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29M-year-old grasshopper nest found intact with eggs, study says
- ufocia 3y agoReading out complete fossilized DNA would be cool.
- mysterydip 3y agoWould also be interesting to see how much of it has changed compared with current grasshoppers
- MPSimmons 3y agoDNA has a pretty hard lifespan of under a couple million years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_DNA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_DNA
- TravisCooper 3y agoImpossible. DNA degrades very quickly. Half-life is ~520 years, and you'd assume any "storage" done quickly and ad-hoc (as these things always are) would not be ideal conditions to maximize this number.
- praptak 3y agoThat's the typical half life. The record is ~2 million years, obviously just tiny fragments https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/unlocking-the-oldest-known-dna-revealed-a-lost-greenland-from-2-million-years-ago https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/unlocking-the-oldest-kn...
- robertlagrant 3y ago> That's the typical half life. The record is ~2 million years, obviously just tiny fragments Half-life of DNA is the time it takes for half the bonds to snap. Far longer than 2 million years is achievable based on that half-life, at least under ideal conditions.
- jahewson 3y agoAnd that’s just tiny fragments too.
- helpfulContrib 3y ago[dead]
- davidw 3y agoOh hey, that's in my neck of the woods, sort of. The John Day fossil beds are worth a trip as well as the Painted Hills. That area has some spectacular scenery that feels almost southwestern, with buttes and canyons and rivers. One of my favorite bits of Oregon that doesn't get many visitors. https://ridewithgps.com/ambassador_routes/98-twickenham-road-ride-from-mitchell-or-fo https://ridewithgps.com/ambassador_routes/98-twickenham-road... https://photos.app.goo.gl/pQE8c4LfEGVbss789 https://photos.app.goo.gl/pQE8c4LfEGVbss789 https://photos.app.goo.gl/g9W9VAgshh58M5yPA https://photos.app.goo.gl/g9W9VAgshh58M5yPA https://photos.app.goo.gl/9t4hfYsE2zvAQHWM7 https://photos.app.goo.gl/9t4hfYsE2zvAQHWM7
- zenmaster10665 3y agoI thought this was a 29 year old Male grasshopper...time for bed.
- hammyhavoc 3y agoHe's a single parent looking for love.
- baxtr 3y agoCould also be single and depressed. Soon turning 30 and all he has is just a bunch of soon-to-be-kids. Poor fellow.
- Smar 3y ago29 year old male grasshopper nest with eggs would certainly be something.
- elevatedastalt 3y agoI read it first as 29 year old M grasshopper has a nest egg, and I was like, fuck a damn grasshopper has beat me to FIRE.
- pvaldes 3y agoStrange fossil. It does not look like something so old.
- hyperific 3y agoI'd be very curious to see how much genetic material they could recover from this. It'd be fascinating to see how much of the grasshopper genome has been conserved over 29 million years. I.e. how different are today's grasshoppers from those from 29M years ago?
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoProbably nothing; fossilized means it's mineralized, turned into stone. At best they can see what it looked like (they mentioned a scan). They can get (some?) DNA from things they get out of the permafrost though, like wooly mammoths.
- praptak 3y agoDNA doesn't last that long. I think the record is about 2 million years, tiny fragments of DNA recovered from samples drilled from under Greenland ice. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/unlocking-the-oldest-known-dna-revealed-a-lost-greenland-from-2-million-years-ago https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/unlocking-the-oldest-kn...
- 7thaccount 3y agoSoooo... you're telling me no Jurassic Park?
- sema4hacker 3y agoWas actually found a dozen years ago.
- waterheater 3y agoThe manner of discovery is almost as remarkable as the find itself: >Christopher Schierup, a collection manager for the National Parks Service, discovered the egg case in the fossil beds in July 2012. Schierup was conducting a routine visual survey of the site when he spotted the object, which was embedded in a chunk of rock that had rolled down a hill, Famoso recalled.
- Sparkyte 3y agoSo absurd I love it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jononomo 3y agofunny how evolution keeps species identical for tens of millions of years
- anuptalwalkar 3y agoJohn day! I visit this place almost every summer. Its remote with true dark sky and almost no cell range. You can find some truly gem of places to see around here. My good memories from 2017 solar eclipse are still etched into my brain:)
- Sparkyte 3y agoSuper neat. We keep finding such amazing old things.
- fosk 3y agoI just wonder how many discoveries were just shrugged off or destroyed by people who couldn’t care less or didn’t know. If I came across something like this in the wild, I wouldn’t think much of it, either.
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- seansh 3y agoThey started blocking my browser a few months ago (safari with ad blocker), I just stopped reading CNN all together.
- ok_dad 3y agoAdvertisers have stopped caring about lies now, awesome. I’m not disabling my adblock even if my own grandmother wanted me to. Advertisers are a scourge on the internet.
- gumby 3y agoThough this is 30 My old, I looked up grasshoppers and grasses on wikipedia: Grasshoppers are 250 My old Grasses are about 50 My old But I suppose these eggs are recent enough that the mother could have lived in, and even eaten grasses. Apparently they aren't particularly picky: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grasshopper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grasshopper And grasses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poaceae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poaceae Actually grasshoppers have been around longer than dinosaurs, who, apart from birds (many of whom are notorious grain-eaters), didn't stick around long enough to actually eat any grass.
- pattmayne 3y agoThis is how we get Tiny Jurassic Park.
- senectus1 3y agohuh... i did not know that grasshoppers made nests.