3 Discoveries You Missed Because of COVID

[Music] it's probably fair to say that just about everyone's brains this year have been dominated by this pandemic but other science stories did happen in 2020 including amazing discoveries about everything from dinosaurs to parasites we didn't get a chance to cover all of them but now they're getting their chance to shine so here are three unbelievably cool stories you might have missed first back in april researchers settled a major argument about dinosaurs for a while scientists had figured that pretty much all species of non-avian dinosaur were terrestrial they could venture out into water every now and again but they mainly stuck to dry land the major exception to this however is spinosaurus egypticus often known as spinosaurus for short based on features like its long narrow jaws and croc-like teeth we've thought it was at least semi-aquatic maybe hunting along the rivers in northern africa although that idea was definitely met with some pushback now though there seems to be strong evidence that it wasn't just prowling around rivers it may have been a proper aquatic beast the key evidence was published on april 29th and it comes from tail bones discovered in morocco in 2018. we don't have a ton of fossils of spinosaurus because they were accidentally destroyed in world war ii so this was a major fine researchers used the fossils to make a digital reconstruction of the whole animal and they found that its tail would have looked a bit like a newt or crocodile's tail long flat upright and strong what's more scientists also made and tested a robotic model of this tail and found it could probably produce enough force to let the animal swim if this is confirmed it would end a years-long argument and really expand our picture of where dinosaurs lived and what they were capable of next is a story about other swimming giants also from april and it involves a clever solution to a tricky puzzle in the spring scientists figured out that we can use nuclear residue from cold war tests to figure out how old whale sharks are whale sharks are the largest living species of shark and we want to understand and protect them but that's easier said than done like one thing we'd love to know is their life history things like how long they live and how fast they grow but there was a conundrum researchers couldn't agree how to measure their age there are growth bans on their vertebrae like tree rings but studies were conflicted about if one ring equals one year or just six months well turns out the secret to figuring it out was nuclear weapons tests back in the 1950s and 60s scientists realized those tests would have increased global atmospheric levels of a rare form or isotope of carbon called carbon 14 and it would have been picked up and incorporated into the shark's bones so the scientists got vertebrae from two of the oldest deceased specimens available and compared the isotope levels in their vertebras bands to ocean water samples from years ago by looking at the bands and the amount of carbon-14 in each they were able to figure out what year different bands were put down and with those landmarks in place they finally put the original question to rest and concluded that each band equals one year using this new knowledge the scientists were also able to conclude that whale sharks grow more slowly and live longer than we generally assumed something that could help us better understand these ocean giants and how their populations are doing finally in may news broke about one of our most notorious diseases one that's been plaguing us long before covet 19. malaria one of the signature signs of malaria is regular recurring fevers these happen because the malaria parasites enter and breed inside red blood cells then burst out in a synchronized wave of new parasites and waste materials for the parasites it's possibly a way to evade the immune system but for humans all those waste materials trigger a fever but what's interesting is that depending on the exact species of parasite these waves can happen like clockwork like some species that infect humans trigger fevers every two days others every three for a long time we've thought that the parasites may be using the host's circadian rhythm to time things basically our daily internal clocks but in may we got published evidence that the parasites use their own biological clock instead to figure this out scientists bred mice to have different circadian rhythms some normal some longer and some non-existent then they infected the mice with the parasites and they found the parasite cycle would kind of adjust to match their host but not perfectly also the parasite cycle existed even in mice without consistent circadian clocks this all suggests that the parasites have their own clock though it's kept in sync by cues from the host's body that helps the individual parasites sync up with each other the scientists even identify genes that might be behind this now there isn't a huge conclusion about how to treat malaria here at least not yet but it's completely possible that this hidden interaction is something we could tweak and exploit to our benefit to put another deadly disease to rest so 2020 has been quite a year but in the science world there's a lot to celebrate some scientists have been tackling this pandemic including studying the virus and potential treatments and vaccines meanwhile researchers like these have been pouring time and energy into conservation natural history and other diseases and in both cases our understanding of the world is that much better for it thanks for watching this episode of scishow if you enjoyed this episode you can give a huge shout out to our patrons on patreon their support lets us keep making this show so if you're a patron thanks for everything you do and if you want to learn more about patreon and our community there you can go to patreon.com scishow [Music] you

Channel: SciShow

Views: 1,789,029

Rating: 4.9219146 out of 5

Keywords: SciShow, science, Hank, Green, education, learn, 3 Things You Missed Because of COVID, Michael, Aranda, discovery, parasites, dino, dinosaurs, non-avian dinosaur, swim, ocean, Spinosaurus Aegypticus, spinosaurus, northern Africa, aquatic beast, fin, tale, fossil, animal, giants, Whale Shark, Cold War, vertebrae, age, bands, growth, carbon-14, malaria, species, circadian rhythm, biological clock, cure, treat, diseases

Id: OkbCS9C-8_E

Length: 5min 32sec (332 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 25 2020