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In the Badlands of North America. Dakota,

2:01

a family made the discovery of a

2:03

lifetime with a little help from a

2:05

paleontologist. You know, I brush a

2:07

little bit more and then we see three

2:10

teeth staring back at us and we both

2:12

exclaim, you know, we found a T-Rex. It's

2:15

Friday, June 14th. Happy Science

2:17

Friday. I'm

2:20

Sci-Fried producer Rasha Ariti. The

2:23

fossil found by this family belongs

2:25

to a teenage T-Rex, teen

2:28

Rex, if you will. They are

2:30

incredibly rare and scientists hope that this

2:32

young specimen could help them piece together

2:34

what T-Rex looked like and how it

2:36

behaved growing up. But

2:38

before we get into this dino discovery,

2:41

let's round up this week's science news.

2:43

Here's guest host, Annie Minoff. This

2:46

is Science Friday. I'm Annie Minoff, a

2:48

senior producer on the journal podcast and

2:50

former co-host of Science Friday's podcast Undiscovered.

2:52

And I will be filling in for

2:55

Ira Flato this week. A

2:57

new study out this week suggests

2:59

that around two to three million

3:01

years ago, our solar system collided

3:04

with a gigantic interstellar cloud. And

3:06

it could have changed the trajectory of life here

3:08

on Earth. Here to fill us in

3:10

on that and other science stories of the week is

3:13

Tim Rebel, executive editor for New

3:15

Scientist. Welcome back, Tim. Hi,

3:18

thanks for having me. So explain what

3:20

was going on with this giant interstellar

3:22

cloud. Yeah, so the

3:24

first thing you need to know about

3:27

this is that the sun has a

3:29

sort of protective bubble around it called

3:31

the heliosphere, and that's formed by solar

3:33

winds pushing outwards. And this protective bubble

3:36

extends to the edges of the solar system,

3:38

and so it helps protect the planets within

3:40

it from radiation. But researchers

3:43

have now worked out that about two to three

3:45

million years ago, the sun passed

3:47

through this dense cloud of helium called

3:49

the local ribbon of cold clouds. I

3:52

love that it has a name just

3:54

to pause on that the local ribbon

3:56

of cold clouds all uppercase. It's

3:58

it's an amazing name, isn't it? sounds like something

4:00

from a fantasy novel

4:02

or a sci-fi. It's amazing. So it

4:04

passes through this dense cloud of helium,

4:06

local ribbon of cold clouds, and that

4:08

caused the heliosphere to shrink so much

4:10

that it no longer protected Earth, so

4:13

it really shrunk in on itself. And

4:15

then that meant that Earth was suddenly exposed

4:18

to interstellar radiation in a way that it

4:20

hadn't been before. Lapera And do we

4:22

know what impact that would have had to

4:24

have all that radiation coming at us? Andrew

4:26

We can only really guess. It took about

4:28

10,000 years to return, so it had

4:31

quite a long time to have an

4:33

impact. And this was at a time

4:35

where on Earth there was woolly mammoths

4:37

and giant sloths walking on the planet.

4:39

And we know that radiation is

4:42

often linked to mutations in DNA,

4:44

and that's also the driver behind evolution.

4:46

And so potentially being exposed to a

4:48

lot more radiation from interstellar

4:51

space could have affected

4:53

evolution in quite a significant way. Lapera

4:56

And we're going to stick with space for

4:58

this next one, because you've brought us a

5:00

story about a study that looked at space

5:02

tourists, so private citizens who've been on SpaceX

5:04

flights. Tell us about that. Andrew

5:06

Yeah, so this is actually a story that's

5:09

not just space tourists, but also astronauts in

5:11

general. And it's about this thing called a

5:13

space biobank. And that's basically

5:15

a big collection of blood samples, tissue

5:17

samples, and medical information, with all of

5:19

that coming from people who've been to

5:21

space. And so as you say,

5:24

some of those have been private citizens, but

5:26

also some of them have been professional astronauts.

5:28

And the idea of this space biobank is

5:30

to really try and pin down the hazardous

5:32

health effects of going to space of which

5:34

we already know there are quite a few.

5:36

So the study is initially about bringing

5:38

all of this data together, but it

5:40

has got some early findings that I

5:42

think are pretty interesting. So one thing

5:44

they found is that a lot of

5:46

the changes recorded on a SpaceX mission

5:48

that involved private civilians, the

5:50

changes that were recorded to people's immune

5:52

systems and their DNA, when they had

5:55

immediately come back from space, within a

5:57

few months they had actually returned back

5:59

to normal. And one of the

6:01

things that they were able to conclude

6:03

from that is that actually maybe the

6:05

risks to civilians of going to space

6:07

are very similar to those of professional

6:09

astronauts who, you know, this highly trained

6:11

elite group. And so maybe as we

6:13

explore the possibility of more civilian space

6:16

trips, that's something that's super

6:18

interesting to know. So for this

6:20

next story, we're going to head to the

6:22

Australian Outback where scientists have found an impressive

6:25

dinosaur skeleton. Tell me about that. Yeah,

6:28

this is an amazing find. So it's

6:30

strictly speaking, it's a pterosaur, which is

6:32

a type of flying reptile that inhabited

6:34

Earth around the same time as the

6:36

dinosaurs. And normally with these, we

6:38

just find the odd bone or two. But what's

6:41

been found now in Australia is a 100

6:44

million year old pterosaur fossil that constitutes

6:46

about a quarter of the animal. And

6:48

it's the most complete pterosaur ever found

6:50

in Australia. I was reading

6:52

that pterosaurs are sometimes called demonic pelicans.

6:54

Is that what they looked like? Yeah,

6:57

demonic pelican is a good word for them.

6:59

This one they found here, it's a new

7:01

species of pterosaur, one that we didn't know

7:04

about before. And they think it

7:06

had a 15 foot wingspan. And

7:08

as you say, would have looked a bit like

7:10

a pelican, but demonic pelican in the fact that

7:12

it had a mouthful of spiky teeth. And

7:14

then in particular with this new pterosaur, they

7:17

think that it had a massive muscular tongue

7:19

that it would have used to catch and

7:21

hold down prey, which personally does sound quite

7:23

demonic to me. To

7:26

catch and hold down prey with the tongue and

7:28

then get it with the bitey teeth, is that

7:30

the idea? Yeah, the very fierce

7:32

teeth. I mean, we think they probably

7:34

ate things like slippery animals, like squid

7:37

and fish. And so that double combo

7:39

of having the extremely muscular powerful tongue

7:41

and a whole bunch of sharp teeth,

7:43

I think would have been quite hard

7:45

to fight against. Yikes.

7:47

Okay, so from one slightly

7:49

disturbing story to another, Tim,

7:52

a lot of us have heard about this double

7:54

cicada brood that's happening in the US right now,

7:57

but there's this really odd fungus that

7:59

is in just

16:00

look up there. So I

16:03

heard dad call her names.

16:06

So I went up there and my

16:08

cousin followed. The

16:10

second I got up there, he asked me,

16:12

what is this? And I said, that looks

16:15

like a leg bone of

16:17

a dinosaur. So. Wow.

16:19

So what, can you describe what you were looking at?

16:21

What were they showing you? They

16:24

were showing me this leg

16:27

bone. It was about four foot

16:29

long and it was flaking at

16:32

the top with some other bones

16:34

here and there. But

16:37

that's all you could see. We took

16:39

some pictures and sent up to Tyler.

16:42

So Justin's dad, Sam Fisher

16:45

and I went to high school together and

16:47

several years ago, he started sending me pictures

16:49

of he and his boys and his nephew

16:51

out looking for fossils. And he'd

16:54

send me pictures of them holding petrified

16:56

wood and rocks and other things. And

16:59

then in July of 2022, he sends

17:01

me this picture of his

17:04

youngest boy lying down next to

17:06

the leg of this dinosaur, which

17:08

was just awesome. What

17:10

a remarkable find for for

17:12

Justin and Liam and their

17:14

cousin, Caden. And

17:16

many of the articles I've seen about

17:19

this story say they they stumbled on

17:21

it. And that's just not at all

17:23

true here because they were out looking

17:25

for a dinosaur and that's

17:27

what they found. And Justin was able to

17:29

identify it and then send pictures

17:31

to me. And so that's that's how I got

17:34

involved. And so from this photo

17:36

that you received, Tyler, did you know it was

17:38

a T-Rex just just from the photo? Yeah,

17:41

based on the photos, I could tell that it was

17:43

a dinosaur. It's like Justin had just

17:45

like he knew. And I could tell

17:47

it was a large dinosaur. So really,

17:49

the only dinosaurs that are that big

17:51

from this part of the world are

17:53

T-Rex, Triceratops or the duck-billed dinosaur and

17:55

Monosaurus. And based on the sort

17:58

of the knee joint where the feet.