The World’s Oldest Thumb Belongs to a Dinosaur
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 963 Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2021
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about the “Monkeydactyl” fossil; whether it’s safe to eat food with freezer burn; and post-death “zombie genes.”
Newly discovered "Monkeydactyl" fossil has the oldest known opposable thumb by Grant Currin
- New Jurassic flying reptile reveals the oldest opposed thumb. (2021). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-04/uob-njf041221.php
- Zhou, X., Pêgas, R. V., Ma, W., Han, G., Jin, X., Leal, M. E. C., Bonde, N., Kobayashi, Y., Lautenschlager, S., Wei, X., Shen, C., & Ji, S. (2021). A new darwinopteran pterosaur reveals arborealism and an opposed thumb. Current Biology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.03.030
- Fox, A. (2021, April 16). A Prehistoric Flying Creature Nicknamed “Monkeydactyl” May Have Climbed Trees Using Opposable Thumbs. Smithsonian Magazine; Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/monkeydactyl-may-have-climbed-using-opposable-thumbs-180977531/
- Specktor, B. (2021, April 16). Tiny Jurassic “Monkeydactyl” has the oldest pair of thumbs on Earth. Livescience.com; Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/pterosaur-monkeydactyl-oldest-animal-thumbs.html
Is It Safe to Eat Food That Has Freezer Burn? Originally aired April 26, 2018 https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/freezer-burn-science-a-giant-flying-reptile-and-ho
Some genes activate in your brain after you die by Cameron Duke
- Dachet, F., Brown, J. B., Valyi-Nagy, T., Narayan, K. D., Serafini, A., Boley, N., Gingeras, T. R., Celniker, S. E., Mohapatra, G., & Loeb, J. A. (2021). Selective time-dependent changes in activity and cell-specific gene expression in human postmortem brain. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 6078. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-85801-6
- “Zombie” genes? Research shows some genes come to life in the brain after death. (2021). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-03/uoia-gr032321.php?s=09
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from |
| 0:04.9 | Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about the |
| 0:09.3 | newly discovered record-breaking monkey dactyl fossil, |
| 0:13.0 | whether it's safe to eat food that has freezer burn, |
| 0:16.0 | and some genes that activate in your brain after you die. |
| 0:20.0 | Let's satisfy some curiosity. |
| 0:22.0 | Researchers working in China Let's satisfy some curiosity. |
| 0:23.0 | Researchers working in China have found the oldest pair of thumbs ever documented by scientists. |
| 0:29.0 | And guess what was attached to them? A dinosaur! a new kind of dinosaur in fact. They call it |
| 0:36.1 | monkey dactyl because of the thumbs. They think it could climb trees and fly and it's called monkey dactyl. And that's great. This 160 million year old |
| 0:48.0 | fossil came from an ancient forest in China that was flush with evergreens, ginkgo trees, and dinosaurs. |
| 0:55.0 | Lucky for us, remains from the forest were preserved in volcanic rock. |
| 1:00.0 | Monkey Soros is one of more than a hundred fossils that have been recovered from the formation so far. |
| 1:06.0 | The researchers used micro CT scans to examine the fossil while it was still embedded in the rock. |
| 1:12.0 | Those observations, combined with other techniques, while it was still embedded in the rock. |
| 1:12.6 | Those observations, combined with other techniques, |
| 1:15.7 | told the paleontologists a ton about the little dino. |
| 1:20.0 | It had a wing span of about three feet, |
| 1:22.4 | or a little less than a meter and at the end of each wing was a hand a hand with two fingers and an opposable thumb |
| 1:30.8 | The thumbs are a big deal because they're pretty rare. |
| 1:34.0 | Some mammals have them, like primates, and so do a lot of tree frogs. |
| 1:38.0 | As for reptiles, only one has the magic digit, |
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