Welcome back to the Abstract!
How’s your mental state these days? Feeling burnt out? Well, have I got a story for you about a guy whose mind was so blown by the events of his time that we can see his actual neurons 2,000 years later. I’m not trying to trivialize anyone’s legitimate feelings of stress; just giving us all the opportunity to look on the bright side: We haven’t been cooked alive—yet!
Next, Mars. Want to live there? Some people apparently do. Here’s a guide to the best coastal real estate of the past, courtesy of a rover that recently died there. Snap up your timeshare before Elon Musk buys it and names it X-Mars-the-Spot or some crap. Then, scientists raise alarms about all the weird endangered animals that get short shrift compared to fan favorites, like tigers, and whales, and Moo Deng. Last, an ode to the mama bear. Enjoy!
This is Your Brain on Mount Vesuvius
Nearly 2,000 years ago, a young man aged about 20 was chilling out in the Collegium Augustalium, a hall built to worship Emperor Augustus, in the Roman town of Herculaneum. Nobody knows what was running through his mind that morning, but we know what was there by the afternoon: A heat-shocked brain preserved in organic glass.
This unlucky fellow was one of the thousands of people killed when Mount Vesuvius blew its ever-lovin’ top in the year 79, burying the neighboring towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum in searing ash, lava, and pumice.
Remains of the man in the Collegium Augustalium. Image: Pier Paolo Petrone
The man in the Collegium Augustalium, who probably served as the building’s guardian, was lying down in bed when he was hit by a fast-moving volcanic belch, known as a pyroclastic flow, which raised his body temperature well above 510°C (950°F).
That is, medically speaking, too hot. But while it is an absolutely horrifying way to die, the guardian has the posthumous honor of having a preserved glass brain “formed by a unique process of vitrification” which “is the only such occurrence on Earth,” according to researchers led by Guido Giordano of Università Roma Tre.
“Our comprehensive chemical and physical characterization of the material sampled from the skull of a human body buried at Herculaneum by the 79 CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius shows compelling evidence that these are human brain remains, composed of organic glass formed at high temperatures, a process of preservation never previously documented for human or animal tissue, neither brain nor any other kind,” said the team.
“The glass that formed as a result of such a unique process attained a perfect state of preservation of the brain and its microstructures” including “exceptionally well-preserved complex networks of neurons, axons, and other neural structures,” the researchers added.
Neural structures preserved in glass. Image: Giordano, Guido et al
We talk about having brain-freeze or being brain-fried, but the guardian definitely has us all beat with: brain–vitrified-into-glass-via-volcano. While it’s probably not how this guy hoped to go down in history, it’s insane that we can look at an ancient person’s actual brain, down to the neural structures, after 2,000 years. These same networks once carried thoughts like “what should I have for lunch?” and “Emperor Augustus was so based” and now they are laid out in front of us, immortalized in a glass tableau.
“We reconstruct a scenario where a fast, very hot ash cloud was the first deadly event during the 79 CE Vesuvius eruption, enveloping victims, including the guardian who was subject to the specific conditions for heating the brain at temperatures well above 510 °C without the (total) destruction of the cerebral tissue,” the team said. “The brain then turned into glass during the fast cooling at glass transition temperature close to 510°C. Later, in agreement with witness accounts and deposit stratigraphy, Herculaneum was progressively buried by thick pyroclastic flow deposits, but at lower temperatures, so that the unique presence of a vitrified brain could have been preserved until today.”
Don’t mess with Mount Vesuvius! Unless you want people to look at your neurons in 2,000 years, in which case: go with the pyroclastic flow.
Oceanfront Property on Mars (Ocean Not Included)
Martian lakes? Sure. Rivers? Ok. But a big ole Martian ocean? Show me the receipts.
That’s the upshot of a decades-long debate about whether a vast Martian sea extended across the northern lowlands of the red planet billions of years ago. Now, China’s Zhurong rover has produced the aforementioned receipts—and they are premium property deeds.
“Various observations suggest that large amounts of liquid water once existed on the Martian surface, however, the nature and fate of this water are uncertain,” said researchers co-led by Jianhui Li and Hai Liu of Guangzhou University.
“Through radar data gathered by the Zhurong Rover, we identify extensive dipping deposits in the subsurface of southern Utopia Planitia,” the team said. “These deposits have structures similar to those of Earth’s coastal sediments. This finding implies the past existence of a large water body, supporting the hypothesis of a past ocean in the northern plains of Mars.”
The Zhurong rover landed in 2021 in a region called Utopia Planitia, at the edge of this proposed shoreline. Though it died the next year, it is still producing revelations from beyond the grave as scientists work through its observations.
This study provides the first clear onsite evidence that ocean waves lapped against these lowlands, creating scenic beaches. All you have to do to cash in on this location is go back in time about four billion years and adapt your body to an alien planet, which is only slightly more challenging than getting into the housing market here on Earth in the present day.
Will Somebody Please Think of the Amphibians?!
Humans are causing a sixth mass extinction event. Yup, it’s a bummer. To make matters worse, even our efforts to help curb the losses get all tangled up with our biases toward the so-called “charismatic megafauna” that most inspire our wonder, affection, and asymmetric sympathy.
Enchanting animals like rhinos, tigers, and pandas have become the icons of conservation movements—but these anthropic preferences come at a great cost, reports a new study that analyzed roughly 14,600 conservation projects over a period of 25 years.
“More attention is urgently needed to assess the extinction risks of neglected taxa, especially smaller species,” said researchers led by Benoit Guénard of the University of Hong Kong. “Paradoxically, while approximately 6% of species identified as threatened were supported by conservation funds, 29% of the funding was allocated to species of ‘least concern.’”
“For example, small-bodied taxa, such as amphibians, have been known to be the most threatened of vertebrate groups for two decades, accounting for ~25% of the threatened vertebrate species” and “yet, amphibians received only 2.5% of recent funding, which declined from 4% in the late 1990s,” the team said. “Similarly, weak conservation efforts are observed within many groups of mammals (e.g., Rodentia, Chiroptera), reptiles (e.g., Squamata, Serpentes, or nonmarine Testudines), or insects (e.g., Odonata, Orthoptera) despite the well-known threats to these taxa.”
Honestly, preach. This problem has been a hobby-horse of mine for years—and if a hobby-horse were a real endangered species, it would probably get disproportionate conservation funding.
To that end, the authors made a series of recommendations for “a more holistic distribution of conservation funding” and “more balanced coverage of threatened species within conservation programs.”
“Successful citizen-science programs, even for taxa not typically seen as charismatic, have already spurred an increase in local and applied actions, as many individuals may feel geographically disconnected from some of the large megafauna that receive the ‘lion’s share’ of funding,” the team noted.
“With heightened awareness of the essential functions and services of many species that are often seen as less charismatic, it is crucial to address these biases and optimize the allocation of funds to ensure the protection of these species.”
Stoneflies and salamanders need love too! Who cares if they don’t inspire Disney movies or Moo-Deng-level devotion? Are we really so superficial that we predicate survival on cuteness?
I mean, yes, evidently—I will literally do this in the following section. I contain hypocritical multitudes. But you can still ogle adorable animals while recognizing the urgent need for more objective conservation approaches.
And now, on to a story about endangered charismatic megafauna….
A Moment of Zen from an Arctic Den
Last, polar bear cubs. Yeah. We deserve it. We talked about the uncharismatic minor-fauna. Now show us those fluffy little bear cubs.
Scientists have done just that by filming a bunch of cuddly future killers emerging from their dens for the first time. For six years, a team logged footage from cameras installed at roughly a dozen sites in Svalbard, Norway, to get a better sense of the factors involved in this crucial rite of passage for bears, which is rarely observed as the dens tend to be in remote and inaccessible parts of the Arctic.
The results revealed…very cute cubs. I just want to pick them up and hug them and accept the fatal mauling that comes my way—worth it for the snug. But in addition to lil baby bear pics, the study also produced valuable scientific insights, which was not necessary, but is nonetheless appreciated.
“We found that the probability a bear had broken out of the den could be accurately predicted from changes in collar temperature, activity, and ordinal date,” said researchers led by Louise Archer of the University of Toronto. “Post-den emergence behavior was influenced by external environmental temperature, time of day, and the amount of time since den breakout; bears were more likely to emerge and stay outside longer given warmer temperatures and increasing time since den breakout.”
“Our study highlights the importance of the post-emergence period for cub acclimatization and development and provides new monitoring tools to study polar bear denning behavior, which is increasingly vulnerable to disruption in a rapidly changing Arctic,” the team said.
The study is also a reminder of the general badassery of mama bears. These animals mate in the spring, delay implantation for several months (wish humans had this trick), dig out a den in late summer, give birth to tiny 600-gram cubs around the winter solstice, nurse them for several months, before emerging with them in the spring, by which point they have fasted up to eight months and lost nearly half their body weight. And then they have to raise the dang kids solo! All while humans make their lives immeasurably harder with the effects of climate change.
These moms deserve a medal. Made of meat. Give the moms 5,000-pound meat medals.
And with that, may you emerge from your dens as spring starts to thaw the Northern Hemisphere. Just watch out for volcanoes!
Thanks for reading! See you next week.