Laura Geggel

Ancient people in the Kingdom of Judah may have gotten high off weed

June 2, 2020 By Laura Geggel

An aerial view of the Tel Arad fortress that stands in what was once the Kingdom of Judah. (Credit: Asaf. Z; Public Domain)

More than 2,700 years ago, worshipers at a “holy of holies” shrine in Israel may have gotten high on weed. Researchers discovered burnt cannabis and frankincense at the site, which was located in the Kingdom of Judah.

Researchers made the discovery after analyzing ancient residues left on two altars at the shrine. The burnt cannabis is “the first known evidence of [a] hallucinogenic substance found in the Kingdom of Judah,” a region that now includes parts of the West Bank and central Israel, the researchers wrote in the study.

Once the cannabis was burned at the Iron Age site, “we can assume that the religious altered state of consciousness in this shrine was an important part of the ceremonies that took place here,” study lead researcher Eran Arie, the curator of Iron Age and Persian period archaeology at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, told Live Science in an email.

Archaeologists first excavated the site in the 1960s; they unearthed two fortresses, dating to from the ninth to the early sixth centuries B.C., that flanked the southern border of the Kingdom of Judah. During these excavations, archaeologists found a well-preserved shrine dating to about 750 B.C. to 715 B.C.

At the shrine’s entrance were two limestone altars, one standing 18 inches (40 centimeters) high and the other 20 inches (50 cm) tall. Each altar had a shallow depression on top containing “round heaps of black solidified organic material,” the researchers wrote in the study. Based on the altars’ characteristics, researchers concluded this was a “holy of holies” shrine, meant to evoke the inner sanctum of the Tabernacle of the Israelites, where God was thought to appear. Tests of this black gunk in the 1960s gave mostly inconclusive results, noting only that one clump contained animal fat.

Arie decided to reanalyze this black material, especially since some residue still remained on the altars. He teamed up with study co-researcher Dvory Namdar, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Plant Sciences at the Volcani Center of Agricultural Research in Israel. Namdar has expertise in analyzing residue from ancient burned incense, but “we never thought we [would] reveal such an amazing find” as the cannabis, Arie said.

However, Namdar was worried that the sample could have been contaminated; at the time, she worked in a lab that conducted cannabinoid research. So, the researchers “re-sampled the altars and verified the results in another laboratory at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,” Arie said. “The results were the same.”

Ceremonial burning

The new tests revealed that the smaller altar contained burned cannabis and animal droppings. It appears that “animal dung was used as the fuel [to burn] the cannabis,” Arie said. Dung burns more slowly than herbs, so it would have slowed down the burning process, he said.

The taller altar contained the remnants of frankincense and animal fat, which would have promoted evaporation of the aromatic tree resin. It’s the earliest evidence that frankincense was used in a cultic practice in the Kingdom of Judah, Arie said.

Both of these findings provide clues about cultic practices in the Kingdom of Judah. In particular, the cannabis finding indicates that people may have purposefully used the plant for its “hallucinogenic ingredients,” to stimulate ecstasy during cultic ceremonies, at least during the eighth century B.C., Arie said.

Practices at this shrine may also shed light on the First Temple, also known as Solomon’s Temple, which was also in the Kingdom of Judah and in use at the same time. The shrine at Arad “was an official shrine of the Kingdom of Judah,” Arie said, so it’s possible that these findings can be “extra-biblical evidence” that similar practices were used in the First Temple, Arie said.

In other words, the bible mentions that frankincense was burned in the First Temple, but because this shrine used both cannabis and frankincense, these substances “were probably also (at least) part of the components of the incense that was burnt in the Temple in Jerusalem,” Arie said.

Shopping around

Where did these burned ingredients originate? Frankincense comes from Arabia, so it’s likely that the Kingdom of Judah took part in the south Arabian trade, even before the Assyrian empire encouraged such practices starting in 701 B.C., the researchers said. Moreover, it probably wasn’t cheap. “The high value of frankincense is further reflected in the Bible, where its price is compared several times with that of gold and precious stones, and it is often described as a royal treasure,” the researchers wrote in the study.

Cannabis, in contrast, isn’t local to the Middle East. Rather, cannabis originated high on the Tibetan Plateau, according to a study of fossil pollen. What’s more, there aren’t any cannabis seeds or pollen remains known in the ancient Near East’s archaeological record. So, it’s possible that cannabis plants “may have been imported from distant origins and were transported as dried resin (commonly known as hashish),” the researchers wrote in the study.

The new finding “is revolutionary in making a case for the use of specialized psychoactive plants in early Israelite religion,” said Patrick McGovern, the scientific director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, who was not involved in the study.

However, McGovern said the study could have delved deeper into the cannabis findings. “The proposal that the cannabis was heated to release psychoactive compounds, rather than for its aroma as an incense (provided by the frankincense, in any case), is an intriguing proposition,” he said.

It’s interesting that the Hebrew Bible doesn’t appear to mention cannabis use, and that there isn’t any known archaeobotanical evidence for the plant at the shrine, he noted. That said, it may not be far-fetched, given that people in the Kingdom of Judah did use another mind-altering substance in rituals, namely alcohol, McGovern said. The study doesn’t mention “the psychoactive properties of grape wine, which we know to have played a central role in early Israelite religion,” McGovern said.

The study was published online yesterday (May 28) in the journal Tel Aviv.

Originally published on Live Science.

Two ‘warrior women’ from ancient Mongolia may have helped inspire the Ballad of Mulan

May 12, 2020 By Laura Geggel

The remains of the older warrior woman (left) and her husband, which were excavated from the Airagiin Gozgor archaeological site, in the Orkhon province of northern Mongolia. (Credit: Christine Lee)

Archaeologists in Mongolia have found the remains of two ancient women warriors, whose skeletal remains indicate that they were well practiced in archery and horseback riding.

These two women lived during the Xianbei period (A.D. 147 to 552), a period of political fragmentation and unrest that gave rise to the Ballad of Mulan, the researchers said.

Perhaps these women were so athletic because during the Xianbei period, “it may have been that women were needed to defend home and country alongside the men,” said study researchers Christine Lee and Yahaira Gonzalez, bioarchaeologists at California State University, Los Angeles.

Lee added that many historians pin Mulan to the Xianbei period. There’s a lot of research into the Ballad of Mulan, and “my research just reinforces what they’ve been finding,” Lee told Live Science.

In the ballad, Mulan serves in the military so that her father doesn’t have to; but at that time, China didn’t have military conscription, Lee said. Moreover, the ballad notes that Mulan was fighting for the khan, a term used for Mongolian leaders. However, Chinese authors were the first to transcribe the ballad, which is probably why it’s seen as a Chinese story, Lee said.

The research, which is not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal, was slated to be presented at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists annual conference in mid-April, until the meeting was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Lee has worked in China and Mongolia for the past 16 years. She discovered the remains of the two women warriors during an excavation of a cemetery at the Airagiin Gozgor archaeological site, in the Orkhon province of northern Mongolia. Over the past four years, Lee and her colleagues have analyzed ancient human remains from 29 elite burials (16 males, 10 females, 3 unknown) at the site, for signs of prolonged horseback riding, archery and trauma.

In particular, she looked at bone marks from muscle attachments, as larger marks indicate that the muscles were heavily used; for instance, during archery. Markers of repetitive movement on the thumb were also indicative of archery, Lee said. She also looked for trauma patterns in the spine that are common in people who ride horses.

While many of the men and adolescents had signs suggestive of archery and horseback riding, and some of the women had marks indicating they did one or the other, the two warrior women had signs of both, said Lee, who is the lead researcher of the study.

“They were probably pretty badass,” Lee said. “They’re doing what the men are doing. So, you can extrapolate from that [and say] that they have some gender equality.”

Any form of gender equality was momentous for that period in Asia. “In neighboring China at that time, women were secluded,” Lee said. “The ideal woman was helpless and docile, while being in the north [in Mongolia], they’re not.”

The Mongolian culture didn’t have a written language before Genghis Khan (1162 to 1227), but other cultures, including the Chinese, Koreans and Persians, wrote about the Mongolians, Lee said. By the A.D. 900s, women in Mongolia were enjoying freedoms not found in contemporary cultures; the Mongolians had queens who led armies and received emissaries from the Pope, Lee said. In addition, women were able to inherit property and decide whom they wanted to marry, she said.

“If they’re already that independent by 900 A.D., my thinking was that you [can] extrapolate backward, at least a couple hundred years, because it has to come from somewhere,” Lee told Live Science.

She noted that the Chinese were writing propaganda about the Mongolian women, “because they were saying that it [women having power] was a bad thing, and that’s horrible and that these women have too much freedom and they’re slutty and they’re horrible wives.”

In essence, the Chinese were disparaging anybody who lived north of the wall, Lee said.

Of the two warrior women, one was older than 50 and the other was about 20 years old. It’s possible they practiced archery and rode horses because these skills were needed during the political instability that following the collapse of the Han Dynasty in China in A.D. 220, Lee said.

Neither woman had signs of war trauma. This could be because both women were found in elite graves, and elite people may not have fought in battles, Lee said.

Originally published on Live Science.

Are ‘covid toes’ a real symptom of the coronavirus?

May 1, 2020 By Laura Geggel

A frostbite-like rash on a person’s toes might be a symptom of the new coronavirus, according to anecdotal evidence from dermatologists around the world.

However, research is needed to determine whether this peculiar rash is truly caused by COVID-19.

The pinkish-reddish rash can turn purple over time, and causes a burning sensation in some people, Dr. Esther Freeman, a dermatologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, told The Washington Post. But the inflammation tends to disappear without treatment in two to three weeks, Freeman said.

So far, data shows that most people with so-called “covid toes” are asymptomatic or have mild cases of the disease, Freeman told the Post. Moreover, this strange rash tends to affect the younger crowd, including children and adults in their 20s or 30s, she said.

“Most of the patients were young, healthy and had a benign clinical course,” she told the Post. “I don’t want people to think if they are having purple spots on their toes that they are going to end up on a ventilator in the ICU. That is not what we are seeing in the data.”

A series of images of covid toes, photographed by Italian dermatologist Andrea Bassi and posted on Twitter show the range of appearances this rash can take.

But there is still much to learn, so Freeman and colleagues who are part of an American Academy of Dermatology task force created an online COVID-19 dermatology registry, where health care workers can report skin-related issues that seem to be linked to COVID-19, including the frostbite-like toe rashes.

The researchers hope that the database will help doctors “understand the relationship between the virus and skin” and determine whether any of these skin problems can help with early disease detection, the team wrote in a report in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

So far, roughly half of the more than 300 database entries include covid toes, USA Today reported on April 27.

Freeman noted that these toe rashes include skin sores or bumps known as pernio or chilblains, which usually occur when a person’s foot has been exposed to extremely cold temperatures. However, because these rashes are happening in spring and in COVID-19 patients, cold temperatures are unlikely to be the cause.

Instead, dermatologists say it’s possible that inflammation in the toes is causing the rash, Freeman told USA Today. Other ideas are that small blood clots in the toe’s blood vessels may lead to the rash, or that the blood vessel walls are inflamed due to a condition known as vasculitis.

One of the first mentions of covid toes appeared in early April, when French doctors noted that the rash had an “appearance of pseudo-frostbite” and “persistent, sometimes painful redness, and transient hive lesions.” (Translated with Google Translate.)

Mention of the toes surfaced again on April 18 in a Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology case report. In the case report, the researchers described a 23-year-old student in Belgium who had “COVID-19 infection–induced chilblains.”

It’s not uncommon for viruses to cause rashes. Measles, for instance, can cause itchy flat spots, while coxsackie can lead to painful sores in the hands, feet and mouth, the Post reported.

Originally published on Live Science.

Should you wear a face mask to prevent COVID-19? Experts disagree.

April 2, 2020 By Laura Geggel

File photo: An N95 air filter mask.
(iStock)

Editor’s note: This story was updated March 31 to include that the CDC is considering the recommendation that the general public wear face coverings in public. Also, that there is circumstantial evidence that the virus spreads through a fine mist known as aerosol.

The public doesn’t need to wear heavy-duty respirators, but it’s a smart idea to don a face mask or wrap a clean scarf around your nose and mouth if you’re going into a crowded place during the COVID-19 outbreak, an infectious disease doctor told Live Science.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may soon agree with this assessment; the agency currently states that healthy people do not need to wear face masks unless they are caring for someone who is ill with the new coronavirus. But an anonymous federal official said that the CDC may change these guidelines, in effect encouraging people to cover their faces in public, The Washington Post reported on March 30.

That said, the public does not need to wear face masks most of the time, said Dr. Otto Yang, a professor in the Department of Medicine and the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.

If you’re out for a walk — in essence, going to a setting where you can be at least 6 feet (1.8 meters) from other people, “then I think that not having a mask is fine and that fits the CDC recommendations,” Yang said.

But, in his opinion, “If you have to be in a crowded situation, perhaps on a plane or waiting in line at the airport, it might make sense to wear a mask,” Yang told Live Science.

The discussion about face masks has become a national conversation. Many people in the public are buying face masks to protect themselves. But health care experts have urged against hoarding, since these supplies are desperately needed in hospitals. Even the U.S. surgeon general tweeted “Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS!”

“The CDC, it’s like they’re talking out of both sides of their mouth,” Yang said. “One side of their mouth is telling the general public, ‘Hey, you don’t need masks, forget about it.’ The other side is, ‘Health care workers need to wear N95 respirators.'”

“Is that a double standard?” Yang said. “Are they valuing some people more than others?”

Droplets or aerosol

Some of the confusion about “masks versus N95 respirators” exists because so little is known about COVID-19. At first, it wasn’t clear if the virus spread predominantly through large respiratory droplets (like influenza) or also through a fine mist, called an aerosol, which can linger for hours (like measles). This great unknown made it unclear whether a heavy-duty mask, known as an N95 respirator, which blocks the smallest virus particles, or a regular surgical mask, which only blocks larger droplets, was better suited to protect against the virus.

At first, the CDC advised health care workers to wear N95 respirators because it wasn’t clear whether COVID-19 could spread through aerosol. A March 17 study in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) seemed to justify the fear of airborne spread, showing that the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 could survive in the air for up to 3 hours as an aerosol.

But Yang doesn’t see it that way. The new study showed that the virus was viable as an aerosol in a lab, but not in real life, he said. In the study, the researchers “took extremely concentrated virus, much more concentrated than a person makes, they used an artificial aerosol machine [a nebulizer], which probably generates way more aerosol than a normal person does,” Yang said. “So their conclusions were in this system.”

Related: Are viruses alive?

The researchers of that study looked at SARS-CoV-1 (the original SARS from the 2003 outbreak) and SARS-CoV-2 and found that both could be aerosols. “But we already know that the original SARS virus was not transmitted that way,” in the general public, so that makes their model “not very believable,” Yang said.

In other words, except in certain hospital situations such as a bronchoscopy, which essentially creates a fine mist of virus, SARS-CoV-2 is likely spread mostly through droplets, like the flu, Yang said. That’s supported by a Feb. 24 case report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, which found a man sick with COVID-19 on a flight from China to Canada in January did not infect his fellow passengers, even though he had a dry cough during the 15-hour flight. The man was wearing a face mask, but because no one else on the plane got infected, this case “supports droplet transmission, not airborne, as the likely route of spread of the COVID-19,” the researchers of the case study found.

However, it’s still unclear whether the virus can spread through aerosol. For example, after the Skagit Valley Chorale in Washington met for rehearsal on March 6, 45 of its members were diagnosed or showed symptoms of COVID-19, at least three were hospitalized and two were dead within three weeks, according to the Los Angeles Times. Perhaps the choir singers’ forceful breathing as they sang dispersed the viral particles, Jamie Lloyd-Smith, an infectious disease researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles and a co-researcher on the NEJM study, told the Los Angeles Times.

“One could imagine that really trying to project your voice would also project more droplets and aerosols, Lloyd-Smith said.

N95 respirator or face mask?

Due to the N95 respirator shortage, the CDC recently relaxed its guidelines, saying that among health care workers, face masks were “an acceptable alternative when the supply chain of respirators cannot meet the demand,” except in situations when respiratory aerosols might be produced, such as intubation or nebulizer treatments.

In addition to the shortage, N95 respirators are challenging to put on. Doctors receive annual training on how to mold the respirator around the face. As a test, doctors put on a hood and have the artificial sweetener saccharin sprayed in. “If you’re wearing the mask properly, you don’t taste any saccharin,” Yang said. But most people do, he noted.

For this reason, the N95 respirator isn’t recommended for the public, since it requires training to put on properly. Moreover, the N95 respirator is thick, so it’s hard to breathe through.

In a nutshell, the public does not need N95 respirators; they likely will not be in a situation where they’re exposed to aerosol of the virus, and these masks are needed by health care workers who will, Yang said.

“There’s no reason for the general public to wear N95’s,” Yang said.

However, even regular face masks are in short supply, prompting the CDC to recommend the use of bandannas and scarves when necessary. There’s not a lot of research on homemade masks, but a small 2013 study found that masks made from cotton T-shirts were effective, though not as good as surgical masks.

“The surgical mask was three times more effective in blocking transmission [of microorganisms] than the homemade mask,” the researchers of that study found, who noted that homemade masks “should only be considered as a last resort to prevent droplet transmission from infected individuals.”

For people opting to use scarves and homemade masks, Yang recommended washing them after every use, and to stop wearing them when damp from breathing. Wearing eye protection, such as a face shield or goggles, could also physically block the virus, said Yang and Dr. James Cherry, a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California at Los Angeles.

In a 1987 study Cherry did with colleagues, health care workers who wore face masks or goggles were less likely to get respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) from hospitalized children than doctors who did not take these measures.

However, unlike Yang, Cherry agreed with the current CDC guidelines, and said that except for certain exceptions, the public doesn’t need to wear face masks, as did Dr. Jaimie Meyer, an infectious disease specialist at Yale Medicine. That’s especially true given that the safest way to avoid being exposed, or exposing others, is to simply stay home.

“The current CDC guidance says the general public does not need to be wearing surgical masks,” Meyer told Live Science. “The best protection is to focus on social distancing, hand-washing, not touching their faces and bleaching high touch surfaces.”

Originally published on Live Science.

Viral video advises washing fruit and vegetables with soap: Here’s why that’s a bad idea

March 31, 2020 By Laura Geggel

A array of fruits and vegetables are displayed for sale at a street market in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Tuesday, April 16, 2019. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Despite what a doctor in a viral video suggests, it’s not a good idea to wash fruits and vegetables with soap and water, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, food scientists told Live Science.

“We’ve known for 60 years that there are toxicity issues about consuming household dish soaps,” Benjamin Chapman, a professor and food safety specialist at North Carolina State University, told Live Science. “Drinking dish soap or eating it can lead to nausea, can lead to [an] upset stomach. It’s not a compound that our stomach is really built to deal with.”

Instead, people should wash produce as they normally would, with cold water, Chapman said.

Dr. Jeffrey VanWingen, who works in private practice as a family doctor in Grand Rapids, Michigan, posted the video to YouTube on March 24. Since then, it’s been seen about 16.5 million times.

“I felt an urgency to get the word out to people that despite the stay-at-home order [in Michigan], we need to use caution when we go out,” VanWingen told Live Science. “That’s really the most important piece of the message: If you don’t have to go out, don’t. But if you must, to get food, do so with caution.”

In the video, he advises people to spend as little time in the grocery store as possible, to wipe down shopping carts with disinfectant, and to go shopping for those older than 60 years old, as they might have a higher risk for severe illness from COVID-19, according to the Centers for Prevention and Disease Control (CDC).

But other advice VanWingen gives is less scientifically sound. For instance, VanWingen advises people to keep new groceries in a garage or porch for at least three days, if possible. (Later, in his interview with Live Science, VanWingen said this didn’t apply to refrigerated or frozen goods.) Then, VanWingen suggests that containers bought at the store be disinfected or discarded.

A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested that the virus could stay on cardboard for 24 hours and plastic and stainless steel for 72 hours, although the overall concentration fell significantly by that time. But the practice of quarantining and then sanitizing food containers before putting them in the refrigerator or pantry isn’t necessary, Chapman said.

“We don’t have any evidence that food or food packaging are transmission vehicles for coronavirus,” Chapman said.

As for VanWingen’s disinfecting suggestion, “it’s not based on any science,” Chapman said. A better way to handle new groceries is to put them away and then wash your hands with soap and water, or use hand sanitizer, Chapman said. “It’s not to say that washing my hands is magical, but it’s as effective as what he’s suggesting.”

Hand cleaning is key, said Donald Schaffner, a specialist in food science and a distinguished professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey. You should clean your hands after returning from the store. “And if you’re still feeling worried after you put all your groceries away, wash your hands and/or use hand sanitizer,” he said. Also, clean your hands before preparing a meal and before eating.

“You know what? That was good advice even before the pandemic,” Schaffner said. “And it’s going to be good advice after the pandemic, too.” (Schaffner expands on these ideas in his Twitter thread about VanWingen’s video.)

As for people concerned about food packaging harboring the virus, “I get it,” Schaffner said. “But here’s the thing, it’s probably not on food. And even if it is on food, it’s not going to make you sick from eating that food.”

As Chapman told Live Science in a previous interview, in theory, coronaviruses do not survive well in the very acidic stomach.

Rinsing produce

In the video, VanWingen suggests pre-soaking produce in soapy water and then washing it with soap for 20 seconds. But doing this could lead to health problems, such as mild gastrointestinal irritation with nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain. That’s because produce is porous, so it can absorb soap, Chapman said.

“Consumers should not wash fruits and vegetables with detergent or soap,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). “These products are not approved or labeled by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use on foods. You could ingest residues from soap or detergent absorbed on the produce.”

Although not mentioned in the video, the internet is rampant with other unscientific advice, such as using a dilute bleach solution, lemon juice or vinegar to wash produce during the COVID-19 outbreak. Again, there’s no scientific evidence that any of these work, Chapman said. In addition, ingesting bleach is dangerous, he said.

Furthermore, there is no evidence that vegetable soaps can destroy SARS-CoV-2, or any other virus for that matter, as there’s been no scientific studies saying as much, Chapman said.

Instead, “rinse fresh fruits and vegetables with running cold water,” Chapman said. “That may remove 90 to 99% of what’s there.”

However, the food scientists did agree with VanWingen on one major point.

“Your biggest risk from groceries and coronavirus is the time that you spend in the grocery store around people who either have the coronavirus and have symptoms or asymptomatic people who are in the grocery store,” Schaffner said. “That’s the big risk right there.”

Originally published on Live Science.

Fish sprouted fingers before they ventured onto land, fossil shows

March 23, 2020 By Laura Geggel

An illustration showing the ancient fish, Elpistostege watsoni, which had finger bones in its front fins. (Credit: John Long)

A 380-million-year-old fossil of a fish has revealed that fingers evolved in vertebrates before the creatures wriggled out of the sea and evolved into land-dwelling creatures, as a new study describes.

The fossil of the 5.1-foot-long (1.6 meters) fish, known by the scientific name Elpistostege watsoni, suggests that human hands likely evolved, eventually, from the fins of this fish, said study lead researcher Richard Cloutier, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Quebec in Rimouski.

The fossil “clarifies the question about the transition between fish and four-legged animals,” known as tetrapods, Cloutier told Live Science in an email. “It is the first time that digits, as seen in tetrapods, are found in a fin covered by scales and fin rays, as seen in fishes.”

A fossil to remember

The discovery of the fossil, in Miguasha National Park in Quebec, took an entire team. Two tourists found different pieces of the tail, and Benoît Cantin, a Miguasha park warden-naturalist, found the majority of the fossil on the beach, which he excavated with Michel Haché and Philippe Duranleau Gagnon, both naturalist guides at the park.

This group of naturalists unearthed “the longest fossil ever found in the Escuminac Formation, less than 200 meters [656 feet] behind the [park’s] museum,” Cloutier said. This fossil was a prize: Although broken into 22 slabs of rock, it showed the most complete specimen of E. watsoni to date.

Once the tail pieces found by the tourists were added, “it was the last piece of the puzzle to complete our unique, 1.57-meter-long specimen of Elpistostege, the only complete [fossil of a] elpistostegalian, or tetrapod-like fish, known on Earth,” Cloutier said.

Other elpistostegalian fishes include the Tiktaalik, known only from incomplete fossil specimens in the Canadian Arctic.

Fish world

When E. watsoni was alive, some 380 million years ago, during the Devonian period, fishes ruled the world. It would be another 150 million years before dinosaurs came into being.

E. watsoni lived in a large estuary along the south coast of Euramerica, an ancient continent that included today’s North America and part of Europe. At that time, Euramerica was a little south of the equator, so E. watsoni enjoyed a warm climate.

On land, there were 33-foot-tall (10 m) tree-like ferns, as well as smaller plants. But there weren’t any vertebrates, or animals with backbones. Instead, there were invertebrates, such as scorpions and millipedes, Cloutier said. The only vertebrates, like the sharp-fanged E. watsoni, were in the sea.

“Exceptional fossil”

The researchers analyzed the fish via a high-energy CT (computed tomography) scan at The University of Texas at Austin, Cloutier said. This gave the team, composed of scientists from the University of Quebec in Rimouski and Flinders University in Australia, a digital image of the fossil that they could rotate, magnify and study.

The fish’s front fins, known as pectoral fins, immediately caught the researchers’ attention. These fins had precursors of vertebrate fingers and arms, including the humerus (arm), radius and ulna (forearm), rows of carpus (wrist), and phalanges organized in digits (fingers), the researchers said. It’s these last, distal bones that the researchers described in the new study, published online Wednesday (March 18) in the journal Nature.

“This is the first time that we have unequivocally discovered fingers locked in a fin with fin-rays in any known fish,” study senior author John Long, professor in palaeontology at Flinders University, said in a statement. “The articulating digits in the fin are like the finger bones found in the hands of most animals.”

Small rows of bones in the pectoral fin, which the researchers identified as digits, “show that the basic plan for the vertebrate hand (including our own hand!) must have originated within the fins of advanced, lobe-finned fishes back in the start of the Late Devonian, more than 380,000,000 years ago,” Cloutier said.

However, this fish likely didn’t walk on its fins. There are too many small bones there, meaning that the fish had a lot of flexibility in the “finger” region, but these fingers weren’t optimal for bearing weight on land. “Most likely, Elpistostege was swimming, but it could have stood on its pectoral fins on the bottom of shallow estuarine and fluvial water,” Cloutier said.

The fish’s upper arm bone, or humerus, also shows features that are shared with early amphibians. However, “Elpistostege is not necessarily our ancestor, but it is [the] closest we can get to a true ‘transitional fossil,’ an intermediate between fishes and tetrapods,” Long said.

Cloutier noted that two of the fish’s fingers have two phalanges each and three have one phalange each, unlike humans, who have two or three phalanges per finger. However, not every vertebrate has five fingers, like this fish and humans.

“Early tetrapods had between six and eight fingers,” Cloutier said.

After E. watsoni lived, fin rays and scales were lost in the pectoral appendages as tetrapods evolved further and eventually made it to land. Still, all tetrapods share the same basic pattern of digits found in E. watsoni, Cloutier said.

“This discovery and research provide a better understanding of one of the most significant events in the evolution of vertebrates: the origin of tetrapods [and] the transition between aquatic fishes and terrestrial tetrapods,” Cloutier said.

Images: Stunning fish X-rays

In photos: ‘Faceless’ fish rediscovered after more than a century

Photos of the largest fish on Earth

Originally published on Live Science.

Billion-year-old green algae is an ancestor of all plants on Earth

February 26, 2020 By Laura Geggel

An illustration of how Proterocladus antiquus likely appeared 1 billion years ago. (Credit: Dinghua Yang; Tang et al., Nature Ecology and Evolution)

The oldest green seaweed on record, the ancestor of all land plants, lived about 1 billion years ago, a new study finds.

Scientists have discovered the fossils of what may be the oldest green algae ever known. The newfound seaweed — called Proterocladus antiquus — lived about a billion years ago. And even though it was tiny, about 0.07 inches (2 millimeters) in length, the algae had a big role: It could produce oxygen through photosynthesis.

“Its discovery indicates that green plants we see today can be traced back to at least 1 billion years ago, and they started in the ocean before they expanded their territory to the land,” study lead researcher Qing Tang, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech, told Live Science in an email.

Until now, researchers didn’t have hard proof that green algae lived that long ago. Rather, computer models, including those based on molecular clocks, indicated that photosynthesizing plants arose between the Paleoproterozoic era (2.5 billion to 1.6 billion years ago) and the Cryogenian period (720 million to 635 million years ago).

Now that researchers have a fossil, they can confidently say that photosynthesizing plants, a group known as Viridiplantae, lived at least 1 billion years ago, and that they were multicellular, Tang said.

“Previously, the oldest widely accepted fossilized green algae was about 800 million years old,” said Timothy Gibson, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University, who was not involved with the study. “This work confirms what many have expected based on the existing, though sparse fossil record, which is that green algae likely existed about a billion years ago.”

Tang and his colleagues discovered the fossils near Dalian City in Liaoning province of northern China. They had heard there was “a thick pile of well-exposed sedimentary rocks” from the Nanfen Formation dating to about a billion years ago. So, Tang took some of these ancient rocks, mostly mudstone and shale, back to the lab at Virginia Tech.

Tang was “really excited” when he saw the algae fossil under the microscope. In all, he identified 1,028 specimens. “I showed it to my supervisor [Shuhai Xiao, a professor in the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech], and we immediately agreed that this was going to be a very interesting discovery,” he said.

Just like modern-day algae, P. antiquus has differentiated, branched cells and root-like structures, Tang said. It likely played an important role in the ancient ecosystem by producing oxygen, he said. In addition, it likely provided food and shelter to other organisms.

“Most of the organisms (particularly cyanobacteria) in this period were either planktonic or lying on the seafloor,” Tang said. P. antiquus also grew on the seafloor, indicating that it could have served as an ideal place for living, hiding, resting for other organisms, he said.

Life on Earth is dependent on photosynthesizing plants and algae for food, yet land plants did not evolve until about 450 million years ago, Tang said. “The new fossil suggests that green seaweeds were important players in the ocean long before their descendants, land plants, took control,” he said.

These fossils came from an ancient ocean, but there is still a debate about where green algae originated. “Not everyone agrees with us; some scientists think that green plants started in rivers and lakes, and then conquered the ocean and land later,” Xiao said in a statement.

Moreover, green algae isn’t the oldest algae on record. “There is strong fossil evidence that red algae existed over a billion years ago, and we know the red and green algae diverged from a common ancestor,” Gibson told Live Science in an email. “So, although this doesn’t fundamentally change the way I’ll think about the evolution of life, the discovery of this green algal fossil helps fill an important gap and strengthens an emerging timeline for the evolution of early, complex life.”

The study was published online yesterday (Feb. 24) in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

1,200-year-old ‘gumdrop’ might have belonged to elite gamer at UK monastery

February 11, 2020 By Laura Geggel

The 1,200-year-old glass game piece looks good enough to eat. (Credit: DigVentures, Durham University)

What looks like a tasty, blue gumdrop decorated with white frosting is actually a 1,200-year-old glass “king” piece that may have belonged to an elite gamer, according to Durham University, England, and DigVentures, a crowdsourced archaeological outfit, also in the U.K.

The royal-blue game piece was found in September 2019 during a community-based dig at a cemetery in Lindisfarne (also called Holy Island), a tiny island off the northeast coast of England. Lindisfarne was once home to monks who ran a medieval monastery that was infamously invaded by the Vikings in A.D. 793.

“This is a truly wonderful discovery, which gives us a very special insight into life in the monastery at the time,” David Petts, a senior lecturer in the archaeology of Northern Britain at Durham University who co-directed the excavation with DigVentures, said in a statement released Thursday (Feb. 6). “It’s similar to a number of other examples found at settlements and trading sites around the edge of the North Sea, and shows us not only that there were people on Lindisfarne who had leisure time, but that they were well connected.”

Five white bobbles decorate the newfound artifact and indicate that it was a king piece, said Maiya Pina-Dacier, the head of community at DigVentures. It’s about 0.7 inches (2 centimeters) across, or “about the size of a chocolate sweet or Ferrero Rocher,” Pina-Dacier told Live Science in an email.

The king piece would have been “a high-status object” that likely belonged to a royal who was living at or visiting the Lindisfarne monastery before the Vikings invaded, she added. “Other gaming pieces are usually made of wood or bone. We’re hoping to get further analysis done to tell us more about how it was made and maybe even where the materials came from.”

The board game itself was a strategy-laden lark with Roman roots called “ludus latrunculorum”. As the Romans invaded new lands, ludus latrunculorum spread; the game evolved differently in each location but became known by the umbrella term “tafl.” Tafl games were played in Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Denmark and Sweden before chess arrived in the 11th and 12th centuries, Pina-Dacier said.

“Although each region had their own version of the rules, the basic principles were the same: Defend a central king against attackers,” she explained. “There was usually only one decorated piece — the king; the rest would be more like counters.”

This is the second tafl game piece discovered in the British Isles. The other one was found at a Pictish hillfort in Dundurn, Scotland.

DigVentures plans to return to Lindisfarne in September 2020 to continue the dig. If you’d like to join, visit digventures.com/projects to learn more.

Originally published on Live Science.

Waffle House on Valentine’s Day: How the chain established itself as a romantic roadside destination

February 11, 2020 By Laura Geggel

Each year on Valentine’s Day, hundreds of Waffle House locations across the country bust out their crisp white tablecloths and heart-shaped decorations, ready to welcome the lucky lovebirds who reserved a table at the most romantic restaurants they could think of … or at least the most romantic restaurants that serve smothered, covered and chunked hash browns.

Sure, this may have seemed like an unusual date idea once upon a time, but celebrating Valentine’s Day at Waffle House has become something of a quirky tradition for couples seeking a unique night out. And now, more than a decade on, that tradition is still going strong.

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“It’s become very popular with a lot of the customers,” said Njeri Boss, the director of public relations for Waffle House. “And once you start something, the customers come to expect it. So we try to provide a special experience.”

The idea for Waffle House’s Valentine’s Day dinner service began in 2008, at a single location in John’s Creek, Ga. According to Boss, the manager of that restaurant noticed the same few customers were returning year after year on Feb. 14, and he took it upon himself to make the dining area “nice” for his most romantic regulars.

The first Valentine’s Day dinner service was such a success, Boss says, that the John’s Creek manager brought it up with the vice president of his region, and the idea spread like butter on a hot pecan waffle.

“And of course, with all traditions, they evolve,” Boss told Fox News.

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Now, as of 2020, over 200 Waffle House locations across the South and Southeast have chosen to opt-in. Each location is also given the freedom to decorate however they wish — as long as white tablecloths are in the mix.

Boss explained that managers, too, are allowed to offer their own Valentine’s Day specials for the evening, for an added touch.

“Some [restaurants] even coordinate their uniforms, or do something different. Go upscale,” she says. “Every one is different … but the tablecloths remain the same.”

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Walt Ehmer, the CEO of Waffle House, is also such a fan of the idea that he once called it a “bucket-list experience.”

“A perfect Valentine’s dinner consists of soft music, great food and a welcoming atmosphere,” said Ehmer in 2018. “And we have all three waiting for those who are ready.”

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As of 2020, over 200 Waffle House locations were accepting reservations for Valentine’s Day dinner service. Visit WaffleHouse.com for a complete list of participating restaurants.

‘Conners’ star John Goodman reflects on career post-‘Roseanne,’ says much of his success is just ‘dumb luck’

February 11, 2020 By Laura Geggel

PASADENA – “The Conners” cast is gearing up to air a live episode of the show on Tuesday, one that focuses on the New Hampshire primary.

The episode will see the family come together as one of the show’s characters is required to watch the political primary for a school assignment, setting the stage for the rest of the Conners clan to debate the topic of voting.

Series co-star John Goodman spoke with reporters in a roundtable-style interview last month at the Television Critics Association winter press tour at the Langham Huntington in Pasadena, Calif. Fox News and others grilled Goodman on everything from the cancellation of “Roseanne,” retirement and whether or not he believes he’s garnered “legend status” at 67 years old.

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‘The Conners’ stars Maya Lynne Robinson as Geena Williams-Conner, Jayden Rey as Mary, Michael Fishman as D.J. Conner, John Goodman as Dan Conner, Laurie Metcalf as Jackie Harris, Sara Gilbert as Darlene Conner, Emma Kenney as Harris Conner, Ames McNamara as Mark, and Lecy Goranson as Becky Conner. (Robert Trachtenberg/Walt Disney Television via Getty Images)

Simply put, Goodman didn’t hold back in reflecting on his storied life and career, and when asked how “comfortable” the show is since debuting as a “Roseanne” spinoff, Goodman said he’s having a blast.

“It is [comfortable] and it’s in the best way because we’re all still working real hard,” said Goodman. “It doesn’t seem like that because it’s so much fun. But I don’t see anybody slacking off. Yeah, we all put into it but it makes it so much better when you’ve got comfortable work shoes on.”

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Goodman was a fixture in the 2018 reboot of “Roseanne,” which brought together the original cast of the family comedy, which ran from 1988 to 1997. It wasn’t until Roseanne Barr was fired from ABC after she made a racially charged tweet — aimed at former Obama administration senior adviser Valerie Jarrett — that the future of the reboot was up in the air.

Goodman said during this time, he didn’t wait and his phone immediately began ringing with offers from other creators vying to work with him.

“When we went off the air, about two days later, I got offered an HBO show, which I took,” he explained. “So there’s no off-time. I go from this to the ‘Righteous Gemstones.’”

“It makes me feel real lucky and real grateful,” he said to Fox News. “That’s about all I can say because ‘Righteous Gemstones’ came at the right time and it was just dumb luck.”

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When asked about the time he is required to devote to each of his projects, Goodman said he welcomes the busy agenda, adding that he was sure he only had to shoot 10 “Roseanne” episodes a year, so landing a role in the Danny McBride creation was icing on the cake.

“Right now, yeah. Because both jobs are fun. I don’t have a lot of downtime,” he said. “See, I was going to start slowing down about now. I thought we’d only do eight or 10 [episodes of] ‘Roseanne’ a year. And I do eight ‘Righteous Gemstones,’ eight or nine. But, yeah I didn’t know ‘Righteous Gemstones’ was gonna come up. And then when I took it, I got the other job back.”

John Goodman is seen before and after his 100-lbs. weight loss.
(Reuters/AP)

The other job Goodman “got back” was his role of Dan Conner, who is putting the pieces of his life back together following the death of wife Roseanne. “The Conners” premiered in 2018.

“He’s a professional football player again,” Goodman said, referencing the pounds his character has shed since the original series went off the air. “Well, he’s lost right now and he doesn’t have time to wallow in it because he’s trying to keep his family fed. So it’s yeah, it’s a big loss for him.”

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Fox News asked Goodman how he keeps himself mentally sharp to juggle his filming schedules, and the “Big Lebowski” star said he absolutely has to keep working otherwise he’s “no good.”

“[I have to] work. Work. I can’t – I’ve learned that right now – and I’ve come a long way with mental health; if I’m not busy, I’m no good and that’s a problem because I’m going to have to find a hobby one of these days,” he lamented. “Golf is pretty much out of the question, but I’ll keep trying it.”

John Goodman in ‘The Artist.’

Asked by another outlet which of his past characters he would like to revisit, Goodman said there were many, adding that he believes if he hadn’t been drinking so heavily at the time of many of these roles, he certainly would have dialed them in better.

“So many of them. That’s why I can’t watch a lot of my old movies,” he stated. “But yeah, there’s guys I wish I would have come in at a different angle or there would have been a much better performance. I wish I would have worked a little harder on some of them – and quite frankly, I wish I hadn’t been drinking during a lot of it.”

“If I’m not busy, I’m no good and that’s a problem.”

— John Goodman on his performance workload

When it comes to the advice he might give to his younger self, Goodman told Fox News: “Keep your mouth shut and your ears open and try to learn things. Yeah, be gracious with everybody because that goes a long way to making your day easier.”

As for if there was anything else he wished to have accomplished in his nearly 50-year career as a stage, television and film performer, Goodman maintained that in his view, he’s done much of everything he’s set out to do when he began his journey as an actor in 1975.

“No, I’m not a very ambitious fellow. I don’t know. I’m lazy,” he joked. “It seems like all the time opportunities come up and it’s something I haven’t done before. So I just don’t pine for anything or yearn for anything. There’s a couple things I’d like to do before I hang it up. But the way things are going, it just might come around by itself. So I just try to concentrate on today.”

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The Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy winner issued stout praise for co-star Estelle Parsons, who continues to be at the top of her game as Beverly Harris on “The Conners” at 92 years old.

“She’s jaw-dropping good. She’s amazing and I’m just stunned watching her because she’s brilliant,” he raved. “She’s a walking acting lesson and she’s so god—n funny.”

John Goodman appears as Coach Harris in ‘Revenge of the Nerds’ in 1984.
(Revenge of the Nerds)

Goodman said if he’s lucky to make it to Parson’s age, he thinks he’d “probably have to work” unless he finds “something cool to do.” “I’m not going to make it that far. But Estelle really took care of herself; I didn’t,” he said.

And on if he ever thinks about retirement?

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“Yeah, I did a couple years ago. I was bored a lot,” said Goodman. “This could be a retirement job. Yeah. It’s just everything’s so great right now and terrific that I’ll worry about it when the time comes.”

Goodman took one more wisecrack with reporters when he was asked, given the wide praise he receives from his peers and those who watch his performances, “Do you see yourself as a legend?”

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“No, I don’t think a lot of people are calling me a legend,” he said. “Liars.”

The live episode of “The Conners” airs Tuesday at 8 p.m. EST on ABC.

Laura Geggel

Ceremonial burning

Shopping around

Droplets or aerosol

N95 respirator or face mask?

Rinsing produce

A fossil to remember

Fish world

“Exceptional fossil”

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