SGU Episode 385

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SGU Episode 385
1st Dec 2012
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 384                      SGU 386
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Guest
BA: Banachek
Quote of the Week
I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.
Richard Feynman
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Forum Discussion

Introduction

You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Monday, November 26, 2012, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,

B: Hey, everybody.

S: Rebecca Watson,

R: Hello, everyone.

S: Jay Novella,

J: Hey, guys.

S: And Evan Bernstein.

E: Hi, everybody. I am still full from that Thanksgiving meal.

S: Still?

R: Yeah.

J: I really overdid it this year.

B: In the past few days I've had four meals consisting of just meatball lasagna. It's awesome.

This Day in Skepticism (00:40)

S: But, what happened on this date in history, Rebecca?

R: On December 1, 1948, a grand mystery began based upon the death of a man whose name is still unknown. As you guys know, I'm flying Australia tomorrow to go a conference in Melbourne, and so in honor of that I wanted to do a this day in skeptic history that has an Australian bent. So this is a really interesting case. It's called The Taman Shud Case or The Mystery of the Somerton Man. So on December 1, 1948, a, the body of a man was discovered on a beach in Adelaide, Australia. And the man well dressed, he was wearing a suit, but no hat, which was odd for the time, apparently. And nobody knew who he was. His dental records were nonexistent. He had no distinguishing characteristics, really. There was no ID on him. So nobody could figure out who this guy was. Eventually he was connected with a suitcase, they found a suitcase that they realized was his because there was a thread in it that was very rare and matched stitching on the inside of this man's pants. So they figured that this must be his suitcase. But there was really nothing in there to give away any clues either. The weirdest thing was that they found sewn into one of his pockets, they found the torn off page from the Rubayat of Omar Khayyam. It's a famous book of poems, basically. And this man had in his pocket a little, a little bit of paper that had been torn off and all it said on the paper was "Taman Shud." I think I'm pronouncing that horribly wrong. But that's what it said. And the officials realized that that was the, that meant "ended" or "finished" and it was at the end of The Rubayat of Omar Khayyam, this collection of poems. And, so specifically it had been torn out, they realized it had been torn out of that book, a very specific edition of that book that didn't have any writing on the other side of the page, and they couldn't find any editions that were printed like that. All of the editions that they found had printing on both sides of the page where those words were. Until this guy came forward. He realized that, it hadn't occurred to him originally that this was connected to this unsolved mystery. But the night that the dead man apparently died, someone had placed a copy of The Rubayat of Omar Khayyam in the back seat of his unmarked car that was parked nearby. And sure enough, in the back, they found that that piece of paper had been torn out of that book. And in the book was a code. There were these seemingly random letters written in the back, but they, they look like a code. And nobody's been able to crack the code yet. Still nobody knows who this guy is. There've been a lot of people guessing that this is something to do with the Cold War. That he was a spy. There's also this other connection where there's a child who died mysteriously and is, was somehow connected with this guy because they both shared similar genetics, or not genetics. They both share similar medical oddities in their bodies that they feel that there's so much

B: Ooo. Like What?

R: It's something like, it's something weird about their ears. One of the things they both have like one part of their ear is longer than the other.

S: His cymba was bigger than his cavum.

R: Yes! That's what it is.

S: Characteristic of one to two percent of the Causasian population. He also had attached rather than hanging earlobes, which is a lesser, less common, variation.

R: Right. And there was one other thing. Oh, hypodontia. Some sort of thing with his incisors. That's only present in two percent of the population, and both the kid and this guy had it. And both died mysteriously, like they're not really sure how they died. The coroner thought that this guy was poisoned, but he has no, the poison didn't leave any trace, so they don't have any proof of that. So it's this huge, huge mystery that still hasn't been solved. There are researchers that are now asking if they can exhume the body so that they can test the DNA in order to figure out at least, like, the general area that this guy, like the country, maybe, that this guy came from. But apparently last year Attorney General John Rowell wouldn't let them exhume the body because he says, "There needs to be public interest reasons that go well beyond public curiosity or broad scientific interest." Which is bogus. What's wrong with broad scientific interest? Dig that body up. That's what I say.

E: That's right.

R: 'Cause it's a really interesting case. Like, you know, it's got everything that a good Hollywood thriller has. Except for the ending. It needs an ending. So. I thought that was really interesting. I'd never heard of it before, so.

E: And you're heading to Australia to figure it all out. Good luck, Rebecca.

R: I'm gonna break this one wide open.

E: Awesome.

R: I'm gonna solve this case.

News Items

Not-So-Terror Bird (06:22)

S: Well, Jay, you're gonna tell us about a mystery that perhaps has recently been solved involving a very large bird.

J: So starting on January 5, 2009, a pineapple express storm hit the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Does everybody know what a pineapple express is?

B: No.

S: It comes from Hawaii?

E: It's a movie.

J: Yeah, that was a good guess, Steve. These types of storms come from the sub-tropical Pacific and dangerous because of the huge quantities of water that they dump, so without going into the details

S: And all the pineapples flying all over the place.

J: (laughing) Yeah, read about it. I'd never heard about it. It's, the name is for a storm that starts in the Pacific Northwest and then it, I guess, hits the United States. But if you're interested read more about that, but I had some fun reading about that. Never heard about a pineapple express before. So, like I said, these storms pick and dump an enormous amount of water. And this storm that I'm talking about that happened in 2009 hit the deeply snow-covered foothills of Whatcom Country in Washington, which is a state in the United States, and it delivered an incredibly huge deluge of rain and warm temperature water. The storm resulted in massive water accumulation in the snow that was already there, and it ended up causing significant landslides. However, the good news is that those landslides uncovered something really awesome. A study published in the journal Paleontology studied a set of footprints made 55.8 to 40.6 million years ago, and the footprints are preserved in sandstone and are believed to be none other than the long-extinct giant bird known as Diatryma. And Steve, I figured you really like this news item for a number of reasons, because you love dinosaurs and because you live birds.

S: That's redundant, but yeah.

R: Redundant.

E: Well, yeah.

J: Well, when I say "birds" I mean modern birds, okay?

E: Modern.

B: Modern day dinosaurs.

E: Avids.

S: So that, every time I make that distinction, somebody says "You mean non-avian dinosaurs."

E: No.

S: Whenever I say "dinosaurs" and I'm referring to non-avian dinosaurs, somebody pendanticly corrects me, you know "You mean non-avian dinosaurs." So the thing is if you're using the term "dinosaurs," this is gonna come up later in the show, too, if you're using the term "dinosaur" colloquially, people know what the hell you're talking about. You're talking about dinosaurs. You know, non-avian dinosaurs, not birds. While birds are in the dinosaur clade, I don't think anybody thinks of a sparrow as a dinosaur.

J: I agree. I'll continue my news item now.

R: That's the first thing that comes to mind, when somebody says "dinosaur." I think of a sparrow.

S: Sparrow?

E: Jack Sparrow.

J: Diatryma were giant flightless birds found as fossils in early Eosene rocks in North America and in Europe. The Eosene Epoch lasted 57.8 to 36.6 million years ago. So these monsters grew to a height of about 2-1/4 meters, or seven feet. It's a pretty big bird. It had small flightless wings and incredibly powerful legs most likely used for running. And it had a large head and an equally powerful beak. This big nasty beak. Because of the beak it's been previously thought that these guys were predators, eating small mammals. George Mustoe, a geologist, and team members studying the footprints said they're commonly thought as the bird that replaced dinosaurs as the top predator. But now that those footprints exist, they provide some evidence about what the birds ate and we're gonna see a shift here, and this is the way that science works when new evidence presents itself. Science's opinion or facts change on that subject. David Tucker, another researcher on this study said the tracks clearly show that the animals did not have long talons but rather short toenails. And this argues against an animal that catches prey and uses claws to hold it down. Carnivore birds all have sharp, long talons. That's a huge point. They were able to see that these birds didn't have the equipment to actually be flesh catchers and flesh eaters, which is significant here. Some early paleontologists concluded that because the Diatryma was big and with a huge head and beak it must have been a predator. But the first fossil they ever found was next to tiny horses and small animals and that kind of led to that, that premise and they just figured that those were its dead prey, which I thought was funny. That like, you know, this bird died next to its recent prey, which, you know, maybe there was a big battle, they thought, or whatever, but it's still kind of weird to think that they'd find the skeletal remains of a deadly predator right next to like three or four animals it just happened to be eating right before it died.

R: Oh, I don't know, Jay, they'll probably find you amidst, like a giant table of bacon.

J: Or meatballs. Yeah, okay.

R: Yeah.

J: All right. So, other scientists at the same time suggested that because their legs were short, they could not run fast enough to capture small prey, and they did not have a hooked beak, and that's huge, which is always found on raptors to help them tear flesh, leading them to think that they were herbivores. So even back in the day, there wasn't a total consensus on what the nature of these animals actually was. The fact that Diatryma did not have talons added greatly to the idea that they were herbivores. Mr. Mustoe added a more likely scenario than being a carnivore would be a gentle Diatryma that used its beak to harvest foilage, fruits, seeds, in sub-tropical forests that it inhabited.

S: Did you say foilage?

E: Foilage?

J: Foliage.

R: Foilage is what you wrap the foliage in for leftovers.

E: Yeah, foilage.

J: Did I say foilage?

S: You said foilage.

J: I meant foliage.

E: Well, we know what you meant.

J: You guys are like ridiculous pendants tonight.

(laughter)

J: All right, the team believes that the similarities of Diatryma to those of the carnivorous South American forosasits, or terror birds

E: Forest what?

S: Phorusrhacidae.

J: Phorusrhacidaes!

E: I was gonna say four-assed monkey, here.

J: a/k/a terror birds, for real – they call these guys terror birds.

B: I, they are my favorite extinct birds.

E: Look at those pictures.

B: They are magnificent, my god!

E: Terrifying.

J: So, those guys led early paleontologists to assume that the two were ecologically similar. And, what have we learned, guys?

R: That you can't pronounce words.

(laughter)

J: Yeah, I can't pronounce words that are spelled very strangely that I've only read and never said. Absolutely!

S: One thing that's interesting, 'cause when I first read the article it said "Terror birds not so terrifying." I'm like "really? Really? They're changing our understanding of the terror birds?" But they're just essentially saying that this North American cousin was an herbivore and was not similar to the South American, which have a . . . those, like titanis walleri, is one example, they had a curved beak, like a hawk, they had talons, like a raptor, and they had long legs for running, most of them.

B: And they were about, what, ten feet tall, Steve?

S: Nine feet, yeah, nine feet. So they were bigger. But there were about eighteen, I think, different species, and they varied in height and characteristics; some had shorter legs, some had longer legs. But some of them, like titanis, had all the characteristics they're saying are typical of a carnivore. Curved beak, talons, long legs for running. These, same bird, but a little smaller, no curved beak, no talons, shorter legs, but otherwise the same basic body plan. And one thing that was interesting, too, they were talking about the fact that the body plan is very similar to a T-Rex! Large head, small arms, large legs. Same basic kind of configuration.

B: Interesting.

S: Yeah. You basically have an avian T-Rex.

R: And the T-Rex is also being neutered, of course. Like every time we get more information about T-Rex, it becomes less terrible, too.

J: Being that, it would be really cool if these guys were herbivores, and some existed today, 'cause you might be able to ride them!

S: Yeah. That'd be cool.

B: Steve. Steve, did you hear this? I read that the terror birds primarily existed in South America, but, and they did, I think, for something like millions of years. They were like on top of the food chain for quite a long time. And I read, I remember reading somewhere, that they also, when South America joined North America, you know, Central America when they actually joined together, when a land bridge was first formed, they actually, I think if I'm remembering correctly, they migrated into North America and existed there for a little while, not very long.

S: Yeah.

B: But for a little while they actually were in North America.

S: That's correct. Their remains have been found in Texas and Florida. But they did not survive long, with the mixing of fauna in North and South America.

B: Yeah.

S: On both sides. They were victims exchange. Yeah, but they were, they did make it into the southern part of North America. Thanks, Jay, that's interesting. Always love talking about dinosaurs and birds.

Skeptical Quote of the Week ()

I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.

References