July 18, 2025 • 32 mins
Every living thing dies—but sometimes, they come back to life! Perhaps unsurprisingly, Will and Mango have a lot of questions about this phenomenon. For example: How hard it is to bring a species back from extinction? Why do some people wake up in the morgue after being declared dead? Are fish markets the best places to look for extinct species? And can resurrecting the woolly mammoth help solve climate change?
This episode originally aired on May 10, 2019.
Photo by Thomas Quine via Wikimedia Commons. Thanks, Thomas!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of iHeartRadio. Guess
what Will?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
What's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
So did you know the world's largest bee isn't as
extinct as we thought, not as extinct we thought.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I gotta feel like that's too bad. No, it's actually
a good thing. How our giant monster bees a good thing.
So for starters, the vs aren't exactly monsters. They're only
about an inch and a half long, and they've got
a two and a half inch wingspan, so it's about
the size of a thumb or I guess three times
the size of the average honeybee, not the size of
(00:39):
mathras like you might be imagining. I mean maybe not.
But actually just pulled up a picture one of these
things while you were talking, and I have to say,
this is the most terrifying bee I have seen in
my life. Like, why do they have such massive pincers
on their faces? They almost look like these stag beetles,
but just creepier.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, So I was trying not to mention that because
it makes them look so much scarier. But they're actually
just used to scrape resin off trees to build their homes,
so it's not that scary. But here's what's really interesting.
The species was first discovered in Indonesia, and this was
back in eighteen fifty nine, and then nobody could find
it again after that, so it was just presumed to
have gone extinct. And then in nineteen eighty four, this
(01:18):
entomologist stumbled across the bees alive and well in Indonesia
and he collected the specimen. He wrote about discovery, but
he didn't get any video or photos, and then the
bees trail went cold again.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
But it sounds like now somebody has found them again.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Is that right? Yeah, so they thought they were extinct,
but it's totally right. In January this year, this photographer
named Clay Bolt actually made history by finding the giant
bees in the wild for the very first time. And
it sounds like it was a pretty surreal experience because
apparently the female bees make this really deep thrumming sound
with their wings, so he could not only hear them,
(01:54):
he could actually feel the air being displaced as they
flew by. And it was amazing because it's really this
creature that he'd only ever imagined about, right, and suddenly
he has this super tangible and memorable experience with them. Anyway,
Clay's account got me thinking that this week it would
be really fun to look into creatures that had come
back to life. And so that's what we're going to
(02:15):
talk about, all these weird cases out there where creatures
seemingly died and then returned. So let's dive in.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Hey, the podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
friend mangesh Hot Ticketer and on the other side of
that soundproof class bringing a dead fern back to life
at least I think that's what he's doing. That's our
friend and producer Tristan McNeil.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Oh, is that what he's doing. I thought Tristan just
brought in his neglect did the houseplant?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Actually, Tristan's trick only works with one kind of plant,
what's called a resurrection fern, which is not the fern
that he's got over there. But you know, during a
drought or a heat spell, the ferns will turn brown
and they shrivel up, and if you look at them,
they look completely dead. But then you just splash a
little water on them and press though it takes like
twenty four hours and the leaves unfurl, turn green again,
(03:22):
and the whole thing is good as new. I mean,
it's kind of like magic.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Yeah, it does sound like something you'd study at Hogwarts
in the homology class or whatever.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
It's pretty cool. And even though it does seem like magic,
there is of course a scientific explanation on how these
ferns come back to life. These resurrection ferns never actually
die during this dying out process. In fact, these plants
can lose up to ninety seven percent of their water content,
and once they're exposed to water again, they'll still spring
right back. So you know, as long as the fern
(03:50):
can hold on to at least three percent of its water,
it actually won't die.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
That's pretty incredible. So those numbers can't hold up for
most plants.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Right, No, with most plants, if they lose more than
ten percent of their water, they are completely done. And
so the saving grace for resurrection ferns is, you know,
it's their ability to synthesize these special proteins called dehydrants,
and so these allow the cell walls of the plant
to kind of fold and unfold as needed, rather than
just cracking and crumbling like other plants do when they
(04:18):
dry out and believe it or not, that's not the
resurrection ferns only claim to feign because back in nineteen
ninety seven, astronauts actually took a bunch of these ferns
with them on the Space Shuttle Discovery, and this was
a feat that earned the plant the title of first
fern in space. Isn't that special?
Speaker 1 (04:35):
I like it? But what sort of experiments were they
running on these plants in space?
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Well, basically, we wanted to see if the plants could
still resurrect themselves in zero gravity, and apparently they could
with no problem, and as later explained, the resurrection fern
quote proved to be a hardy space traveler and exhibited
regeneration patterns unaltered by its orbital adventure. So not only
can they cheat death, they can do it while rocketing
through space at thousands of miles an hour.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I do like that, but to be fair, resurrection ferns
aren't the only ones to master the old back from
the dead routine, and it's not just flowers and trees
getting into the act either. The animal kingdom has its
own resurrection like events, including some insects and amphibians that
can freeze themselves during winter and then thaw out in
the spring totally alive and healthy.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
But again, like with the ferns, those animals don't technically
die though, right right, but they come pretty close.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Like you can take the wood frogs, which we've talked
about forever ago on the show. But when temperatures drop,
the wood frogs go into what's basically this state of
suspended animation and all of their processes shut down. So
there's no heartbeat, there's no breathing, nothing, but their cells
stay alive regardless, and it's thanks to this handy adaptation
they've evolved that lets them survive for long periods without oxygen.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
So I remember talking about them, but remind me how
long they can actually stay like that, so it can vary.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
I mean, most wood frogs do this extreme hibernation for
a few days at a time to cope with like
a cold snap or something like that, but they can
stay frozen for longer, even for weeks if they.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Need to, which is pretty amazing. And you mentioned their
cells still receive oxygen during this big sleep, and that
makes sense. But what I'm wondering is how those cells
survive the freezing process at all. I mean, there's water
inside those cells, and water expands as it freezes to ice,
and so it seems like those newly formed ice crystals
would just break the cells apart from within.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yeah, that's exactly right, and it's a big part of
why a cryopreservation isn't really an option for humans. Our
cells just aren't equipped to handle a deep freeze. And
it's actually the same for wood frogs. If their cells froze,
they would die too. But that's why whenever there's this
sub zero temperature that sets in the frog's central organ
starts expelling moisture, and this way the water surrounding their
(06:47):
organs freezes into ice, but their organs them cells, and
their cells don't. And that's not the only trick either.
Before a wood frog fully freezes, its body floods the
veins with a special glucose molecule that works like an
anti freeze. So when the glucose reaches the frog cells,
it'll dissolve in the water and bond with the water molecules.
And this means that water molecules in the cell won't
(07:09):
be able to bind with other water molecules to form ice.
So even if the water in a cell reaches subzero temperatures,
it still won't freeze.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Okay, I think I got it. So they really use
the same strategy on a cellular level as they do
for like their central organs, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
But the more researchers learn about the frog's approach, the
better we get it perfecting things like freezing human organs
for transport, and that technique might help us perfect cry
of preservation in the future, you know, getting humans into
this act of resurrecting themselves, which is.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
A little bit creepy, and also, if you think about it,
some humans have already jumped the gun on the whole
resurrection thing. I was actually reading about this rare phenomenon
called auto resuscitation, which is when a person who is
declared dead spontaneously comes back to life spontaneously.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
So this isn't like a patient who's flatline that doctors
use those Z clamps on and jolten back to life.
It's someone who comes back to life on their own.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
That's right. So according to a two thousand and seven
medical review I believe this was the Journal of the
Royal Society of Medicine, there've actually been over thirty cases
of auto resuscitation since the initial report on this condition
back in nineteen eighty two. So on average, these patients
return to life did so about seven minutes after doctors
stopped administering CPR. One patient made it all the way
(08:26):
to the hospital morgue before suddenly returning to life. I mean,
can you imagine what that must have been like for
the poor folks who had to wheel that person down
there and in the morgue no less, but it's just
so like, of all places to witness someone coming back
from the dead, this would have been such a weird experience.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
So these people sort of pop back up? Did they
live for a while?
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I mean, the sad reality is that the majority of
these patients die shortly after their auto resuscitated it. But
I think what's amazing though, is that in a little
over a third of the reported cases, the patients make
a full recovery with little or no neurological damage.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
That is wild. So do doctors have any idea of
why this is happening?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Well, I mean, it's tough to say for certain, because
there've only been, like we said, thirty something cases reported
in the last forty years, and that's not a lot
of data to go on. But that said, the reports
do offer some clues about what might be going on here,
for instance, the use of CPR, which is something that's
in all of these reported cases. So remember I said
the patients came back a few minutes after CPR was stopped. Well,
(09:30):
that gap and time might actually be the key to
understanding the whole phenomenon. It's a little bit complicated, So
I pulled this good breakdown from the Smithsonian and here's
how they explain it. One popular theory is that dynamic
hyperinflation which can occur during CPR if the lungs are
rapidly filled with air without adequate time to exhale. In theory,
(09:50):
when emergency doctors stop CPR, the lung pressure caused by
dynamic hyperinflation returns to normal and the blood begins to
circulate with greater e, producing an auto resuscitation effect.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Huh, So, how can doctor's guard against this kind of thing? Like?
Is there a said amount of time they need to wait?
Speaker 2 (10:09):
I don't think there's like a hard and fast rule
around this, but doctors who've studied the subject do recommend
waiting at least ten or fifteen minutes after CPR has
ceased before declaring someone dead, you know, just to be
on the safe side here.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
That is so strange, Like there's this period of time
when death isn't necessarily final, that someone might still pop
back to life.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, I mean it's it's you know, it's not super likely,
but it does happen. It makes you wonder about where
the cutoff is, like that point past which death is irreversible.
It might be, you know, more fluid than we had
first guessed.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yeah, I think you're right. In fact, I was reading
about this concept people talk about in the conservation world
called the Lazarus taxon or a Lazarus species, and it's
basically a group of plants and animals that were believed
to be extinct but were later rediscovered in the wild.
Like the giant b I mentioned at the top of
the show. It's not the same as the biological resurrections
we've been talking about, but it's another interesting case of
(11:05):
death not being quite as final as we first looked at.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I definitely want to hear more about this, but before
we get to that, let's take a quick break. You're
listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about Lazarus species.
(11:30):
These are the extinct plants and animals that turned out
to be not so extinct after all. And speaking of Lazarus,
I actually forgot to mention this earlier, but auto resuscitation
actually shares some biblical inspiration. It's actually nicknamed the Lazarus phenomenon.
Have you heard of this? So in both cases the
name is a nod to the New Testament story where
Jesus performs a miracle by raising this man named Lazarus
(11:53):
from the dead. So kind of a fun, if not
surprising bit of overlap between religion and science here.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, that's pretty cool. But the term Lazarus taxon was
coined in the nineteen eighties by a couple of paleontologists,
and they were studying the fossil record. They noticed some
organisms seem to disappear during one of Earth's massive extinction
events and then miraculously reappear on the record later, and
these species taken together, form what the scientists called the
Lazarus taxon. So these days the term applies more broadly,
(12:22):
not just to fossilized organisms, but also to living species
that have been rediscovered after the presumed extinction. Actually, there's
a slight variation on this called the elvis taxon, which
is species that seem like they re emerge, but it's
actually an impostor. This is a true thing. But back
to the Lazarus. Like you'd think it's this small club
of species, but there are actually about three hundred and
(12:44):
fifty species on that list, includes everything from plants to
insects to every kind of vertebrae.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Oh wow, so it really runs the gamut. But what
are some of the most famous on the list, or
maybe just a few favorites you came across.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
So my favorite species are the ones that turned up
in the super unexpected places, and one of the oldest
and most famous of these is definitely the seilican, which
is this ancient type of fish that was believed to
have gone extinct over sixty five million years ago. It
was in the supposed to be wiped out in that
same extinction event that claimed the dinosaurs.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yeah, I actually think I've seen these guys before. They
live like way down deep, don't they.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Yeah, I mean they're bottom dwellers for sure, But that's
part of the reason it took us so long to
find one alive. That said living silicans weren't discovered thanks
to some technological breakthrough or some sort of landmark expedition. Instead,
it all happened by sheer chance, and here's how it
went down. So in December nineteen thirty eight, this Natural
History Museum curator named Marjorie Courtney Latimer was strolling the
(13:46):
docks in East London, South Africa. Apparently she did this
often as part of her work for the museum. She'd
just visit the local fishermen and if anyone thought they'd
caught something interesting that day, Marjorie would take a closer
look at their catch. And on that December she indeed
found something interesting in the hall of this fisherman named
Captain Hendrik Goosen. So in his pile of fish there
(14:08):
was this bizarre looking fin that Marjorie had never seen
at the docks before, and this is how she described it.
I picked away at a layer of slime to reveal
the most beautiful fish I had ever seen. It was
pale mauve blue with faint flecks of whitish spots. It
had an iridescent silver blue green sheen all over it.
It was covered in hard scales, and it had four
(14:30):
limb like fins and a strange puppy dog tail.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Wait, let me make sure I have this raight. So
she found what is basically a living fossil, and this
was at a South African fish market.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Yeah, and it was actually really big too, So the
silicon she found at the market weighed one hundred and
twenty seven pounds, which made it tough to transport back
to the museum. And in the end Marjorie and her
assistant they managed to get the fish into the backseat
of a taxi, but they nearly got thrown of that too,
because the fish smelled so bad. Apparently, as they pushed
it through the door and finally got in, the driver
(15:03):
was shouting, no stinking fish in my tax Yeah her, I.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Mean, honestly, can you really blame the guys?
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yeah, I mean you can. And once they explained the
circumstance and probably how big a tip they were going
to give, the driver agreed to help. Although that wasn't
the only obstacle Marjorie face that day. So when she
got the fish back to the museum, she still wasn't
sure what she'd found. Her expertise was actually in birds,
not fish, and when she asked the chairman of the
museum board to help her, identify the specimen. He told
(15:32):
her it's nothing more than a rock cot and then
he left to go on his holiday.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Yeah, it's funny, it almost reads like parody. But well,
obviously the museum was no help. So how did Marjorie
ultimately crack this case?
Speaker 1 (15:44):
So the first thing she did was to find some
way to preserve the fish long term. She tried the
morgue at her local hospital, but they flat out refused
to store fish, no matter how ancient it was, and
in the end she had to settle for getting it
taxidermied instead. So she reached out to a fish curator
at a different South African museum. This guy at JLB. Smith,
and she sent the description and sketches of what she'd found.
(16:06):
Within a month or so, Smith decided to make a
trip to see the fish for himself, and he definitely
wasn't disappointed with what he found. In fact, listen to
how he later described the day he arrived at Marjorie's museum. Quote,
although I had come prepared, the first sight of the
fish hit me like a white hot blast and made
me feel shaky and queer. My body tingled, I stood
as if stricken to stone. Yes, there was not a
(16:29):
shadow of a doubt, scale by sale, bone by bone,
finn by thin. It was a true silicon.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
It must have felt like such vindication.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Yeah, but plus it must have made the museum chairman
feel like such a chomp when he got back from
his vacation.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
I mean, I know I said this earlier, but I
still can't believe she found an extinct species at a
fish market. It just seemed like such a weird place
to find this.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Well, the craziest part is that it wasn't even the
only time that's happened. In fact, there are plenty of
Lazarus species that have showed up at food markets. There's
the smooth toothed black tip shark that reappeared in this
fish market in the Middle East. There's the Laotian rock rat,
which was rediscovered at a meat market, and the Erican
forest turtle, which debuted at a food market in China.
(17:13):
But the list just keeps going.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Pretty sure you made up a couple of those, and
I'm not sure what it says about us in the
first place that we find so many supposedly extinct animals
on our dinner tables. Just it's just so weird.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah, it kind of makes me wonder if any Lazarus
species have actually gone extinct for real, like that way,
like the humans just ate too many of them without
scientists walking by and stopping them from eating. But I
know we've got a few more things to tackle, but first,
let's take a quick break. Welcome back to part time Genius. So, well,
(17:55):
I know you wanted to talk about the extinction, which
is the ability to bring vanished species back to life.
Do you think that's something we'll be able to do
one day? And if so, how long until we're all
riding Willie Manno's to work like God intended.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
I mean, I think it's gonna be a little while
on that one. But yeah, to the question of weather
we'll be able to bring an extinct species back, I mean,
the truth is we already have, or at least we
sort of.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Did, so I'm curious about this sort of you speak up.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Well all right, well, let me back up just a
little bit here. So have you ever heard of Celia,
who happens to be the last Bucardo?
Speaker 1 (18:30):
No, it sounds like a Tolkien character, though.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
It's actually an extinct species of Ibex that used to
live in Spain, And I think in southern France, and
so basically picture a mountain goat or a ram and
you're not far off from this. But all right, so
back in two thousand, the last Bucardo on Earth was
sadly crushed to death by a falling tree. And her
name was Celia.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Sure rip Celia, right right?
Speaker 2 (18:56):
So that wasn't the end of the story there though,
because scientists tried to revive her species, and they used
the nucleus of a cell extracted intact from Celia.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
So you're saying they cloned her, well sort of like.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
This wasn't like with Dolly the sheep, where her nucleus
could be implanted in the egg of a sheep from
the same species. I mean, remember, Celia was the last
one and there weren't any of her kind around to
donate an egg, so instead, scientists inserted the nucleus from
Celia into the unfertilized egg cell of a different kind
of Spanish ibex. Then they took the resulting embryo and
(19:31):
transferred it to the womb of a living goat. It's
just a lot of connections here. And almost a year later,
in July of two thousand and three, the first baby
Buchardo since Celia was born.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Which is kind of amazing. It sounds like some bizarre
science traducan like a buccardo wrapped in an ibex wrapped
in a living goat. But is the Bucardo back for real?
Now it's it's de extinct. No.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Unfortunately, the baby Buchardo was born with a lung defect
and only survived seven minutes, and so that means that,
depending on how you look at it, the Bucardo has
really gone extinct twice at this point. I not the
happy ending we might have looked for, But of course
that's only if you consider that the bucardo made from
Celia's cell to be a true Bucardo and not some
(20:16):
kind of hybrid, you know, like a Spanish ibex with
Bucardo like traits.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
I guess. So, I guess any other species we try
to de extinct would also be that way, right, Like
we couldn't make one hundred percent wooly mammoth.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Yeah, it would always be an animal with cells that
most certainly contain elephant DNA and just a little bit
of mammoth DNA like the nucleus they took from Celia,
you know, and with the long extinct creature like a
wooly mammoth, you'd be even further into hybrid territory. And
that's because there aren't any living mammoths to harvest intact
nuclei from, so scientists will be working with far less
(20:51):
DNA than they had with Celia the bucardo. So all
the efforts that you hear about bringing back the wooly mammoth,
those aren't attempts to clone a mammoth so much as
they are attempts to make an elephant mammoth hybrid. And
so there are new genome editing methods like Crisper, so
scientists could kind of cheat a little bit by changing
the DNA sequences of elephants to it'll look a little
(21:13):
bit more like the DNA sequences of mammoths. That's why
I started by saying that the extinction is sort of possible.
I mean, if you're willing to accept hybrids as the
real thing, or close enough to it, then I guess
the extinction will definitely be something we can do within
the next decade or so. But on the other hand,
if you want a full on recreation of a vanish species,
(21:34):
the same genes, same behaviors all of that. I mean,
that's pretty much never going to happen, and in most cases,
there just aren't enough ancient DNA lying around to completely
reconstruct an animal's genome.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
So for all of us Jurassic Park fans, it does
sound like dinosaur and willing mammoth hybrids are still on
the table in the not so distant future, and gene
editing could actually get them looking pretty close to how
they did originally.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Yeah, and that's actually more like the Jurassic Park dinosaurs
then straight up clones would be anyway. And you know,
I'm not sure if you remember, but in the movie
they filled the gaps in the DNA sequences with frog
DNA and they messed with the genomes so they actually
all have scales instead of feathers. So we're on the
verge of being able to do something pretty similar to that.
I mean, we'd probably use chicken DNA as our gap
(22:20):
instead of frogs, but the basic idea wouldn't be too
far off from that.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
And so what about extinct species that have died out
more recently, like hundreds or thousands of years ago, for instance,
instead of millions, Like would those actually be better candidates
for de extinction absolutely.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
I mean, the passenger pigeon is one example that comes
up a lot. They went extinct in the early twentieth century,
so recovering their DNA wouldn't be that difficult, and there's
a good chance the eggs from a related species of
pigeon might be close enough of a match to create
a viable embryo. But funnily enough is researchers say that
the easiest species to resurrect would actually be the neanderthal,
(23:00):
which is just so weird to think about. So, according
to Scientific American quote, there appear to be just slightly
more than thirty thousand genetic mutations that differentiate us from them,
and Homo sapiens is the complicated organism best understood by
human geneticists. So of course, bringing us, you know, a
sentient human species back to life is a giant ethical
(23:21):
can of worms. So I don't imagine we'll be bringing
Neanderthals back anytime soon, or at least telling myself that.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Which is probably for the best, because you know, I
read that even though there's no ideal candidate for de extinction,
the wily mammoth would still be the best choice, just
because of how much good will it would generate in
the public. And it makes sense if you think about it, right,
Like bringing back the willy mammoth has been a collective
dream for decades now. Plus they look big, free elephants,
(23:48):
like it just feels so much less threatening than a
t rex.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
I mean, still pretty threatening, but I think you're right,
And there's actually another reason why raising the mammoth might
be the best way to go, and it's something that
you'd probably never guess, which is climate change.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
So you're gonna have to explain this one.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
All right. Well it sounds ridiculous, but there actually is
something to this. According to that GEO, Siberia was home
to mammos and these other giant grazing mammals about twelve
thousand years ago, and back then the entire region was
a grassland, not the moss covered tundra that it is today.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
So I'm having a tough time understanding this year you're
saying the landscape changed into something less productive just because
the mamm it's one extinct.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
It is possible, yeah, I mean, the idea is that
the mammos and the other grazing animals used to maintain
the grassy steps by, you know, trampling moss and shrubs,
breaking up the soil, fertilizing what they're droppings. But you know,
once the mammis went the way of the buffalo, the
moss and the trees took over, and this region gradually
transformed into a tundra. And so some researchers think that
(24:53):
reintroducing mammos to the tundra could actually cause the ecosystem
to shift back again.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Which is really interesting and good news for the mammoths
and maybe for any would be farmers in the region.
But how exactly would this help with climate change?
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Well, you know, it's because the frozen ground in Siberia
contains a huge amount of carbon, about twice as much
as what's in the atmosphere already, and the only thing
keeping those carbon stores in check are the region's Arctic temperatures.
So as temperatures continue to rise, the chance of that
permafrost thawing out and that carbon being released rises with them.
(25:27):
And that's where the mammoths would come in. Like, if
they were able to transform the region back into a grassland,
the carbon stores just might stay put. And Smithsonian actually
had a nice breakdown of why this is exactly and
so here's how they explained it. Because grass absorbs less
sunlight than trees, this would cause the ground to absorb
less heat and in turn keep the carbon pools and
(25:50):
their greenhouse gases on ice for longer. Large numbers of
mammoths would also trample snow cover, stopping it from acting
like insulation for the ground and allowing the permafrost to
feel the effects of the bitter Arctic winters. Again, this,
in theory, would keep the ground colder for longer.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Yeah, I don't see how anything could go wrong with
this plan.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Now it's gonna be great.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
It is funny like, on one hand, resurrecting a species
kind of feels like playing god, and that's one of
the main arguments you'll hear from opponents of de extinction.
And yet at the same time, since humans were responsible
for so many recent extinctions, it also feels like we
were playing god when we wipe these creatures out in
the first place. So maybe bringing them back as a
way to right some of the wrongs our species has
(26:32):
done to nature, especially in cases like a Mammo's where
the revival might also benefit the environment as a whole.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, but admitute, Mago, your main motivation is just wanting
to ride one to work. You said it earlier.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, I mean if writing a Willie manmot to work
is wrong, then brother, I don't want to be.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Right that dollar for every time he said that. All right, Well,
while we're waiting on science to deliver on that promise,
what do you say we have ourselves a quick.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Fact off sounds great?
Speaker 2 (27:06):
All right, I'll kick it off here. So remember that
Siberian permafrost that we talked about a few minutes ago, Well,
it turns out it's home to more than just carbon deposits.
Just last year, researchers discovered that the frigid ground had
also preserved ancient life in the form of two forty
thousand year old nematodes, or roundworms. So, even more incredibly,
(27:28):
the researchers were able to successfully quote defrost the creatures,
according to a report from the Siberian Times. Isn't that amazing?
There's something called the Siberian Times, not the fact the
fact that there is a Siberian Times. I just love that.
And if that's true, then roundworms can endure cryo preservation
for way way longer than we thought. The previous record
(27:49):
for anema toad was it was revived like thirty nine
years of dormancy or something like that. But not only that,
it would also mean that those resurrected roundworms are now
the oldest living animals on the planet, and by a
pretty wide margin, of course.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, so I've got a weird one for you. The
name Lazarus came up a lot this week, so I
did some digging on the name itself, and it turns
out it's going through a bit of a resurgence right now.
According to rankings on the top baby naming sites, the
name Lazarus is now more popular than it's been in
over a century.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
And so what are these reports based on exactly?
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Yeah, so a lot of the data comes from the
users on these sites, but the rankings also pull from
the Social Security Administration. So things like how many babies
born in twenty eighteen were named Lazarus shows up on this.
The data goes all the way back to about nineteen hundred,
which is when the name Lazarus was at its peak
as the one hundred and fifth most popular name in
the country.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Wait, and that was the name at its peak popularity. Yeah,
but you've got to keep this in perspective. For the
rest of the twentieth century, the name hovered between the
three thousand and four thousandth most popular name, and it
started to rise in the early nineties and now it's
back in the lowand it's just like it was about
one hundred years ago. Oh wow, it's impressive.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Well.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
One neat thing I read about this week is an
experiment with cryopreserve seeds, and it's called the Project Baseline
Resurrection Approach. So basically, millions of seeds from different plant
species are being collected and then ship to a seed
bank in Colorado, and then they're kept on ice for
anywhere between five and fifty years. So the idea is
that once the time is up, scientists of the future
(29:26):
can actually warm up the seeds, plant them, and bring
them back to life. And that way they'll be able
to compare these ancestor plants with their descendants, you know,
which will be the plants collected from the exact same
location where the ancestor seeds were first harvested. And so
the hope is that by looking at this side by
side comparison across multiple decades, it'll actually allow the scientists
(29:48):
to see how a certain plant population changed over time.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
That's really cool. It's kind of like a botanical time capsule. Yeah,
but okay, here's a good one I found about Caspian horses,
which Nattio describes as having the hallmark movie stylings of
all Lazarus species. So here's what happened. In nineteen fifty seven,
an American horse breeder and researcher named Louise Lelan married
this Iranian aristocrat named Narci Ferruz and they moved to
(30:14):
Tehran together, and a few years later, the couple opened
a children's riding academy so that Louise could share her
love of riding with all the locals. The only problem
was that the stallions native to the region were way
too rough and bad tempered for the kids to ride safely.
So Louise asked around and she hoped to find this
alternative horse for the kids, and she started hearing these
rumors about a group of strong but friendly miniature horses
(30:37):
that lived tucked away in this remote mountain region near
the Caspian Sea. So, based on that hunch, Louise got
some friends and they went on this expedition and sure enough,
they actually found the group of horses that they'd heard about,
and the more time she spent with them, the more
she realized they resembled this ancient lost breed of horse
that these Persian royals had carved all over their palaces.
(30:57):
It was called the Caspian horse, so Louise made the
connection almost immediately, but it wasn't until the nineteen nineties
that DNA testing was finally able to confirm her suspicion.
But Louise knew the horses pedigree from the start, so
she brought them back to Tehran for students, and to
this day, Caspians are still considered the ideal starter horse
for young riders.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Oh wow, all right, So to recap, a riding instructor
turned adventurer discovered a lost colony of royal horses and
then marched them back to civilization so that children of
Iran would have had something safe to ride. I don't
think I can top that today, Mega, so I think
you win the trophy. Congratulations, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
So much, and that does it for today's Part Time
Genius from Gabe Tristan Willelmy. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Part Time Genius is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcast from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of iHeartRadio. Guess
what Will?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
What's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
So did you know the world's largest bee isn't as
extinct as we thought, not as extinct we thought.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I gotta feel like that's too bad. No, it's actually
a good thing. How our giant monster bees a good thing.
So for starters, the vs aren't exactly monsters. They're only
about an inch and a half long, and they've got
a two and a half inch wingspan, so it's about
the size of a thumb or I guess three times
the size of the average honeybee, not the size of
(00:39):
mathras like you might be imagining. I mean maybe not.
But actually just pulled up a picture one of these
things while you were talking, and I have to say,
this is the most terrifying bee I have seen in
my life. Like, why do they have such massive pincers
on their faces? They almost look like these stag beetles,
but just creepier.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, So I was trying not to mention that because
it makes them look so much scarier. But they're actually
just used to scrape resin off trees to build their homes,
so it's not that scary. But here's what's really interesting.
The species was first discovered in Indonesia, and this was
back in eighteen fifty nine, and then nobody could find
it again after that, so it was just presumed to
have gone extinct. And then in nineteen eighty four, this
(01:18):
entomologist stumbled across the bees alive and well in Indonesia
and he collected the specimen. He wrote about discovery, but
he didn't get any video or photos, and then the
bees trail went cold again.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
But it sounds like now somebody has found them again.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Is that right? Yeah, so they thought they were extinct,
but it's totally right. In January this year, this photographer
named Clay Bolt actually made history by finding the giant
bees in the wild for the very first time. And
it sounds like it was a pretty surreal experience because
apparently the female bees make this really deep thrumming sound
with their wings, so he could not only hear them,
(01:54):
he could actually feel the air being displaced as they
flew by. And it was amazing because it's really this
creature that he'd only ever imagined about, right, and suddenly
he has this super tangible and memorable experience with them. Anyway,
Clay's account got me thinking that this week it would
be really fun to look into creatures that had come
back to life. And so that's what we're going to
(02:15):
talk about, all these weird cases out there where creatures
seemingly died and then returned. So let's dive in.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Hey, the podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
friend mangesh Hot Ticketer and on the other side of
that soundproof class bringing a dead fern back to life
at least I think that's what he's doing. That's our
friend and producer Tristan McNeil.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Oh, is that what he's doing. I thought Tristan just
brought in his neglect did the houseplant?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Actually, Tristan's trick only works with one kind of plant,
what's called a resurrection fern, which is not the fern
that he's got over there. But you know, during a
drought or a heat spell, the ferns will turn brown
and they shrivel up, and if you look at them,
they look completely dead. But then you just splash a
little water on them and press though it takes like
twenty four hours and the leaves unfurl, turn green again,
(03:22):
and the whole thing is good as new. I mean,
it's kind of like magic.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Yeah, it does sound like something you'd study at Hogwarts
in the homology class or whatever.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
It's pretty cool. And even though it does seem like magic,
there is of course a scientific explanation on how these
ferns come back to life. These resurrection ferns never actually
die during this dying out process. In fact, these plants
can lose up to ninety seven percent of their water content,
and once they're exposed to water again, they'll still spring
right back. So you know, as long as the fern
(03:50):
can hold on to at least three percent of its water,
it actually won't die.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
That's pretty incredible. So those numbers can't hold up for
most plants.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Right, No, with most plants, if they lose more than
ten percent of their water, they are completely done. And
so the saving grace for resurrection ferns is, you know,
it's their ability to synthesize these special proteins called dehydrants,
and so these allow the cell walls of the plant
to kind of fold and unfold as needed, rather than
just cracking and crumbling like other plants do when they
(04:18):
dry out and believe it or not, that's not the
resurrection ferns only claim to feign because back in nineteen
ninety seven, astronauts actually took a bunch of these ferns
with them on the Space Shuttle Discovery, and this was
a feat that earned the plant the title of first
fern in space. Isn't that special?
Speaker 1 (04:35):
I like it? But what sort of experiments were they
running on these plants in space?
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Well, basically, we wanted to see if the plants could
still resurrect themselves in zero gravity, and apparently they could
with no problem, and as later explained, the resurrection fern
quote proved to be a hardy space traveler and exhibited
regeneration patterns unaltered by its orbital adventure. So not only
can they cheat death, they can do it while rocketing
through space at thousands of miles an hour.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I do like that, but to be fair, resurrection ferns
aren't the only ones to master the old back from
the dead routine, and it's not just flowers and trees
getting into the act either. The animal kingdom has its
own resurrection like events, including some insects and amphibians that
can freeze themselves during winter and then thaw out in
the spring totally alive and healthy.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
But again, like with the ferns, those animals don't technically
die though, right right, but they come pretty close.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Like you can take the wood frogs, which we've talked
about forever ago on the show. But when temperatures drop,
the wood frogs go into what's basically this state of
suspended animation and all of their processes shut down. So
there's no heartbeat, there's no breathing, nothing, but their cells
stay alive regardless, and it's thanks to this handy adaptation
they've evolved that lets them survive for long periods without oxygen.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
So I remember talking about them, but remind me how
long they can actually stay like that, so it can vary.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
I mean, most wood frogs do this extreme hibernation for
a few days at a time to cope with like
a cold snap or something like that, but they can
stay frozen for longer, even for weeks if they.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Need to, which is pretty amazing. And you mentioned their
cells still receive oxygen during this big sleep, and that
makes sense. But what I'm wondering is how those cells
survive the freezing process at all. I mean, there's water
inside those cells, and water expands as it freezes to ice,
and so it seems like those newly formed ice crystals
would just break the cells apart from within.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yeah, that's exactly right, and it's a big part of
why a cryopreservation isn't really an option for humans. Our
cells just aren't equipped to handle a deep freeze. And
it's actually the same for wood frogs. If their cells froze,
they would die too. But that's why whenever there's this
sub zero temperature that sets in the frog's central organ
starts expelling moisture, and this way the water surrounding their
(06:47):
organs freezes into ice, but their organs them cells, and
their cells don't. And that's not the only trick either.
Before a wood frog fully freezes, its body floods the
veins with a special glucose molecule that works like an
anti freeze. So when the glucose reaches the frog cells,
it'll dissolve in the water and bond with the water molecules.
And this means that water molecules in the cell won't
(07:09):
be able to bind with other water molecules to form ice.
So even if the water in a cell reaches subzero temperatures,
it still won't freeze.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Okay, I think I got it. So they really use
the same strategy on a cellular level as they do
for like their central organs, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
But the more researchers learn about the frog's approach, the
better we get it perfecting things like freezing human organs
for transport, and that technique might help us perfect cry
of preservation in the future, you know, getting humans into
this act of resurrecting themselves, which is.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
A little bit creepy, and also, if you think about it,
some humans have already jumped the gun on the whole
resurrection thing. I was actually reading about this rare phenomenon
called auto resuscitation, which is when a person who is
declared dead spontaneously comes back to life spontaneously.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
So this isn't like a patient who's flatline that doctors
use those Z clamps on and jolten back to life.
It's someone who comes back to life on their own.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
That's right. So according to a two thousand and seven
medical review I believe this was the Journal of the
Royal Society of Medicine, there've actually been over thirty cases
of auto resuscitation since the initial report on this condition
back in nineteen eighty two. So on average, these patients
return to life did so about seven minutes after doctors
stopped administering CPR. One patient made it all the way
(08:26):
to the hospital morgue before suddenly returning to life. I mean,
can you imagine what that must have been like for
the poor folks who had to wheel that person down
there and in the morgue no less, but it's just
so like, of all places to witness someone coming back
from the dead, this would have been such a weird experience.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
So these people sort of pop back up? Did they
live for a while?
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I mean, the sad reality is that the majority of
these patients die shortly after their auto resuscitated it. But
I think what's amazing though, is that in a little
over a third of the reported cases, the patients make
a full recovery with little or no neurological damage.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
That is wild. So do doctors have any idea of
why this is happening?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Well, I mean, it's tough to say for certain, because
there've only been, like we said, thirty something cases reported
in the last forty years, and that's not a lot
of data to go on. But that said, the reports
do offer some clues about what might be going on here,
for instance, the use of CPR, which is something that's
in all of these reported cases. So remember I said
the patients came back a few minutes after CPR was stopped. Well,
(09:30):
that gap and time might actually be the key to
understanding the whole phenomenon. It's a little bit complicated, So
I pulled this good breakdown from the Smithsonian and here's
how they explain it. One popular theory is that dynamic
hyperinflation which can occur during CPR if the lungs are
rapidly filled with air without adequate time to exhale. In theory,
(09:50):
when emergency doctors stop CPR, the lung pressure caused by
dynamic hyperinflation returns to normal and the blood begins to
circulate with greater e, producing an auto resuscitation effect.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Huh, So, how can doctor's guard against this kind of thing? Like?
Is there a said amount of time they need to wait?
Speaker 2 (10:09):
I don't think there's like a hard and fast rule
around this, but doctors who've studied the subject do recommend
waiting at least ten or fifteen minutes after CPR has
ceased before declaring someone dead, you know, just to be
on the safe side here.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
That is so strange, Like there's this period of time
when death isn't necessarily final, that someone might still pop
back to life.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, I mean it's it's you know, it's not super likely,
but it does happen. It makes you wonder about where
the cutoff is, like that point past which death is irreversible.
It might be, you know, more fluid than we had
first guessed.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yeah, I think you're right. In fact, I was reading
about this concept people talk about in the conservation world
called the Lazarus taxon or a Lazarus species, and it's
basically a group of plants and animals that were believed
to be extinct but were later rediscovered in the wild.
Like the giant b I mentioned at the top of
the show. It's not the same as the biological resurrections
we've been talking about, but it's another interesting case of
(11:05):
death not being quite as final as we first looked at.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I definitely want to hear more about this, but before
we get to that, let's take a quick break. You're
listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about Lazarus species.
(11:30):
These are the extinct plants and animals that turned out
to be not so extinct after all. And speaking of Lazarus,
I actually forgot to mention this earlier, but auto resuscitation
actually shares some biblical inspiration. It's actually nicknamed the Lazarus phenomenon.
Have you heard of this? So in both cases the
name is a nod to the New Testament story where
Jesus performs a miracle by raising this man named Lazarus
(11:53):
from the dead. So kind of a fun, if not
surprising bit of overlap between religion and science here.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, that's pretty cool. But the term Lazarus taxon was
coined in the nineteen eighties by a couple of paleontologists,
and they were studying the fossil record. They noticed some
organisms seem to disappear during one of Earth's massive extinction
events and then miraculously reappear on the record later, and
these species taken together, form what the scientists called the
Lazarus taxon. So these days the term applies more broadly,
(12:22):
not just to fossilized organisms, but also to living species
that have been rediscovered after the presumed extinction. Actually, there's
a slight variation on this called the elvis taxon, which
is species that seem like they re emerge, but it's
actually an impostor. This is a true thing. But back
to the Lazarus. Like you'd think it's this small club
of species, but there are actually about three hundred and
(12:44):
fifty species on that list, includes everything from plants to
insects to every kind of vertebrae.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Oh wow, so it really runs the gamut. But what
are some of the most famous on the list, or
maybe just a few favorites you came across.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
So my favorite species are the ones that turned up
in the super unexpected places, and one of the oldest
and most famous of these is definitely the seilican, which
is this ancient type of fish that was believed to
have gone extinct over sixty five million years ago. It
was in the supposed to be wiped out in that
same extinction event that claimed the dinosaurs.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yeah, I actually think I've seen these guys before. They
live like way down deep, don't they.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Yeah, I mean they're bottom dwellers for sure, But that's
part of the reason it took us so long to
find one alive. That said living silicans weren't discovered thanks
to some technological breakthrough or some sort of landmark expedition. Instead,
it all happened by sheer chance, and here's how it
went down. So in December nineteen thirty eight, this Natural
History Museum curator named Marjorie Courtney Latimer was strolling the
(13:46):
docks in East London, South Africa. Apparently she did this
often as part of her work for the museum. She'd
just visit the local fishermen and if anyone thought they'd
caught something interesting that day, Marjorie would take a closer
look at their catch. And on that December she indeed
found something interesting in the hall of this fisherman named
Captain Hendrik Goosen. So in his pile of fish there
(14:08):
was this bizarre looking fin that Marjorie had never seen
at the docks before, and this is how she described it.
I picked away at a layer of slime to reveal
the most beautiful fish I had ever seen. It was
pale mauve blue with faint flecks of whitish spots. It
had an iridescent silver blue green sheen all over it.
It was covered in hard scales, and it had four
(14:30):
limb like fins and a strange puppy dog tail.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Wait, let me make sure I have this raight. So
she found what is basically a living fossil, and this
was at a South African fish market.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Yeah, and it was actually really big too, So the
silicon she found at the market weighed one hundred and
twenty seven pounds, which made it tough to transport back
to the museum. And in the end Marjorie and her
assistant they managed to get the fish into the backseat
of a taxi, but they nearly got thrown of that too,
because the fish smelled so bad. Apparently, as they pushed
it through the door and finally got in, the driver
(15:03):
was shouting, no stinking fish in my tax Yeah her, I.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Mean, honestly, can you really blame the guys?
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yeah, I mean you can. And once they explained the
circumstance and probably how big a tip they were going
to give, the driver agreed to help. Although that wasn't
the only obstacle Marjorie face that day. So when she
got the fish back to the museum, she still wasn't
sure what she'd found. Her expertise was actually in birds,
not fish, and when she asked the chairman of the
museum board to help her, identify the specimen. He told
(15:32):
her it's nothing more than a rock cot and then
he left to go on his holiday.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Yeah, it's funny, it almost reads like parody. But well,
obviously the museum was no help. So how did Marjorie
ultimately crack this case?
Speaker 1 (15:44):
So the first thing she did was to find some
way to preserve the fish long term. She tried the
morgue at her local hospital, but they flat out refused
to store fish, no matter how ancient it was, and
in the end she had to settle for getting it
taxidermied instead. So she reached out to a fish curator
at a different South African museum. This guy at JLB. Smith,
and she sent the description and sketches of what she'd found.
(16:06):
Within a month or so, Smith decided to make a
trip to see the fish for himself, and he definitely
wasn't disappointed with what he found. In fact, listen to
how he later described the day he arrived at Marjorie's museum. Quote,
although I had come prepared, the first sight of the
fish hit me like a white hot blast and made
me feel shaky and queer. My body tingled, I stood
as if stricken to stone. Yes, there was not a
(16:29):
shadow of a doubt, scale by sale, bone by bone,
finn by thin. It was a true silicon.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
It must have felt like such vindication.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Yeah, but plus it must have made the museum chairman
feel like such a chomp when he got back from
his vacation.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
I mean, I know I said this earlier, but I
still can't believe she found an extinct species at a
fish market. It just seemed like such a weird place
to find this.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Well, the craziest part is that it wasn't even the
only time that's happened. In fact, there are plenty of
Lazarus species that have showed up at food markets. There's
the smooth toothed black tip shark that reappeared in this
fish market in the Middle East. There's the Laotian rock rat,
which was rediscovered at a meat market, and the Erican
forest turtle, which debuted at a food market in China.
(17:13):
But the list just keeps going.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Pretty sure you made up a couple of those, and
I'm not sure what it says about us in the
first place that we find so many supposedly extinct animals
on our dinner tables. Just it's just so weird.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah, it kind of makes me wonder if any Lazarus
species have actually gone extinct for real, like that way,
like the humans just ate too many of them without
scientists walking by and stopping them from eating. But I
know we've got a few more things to tackle, but first,
let's take a quick break. Welcome back to part time Genius. So, well,
(17:55):
I know you wanted to talk about the extinction, which
is the ability to bring vanished species back to life.
Do you think that's something we'll be able to do
one day? And if so, how long until we're all
riding Willie Manno's to work like God intended.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
I mean, I think it's gonna be a little while
on that one. But yeah, to the question of weather
we'll be able to bring an extinct species back, I mean,
the truth is we already have, or at least we
sort of.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Did, so I'm curious about this sort of you speak up.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Well all right, well, let me back up just a
little bit here. So have you ever heard of Celia,
who happens to be the last Bucardo?
Speaker 1 (18:30):
No, it sounds like a Tolkien character, though.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
It's actually an extinct species of Ibex that used to
live in Spain, And I think in southern France, and
so basically picture a mountain goat or a ram and
you're not far off from this. But all right, so
back in two thousand, the last Bucardo on Earth was
sadly crushed to death by a falling tree. And her
name was Celia.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Sure rip Celia, right right?
Speaker 2 (18:56):
So that wasn't the end of the story there though,
because scientists tried to revive her species, and they used
the nucleus of a cell extracted intact from Celia.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
So you're saying they cloned her, well sort of like.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
This wasn't like with Dolly the sheep, where her nucleus
could be implanted in the egg of a sheep from
the same species. I mean, remember, Celia was the last
one and there weren't any of her kind around to
donate an egg, so instead, scientists inserted the nucleus from
Celia into the unfertilized egg cell of a different kind
of Spanish ibex. Then they took the resulting embryo and
(19:31):
transferred it to the womb of a living goat. It's
just a lot of connections here. And almost a year later,
in July of two thousand and three, the first baby
Buchardo since Celia was born.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Which is kind of amazing. It sounds like some bizarre
science traducan like a buccardo wrapped in an ibex wrapped
in a living goat. But is the Bucardo back for real?
Now it's it's de extinct. No.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Unfortunately, the baby Buchardo was born with a lung defect
and only survived seven minutes, and so that means that,
depending on how you look at it, the Bucardo has
really gone extinct twice at this point. I not the
happy ending we might have looked for, But of course
that's only if you consider that the bucardo made from
Celia's cell to be a true Bucardo and not some
(20:16):
kind of hybrid, you know, like a Spanish ibex with
Bucardo like traits.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
I guess. So, I guess any other species we try
to de extinct would also be that way, right, Like
we couldn't make one hundred percent wooly mammoth.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Yeah, it would always be an animal with cells that
most certainly contain elephant DNA and just a little bit
of mammoth DNA like the nucleus they took from Celia,
you know, and with the long extinct creature like a
wooly mammoth, you'd be even further into hybrid territory. And
that's because there aren't any living mammoths to harvest intact
nuclei from, so scientists will be working with far less
(20:51):
DNA than they had with Celia the bucardo. So all
the efforts that you hear about bringing back the wooly mammoth,
those aren't attempts to clone a mammoth so much as
they are attempts to make an elephant mammoth hybrid. And
so there are new genome editing methods like Crisper, so
scientists could kind of cheat a little bit by changing
the DNA sequences of elephants to it'll look a little
(21:13):
bit more like the DNA sequences of mammoths. That's why
I started by saying that the extinction is sort of possible.
I mean, if you're willing to accept hybrids as the
real thing, or close enough to it, then I guess
the extinction will definitely be something we can do within
the next decade or so. But on the other hand,
if you want a full on recreation of a vanish species,
(21:34):
the same genes, same behaviors all of that. I mean,
that's pretty much never going to happen, and in most cases,
there just aren't enough ancient DNA lying around to completely
reconstruct an animal's genome.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
So for all of us Jurassic Park fans, it does
sound like dinosaur and willing mammoth hybrids are still on
the table in the not so distant future, and gene
editing could actually get them looking pretty close to how
they did originally.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Yeah, and that's actually more like the Jurassic Park dinosaurs
then straight up clones would be anyway. And you know,
I'm not sure if you remember, but in the movie
they filled the gaps in the DNA sequences with frog
DNA and they messed with the genomes so they actually
all have scales instead of feathers. So we're on the
verge of being able to do something pretty similar to that.
I mean, we'd probably use chicken DNA as our gap
(22:20):
instead of frogs, but the basic idea wouldn't be too
far off from that.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
And so what about extinct species that have died out
more recently, like hundreds or thousands of years ago, for instance,
instead of millions, Like would those actually be better candidates
for de extinction absolutely.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
I mean, the passenger pigeon is one example that comes
up a lot. They went extinct in the early twentieth century,
so recovering their DNA wouldn't be that difficult, and there's
a good chance the eggs from a related species of
pigeon might be close enough of a match to create
a viable embryo. But funnily enough is researchers say that
the easiest species to resurrect would actually be the neanderthal,
(23:00):
which is just so weird to think about. So, according
to Scientific American quote, there appear to be just slightly
more than thirty thousand genetic mutations that differentiate us from them,
and Homo sapiens is the complicated organism best understood by
human geneticists. So of course, bringing us, you know, a
sentient human species back to life is a giant ethical
(23:21):
can of worms. So I don't imagine we'll be bringing
Neanderthals back anytime soon, or at least telling myself that.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Which is probably for the best, because you know, I
read that even though there's no ideal candidate for de extinction,
the wily mammoth would still be the best choice, just
because of how much good will it would generate in
the public. And it makes sense if you think about it, right,
Like bringing back the willy mammoth has been a collective
dream for decades now. Plus they look big, free elephants,
(23:48):
like it just feels so much less threatening than a
t rex.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
I mean, still pretty threatening, but I think you're right,
And there's actually another reason why raising the mammoth might
be the best way to go, and it's something that
you'd probably never guess, which is climate change.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
So you're gonna have to explain this one.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
All right. Well it sounds ridiculous, but there actually is
something to this. According to that GEO, Siberia was home
to mammos and these other giant grazing mammals about twelve
thousand years ago, and back then the entire region was
a grassland, not the moss covered tundra that it is today.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
So I'm having a tough time understanding this year you're
saying the landscape changed into something less productive just because
the mamm it's one extinct.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
It is possible, yeah, I mean, the idea is that
the mammos and the other grazing animals used to maintain
the grassy steps by, you know, trampling moss and shrubs,
breaking up the soil, fertilizing what they're droppings. But you know,
once the mammis went the way of the buffalo, the
moss and the trees took over, and this region gradually
transformed into a tundra. And so some researchers think that
(24:53):
reintroducing mammos to the tundra could actually cause the ecosystem
to shift back again.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Which is really interesting and good news for the mammoths
and maybe for any would be farmers in the region.
But how exactly would this help with climate change?
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Well, you know, it's because the frozen ground in Siberia
contains a huge amount of carbon, about twice as much
as what's in the atmosphere already, and the only thing
keeping those carbon stores in check are the region's Arctic temperatures.
So as temperatures continue to rise, the chance of that
permafrost thawing out and that carbon being released rises with them.
(25:27):
And that's where the mammoths would come in. Like, if
they were able to transform the region back into a grassland,
the carbon stores just might stay put. And Smithsonian actually
had a nice breakdown of why this is exactly and
so here's how they explained it. Because grass absorbs less
sunlight than trees, this would cause the ground to absorb
less heat and in turn keep the carbon pools and
(25:50):
their greenhouse gases on ice for longer. Large numbers of
mammoths would also trample snow cover, stopping it from acting
like insulation for the ground and allowing the permafrost to
feel the effects of the bitter Arctic winters. Again, this,
in theory, would keep the ground colder for longer.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Yeah, I don't see how anything could go wrong with
this plan.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Now it's gonna be great.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
It is funny like, on one hand, resurrecting a species
kind of feels like playing god, and that's one of
the main arguments you'll hear from opponents of de extinction.
And yet at the same time, since humans were responsible
for so many recent extinctions, it also feels like we
were playing god when we wipe these creatures out in
the first place. So maybe bringing them back as a
way to right some of the wrongs our species has
(26:32):
done to nature, especially in cases like a Mammo's where
the revival might also benefit the environment as a whole.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, but admitute, Mago, your main motivation is just wanting
to ride one to work. You said it earlier.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, I mean if writing a Willie manmot to work
is wrong, then brother, I don't want to be.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Right that dollar for every time he said that. All right, Well,
while we're waiting on science to deliver on that promise,
what do you say we have ourselves a quick.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Fact off sounds great?
Speaker 2 (27:06):
All right, I'll kick it off here. So remember that
Siberian permafrost that we talked about a few minutes ago, Well,
it turns out it's home to more than just carbon deposits.
Just last year, researchers discovered that the frigid ground had
also preserved ancient life in the form of two forty
thousand year old nematodes, or roundworms. So, even more incredibly,
(27:28):
the researchers were able to successfully quote defrost the creatures,
according to a report from the Siberian Times. Isn't that amazing?
There's something called the Siberian Times, not the fact the
fact that there is a Siberian Times. I just love that.
And if that's true, then roundworms can endure cryo preservation
for way way longer than we thought. The previous record
(27:49):
for anema toad was it was revived like thirty nine
years of dormancy or something like that. But not only that,
it would also mean that those resurrected roundworms are now
the oldest living animals on the planet, and by a
pretty wide margin, of course.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, so I've got a weird one for you. The
name Lazarus came up a lot this week, so I
did some digging on the name itself, and it turns
out it's going through a bit of a resurgence right now.
According to rankings on the top baby naming sites, the
name Lazarus is now more popular than it's been in
over a century.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
And so what are these reports based on exactly?
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Yeah, so a lot of the data comes from the
users on these sites, but the rankings also pull from
the Social Security Administration. So things like how many babies
born in twenty eighteen were named Lazarus shows up on this.
The data goes all the way back to about nineteen hundred,
which is when the name Lazarus was at its peak
as the one hundred and fifth most popular name in
the country.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Wait, and that was the name at its peak popularity. Yeah,
but you've got to keep this in perspective. For the
rest of the twentieth century, the name hovered between the
three thousand and four thousandth most popular name, and it
started to rise in the early nineties and now it's
back in the lowand it's just like it was about
one hundred years ago. Oh wow, it's impressive.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Well.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
One neat thing I read about this week is an
experiment with cryopreserve seeds, and it's called the Project Baseline
Resurrection Approach. So basically, millions of seeds from different plant
species are being collected and then ship to a seed
bank in Colorado, and then they're kept on ice for
anywhere between five and fifty years. So the idea is
that once the time is up, scientists of the future
(29:26):
can actually warm up the seeds, plant them, and bring
them back to life. And that way they'll be able
to compare these ancestor plants with their descendants, you know,
which will be the plants collected from the exact same
location where the ancestor seeds were first harvested. And so
the hope is that by looking at this side by
side comparison across multiple decades, it'll actually allow the scientists
(29:48):
to see how a certain plant population changed over time.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
That's really cool. It's kind of like a botanical time capsule. Yeah,
but okay, here's a good one I found about Caspian horses,
which Nattio describes as having the hallmark movie stylings of
all Lazarus species. So here's what happened. In nineteen fifty seven,
an American horse breeder and researcher named Louise Lelan married
this Iranian aristocrat named Narci Ferruz and they moved to
(30:14):
Tehran together, and a few years later, the couple opened
a children's riding academy so that Louise could share her
love of riding with all the locals. The only problem
was that the stallions native to the region were way
too rough and bad tempered for the kids to ride safely.
So Louise asked around and she hoped to find this
alternative horse for the kids, and she started hearing these
rumors about a group of strong but friendly miniature horses
(30:37):
that lived tucked away in this remote mountain region near
the Caspian Sea. So, based on that hunch, Louise got
some friends and they went on this expedition and sure enough,
they actually found the group of horses that they'd heard about,
and the more time she spent with them, the more
she realized they resembled this ancient lost breed of horse
that these Persian royals had carved all over their palaces.
(30:57):
It was called the Caspian horse, so Louise made the
connection almost immediately, but it wasn't until the nineteen nineties
that DNA testing was finally able to confirm her suspicion.
But Louise knew the horses pedigree from the start, so
she brought them back to Tehran for students, and to
this day, Caspians are still considered the ideal starter horse
for young riders.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Oh wow, all right, So to recap, a riding instructor
turned adventurer discovered a lost colony of royal horses and
then marched them back to civilization so that children of
Iran would have had something safe to ride. I don't
think I can top that today, Mega, so I think
you win the trophy. Congratulations, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
So much, and that does it for today's Part Time
Genius from Gabe Tristan Willelmy. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Part Time Genius is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
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Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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