Move Over Norse Mythology, There's A New Loki In Town - A Dinosaur

Primary Topic

This episode of Short Wave dives into the discovery of a new dinosaur species named Loki Saratops, revealing how this species differs from other ceratopsians and the importance of such findings in paleontology.

Episode Summary

In this intriguing episode of Short Wave, hosts Regina Barber and Ari Shapiro, along with guests, delve into the discovery of Loki Saratops Rangiformes, a new dinosaur species named after the Norse god Loki. This ceratopsian distinguishes itself with unique horn structures resembling those on Loki's helmet, found in Denmark. The episode explores not only the physical characteristics of this new species but also the broader implications of such a discovery on our understanding of dinosaur diversity and evolution, particularly in Montana, a hotspot for fossils. Furthermore, discussions extend to conservation successes like the Iberian lynx and an anticipated astronomical event, providing a compelling mix of historical life and current natural phenomena.

Main Takeaways

  1. Discovery of Loki Saratops: A new dinosaur species found in Montana, showcasing unique evolutionary traits.
  2. Conservation Success: The episode highlights the rebound of the Iberian lynx population in Spain and Portugal.
  3. Astronomical Event: An upcoming nova visible to the naked eye this summer, providing a rare spectacle.
  4. Educational Impact: Insights into the significant role of fossils in understanding our planet's biological history.
  5. Interdisciplinary Discussion: Combining paleontology with conservation and astronomy to engage a wide audience.

Episode Chapters

1. Introduction

Hosts Regina Barber and Ari Shapiro set the stage for a discussion on new scientific findings across various fields. Regina Barber: "You're listening to short wave from NPR."

2. Unveiling Loki Saratops

The new dinosaur species Loki Saratops is introduced, emphasizing its unique features and naming origin. Regina Barber: "Its name is Loki Saratops Rangiformes, named after the Norse god Loki."

3. Conservation Triumphs

The successful conservation efforts leading to the recovery of the Iberian lynx population are discussed. Burleigh McCoy: "In 2001, there were only about 60 of these mature cats... now over 2000."

4. Star Gazing

Details about an anticipated nova event in the Milky Way, expected to be a visible and significant astronomical occurrence. Regina Barber: "Astrophysicists are excited about this because we don't usually see a repeated nova event in a human lifetime."

Actionable Advice

  1. Fossil Hunting: Learn about local fossil sites and consider visiting museums or participating in digs.
  2. Wildlife Conservation: Support or volunteer with wildlife conservation groups.
  3. Astronomical Observation: Equip yourself with a telescope to observe upcoming celestial events.
  4. Environmental Awareness: Engage with local environmental causes to help protect endangered species.
  5. Science Communication: Share interesting scientific findings with your community to spread knowledge.

About This Episode

A brand new species of ceratops, or horned dinosaur, was recently discovered in northern Montana. The dinosaur is called Lokiceratops rangiformis, after the Norse god Loki, and is believed to have lived roughly eighty million years ago. The bones of the plant-eating dinosaur were found on private land in an area well known for its large amount of fossils, and at first, researchers thought the bones belonged to another species of dinosaur!

People

  • Regina Barber, Ari Shapiro, Burleigh McCoy, Mark Loewen, Joseph Surtage, Fernando Nahara

Companies

None

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

  • Mark Loewen, Joseph Surtage, Fernando Nahara

Content Warnings:

None

Transcript

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Regina Barber
You're listening to short wave from NPR.

Hey, short waivers. Regina Barbora here. This time I've got some serious science dorks for our regular science news roundup, starting with Ari Shapiro, who hosts all things considered between stints with us. Hey, Ari. Hi.

Ari Shapiro
So honored to have the title of Science dork. It's a real privilege.

Regina Barber
And my fellow, like, science queen producer Burleigh McCoy.

Burleigh McCoy
Hey, Dina.

Regina Barber
Okay, as you both know, we're gonna share three science stories in the news that have caught our attention recently.

Ari Shapiro
Yeah. Everything from a newly uncovered dinosaur species.

Regina Barber
To a current species bouncing back from.

Burleigh McCoy
The brink of extinction and an impending star explosion that'll be visible to the.

Ari Shapiro
Naked eye, which, btw, I heard NASA scientists are calling a once in a lifetime event.

Regina Barber
All that on this episode of Shortwave, the science Podcast from NPR.

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Regina Barber
All right, Ari, as our guest, which topic do you wanna start with?

Ari Shapiro
I love dinosaur coverage because we got called out a few years ago by an eight year old listener named Leo for not doing enough dinosaur stories. Gina, let's start there and continue rectifying this shortcoming. Tell us about the new dinosaur.

Regina Barber
I got you, Leo. Okay. Its name is Loki Saratops Rangiformes. And it's named after the norse God Loki for two reasons. One, because like all ceratops, it has horns on its head, but these blades, they look like the ones on Loki's helmet. And two, because its skull resides in Denmark.

Ari Shapiro
So that's the first part of the name. What about the second part of the name?

Regina Barber
Yeah, this is less fun, but still interesting. Like, rangiformes refers to horns not being symmetrical. Like caribou.

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Huh.

Ari Shapiro
I didn't know caribou have asymmetrical horns.

Regina Barber
Yeah, I had to look it up.

Burleigh McCoy
So, Ari, this is a brand new species of ceratops, or horned dinosaur. And it all starts with bones found on private land in northern Montana, which is actually in my neck of the woods. So this area is well known for a place with lots of fossils. At first, researchers thought it was a known dinosaur called Medusa ceratops.

Mark Loewen
So it was pretty cool. We were actually gathered around a table, and we're there together, and we had that Eureka moment where, wow, this really is something new.

Regina Barber
That's paleontologist Mark Loewen, and this discovery was published in the journal Peer J last week.

Ari Shapiro
Can I just say, these names are very mythological, like Medusa ceratops, Loki ceratops. I feel like we're tapping into greek mythology and the marvel Cinematic Universe. Is this pretty typical?

Regina Barber
Well, not all of them are named that Ari, but it's a reasonable question.

Burleigh McCoy
But they're still cool, because over the years, researchers have found five distinct ceratops there, which shows how diverse the horned dino population was and how they were rapidly evolving.

Regina Barber
Mark and another co author, Joseph Surtage, told me that where most dinosaur species live for around 2 million years, these fast evolving ceratops species might only have existed for 200,000 years.

Ari Shapiro
Hmm. So among this new family of ceratops, what makes Loki ceratops different from the others?

Burleigh McCoy
Yeah. So, generally, ceratops have horns on the top of their skulls, this bony frill going backwards from its skull and horns on their noses. These head features are thought to be used for attracting mates. But the Loki ceratops does not have this same nose horn, which Joseph says.

Mark Loewen
Probably means members of its own species found that sexy. To not have a nose horn and to have big blades on the back of its grill.

Ari Shapiro
Whatever does it for you, I guess.

Regina Barber
Yeah, no, I really like when he said that. But in all seriousness, Joseph says that, really, this discovery is such a big deal because. Because it shows that we're just scratching the surface of, like, the dino diversity in that region during the late Cretaceous period, about 78 million years ago.

Ari Shapiro
Cool. So let's pivot to an animal that exists in the present day. This is a wildlife success story about a lynx that has come back from the brink of extinction.

Burleigh McCoy
Yes, we are talking about the iberian lynx. So these are medium sized wild cats. They only live in Spain and Portugal, aka the Iberian Peninsula.

Ari Shapiro
Got it.

Burleigh McCoy
So, in 2001, there were only about 60 of these mature cats, and soon after, they were listed as critically endangered. But through conservation efforts over the past couple of decades, the total number of lynx is now over 2000.

Regina Barber
This is so cool. So just last week, the lynx was officially reclassified from an endangered species to a vulnerable one.

Ari Shapiro
That's amazing. How did they make this comeback?

Burleigh McCoy
So, to understand that, I talked to Fernando Nahara. He's a wildlife research veterinarian at the California Carnivore program that's at UC Davis Wildlife Health center. And he says it was a mix of things. So restoring habitat, minimizing human caused deaths, like from roadkill and poaching, and releasing lynx that were bred in captivity back into the wild.

Regina Barber
But one huge consideration was the lynx main prey, and that's the european white rabbit.

Fernando Nahara
So anything that happens to european white rabbits is going to have an impact on iberian lynxes.

Regina Barber
The rabbits are also endangered, largely due to viral outbreaks. Two major ones in the late eighties and the early 2010s really knocked their population populations down. So conservation groups trying to protect the lynx knew they had to focus on upping the rabbit populations.

Ari Shapiro
So a rebound of a couple thousand lynx is better than 60. But it sounds like there's still work to do, right?

Burleigh McCoy
There is. Fernando says people working with the lynx now are focusing on connecting the subpopulations in different areas of the peninsula and continuing to keep an eye on the rabbit population, since theoretically, a viral outbreak could knock it down again.

Fernando Nahara
But achieving this is something that we need to celebrate, and he says he's.

Regina Barber
Optimistic people will see the success of bringing the lynx back and apply a similar approach to other species facing extinction, which is almost 30% of all SS species.

Ari Shapiro
Ooh. 30% is a high number. Okay, let's go to our third and final topic of a once in a lifetime star explosion. Is that once in a person's lifetime or once in a star's lifetime?

Regina Barber
Person's lifetime, yeah.

Burleigh McCoy
So astronomers expect that this summer you'll be able to see an explosion in a star system in our Milky Way galaxy with your naked eye.

Regina Barber
When that happens, it's called a nova, and this one will be in a star system 3000 light years away called T. Corone borealis. And our NPR colleague Joe Hernandez reported on this recently. And the last time this happened in this star system, and it was seen from Earth, was in 1946. So this happens once every 80 years or so, and it's more rare than.

Ari Shapiro
A solar eclipse, a once in a lifetime event. So is this like a supernova? Is that what you're describing?

Burleigh McCoy
Good question. It's a little different. So a nova is a rapid increase in the brightness of a star. So in this case, T coronae Borealis is a binary star system, and that's made up of a white dwarf that's a dead star about the size of Earth and a red giant. So the white dwarf basically sucks material from the red giant, which causes a buildup of pressure and heat on the surface of the white dwarf, and eventually there's an explosion.

Regina Barber
Yeah. And a nova is different from a supernova because in this case, the white dwarf remains intact and the cycle can repeat over time. A supernova is only the final explosion of a dying star. So the white dwarf wouldn't exist anymore if it was a supernova.

Ari Shapiro
You said it's happening this summer. When should we be looking at the sky to see this?

Regina Barber
Yeah.

Burleigh McCoy
So it could happen at any moment between now and September. And once it does happen, it'll be visible for us for a little less than a week.

Regina Barber
Astrophysicists are excited about this because we don't usually see a repeated nova event in a human lifetime, and because this one is relatively close to our solar system. So they hope to use it to make observations that will help us understand novae like more in general.

Burleigh McCoy
And the super cool thing here, Ari, is that since the star system is 3000 light years from Earth, when we do see the explosion, it'll have already happened 3000 years ago.

Ari Shapiro
Can, like, backyard astronomers with a home telescope spot this. What's it gonna look like?

Regina Barber
Yeah, they can just look up in the sky around corona borealis, which is a really easy to find constellation, and it'll just be a star.

Ari, thank you so much for hanging out with us today.

Burleigh McCoy
Thanks, Ari.

Ari Shapiro
I love pretending to be a scientist with the two of you.

Regina Barber
Oh, you don't have to pretend. Everyone is a scientist at heart.

Burleigh McCoy
You're a scientist. Here, you can catch more of Ari doing his day job hosting the news on COnsider NPR's Afternoon news podcast.

Regina Barber
Before we head out, a quick shout out to our short wave listeners. We appreciate you, and we thank you for supporting our show. Shortwave helps support our show, and if you're a regular listener, we'd love for you to join so you can enjoy the show without sponsor interruptions. Find out more at plus dot npr.org shortwave.

Burleigh McCoy
This episode was produced by Gus Contreras and Rachel Carlson. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and Patrick Jaren Watanana Burleigh, Rachel, Rebecca and.

Regina Barber
I checked the fax, and the audio engineer was Patrick Murray. Thanks again to Alejandra Marques Hansen.

I'm Regina Barber.

Burleigh McCoy
And I'm Burleigh McCoy.

Regina Barber
Thank you for listening to short wave, the Science podcast from NPR.

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