Speaker 1: Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I guess, well, well, what's that mango? So did you
Speaker 1: know the world's largest be isn't as extinct as we thought,
Speaker 1: not as extinct as we thought. I gotta feel like
Speaker 1: that's too bad. No, it's actually a good thing. How
Speaker 1: our giant monster be is a good thing. So for
Speaker 1: for starters, the vs aren't exactly monsters. There are only
Speaker 1: about an inch and a half long, and they've got
Speaker 1: a two and a half inch wingspan, so it's about
Speaker 1: the size of a thumb or I guess three times
Speaker 1: the size of the average honeybee, not the size of
Speaker 1: matras like you might be imagining. I mean maybe not.
Speaker 1: But actually just pulled up a picture one of these
Speaker 1: things while you were talking, and I have to say,
Speaker 1: this is the most terrifying be I have seen in
Speaker 1: my life. Like, why do they have such massive pincuers
Speaker 1: on their faces? They almost look like these stag beetles,
Speaker 1: but just creepier. Yeah, So I was trying not to
Speaker 1: mention that because it makes them look so much scarier.
Speaker 1: But they're actually just used to scrape resin off trees
Speaker 1: to build their homes. So it's not that scary. But
Speaker 1: here's what's really interesting. The species was first discovered in Indonesia,
Speaker 1: and this was back in eighteen fifty nine, and then
Speaker 1: nobody could find it again after that, so it was
Speaker 1: just presumed to have gone extinct. And then in this
Speaker 1: entomologists stumbled across the bees alive and well in Indonesia
Speaker 1: and he collected the specimen. He wrote about discovery, but
Speaker 1: he didn't get any video or photos, and then the
Speaker 1: bees trail went cold again. But it sounds like now
Speaker 1: somebody has found them again. Is that right? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they thought they were extinct, but it's totally right. In
Speaker 1: January this year, this photographer named Clay Bolt actually made
Speaker 1: history by finding the giant bees in the wild for
Speaker 1: the very first time. And it sounds like it was
Speaker 1: a pretty surreal experience because apparently the female bees make
Speaker 1: this really deep thrumming sound with their wings, so he
Speaker 1: could not only hear them, he could actually feel the
Speaker 1: air being displaced as they flew by. And it was
Speaker 1: amazing because it's this creature that he'd only ever imagined about, right,
Speaker 1: and suddenly he has this super tangible and memorable experience
Speaker 1: with them. Anyway, Clay's account got me thinking that this
Speaker 1: week it would be really fun to look into creatures
Speaker 1: that had come back to life. And so that's what
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about, all these weird cases out
Speaker 1: there where creatures seemingly died and then returned. So let's
Speaker 1: dive in day their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius.
Speaker 1: I'm Will Pearson and it's always I'm joined by my
Speaker 1: good friend man Guess Ticketer on the other side of
Speaker 1: that soundproof class bringing a dead fern back to life.
Speaker 1: At least I think that's what he's doing. That's our
Speaker 1: friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Oh, is that what he's doing.
Speaker 1: I thought Tristan just brought in his neglect did the
Speaker 1: house plant? Actually, Tristan's trick only works with one kind
Speaker 1: of plant, what's called a resurrection fern, which is not
Speaker 1: the fern that he's got over there. But you know,
Speaker 1: during a drought or a heat spell, the ferns will
Speaker 1: turn brown and they shrivel up, and if you look
Speaker 1: at them, they look completely dead. But then you just
Speaker 1: splash a little water on them and press though it
Speaker 1: takes like twenty four hours and the leaves unfurled, turn
Speaker 1: green again, and the whole thing is good is new.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of like magic. Yeah, it does
Speaker 1: sound like something you'd study at Hogwarts in the homology
Speaker 1: class or whatever. It's pretty cool. And even though it
Speaker 1: does seem like magic, there is of course a scientific
Speaker 1: explanation on how these ferns come back to life. These
Speaker 1: resurrection ferns never actually die during this dying out process.
Speaker 1: In fact, these plants can lose up to of their
Speaker 1: water content and once they're exposed to water again, they'll
Speaker 1: still spring right back. So you know, as long as
Speaker 1: the fern can hold onto at least three percent of
Speaker 1: its water, it actually won't die. That's pretty incredible. So
Speaker 1: those numbers can't hold up for most plants right now,
Speaker 1: with most plants, if they lose more than ten percent
Speaker 1: of their water, they are completely done. And so the
Speaker 1: saving grace for resurrection ferns is, you know, it's their
Speaker 1: ability to synthesize these special proteins called dehydrants, and so
Speaker 1: these allow the cell walls of the plant to kind
Speaker 1: of fold and unfold is needed rather than just cracking
Speaker 1: and crumbling like other plants do when they dry out.
Speaker 1: And believe it or not, that's not the resurrection ferns
Speaker 1: only claim to feign because back in astronauts actually took
Speaker 1: a bunch of these ferns with them on the Space
Speaker 1: Shuttle Discovery, and this was a feat that earned the
Speaker 1: plant the title of first fern in space and that
Speaker 1: special I like it, But what sort of experiments where
Speaker 1: they running on these plants since this, Well, basically we
Speaker 1: wanted to see if the plants could still resurrect themselves
Speaker 1: in zero gravity, and apparently they could with no problem,
Speaker 1: And as later explained, the resurrection fern quote proved to
Speaker 1: be a hearty space traveler and exhibited regeneration patterns unaltered
Speaker 1: by its orbital adventure. So not only can they cheat death,
Speaker 1: they can do it while rocketing through space at thousands
Speaker 1: of miles an hour. I do like that, but to
Speaker 1: be fair, resurrection ferns aren't the only ones to master
Speaker 1: the old back from the dead routine. And it's not
Speaker 1: just flowers and trees getting into the act either. The
Speaker 1: animal kingdom has its own resurrection like events, including some
Speaker 1: insects and amphibians that can freeze themselves during winter and
Speaker 1: then thaw out in the spring totally alive and healthy.
Speaker 1: But again, like with the ferns, those animals don't technically
Speaker 1: die though, right, right, but they come pretty close. Like
Speaker 1: you can take the wood frogs, which we've talked about
Speaker 1: forever ago on the show. But when temperatures dropped, the
Speaker 1: wood frogs go into what's basically the state of suspended
Speaker 1: animation and all of their processes shut down. So there's
Speaker 1: no heartbeat, there's no breathing, nothing, but their cells stay
Speaker 1: alive regardless, and it thanks to this handy adaptation they've
Speaker 1: evolved that lets them survive for long periods without oxygen.
Speaker 1: So I remember talking about them, but remind me how
Speaker 1: long they can actually stay like that, so it can vary.
Speaker 1: I mean, most wood frogs do this extreme hibernation for
Speaker 1: a few days at a time is to cope with
Speaker 1: like a cold snap or something like that. But they
Speaker 1: can stay frozen for longer, even for weeks if they
Speaker 1: need to, which is pretty amazing. And you mentioned their
Speaker 1: cells still receive oxygen during this big sleep, and that
Speaker 1: makes sense. But what I'm wondering is how those cells
Speaker 1: survive the freezing process at all. I mean, there's water
Speaker 1: inside those cells, and water expands as it freezes to ice.
Speaker 1: And so it seems like those newly formed ice crystals
Speaker 1: would just break the cells apart from within. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: exactly right, and it's a big part of why a
Speaker 1: cryopreservation isn't really an option for humans. Our cells just
Speaker 1: aren't equipped to handle a deep freeze. And it's actually
Speaker 1: the same for wood frogs. If they're cells froze, they
Speaker 1: would die too. But that's why whenever there's this sub
Speaker 1: zero temperature that sets in the frog's central organ starts
Speaker 1: expelling moisture, and this way the water surrounding their organs
Speaker 1: freezes into ice, but their organs themselves and their cells don't.
Speaker 1: And that's not the only trick either. Before a wood
Speaker 1: frog fully freezes, its body floods the veins with a
Speaker 1: special glucose molecule that works like an anti freeze. So
Speaker 1: when the glucose reaches the frog cells, it will dissolve
Speaker 1: in the water and bond with the water molecules, and
Speaker 1: this means that water molecules in the cell won't be
Speaker 1: able to bind with other water molecules to form ice.
Speaker 1: So even if the water in a cell reaches subzero temperatures,
Speaker 1: it still won't freeze. Okay, I think I got it. So,
Speaker 1: so they really use the same strategy on a cellular
Speaker 1: level as they do for like their central organs, right exactly.
Speaker 1: But the more researchers learned about the frog's approach, the
Speaker 1: better we get it perfecting things like freezing human organs
Speaker 1: for transport, and that technique might help us perfect cry
Speaker 1: of preservation in the future, you know, getting humans into
Speaker 1: this act of resurrecting themselves, which is a little bit creepy,
Speaker 1: and also, if you think about it, some humans have
Speaker 1: already jumped the gun on the whole resurrection thing. I
Speaker 1: was actually reading about this rare phenomenon called auto resuscitation,
Speaker 1: which is when a person who has declared dead spontaneously
Speaker 1: comes back to life spontaneously. So this isn't like a
Speaker 1: patient who's flatline that doctors used the clients on and
Speaker 1: jolt them back to life. It's someone who comes back
Speaker 1: to life on their own, that's right. So according to
Speaker 1: a two thousand seven medical review I believe this was
Speaker 1: the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, they've actually
Speaker 1: been over thirty cases of auto resuscitation since the initial
Speaker 1: report on this condition back in two so on average,
Speaker 1: these patients returned to life did so about seven minutes
Speaker 1: after doctors stopped administering CPR. One patient made it all
Speaker 1: the way to the hospital morgue before suddenly returning to life.
Speaker 1: I mean, can you imagine what that must have been
Speaker 1: like for the poor folks who had to wheel that
Speaker 1: person down there and in the morgue no less, but
Speaker 1: it's just so like, of all places to witness someone
Speaker 1: coming back from the dead, this would have been such
Speaker 1: a weird experience. So these people sort of pop back up?
Speaker 1: Did they live for a while? I mean, the sad
Speaker 1: reality is that the majority of these patients die shortly
Speaker 1: after their auto resuscitated it. But I think what's amazing though,
Speaker 1: is that in a little over a third of the
Speaker 1: reported cases, the patients make a full recovery with little
Speaker 1: or no neurological damage. That is wild. So do doctors
Speaker 1: have any idea of why this is happening? Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's tough to say for certain, because they've only been
Speaker 1: like we said, thirty something cases reported in the last
Speaker 1: forty years, and that's you know, not a lot of
Speaker 1: data to go on. But that said, the reports do
Speaker 1: offer some clues about what might be going on here,
Speaker 1: for instance, the use of CPR, which is something that's
Speaker 1: in all of these reported cases. So remember I said
Speaker 1: the patients came back a few minutes after CPR was stopped. Well,
Speaker 1: that gap in time might actually be the key to
Speaker 1: understanding the whole phenomenon. It's a little bit complicated. So
Speaker 1: I pulled this good breakdown from the Smithsonian and and
Speaker 1: here's how they explain it. One popular theory is that
Speaker 1: dynamic hyperinflation which can occur during CPR if the lungs
Speaker 1: are rapidly filled with air without adequate time to exhale.
Speaker 1: In theory, when emergency doctors stop CPR, the lung pressure
Speaker 1: caused by dynamic hyper inflation returns to normal and the
Speaker 1: blood begins to circulate with greater e is producing an
Speaker 1: auto resuscitation effect. So how can doctors guard against this
Speaker 1: kind of thing? Like? Is there a set amount of
Speaker 1: time they need to wait? I don't think there's like
Speaker 1: a hard and fast rule around this, but doctors who
Speaker 1: have studied the subject do recommend waiting at least ten
Speaker 1: or fifteen minutes after CPR has seas before declaring someone dead,
Speaker 1: just to be on the safe side here. That is
Speaker 1: so strange, like there's this period of time when death
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily final, that someone might still pop back to life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's you know, it's not super likely,
Speaker 1: but it it does happen, it makes you wonder about
Speaker 1: where the cut off is, Like that point past which
Speaker 1: death is irreversible, it might be, you know, more fluid
Speaker 1: than we had first guessed. Yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 1: In fact, I was reading about this concept people talk
Speaker 1: about in the conservation world called the Lazarus taxon or
Speaker 1: Lazarus species, and it's basically a group of plants and
Speaker 1: animals that were believed to be extinct but we're later
Speaker 1: rediscovered in the wild, like the giant b I mentioned
Speaker 1: at the top of the show. It's not the same
Speaker 1: as the biological resurrections we've been talking about, but it's
Speaker 1: another interesting case of death not being quite as final
Speaker 1: as we first looked at. I definitely want to hear
Speaker 1: more about this, but before we get to that, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. You're listening to Part Time Genius
Speaker 1: and we're talking about Lazarus species. These are the extinct
Speaker 1: plants and animals that turned out to be not so
Speaker 1: extinct after all. And speaking of Lazarus, I actually forgot
Speaker 1: to mention this earlier, but auto resuscitation actually shares some
Speaker 1: biblical inspiration. It's actually nicknamed the Lazarus phenomenon. Have you
Speaker 1: heard of this? So in both cases the name is
Speaker 1: the nod to the New Testament story where Jesus performs
Speaker 1: a miracle by raising this man named Lazarus from the dead.
Speaker 1: So kind of a fun, if not surprising bit of
Speaker 1: overlap between religion and science here. Yeah, is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: But the term Lazarus taxon was coined in the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties by a couple of paleontologists, and they were studying
Speaker 1: the fossil record. They noticed some organisms seemed to disappear
Speaker 1: during one of Earth's massive extinction events and then miraculously
Speaker 1: reappear on the record later, and these species taken together,
Speaker 1: form what the scientists called the Lazarus taxon. So these
Speaker 1: days the term applies more broadly, not just to fossilized organisms,
Speaker 1: but also to living species that have been rediscovered after
Speaker 1: the presumed extinction. Actually, there's a slight variation on this,
Speaker 1: called the elvis taxon, which is species that seem like
Speaker 1: they re emerged, but it's actually an impostor. This is
Speaker 1: a true thing. But back to the Lazarus. Like you
Speaker 1: think it's the small club of species, but they're actually
Speaker 1: about three hundred fifty species on that list includes everything
Speaker 1: from plants to insects to every kind of vertebrae. Wow,
Speaker 1: so it really runs the gamut. But what are some
Speaker 1: of the most famous on the list, or maybe just
Speaker 1: a few favorites who came across. So my favorite species
Speaker 1: are are the ones that turned up in the super
Speaker 1: unexpected places, and one of the oldest and most famous
Speaker 1: of these is definitely the Seilic himp, which is this
Speaker 1: ancient type of fish that was believed to have gone
Speaker 1: extinct over sixty five million years ago. It was in
Speaker 1: the supposed to be wiped out in that same extinction
Speaker 1: event that claimed the dinosaurs. Yeah, I actually think I've
Speaker 1: seen these guys before. They live like way down deep,
Speaker 1: don't they. Yeah, I mean their bottom dwellers for sure.
Speaker 1: But that's part of the reason it took us so
Speaker 1: long to find one alive. That said, living silicants weren't
Speaker 1: discovered thanks to some technological breakthrough or or some sort
Speaker 1: of landmark expedition and instead, it all happened by sheer chance,
Speaker 1: and here's how it went down. So in December, this
Speaker 1: Natural History Museum curator named Marjorie Courtney Latimer was strolling
Speaker 1: the docks in East London, South Africa. Apparently she did
Speaker 1: this often as part of her work for the museum.
Speaker 1: She would just visit the local fisherman and if anyone
Speaker 1: thought they had caught something interesting that day, Marjorie would
Speaker 1: take a closer look at their catch, and on that
Speaker 1: in December, she indeed found something interesting in the hall
Speaker 1: of this fisherman named Captain Hendrik Goosen. So in his
Speaker 1: pile of fish there was this bizarre looking fin that
Speaker 1: Marjorie had never seen at the docks before, and this
Speaker 1: is how she described it. I picked away at a
Speaker 1: layer of slime to reveal the most beautiful fish I
Speaker 1: had ever seen. It was pale mauve blue with faint
Speaker 1: flecks of whitish spots. It had an iridescent silver blue
Speaker 1: green sheen all over it. It was covered in hard scales,
Speaker 1: and it had four limb like fins and a strange
Speaker 1: puppy dog tail. Wait, let me make sure I have
Speaker 1: this trait. So she found what is basically a living fossil,
Speaker 1: and this was at a South African fish market. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was actually really big too, so the silicon
Speaker 1: she found at the market weighed a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: seven pounds, which made it tough to transport back to
Speaker 1: the museum. And in the end Marjorie and her assistant
Speaker 1: they managed to get the fish into the backseat of
Speaker 1: a taxi, but they nearly got thrown of that too,
Speaker 1: because the fish smelled so bad. Apparently, as they pushed
Speaker 1: it through the door and finally got in, the driver
Speaker 1: was shouting, no stinking fish in my tax together. I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: can you really blame the guy? Yeah, I mean you can.
Speaker 1: And once they explained the circumstance and probably how big
Speaker 1: a tip they were going to give, the driver agreed
Speaker 1: to help. Although that wasn't the only obstacle Marjorie face
Speaker 1: that day. So when when she got the fish back
Speaker 1: to the museum, she still wasn't sure what she'd found.
Speaker 1: Her expertise was actually in birds, not fish, and when
Speaker 1: she asked the chairman of the museum board to help
Speaker 1: her identify the specimen, he told her it's nothing more
Speaker 1: than a rock cod and then he left to go
Speaker 1: on his holiday. You know, it's funny, it almost reads
Speaker 1: like parody. But well, obviously the museum was no help.
Speaker 1: So how did Marjorie ultimately crack this case? So the
Speaker 1: first thing she did was to find some way to
Speaker 1: preserve the fish long term. She tried the morge at
Speaker 1: her local hospital, but they flat out refused to store fish,
Speaker 1: no matter how ancient it was. And uh, in the end,
Speaker 1: she had to settle for getting it taxidermied instead. So
Speaker 1: she reached out to a fish curator at a different
Speaker 1: South African museum. This guy at J. LB. Smith, and
Speaker 1: she sent the description and sketches of what she had found.
Speaker 1: Within a month or so, Smith decided to make a
Speaker 1: trip to see the fish for himself, and he definitely
Speaker 1: wasn't disappointed with what he found. In fact, listen to
Speaker 1: how he later described the day he arrived at Marjorie's
Speaker 1: museum quote, although I had come prepared, the first side
Speaker 1: of the fish hit me like a white hot blast
Speaker 1: and made me feel shaky and queer. My body tingled,
Speaker 1: I stood as if stricken to stone. Yes, there was
Speaker 1: not a shadow of a doubt. Scale by sale, bone
Speaker 1: by bone, Finn by fin it was a true silican.
Speaker 1: That must have felt like such vindication. Yeah, but plus
Speaker 1: it must have made the museum chairman feel like such
Speaker 1: a chump when he got back from his vacation. I still,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know I said this a little bit.
Speaker 1: I still can't believe she found an extinct species at
Speaker 1: a fish market. It just it seems like such a
Speaker 1: weird place to find this. Well, the craziest part is
Speaker 1: that it wasn't even the only time that's happened. In fact,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of Lazarus species that have showed up
Speaker 1: at food markets. There's the smooth tooth black tip shark
Speaker 1: that reappeared in this fish market in the Middle East.
Speaker 1: There's the low astion rock rat, which was rediscovered at
Speaker 1: a meat market, and and the Erican forest turtle, which
Speaker 1: debuted at a food market in China. But the list
Speaker 1: just keeps going. I'm pretty sure you made up a
Speaker 1: couple of those. But and I'm not sure what it
Speaker 1: says about us in the first place, that we find
Speaker 1: so many supposedly extinct animals on our dinner tables. Just
Speaker 1: it's just so weird. Yeah, it kind of makes me
Speaker 1: wonder if any Lazar species have actually gone extinct for real,
Speaker 1: like that way, like he was just eight too many
Speaker 1: of them without scientists walking by and stopping them from eating.
Speaker 1: But uh, I, I know we've got a few more
Speaker 1: things to tackle, But first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to part time Genius. So, well, I know
Speaker 1: you wanted to talk about de extinction, which is the
Speaker 1: ability to bring vanished species back to if uh do
Speaker 1: you think that's something we'll be able to do one day?
Speaker 1: And if so, how long until we're all riding Willy man?
Speaker 1: It's to work like God intended. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a little while on that one. But yeah,
Speaker 1: to the question of whether we'll be able to bring
Speaker 1: an extinct species back, I mean, the truth is we
Speaker 1: already have, or at least we we sort of did.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious about this sort of you speak of.
Speaker 1: Well all right, well let me back up just a
Speaker 1: little bit here. So have you ever heard of Celia,
Speaker 1: who happens to be the last Boucardo? No, it sounds
Speaker 1: like a Tolkien character, though it's it's actually an extinct
Speaker 1: species of Ibex that used to live in Spain and
Speaker 1: I think in southern France, and so basically picture a
Speaker 1: mountain goat or a ram and you're not far off
Speaker 1: from this. But alright, so back in two thousand, the
Speaker 1: last Boucardo on Earth was sadly crushed to death by
Speaker 1: a falling tree. And her name was Celia, right right.
Speaker 1: So that wasn't the end of the story there though,
Speaker 1: because scientists tried to revive her species, and they used
Speaker 1: the nucleus of a cell extracted intact from Celia. So
Speaker 1: you're saying they cloned her, Well, it's sort of like
Speaker 1: this wasn't like with Dolly the sheep, where her nucleus
Speaker 1: could be implanted in the egg of a sheet from
Speaker 1: the same species. I mean, remember, Celia was the last
Speaker 1: one and there weren't any of her kind around to
Speaker 1: donate an egg, so instead, scientists inserted the nucleus from
Speaker 1: Celia into the unfertilized egg cell of a different kind
Speaker 1: of Spanish ibex. Then they took the resulting embryo and
Speaker 1: transferred it to the womb of a living goat. It's
Speaker 1: just a lot of connections here, And almost a year later,
Speaker 1: in July of two thousand three, the first baby Boucardo
Speaker 1: since Celia was born, which is kind of amazing. It
Speaker 1: sounds like some bizarre science tur Ducan like like bucardo
Speaker 1: wrapped in an I vex wrapped in a living goat.
Speaker 1: But is the Bucardo back for real? Now? It's it's
Speaker 1: de extinct now. Unfortunately, the baby Bucardo was born with
Speaker 1: a long defect and only survived of seven minutes, And
Speaker 1: so that means that, depending on how you look at it,
Speaker 1: the Bucardo has really gone extinct twice at this point,
Speaker 1: not not the happy ending we might have looked for.
Speaker 1: But of course that's only if you consider that the
Speaker 1: bucardo made from Celia's cell to be a true Bucardo
Speaker 1: and not some kind of hybrid, you know, like a
Speaker 1: Spanish ibex with Bucardo like traits. I guess, so, I
Speaker 1: guess any other species we tried to de extinct would
Speaker 1: also be that way, right, Like like we couldn't make
Speaker 1: a d percent willy mammoth. It would always be an
Speaker 1: animal with cells that most certainly contain elephant DNA and
Speaker 1: just a little bit of mammoth DNA like the nucleus
Speaker 1: they took from Celia, you know, and and with the
Speaker 1: long extinct creature like a wooly mammoth, you'd be even
Speaker 1: further into hybrid territory. And that's because there aren't any
Speaker 1: living mammoths to harvest intact nuclei from, so scientists will
Speaker 1: be working with far less DNA than they had with
Speaker 1: Celia the bucardo. So all the efforts that you hear
Speaker 1: about bringing back the wooly mammoth, those aren't attempts to
Speaker 1: clone a mammoth so much as they are attempts to
Speaker 1: make an elephant mammoth hybrid. And so there are new
Speaker 1: genome editing methods like Crisper, so scientists could kind of
Speaker 1: cheat a little bit by changing the DNA sequences of
Speaker 1: elephants to it'll look a little bit more like the
Speaker 1: DNA sequences of mammoths. That's why I started by saying
Speaker 1: that d extinction is sort of possible. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're willing to accept hybrids as the real thing, or
Speaker 1: close enough to it, then I guess the extinction will
Speaker 1: definitely be something we can do within the next decade
Speaker 1: or so. But on the other hand, if you want
Speaker 1: a full on recreation of a vana species, the same genes,
Speaker 1: same behaviors, all of that I mean, that's pretty much
Speaker 1: never going to happen in most cases. There just aren't
Speaker 1: enough ancient DNA lying around to completely reconstruct an animal's genome.
Speaker 1: So for all of us Jurassic Park fans, it does
Speaker 1: sound like dinosaur and William mammoth hybrids are still on
Speaker 1: the table in the not so distant future, and gene
Speaker 1: editing could actually get them looking pretty close to how
Speaker 1: they did originally. Yeah, and that's actually more like the
Speaker 1: Jurassic Park dinosaurs than straight up clones would be anyway.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm not sure if you remember, but
Speaker 1: in the movie they filled the gaps in the DNA
Speaker 1: sequences with frog DNA and they messed with the genomes
Speaker 1: so they actually all have scales instead of feathers. So
Speaker 1: we're on the verge of being able to do something
Speaker 1: pretty similar to that. I mean, we'd probably use chicken
Speaker 1: DNA as our gap instead of frogs, but the basic
Speaker 1: idea wouldn't be too far off from that. And so, well,
Speaker 1: what about extinct species that have died out more recently,
Speaker 1: like hundreds or thousands of years ago, for instance, instead
Speaker 1: of millions? Like would those actually be better candidates for
Speaker 1: d extinction? Absolutely? I mean, the passenger pigeon is one
Speaker 1: example that comes up a lot. They went extinct in
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century, so recovering their DNA wouldn't be
Speaker 1: that difficult, and there's a good chance the eggs from
Speaker 1: a related species of pigeon might be close enough of
Speaker 1: a match to create a viable embryo. But funnily enough,
Speaker 1: researchers say that the easiest species to resurrect would actually
Speaker 1: be the Neanderthal, which is just so weird to think about. So,
Speaker 1: according to Scientific American Quote, there appear to be just
Speaker 1: slightly more than thirty thousand genetic mutations that differentiate us
Speaker 1: from them, and Homo sapiens is the complicated organism best
Speaker 1: understood by human geneticist. So of course, bringing us, you know,
Speaker 1: a sentient human species back to life is a giant
Speaker 1: ethical can of worms. So I don't imagine we'll be
Speaker 1: bringing Neanderthals back anytime soon. At least you're telling myself that,
Speaker 1: which is probably for the best, because you know, I
Speaker 1: E read that even though there's no ideal credit for
Speaker 1: the extinction, the willy mammoth would still be the best
Speaker 1: choice just because of how much good will it would
Speaker 1: generate in the public And it makes sense if you
Speaker 1: think about it, right, Like, bringing back to William mammoth
Speaker 1: has been a collective dream for decades now. Plus they
Speaker 1: look big, free elephants, like it just feels so much
Speaker 1: less threatening than a t rex. I mean, still pretty threatening,
Speaker 1: but but I think you're right, and there's actually another
Speaker 1: reason why raising the mammoth might be the best way
Speaker 1: to go, and it's something that you'd probably never guess,
Speaker 1: which is climate change. So you're gonna have to explain
Speaker 1: this one, all right, Well, it sounds ridiculous, but there
Speaker 1: actually is something to this. According to that GEO, Siberia
Speaker 1: was home to mammoths and these other giant grazing mammals
Speaker 1: about twelve thousand years ago, and back then the entire
Speaker 1: region was a grassland, not the moss covered tundra that
Speaker 1: it is today. So I'm having a tough time understanding
Speaker 1: this year you're saying the landscape changed into something less
Speaker 1: productive just because the mammots when extinct. It is possible, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, the idea is that the mammoths and the
Speaker 1: other grazing animals used to maintain the grassy steps by
Speaker 1: you know, trampling moss and shrubs, breaking up the soil,
Speaker 1: fertilizing what they're droppings. But you know, once the mammoths
Speaker 1: went the way of the buffalo, the moss and the
Speaker 1: trees took over, and you know, this region gradually transformed
Speaker 1: into a tundra. And so some researchers think that reintroducing
Speaker 1: mammoths to the tundra could actually cause the ecosystem to
Speaker 1: shift back again, which is really interesting and it's how
Speaker 1: was like good news for the mammoths and and maybe
Speaker 1: for any would be farmers in the region, But how
Speaker 1: exactly would this help with climate change? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's because the frozen ground in Siberia contains a huge
Speaker 1: amount of carbon, about twice as much as what's in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere already, and the only thing keeping those carbon
Speaker 1: stores in check are the region's Arctic temperatures. So as
Speaker 1: temperatures continue to rise, the chance of that perma frost
Speaker 1: thawing out and that carbon being released rises with them.
Speaker 1: And that's where the mammoths would come in. Like, if
Speaker 1: they were able to transform the region back into a grassland,
Speaker 1: the carbon stores just might stay put. And Smithsonian actually
Speaker 1: had a nice breakdown of why this is exactly, and
Speaker 1: so here's how they explained it. Because grass absorbs less
Speaker 1: sunlight than trees, this would cause the ground to absorb
Speaker 1: less heat and in turn keep the carbon pools and
Speaker 1: their greenhouse gases on ice for longer. Large numbers of
Speaker 1: mammoths would also trample snow cover, stopping it from acting
Speaker 1: like insulation for the ground, and allow the perma frost
Speaker 1: to feel the effects of the bitter Arctic winters. Again, this,
Speaker 1: in theory, would keep the ground colder for longer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't see how anything could go wrong with this planet.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be great. It is funny like, on one hand,
Speaker 1: resurrecting a species kind of feels like playing god, and
Speaker 1: that's one of the main arguments you'll hear from opponents
Speaker 1: of the extinction. And yet at the same time, since
Speaker 1: humans were responsible for so many recent extinctions, it also
Speaker 1: feels like we were playing god when we wipe these
Speaker 1: creatures out in the first place. So maybe bringing them
Speaker 1: back as a way to right some of the wrongs
Speaker 1: our species has done the nature, especially in cases like
Speaker 1: a mammoths, where the revival might also benefit the environment
Speaker 1: as a whole. Yeah, but in a minute, may go,
Speaker 1: your main motivation is just wanting to ride one to work.
Speaker 1: You said it earlier. Yeah, I mean if riding a
Speaker 1: William Ammit to work is wrong, then brother, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be right dollar for every time he said that.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, while we're waiting on science to deliver
Speaker 1: on that promise, what do you say we have ourselves
Speaker 1: a quick fact off sounds good? All right, I'll kick
Speaker 1: it off here. So remember that Siberian permafrost that we
Speaker 1: talked about a few minutes ago, Well, it turns out
Speaker 1: it's home to more than just carbon deposits. Just last year,
Speaker 1: researchers discovered that the frigid ground had also preserved ancient
Speaker 1: life in the form of two forty thousand year old
Speaker 1: nematodes or roundworms. So, even more incredibly, the researchers were
Speaker 1: able to successfully quote defrost the creatures, according to report
Speaker 1: from the Siberian Times. Isn't that amazing? There's something called
Speaker 1: the Siberian Times, not the fact the fact that there
Speaker 1: is a Siberian Times. I just love that. And if
Speaker 1: that's true, then round worms can endure cryo preservation for
Speaker 1: way way longer than we thought the previous record for
Speaker 1: a nematode was it was revived like thirty nine years
Speaker 1: of dormancy or something like that. But not only that,
Speaker 1: it would also mean that those resurrected roundworms are now
Speaker 1: the oldest live animals on the planet, and by a
Speaker 1: pretty wide margin, of course. Yeah. So, so I've got
Speaker 1: a weird one for you. The name Lazarus came up
Speaker 1: a lot this week, so I did some digging on
Speaker 1: the name itself, and it turns out it's going through
Speaker 1: a bit of a resurgence right now. According to rankings
Speaker 1: on on the top baby naming sites, the name Lazarus
Speaker 1: is now more popular than it's been in over a century.
Speaker 1: And so what what are these reports based on? Exactly? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So a lot of the data comes from the users
Speaker 1: on these sites, but the rankings also pull from the
Speaker 1: Social Security Administration, So things like how many babies born
Speaker 1: in two thousand eighteen were named Lazarus shows up on this.
Speaker 1: The data goes all the way back to about nine hundred,
Speaker 1: which is when the name Lazarus was at its peak
Speaker 1: as the one thousand, hundred fifth most popular name in
Speaker 1: the country. Wait, and that was the name at its
Speaker 1: peak popularity. Yeah, but but you've got to keep this
Speaker 1: in perspective. For the rest of the twentieth century, the
Speaker 1: name hovered between the three thousand and four thousand most
Speaker 1: popular name, and it started to rise in the early
Speaker 1: nineties and now it's back in the low thou and
Speaker 1: it's just like it was about a hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, it's impressive. Alright. Well, one anything I read
Speaker 1: about this week is an experiment with cryo preserve seeds,
Speaker 1: and it's called the Project Baseline Resurrection Approach. So basically,
Speaker 1: millions of seeds from different plant species are being collected
Speaker 1: and then shipped to a seed bank in Colorado and
Speaker 1: then they're kept on ice for anywhere between five and
Speaker 1: fifty years. So the idea is that once the time
Speaker 1: is up, scientists of the future can actually warm up
Speaker 1: the seeds, plant them, and bring them back to life.
Speaker 1: And that way they'll be able to compare these ancestor
Speaker 1: plants with their descendants, you know, which will be the
Speaker 1: plants collected from the exact same location where the ancestor
Speaker 1: seeds were first harvested. And so the hope is that
Speaker 1: by you know, looking at this side by side comparison
Speaker 1: across multiple decades. It will actually allow the scientists to
Speaker 1: see how a certain plant population changed over time. That's
Speaker 1: really cool. It's kind of like a botanical time capsule.
Speaker 1: But okay, here's a good one. I found about Caspian horses,
Speaker 1: which Nattio describes as having the hallmark movie stylings of
Speaker 1: all Lazarus species. So here's what happened. In nine seven,
Speaker 1: an American horse breeder and researcher named Louise Leyland married
Speaker 1: this Iranian aristocrat named Narci Ferous and they moved to
Speaker 1: Tehran together, and a few years later, the couple opened
Speaker 1: a children's riding academy so that Louise could share her
Speaker 1: love of riding with all the locals. The only problem
Speaker 1: was that the stallion's native to the region were way
Speaker 1: too rough and bad tempered for the kids to ride safely.
Speaker 1: So Louise asked around and she hoped to find this
Speaker 1: alternative horse for the kids, and she started hearing these
Speaker 1: rumors about a group of strong but friendly miniature horses
Speaker 1: that lived tucked away in this remote mountain region near
Speaker 1: the Caspian Sea. So, based on that hunch, Louise got
Speaker 1: some friends and they went on this expedition, and sure
Speaker 1: enough they actually found the group of horses that they'd
Speaker 1: heard about, And the more time she spent with them,
Speaker 1: the more she realized they resembled this ancient lost breed
Speaker 1: of horse that these Persian royals had carved all over
Speaker 1: their palaces. It was called the Caspian horse, so Louise
Speaker 1: made the connection almost immediately, but it wasn't until the
Speaker 1: ninety nineties that DNA testing was finally able to confirm
Speaker 1: her suspicion. But Louise knew the horse's pedigree from the start,
Speaker 1: so she brought them back to Tehran for students, and
Speaker 1: to this day, Caspians are still considered the ideal starter
Speaker 1: horse for young riders. Wow. Alright, So to recap, a
Speaker 1: riding instructor turned adventurer discovered a lost colony of royal
Speaker 1: horses and then marched them back to civilization so that
Speaker 1: children of Iran would had something safe to ride. I
Speaker 1: don't think I can top that today, Mega, so I
Speaker 1: think you win the trophy. Congratulations, Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: And that doesn't for today's part time genius from Gabe
Speaker 1: Tristan Willemy. Thank you so much for listening. Part Time
Speaker 1: Genius is a production of I heart Radio. For more
Speaker 1: podcast from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
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