Latest news with #JingmaiOConnor
CBC
23-05-2025
- Science
- CBC
May 24: How to live forever, and more...
Apart from their rich vocal palette, chimpanzees drum on trees to communicate over long distances. A new interdisciplinary study, led in part by PhD student Vesta Eleuteri and primatologist Cat Hobaiter from the University of St. Andrews, investigated the rhythms they used and found that different populations drum with rhythms similar to the beats in human music. The research was published in the journal Current Biology. The Archaeopteryx, a 150-million-year-old bird-like dinosaur, is known from about a dozen fossils found in Germany. A new one recently studied at Chicago's Field Museum may be the best preserved yet. It's giving researchers, like paleontologist Jingmai O'Connor, new insights into how the ancient animal moved around the Jurassic landscape. The research was published in the journal Nature. Inspired by the structure of bone, researchers have created limestone-like biomineralized construction materials using a fungal-scaffold that they seeded with bacteria. Montana State University's Chelsea Heveran said they demonstrated they could mould it into specific shapes with internal properties similar to bone, and that it remained alive for a month. It's early days yet, but she envisions a day when they can grow living structural material on site that may even be able to heal themselves. The study is in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science. Scientists have created a clever combination of physical sensors and computer technology to produce a flexible Band-Aid-like device that can accurately read emotions when it is stuck to the face. It's not quite mind reading, but it could give physicians better insight into the emotional state of their patients. Huanyu Cheng of Penn State led the work, which was published in the journal Nano Letters. Do you want to live forever? As he noticed himself showing signs of aging, immunologist John Tregoning decided to find out what he could do to make that possible. So he explored the investigations that scientists are doing into why we age and die — and tried a few experiments on himself. Bob speaks with him about his new book, Live Forever? A Curious Scientists' Guide to Wellness, Ageing and Death. Tregoning dutifully documents everything he discovers as he undergoes testing for his heart, gets his genes sequenced, has a bronchoscopy, and follows an extreme diet, among other experiments. But he comes to the conclusion that "when it comes to improving life outcomes, exercise considerably trumps nearly everything I am planning to do whilst writing this book."
The Independent
15-05-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Flying dinosaur fossil with intact feathers reveals how first birds took flight
Scans of the most well-preserved fossil of a prehistoric flying reptile with intact feathers have revealed how the first birds managed to fly while their non-bird dinosaur cousins could not. The Archaeopteryx, which lived over 150 million years ago during the Jurassic Period, is the oldest known fossil bird and it shows that all birds, including modern ones, evolved from dinosaurs. While the prehistoric beast's first fossil was uncovered over 160 years ago, exactly how it took to the skies while its reptile cousins could not was unknown. To unravel this mystery, scientists conducted x-ray and UV light scans of the Archaeopteryx at Field Museum's Chicago, an ultra-rare fossil with more intact soft tissues and skeletal details than ever seen before. They concluded that its well-preserved feathers helped explain why the archaeopteryx could fly when many of its non-bird dinosaur cousins could not. The specimen, discovered by a private fossil collector sometime in the last century, arrived at the Field Museum in August 2022. 'Our specimen is so well-preserved and so well-prepared that we are actually learning a tonne of new information, from the tip of its snout to the tip of its tail,' said Jingmai O'Connor, the Chicago museum's associate curator of fossil reptiles who led the latest study. The specimen is the smallest of the species known – only about the size of a pigeon – and is preserved in a slab of extremely hard limestone. "When we prepared it, we carefully chipped away the bits of rock covering the fossil,' Dr O'Connor said. After preparing the fossil, which took about a year of careful work, researchers used CT scans to build a three-dimensional image of its insides. "CT scanning was very important for our preparation process, it let us know things like the bone is exactly 3.2 millimeters below the surface of the rock, which let us know exactly how far we could go before we would hit the bone,' Dr O'Connor explained. 'This is the first time a complete Archaeopteryx has been CT scanned and the data made available.' Researchers then used UV light to illuminate pieces of the fossil's skeleton and its soft tissues like scales on the bottom of the toes. They particularly probed the head, hands, feet, and wing feathers. "The bones in the roof of the mouth help us learn about the evolution of something called cranial kinesis – a feature in modern birds that lets the beak move independently from the braincase,' Dr O'Connor said. Studying this feature could provide new insights into how birds underwent skull adaptations for different ecological niches and evolve into the over 11,000 species we see today, scientists suspected. Analysis of the hands and feet of the Chicago specimen revealed that the Archaeopteryx spent much of its time walking on the ground and, possibly, climbing trees. An examination of its wing feathers helped resolve a longstanding scientific debate about the origin of flight in dinosaurs. 'Archaeopteryx isn't the first dinosaur to have feathers or the first dinosaur to have 'wings'. But we think it is the earliest known dinosaur that was able to use its feathers to fly," Dr O'Connor said. "This is my favourite part of the paper, the part that provides evidence that Archaeopteryx was using its feathered wings for flying.' Key to the first bird's flight was likely a set of never-before-seen feathers, called tertials, found on the upper arm of the fossil. "Compared to most living birds, Archaeopteryx has a very long upper arm bone," Dr O'Connor said. "And if you're trying to fly, having a long upper arm bone can create a gap between the long primary and secondary feathers of the wing and the rest of your body. If air passes through that gap, that disrupts the lift you're generating, and you can't fly.' In modern birds, the palaeontologist said, shorter upper arm bones and a set of tertial feathers fill the gap between the body and the rest of the wing. In the case of Archaeopteryx, however, the tertial feathers alone plugged the gap. "These feathers are missing in feathered dinosaurs that are closely related to birds but aren't quite birds,' Dr O'Connor said. 'Their wing feathers stop at the elbow.' Researchers said they hoped to gain further understanding of how the first birds were able to fly by continuing their study of the fossil. 'This paper is really just the tip of the iceberg,' they said.
Gizmodo
14-05-2025
- Science
- Gizmodo
The Famous, Fearsome Archaeopteryx Was More Bird Than We Knew
CT scans, UV light, and careful prep work uncovered feathers that may have given the ancient dinosaur liftoff. It's been more than 160 years since Archaeopteryx first shook up science as the missing link—part reptile, part bird—and indicated that today's pigeons and parakeets are the feathery descendants of dinosaurs. But despite decades of research, there's still more to learn. Case in point: a newly described fossil, nicknamed the Chicago Archaeopteryx, may be the most detailed and revealing specimen yet. 'The most important findings all center around rarely preserved soft tissues. For the first time we see the soft tissue of the hand and foot,' said Jingmai O'Connor, lead author of the new study in Nature and associate curator of fossil reptiles at the Field Museum, in an email to Gizmodo. With that information, paleontologists are getting a more nuanced understanding of the creature than they've ever had. 'The tissue on the right hand suggests that the two main digits of the hand were not bound together in soft tissue and that the third digit could move independently, supporting long abandoned claims from the 90s that Archaeopteryx could use its hands to climb,' O'Connor added. The fossil had been in private hands since 1990, but made its public debut at Chicago's Field Museum last year. At roughly the size of a pigeon, the Chicago Archaeopteryx is the smallest specimen yet found, and was pulled from the same German limestone where all Archaeopteryx fossils come from. What sets this fossil apart is its pristine preservation and exhaustive preparation. Over a year of painstaking work by the Field's fossil prep team, led by the museum's chief preparator Akiko Shinya, revealed bones and soft tissues that had never been visible before. That tissue included a set of upper wing feathers called tertials, which may have helped Archaeopteryx fly when many of its dinosaur cousins couldn't. The team used UV light and CT scans to carefully chip away the rock encasing the bird's mineralized remains, sometimes removing just fractions of a millimeter to avoid damaging tissue. The result is the most complete and delicately preserved Archaeopteryx yet. Among the findings: scales on the bottom of the animal's toes, soft tissue in the fingers, and fine details in the skull that could help explain how modern birds evolved flexible beaks. But the key takeaway in this paper is evidence of the creature's flight. While earlier dinosaurs had feathers and wings, Archaeopteryx may have been the first to actually take wing, based on the tertials, which are missing in feathered dinosaurs that aren't quite birds. Though non-avian dinosaurs couldn't fly, this spunky critter could. That supports the idea that flight evolved more than once in dinosaurs—an exceptionally cool notion that serves as a reminder that Archaeopteryx is merely one branch of the tree of life—albeit a very neat one. And as for this fossil, O'Connor says we're only just scratching the surface. More analysis of the Chicago Archaeopteryx will reveal more details of how these flying dinosaurs lived. 'Some very cool and surprisingly bird-like new features of the skull; chemical data about the soft tissues; the full body CT scan, and much, much more are still to come,' O'Connor added.
New York Times
14-05-2025
- Science
- New York Times
This Dinosaur Had Feathers and Probably Flew Like a Chicken
In 1861, scientists discovered Archaeopteryx, a dinosaur with feathers, in 150-million-year-old limestones in Solnhofen, Germany. They didn't know it at the time, but that fossilized skeleton — and the several that followed — provided a key piece of evidence for the theory of evolution, as well as for the fact that birds were actually dinosaurs. Archaeopteryx specimens have, 'maybe more than any other fossil, changed the way that we see the world,' said Jingmai O'Connor, a paleontologist at the Field Museum in Chicago. Over 164 years, researchers have pored over every detail of available specimens, trying to puzzle out how birds came to fly. Therefore, you might expect that such a well-studied fossil species wouldn't be capable of surprises. But in a paper published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, Dr. O'Connor and a team of researchers revealed previously unrecorded soft tissues and skeletal details from a new specimen, known as the Chicago Archaeopteryx. What they found also helps explain why some feathered dinosaurs got off the ground, if only for short-haul flights. Sussing out Archaeopteryx's abilities in flight and how it fit in its environment has long been tricky, Dr. O'Connor said. A majority of specimens are cartoonishly flattened by geology, making it difficult to discern important skeletal details. And while its earliest discoverers and most modern scientists have concluded that the species could likely take off, particular bodily features have left paleontologists seeking more data. The latest specimen, acquired by the Field Museum in 2022 and on public display since 2024, allowed Dr. O'Connor's team to begin addressing some of the anatomical uncertainties. When the fossil arrived at the museum, it didn't look like much. The specimen was the same color as the surrounding rock, and most of the soft-tissue remains were difficult to see, Dr. O'Connor said. The researchers CT-scanned the fossil, building a digital map of the skeleton to help guide their preparation of the slab. They also had a secret weapon: By a quirk of chemistry, soft-tissue remains preserved in certain sediments glow under UV light, allowing the team to avoid accidentally removing feathers or skin textures while uncovering bone. That technique was not available to fossil preparators in the 1800s. Unlike other specimens, the bones of the Chicago Archaeopteryx were preserved in three dimensions, and Dr. O'Connor's team could better evaluate the skull's palate. That showed the earliest signs of an evolutionary trajectory toward the skulls of modern birds, which are more mobile than those of prehistoric birds, Dr. O'Connor said. In another lucky accident of fossilization, the carcass's wings were separated from the body, leaving them 'clearly and pristinely preserved,' Dr. O'Connor said. Upon close inspection, the team confirmed that rather than having two layers of wing feathers, as observed in earlier specimens, Archaeopteryx actually had three. In modern birds, that third layer helps link the shorter forearm to the body to create a continuous lift surface, which allows birds to sustain flight. Dr. O'Connor noted that the shape of the wing is a contrast with other feathered nonbird dinosaurs, whose long feathers 'hard stop at the elbow,' she said, making them useful but ultimately flightless decorations. While the lack of a breastbone still means that the bird was likely to have been a relatively poor flyer, toe pads preserved in the Chicago Archaeopteryx's feet add evidence to the assumption that the species was adept at life on the ground, Dr. O'Connor said. The species would therefore have lived like a Jurassic chicken or roadrunner: capable of flying in short bursts when necessary, but otherwise preferring to sprint. The newly reported features are a nice addition to existing understandings of Archaeopteryx, and they offer direct support for current hypotheses about the species' abilities and its relationship to the origins of flight, said Michael Pittman, a paleontologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who was not involved with the study. 'This study nicely underscores the importance of discovering new fossils, even of well-known and well-studied specimens,' he said. Dr. O'Connor agreed. 'This specimen's going to keep me busy for years,' she said.
