Tag: origins

Covid before China?

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The President of the United States is fond of spitting out the word "China" when he talks of Covid-19, but there are now signs that the virus was in Italy for months before it was in China.

The Zika virus was first reported in some Pacific island countries, but is believed to have originated in Uganda. And the 1918 flu pandemic, which was first reported by the Spanish government and labelled the Spanish flu, had its earliest recorded outbreak in a military base in the US state of Kansas.

A variety of questions remain. Could Sars-CoV-2 have developed from similar viruses in Italy, and could that explain why early cases in Italy seemed less prevalent? How was it transferred to Wuhan?

Ultimately, it helps us all to understand this virus more, including its origins. We can also hope that the evolving discoveries undercut some of the anti-Chinese racism that has stemmed from the US President and others.

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Life on Venus?

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The images used to create this view of Venus were acquired by the Mariner 10 craft on Feb. 7 and 8, 1974

This is kind of a big deal. It could mean just mean that there’s a smelly deadly gas out there, that can be created in ways that we don’t understand much. Yawn, right?

Of course, the excitement is that it could also mean that the gas came to be on Venus through means that we already understand … from life.

As Carl Sagan, who also hypothesized about ways for life to exist on Venus, said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". To be clear, humans have not discovered life on Venus … yet. But, this is evidence that might indicate that there’s life on Venus. Following up on that evidence will be a huge challenge, and we might well find life, or proof of past life, on Mars first.

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World’s oldest sperm

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Ostracods mating

It seems that a post-coital female ostracod became trapped in tree resin about 100 million years ago, and was recently discovered by scientists. The sperm within her body is likely twice as old as the next oldest known animal sperm specimen, but it is also nearly five times the size of the male ostracod that produced it! according to a co-author of the study:

"This is equivalent to about 7.30 metres in a 1.70-metre human, so it requires a lot of energy to produce them"

While the article suggests that the next oldest sperm sample is a mere 17 million years, an article in The Independent highlights a 50 million year old find.

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On the verge of animal domestication

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A view of excavations in the Nachcharini Cave taken at end of the season in the summer of 1974

What was the transition from nomadic hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural settlements like? Among other things, it seems that humans got more specialized in their hunting, and adapted their approach, using temporary encampments as outposts while hunting in support of more substantial villages elsewhere in the region.

“We are not saying that hunters at Nachcharini were engaged in early stages of this domestication,” [Stephen Rhodes] said. “But the evidence of a local tradition makes this area a possible center of sheep domestication later on.”

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