, but ray spiders (Theridiosomatidae) play a more active role by pulling their webs into tense conical shapes that they then release to capture prey like a slingshot. 

Scientists took a closer look at this ingenious hunting strategy by filming ray spiders reacting to simulated insect noises as well as live mosquitos that were “tethered to very thin strips of black construction paper attached to the abdomen or hind legs using a small dab of gel SuperGlue” (this is the only time I have ever felt a little sorry for a mosquito). 

The results show that ray spiders pick up on airborne signals from their incoming victims, triggering them to release the nets at high speeds to actively ensnare prey that might otherwise evade capture.

“Given that static webs can pick up airborne sounds, it is plausible that spiders hunting in these webs might also discern useful information about the approach, size and/or behaviors of flying insects before they impact webs,” said authors Sarah Han and Todd Blackledge of the University of Akron. “If this hypothesis is correct, such information could significantly improve the odds of spiders successfully capturing prey.”

It’s definitely worth taking a look through the study, which includes videos and pictures of the spiders in action. 

Thanks for reading! See you next week.

Welcome back to the Abstract! 

This week, let’s get our hands dirty by digging deep into a bunch of dinosaur poop, puke, and guts that dates back about 200 million years to the Triassic-Jurassic transition. An amazing story, written in filthy fossilized ink, reveals how dinosaurs ate, crapped, and barfed their way to world domination.

Then, ancient needles at a camp in Wyoming hold clues about the tailored garments that prehistoric peoples depended on for comfort and survival. Next, a squirting cucumber goes ballistic—literally. And if you’ve ever felt stressed out about your social standing, there are fish who understand. I hope it was a happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate, and a restful end of November to everyone else.

The Rise of the Dinosaurs, According to Poop, Puke, and Guts 

Qvarnström, Martin et al. “Digestive contents and food webs record the advent of dinosaur supremacy,” Nature

The fossil record preserves the bones and tracks of extinct creatures, but it is also packed with heaps of poo, puke, and other delightfully yucky stuff from digestion systems of the deep past. These trace fossils are collectively known as bromalites, a category that includes coprolites (fossilized poop), regurgitalites (fossilized upchuck), and cololites (fossilized guts). 

Bromalites are incredibly useful datapoints because they expose the contents of bygone stomachs, allowing researchers to reconstruct diets and food webs with direct evidence that is absent from other parts of the fossil record.

Scientists have now dropped a bomb of a bromalite study that analyzes a whopping 500 poopy, barfy specimens that span the transition from the late Triassic to the early Jurassic periods, which played out from about 210 to 180 million years ago. This was the era when dinosaurs first took over Earth, displacing other animals in similar niches to become the most dominant group for the next 170 million years. 

“Here we analyse the rise and early evolutionary radiation of dinosaurs using a completely new approach,” said researchers led by Martin Qvarnström of Uppsala University. “We used an array of methods, including synchrotron microtomography, to perform analyses of more than 500 bromalites (coprolites, cololites and regurgitalites) and other fossils with direct evidence of feeding (for example, bones with signs of predation/scavenging).”  

Bromalites “increase in size and diversity across the interval, indicating the emergence of larger dinosaur faunas with new feeding patterns,” the team added. “Our results support the idea that stochastic processes coupled with a competitive advantage paved the way for the enormous evolutionary success of dinosaurs.”

The story unveiled through this lens unfolds in five parts. It begins with early dinosaur ancestors who leaned into omnivory, enabling them to edge out non-dinosaur animals that had more specialized diets. That was followed by the emergence of small theropods—the clade that eventually produced raptors, tyrannosaurus, and birds—which were the first carnivorous dinosaurs. In part three, dinosaurs caught a lucky break from a major bout of climate change that created landscapes with more diverse plant life, a diet favored by herbivorous dinosaurs, including the ornithischian precursors of Triceratops. The dinosaurs get bigger and more diverse in part four, a shift marked by the entrance of sauropods, the long-necked herbivores that ultimately became the largest animals ever known to walk on land. Part five: World domination. 

It’s an amazing tapestry to weave together with scatalogical threads, but the best part of the study might be all the finer details about the specimens. Bromalites from Lisowicia, a wild-looking competitor to early dinosaurs, showed it ate almost exclusively conifers, foreshadowing the disadvantage these specialized eaters would later confront in environments with more diverse flora. Bromalites from herbivorous dinosaurs in the early Jurassic contain charcoal, revealing that these animals were eating wood that was burned and charred from widespread wildfires at the time. But perhaps the gnarliest bromalites come from carnivorous dinosaurs, which would regularly poop out bones and skulls.

“Theropods, known from up to 55-cm-long tracks, probably produced the large bone-bearing bromalites” including one containing the “skull and limb elements of an early crocodylomorph,” the team said. “However, the menu of these large theropods probably extended far beyond crocodilians, as evidenced by the presence of fish scales and bone fragments of much larger prey items, which probably represent large sauropodomorph rib or limb fragments.” 

First of all, I’m always a fan of using the word “menu” in this context, because it makes me imagine a theropod at a fancy dinner table ordering a crocodilian a la carte. But more importantly, these bromalites open a window into the bellies of these beasts, yielding insights into how dinosaurs ascended to a reign so awesome that an extraterrestrial deathbringer was ultimately required to end it. We can glimpse everything from scorched landscapes to grand migrations through these digestive remains.  

The study is also a wonderful reminder that bodies have been dumping goopy waste out of one end or the other for time immemorial on this planet. May this add some purpose and grandeur to your next visit to the restroom. 

Stitching Together the Story of Prehistoric Garments 

Peloton, Spencer et al. “Early Paleoindian use of canids, felids, and hares for bone needle production at the La Prele site, Wyoming, USA.” PLOS ONE.

The phrase “clothes make the man” hints at the social judgment that we all receive for our sartorial choices, but there is also an unintended and literal side to this aphorism—the evolution of humanity has been profoundly shaped by tailored garments. Needles made of bones have provided indirect evidence of these garments at archaeological sites dating back as far as 40,000 years. Now, archaeologists working at the LaPrele Mammoth site in Wyoming have identified some of the animals used to make these tools for the first time.

“Of the various technologies and behaviors enacted to cope with cold temperatures, complex, tailored garments are among the most important,” said researchers led by Spencer Pelton of the University of Wyoming. “Despite the importance of bone needles to explaining global modern human dispersal, archaeologists have never identified the materials used to produce them, thus limiting understanding of this important cultural innovation.”

Pelton and his colleagues analyzed dozens of needles from this ancient hunting camp where Paleoindians once butchered a mammoth. They discovered that needles were commonly crafted from fur-bearing animals like foxes, hares, rabbits, bobcats, lynx and possibly the American cheetah, which has since gone extinct.

“Our results are strong evidence for tailored garment production using bone needles and fur-bearing animal pelts,” the team concluded. “Such garments might have looked comparable to those of the Inuit, who sewed fur-bearer pelts into the fringes of parkas whose base material was typically comprised of ungulate hide and used them for hats and mittens.”

Damn, that sounds cozy. As temperatures plunge across the Northern Hemisphere, remember that your warm winter-wear was pioneered by people who had to stitch to survive.

The Stressful Lives of Subordinate Cichlid Fish

Dijkstra. Peter et al. “Oxidative stress in the brain is regulated by social status in a highly social cichlid fish.” Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. 

Animals that live in hierarchical social structures receive all kinds of positive and negative information about their status, access to resources, and reproductive prospects. Now, scientists have zoomed in on how all these pressures affect the brains of the highly social cichlid fish Astatotilapia burtoni. 

Dominant males of this species are more brightly colored, territorial, and reproductively successful than subordinate males—though interestingly, subordinates can become dominant, and vice versa, depending on their environment. Scientists studied the dissected brains of fish from both male phenotypes, and discovered that subordinates were generally more stressed, though dominant fish also experienced some stress in different parts of the brain.

“Social stress can increase reactive oxygen species and derail antioxidant function in the brain, which may contribute to the onset and progression of mental health disorders,” said researchers led by Peter Dijkstra of Central Michigan University. “In hierarchical species, repeated social defeat can raise oxidative stress in the brain.” 

“Our findings show that both antioxidant capacity and oxidative DNA damage are impacted by social status but these effects varied by brain division and were marker specific,” the team said. “These general findings are consistent with the idea that distinct social challenges experienced by dominant and subordinate males could impact patterns of oxidative balance in the brain.” 

There’s something so perfectly devastating about the phrase “repeated social defeat.” If you've ever been stressed about your social life, these fish are a remdiner to cut yourself some slack for the sake of your brain.

The Secrets of a Ballistic Squirter

Box, Finn et al. “Uncovering the mechanical secrets of the squirting cucumber.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Nature is filled with innovative means of dispersing seeds, but the squirting cucumber is one of the only species that decided to go ballistic with it. This flowering plant, also known as the exploding cucumber, squirts its seeds out in a spray of goopy liquid at speeds around 44 miles per hour, allowing them to cross distances of about 32 feet from the source plant. How do they do it?? That’s the topic of a study this week that sought to expose the finer details of this impressive squirter.

“We study the remarkable seed dispersal mechanism of Ecballium elaterium, commonly known as the squirting cucumber, one of the most rapid motions in the plant kingdom,” said researchers led by Finn Box of the University of Manchester. “Despite its apparent simplicity, the specifics of the seed ejection process—combining mechanical, hydraulic, and ballistic phenomena—remain largely unexplored.” 

“By integrating experiments, high-speed videography, and advanced mathematical modeling, we uncover unique facets of this strategy, including an unusual decrease in fruit volume prior to ejection which stiffens the stem and orients the fruit to an improved angle for dispersal.”

When Charles Darwin wrote that “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved,” he was definitely talking about exploding cucumbers.

Thanks for reading! See you next week.