Scientific news in small doses

A few milligrams of all the scientific news of the week

Mathieu Perreault
The Press

Dinosaurs below zero

The supremacy of dinosaurs was partly linked to their ability to survive a winter caused by eruptions 250 million years ago, according to a new American study published in Science Advances at the beginning of July. Columbia University paleontologists have analyzed fossils from the Junggar Basin in far northern Xinjiang, China, and found that the animals that survived the Late Triassic extinction event are the ancestors of the dinosaurs . The end of the Triassic extinction, 252 to 201 million years ago, saw the disappearance of 76% of all species on the planet.

Quiz

What new threat poses deforestation in the Amazon?

Answer

It is a source of new pandemic viruses. This is what emerges from an analysis of nine zoonoses (infectious diseases passed from animals to humans), whose human cases were followed between 2001 and 2019. The intensity of hunting in the cities near Amazonian deforestation areas is directly linked to the number of cases of zoonoses, which increases the risk of animal viruses adapting to humans, according to biologists from the Oswaldo Cruz Institute. This adaptation of viruses is notably responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. This research is published in early July in Science Advances.

The number

25

This is the weight, in kilograms, of the satellite capstone from NASA, which was launched at the end of June aboard a New Zealand Electron rocket. Capstone will test the stability of the orbit planned for the lunar station Gateway. capstone, the first lunar satellite, will take five months to reach the Moon (instead of a few days for most lunar missions). Why ? Because the Electron rocket is only 18 m, five times less than the Saturn V rocket of the Apollo project.

Prehistoric ancestor worship

Israeli researchers have discovered the oldest evidence of ancestor worship. At the Revadim site in the south of the country, paleontologists from Tel Aviv University found collections of stone tools that had no practical use. In Scientific Reports as of late June, they believe that the most likely justification for these stone tool collections is a desire to preserve the possessions of extinct ancestors.

Two victims of Santorini

The first two victims of the eruption of the volcano on the Greek island of Santorini 3,500 years ago have been unearthed in western Turkey. They died when the tsunami generated by the eruption reached Çeşme-Bağlararası, destroying this regional metropolis founded 1,000 years earlier. The Santorini eruption is one of the greatest natural disasters in human history. It caused the disappearance of several Mediterranean coastal civilizations. A description of the 20-year excavations carried out by the University of Ankara, which led to the discovery of the corpse of a man and his dog last year, is published in June in the journal of the Center for World Archeology from the University of Copenhagen.