“The original silphion was said to have appeared suddenly, after a great
downpour. Miski observed that, when rains came to Cappadocia in April, Ferula
drudeana would spring from the ground, growing up to six feet in just over a
month.”
Taras Grescoe, Alice Zoo, and Nirupa Rao ,
This miracle plant was eaten into extinction 2,000 years ago — or was it?
(National Geographic ,
September 23, 2022 )
posted 10/19/2022 8:00pm ∞
“[I]t turned out that the strain of plague that ravaged northern Kyrgyzstan in
1338–1339 was an ancestor of every other 14th-century plague genome that has
ever been sequenced. The plague strain from the Lake Issyk-Kul villages also
seems to be the most recent common ancestor of four Y. pestis lineages that
circulate in modern rodent populations.”
posted 9/25/2022 8:00pm ∞
“The pellets are filled with fish scales that match a type of ray-finned fish
found in that same location. The authors determined that these were gastric
pellets rather than coprolites due to their shape and the location in which they
were found in association with the pterosaurs.”
posted 9/22/2022 8:00pm ∞
“[T]he Iron Age sample also had a high abundance of two species of fungi:
Penicillium roqueforti — commonly used in the fermentation of cheese — and
Saccharomyces cerevisiae , used for fermenting bread and alcoholic beverages
like beer, mead, and wine.”
posted 8/16/2022 8:00pm ∞
“[O]ne slab sinking below the Mantle Transition Zone can create a mantle
undertow that squeezes up mountains on an entirely different plate,
660 kilometers above it. This new level of tectonics now makes sense of
other geological puzzles.”
Howard Lee ,
Plate tectonics runs deeper than we thought
(Ars Technica ,
October 3, 2019 )