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Short Wave

The Best (And Oldest) Tadpole Ever Discovered

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 β€’ 6K Ratings

πŸ—“οΈ 1 November 2024

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

For years, we've been asking, "Which came first: the chicken or the egg?" Maybe what we should have been asking is, "Which came first: the frog or the tadpole?" A new paper in the journal Nature details the oldest known tadpole fossil. Ringing in 20 million years earlier than scientists previously had evidence of, this fossil might get us closer to an answer.

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Okay, so there are three science stories that really caught our attention this week and we're really excited to share them with you. All right. What are they? We have two students that developed new mathematics

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for the Pythagorean theorem. Another one about how overwrite fruit in the wild may have affected

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