2020-02-22_New_Scientist

22 February 2020 | New Scientist | 17

Neuroscience

Palaeontology Environment

Sweaty summer

nights ahead

The number of extremely

hot days followed by

intensely hot nights in

northern hemisphere

summers could jump to

32 by 2100 – four times as

many as now. That applies

even if the world acts to

check global warming

(Nature Communications,

doi.org/dmk8).

Mars may have

been a late bloomer

Evidence from Martian

meteorites that landed on

Earth has shown that Mars

may have taken 15 million

years more to form than

we thought. The meteorites

had initially pointed to early

formation, but simulations

of large rocks hitting Mars

show their compositions

better fit a later formation

of the planet (Science

Advances, doi.org/dmk7).

Conception most

likely in autumn

Women may be most likely

to conceive in late autumn

and least likely to do so in

spring. A study of 14,

women in North America

and Denmark found the

chance of conceiving in a

given menstrual cycle was

highest in late November

and early December

(Human Reproduction,

doi.org/dmpb).

Ape brains are

more like ours

OUR brains could have more in

common with those of our ape

cousins than previously thought.

The left and right sides of our

brains aren’t symmetrical; some

areas on one side are larger or

smaller, while other bits protrude

more. The pattern of these

differences, or asymmetries, was

thought to be uniquely human,

dating from when our brain

hemispheres became specialised

for certain tasks, like processing

ALL dinosaurs were warm-blooded,

suggests a new analysis of fossil

eggshells. The finding also means

the ancestors of dinosaurs were

warm-blooded too, say researchers.

It is now mostly agreed that the

theropod dinosaurs that gave rise

to birds were warm-blooded, but

there is still a debate about whether

other groups of dinosaurs were too.

There is a way to work out the

temperature at which organic

matter, such as eggshells, forms

inside bodies. In 2015, a team

applied this method to the

eggshell of a theropod and

a sauropod – a long-necked

dinosaur – and found both were

warm-blooded. Now Robin

Dawson at Yale University and her

colleagues have done the same

to three more fossil eggshells.

One belonged to a theropod,

another to a duck-billed dinosaur

and the third is thought to have

been a sauropod. Their analysis

showed all were warm-blooded

(Science Advances, doi.org/dmsb).

Duck-billed dinosaurs are a more

distant relative of theropods and

sauropods. It is much less likely

that warm-bloodedness evolved

independently in these three major

groups, says Dawson, which implies

this trait had an ancestral origin.

Michael Le Page

language with the left side.

Now it seems the pattern came

first, before humans evolved. “It

suggests it is an ancestral pattern

that was established far earlier

during evolution,” says Simon

Neubauer at the Max Planck

Institute for Evolutionary

Anthropology in Germany.

His team analysed skulls from

95 humans, 45 chimpanzees,

43 gorillas and 43 orangutans.

Brain shape is imprinted on the

inside of the skull during growth,

so the team used CT scanning to

detect these details in the hollow

skulls and then created digital

BP oil spill was even

bigger than thought

THE worst ever oil spill in the US,

at a rig run by BP a decade ago,

may have been almost a third

larger than previously thought.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster

in 2010 saw nearly 800 million

litres of oil spew into the Gulf of

Mexico, which satellite tracking

suggested covered an estimated

149,000 square kilometres.

But an analysis suggests that the

real extent of the spill may have

been 30 per cent greater, because

much of the oil was invisible to

satellites. The study also found

that the oil extended much deeper

than satellites had detected,

with toxic concentrations

1.3 kilometres down.

A US team made this estimate

using data from 25,000 samples of

water and sediment from the area,

much of it only released in recent

years by BP, in addition to satellite

and aerial images. The team used

these to model how far the oil is

likely to have spread, accounting

for ocean currents, temperature

and the biodegradation of oil.

The results suggest the spill

reached as far as the West Florida

shelf, Texas shores and Florida

Keys (Science Advances, doi.org/

dmn9). The Deepwater Horizon

crisis has cost BP more than

$65 billion. Adam Vaughan

models of each brain. Anatomical

features on the left and right sides

of each brain model were then

marked with digital dots.

When the hemispheres were

superimposed, mismatching dots

revealed the pattern and size of

brain asymmetry. They all shared

a common pattern but it was

less pronounced in chimpanzees

than in the other species (Science

Advances, doi.org/dmsq). Past

comparisons relied on chimps,

which may explain why the deep

evolutionary history of brain

asymmetry wasn’t spotted sooner.

James Urquhart

Heated debate over dinosaurs

may finally have been settled

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Really brief

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