First complete woolly mammoth genome found in freeze-dried "jerky" | New Scientist Weekly Ep 258

Fancy a bite of woolly mammoth jerky? A beef-jerky-like fossil of this prehistoric creature has been discovered - a metre-long piece of skin still covered in hair. And the most amazing thing is that the entire genome has remained intact, giving more insight into these creatures than ever before. Could this help bring woolly mammoths back to life?
There is a way to make butter not from cows, not from vegetable oils or even microbes, but from pure carbon. And if you want a climate friendly way of producing a delicious spreadable fat, this may just be it. A company called Savor is using a process that can convert captured CO2 or natural gas into fatty acids.
The origin of life is a huge scientific mystery: how can something so complex emerge from inert and random molecules? Well, Google has created a simulation to figure this out. The company has used computer code to recreate the random ‘primordial soup’ of early Earth, with results that might baffle you.
When mammals breastfeed, calcium is stripped from their bones to make the milk, but their bones don’t get significantly weaker. How does that work? Well, a new, bone-strengthening hormone found in mice may have finally solved the long-standing mystery - and could benefit human health.
Plus: How our pupils change size with every breath; how cosmic rays could help protect financial markets; and how ancient Denisovan DNA may have helped the people of Papua New Guinea adapt to their environment.
Hosts Timothy Revell and Christie Taylor discuss with guests Corryn Wetzel, Madeleine Cuff, Matthew Sparkes and Grace Wade.
To read more about these stories, visit newscientist.com.
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[@DogFoxHybrid]

The mammoth was an archeological find? Unless humans butchered it, you're talking about paleontology.

[@Davywatson121]

Bring back mammoths in time for the melting of the last glacier? Elephants have a culture, including teaching the young where to find seasonal water and food. Which foster mother is going to teach this baby mammoth to be a mammoth? 😢

[@Erime]

🤔 sounds a bit woolly to me

[@NeilEvans-xq8ik]

We could teach their community to eventually teach each other.

[@cacogenicist]

One of the ideas is that mammoth-ized elephants would knock over trees and dig up the ground -- such that the cold would penetrate deeper. In principle, at scale, cold weather elephants could help reduce the loss of permafrost. Bison and other megafauna are not nearly as useful for this; they don't knock trees over, for example.

[@alphalunamare]

the commentary is so so so childish.

[@bjdefilippo447]

Thanks for the interesting info. In case you're curious, the plastic tip on a shoelace is called an aglet. (Thanks, Phineas & Ferb!)

[@FlubberFrosch]

Or Pinke in German. (also thanks, Phineas & Ferb)

[@cacogenicist]

_What does this have to do with mammals!?_ is quite a dumb response to reaearch exploring the foundations of abiogenesis. Smarter commentary, please.

[@flyingfox707b]

0:49 Paleontological or Biological, not archaeological, in this context.

[@thegroove2000]

Manipulating whats already there. Now what could be behind this all? A mysterious mover?

[@thomasbell7033]

Picking a few news briefs from a longer list of news.briefs does not make them "curated." I should think NS, of all institutions, would leave dumb marketing-speak alone.

[@user-md9yv7jx2c]

Soylent Green is people.

[@jshellenberger7876]

The Conway game of life. Arkansas hwy 65. Thailand Highway to Korat. Same copycat. #POW

[@princessaja2557]

How they know it was natural considering it was just a skin that was dry.

[@cacogenicist]

What are you suggesting exactly?

[@Rene-uz3eb]

So we're going to see mammoths nice. I guess we could even breed mini dinosaurs, given that they could not grow as big in today's gravity.

[@cacogenicist]

If this was a Ken M-style troll, _nice._ But if you're serious, of course Earth's gravity has not changed to any remotely significant degree since dinosaurs walked the Earth. I'm inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt.

[@Rene-uz3eb]

You inclined wrong. Now that I think about it, it kind of seems nonsensical for a static planet to have plate tectonics. Why would there be moving plates? Whereas, if you imagine the planet was expanding (with some hollow shells somewhere), that would very well account for plate tectonics. Volcanic activity could be seen as evidence for an expanding planet.

[@jesuschristt7692]

@@Rene-uz3ebok,even if the planet was expanding ( which is not the case),the only thing that would change is the volume,not the mass. Otherwise you should explain where and how the new mass Is generated

[@Rene-uz3eb]

@@jesuschristt7692 you got me I'm also assuming gravity is not only a function of mass

[@TheMemesofDestruction]

Was it tasty? 🤔

[@markmonaghan2309]

Not that interested in the jerky I'll wait for the burgers

[@FlubberFrosch]

The team of researchers preparing the steppe wisent mummy, known as Blue Babe, for display stewed a piece of its neck to celebrate.

[@TheMemesofDestruction]

@@FlubberFrosch Yummy?

[@selakery3297]

Wooly mammoths went extinct mostly due to global climate change and we're going to bring them back to go through global climate change again. Brilliant!! 🙄🙄🙄

[@cacogenicist]

Note that mammoths persisted the longest where there were no humans. Be skeptical of climate as a complete explanation for megafauna extinction. E.g., climate change absolutely can not explain the demise of the Columbian mammoth -- which ranged from near Mexico City to Florida, and to all of California, eastern Oregon, and over to Montana, and through Illinois to the East Coast south of Washington DC. So they were capable of making a living in a very wide range of habitats. Climate change should not have wiped them out. ... human presence in the Americas (probably starting about 25k years ago) almost certainly played a major role. And new research supports my assertion. As for mammoth-ized elephants possibly being introduced to Siberia -- one of the ideas is that they will bust up the ground and knock over trees that are moving north, which will help preserve permafrost by allowing the cold to penetrate into the ground more deeply -- we don't want melting permafrost to contribute to warming.

[@Tubemanjac]

The intact piece of skin probably got frozen within one natural day as a result of the huge, worldwide cataclysm appr. 20k+ years ago. It's described in the book The Adam and Eve Story - The Story of Cataclysms by Chan Thomas (1965) which has been classified for decades.

[@cacogenicist]

Trolling or smooth-brained? -- so hard to tell these days.