Holtz retweeted
A marine amphibian?? Damn.
貴州省安順市、三畳紀後期（カーニアン期 約2億3700万年前）の地層産出標本により、分堆類 プラギオサウルス科 Gerrothorax属の新種記載
Gerrothorax maritimus
種小名：（ラ）海の
ホロタイプ：GMG 1119 はほぼ完全な骨格で、正中線に沿った全長は737mm
陸地（島）から少なくとも30km離れた沖合の海底堆積物から出土した本種は、手足の細かな骨まで関節したまま保存されており、骨のストロンチウム同位体比（87Sr/86Sr）も当時の全球海水の値（約0.7076）と精密に一致したことから、海水を直接摂取して生息していた史上初の完全海洋生両生類であり、完全な海洋環境での生活が示唆される
本来なら海水中で浸透圧脱水を引き起こす両生類が海洋進出できた理由は、全身を極厚に覆う皮甲にあった。皮甲が皮膚からの脱水を物理的にブロックしたため、彼らは海水を飲んで水分を補給し、内鰓（エラ）の細胞ポンプで過剰な塩分を排出するという、海水魚と同様の浸透圧調節を獲得。また、前突起を欠く鎖骨や板状の巨大な下鰓骨により、海の底で強力な吸込み採餌を行っていた（底生吸引摂食）古生態も示唆される。
画像はプレスキットから
論文
Diao, L., Motani, R., Jiang, Dy. et al. A fully marine stem amphibian from the Late Triassic of China. Nat Ecol Evol (2026). doi.org/10.1038/s41559-026-0…
ニュース
カリフォルニア大学デイヴィス校
研究者らが、初の完全海洋性両生類の化石証拠を発掘
ucdavis.edu/curiosity/news/r…
Holtz retweeted
Scientists & science journalists decry the public's rejection of science, but are oblivious to the major cause: the perception, sometimes correct, that scientists are just another political faction. Among the guiltiest perpetrators are the recent editors of Scientific American, who turned this once-beloved treasure into a left-wing propaganda rag. This absolutely does not justify the Trump administration's unconstitutional meddling, but the new owners are right to restore it to its mission of explaining science to Americans. The Nation reports on The Fall of “Scientific American” thenation.com/article/societ…
Holtz retweeted
I finally put a short publication-style version of my Bayesian analysis of covid origins up on arXiv. Comments would help for an anticipated v2 at some point.
arxiv.org/pdf/2610.29766
Holtz retweeted
"Alex Comfort, who is best known for The Joy of Sex, was a biogerontologist who predicted in 1969 that within 20 years, the average human lifespan would be 120. His was one of the first of a long line of such predictions that have not come to pass." share.google/k5zKXIDDOAM1sAR…
Holtz retweeted
E-bike rental company Lime has said its bikes are "not for jousting" after footage of two riders dressed as knights charging at each other in an east London park circulated over the weekend. share.google/n29G5PUqYsrW9S2…
Holtz retweeted
Americans have a "revealed preference" for doing less of basically everything except going online and I have serious doubts that this is making us happier.
slowboring.com/p/americans-n…
E-bike rental company Lime has said its bikes are "not for jousting" after footage of two riders dressed as knights charging at each other in an east London park circulated over the weekend. share.google/n29G5PUqYsrW9S2…
Holtz retweeted
What distinguishes the 1% from the merely affluent? How about having a third child.
New post on a topic I've long been fascinated by (the economics and financing of having a third kid) where I finally felt bold enough to go into the latest SCF microdata to get a good answer. /1
"Alex Comfort, who is best known for The Joy of Sex, was a biogerontologist who predicted in 1969 that within 20 years, the average human lifespan would be 120. His was one of the first of a long line of such predictions that have not come to pass." share.google/k5zKXIDDOAM1sAR…
Holtz retweeted
Human evolution didn’t stop when civilization began. So why is biology so often left out of its history?
My new book, Buried in the Genome, tackles migration, selection, human differences and the tangled evolution of genes and culture. Get your copy: book.davidepiffer.com
Holtz retweeted
My strongest “vibes not evidence” belief is that remote work is a cancer that’s making (most) people miserable even though it seems better in the short term.
Holtz retweeted
Domestic dogs spread from northern Eurasia to virtually every human population in prehistoric times.
Only Tasmanians and Andamanese had no dogs when Europeans arrived.
As @VectorsOfMind says, if humans were connected enough for that, why not also for agriculture to spread?
This study is an excellent example of the power of nano delivery systems and their ability to potentially treat cancer and other diseases," Langer says. share.google/umaux2q76xyBIup…
Holtz retweeted
Avian molecular clocks suggest that the ~12,000 bird species in the Holocene descend from a small number of species surviving the Chicxulub impact and Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction. Perhaps as few as three species give rise to all modern birds.
Brüstle notes, the rejuvenated cells actually behave like young cells, adopting the functional characteristics expected of youthful neural stem cells rather than simply displaying young-looking chemical signatures share.google/KAYGcEO4DyUGjIH…
Holtz retweeted
Why not use functional markers? Why not grip strength? Why not chair rise time?
Because those are bad for business!
Your intervention would have to reverse aging, which it can't.
That's why we need complex methylation or omics biomarkers. Those can be manipulated. Much better.
Aging biomarkers might be the most important project for speeding up longevity progress.
This is why @impetusgrants has backed over a dozen researchers that produced 20+ pubs developing different ways to measure aging. From Vadim Gladyshev and Raghav Sehgal to Patrick Griffin and Vineet Raghu, their work includes epigenetic biomarkers, making methylation measurements cheaper, imaging-based measures of biological age, and building system-specific clocks.
Like we mention in our clocks essay (link below), useful clocks will come from testing many ideas and learning which ones make reliable predictions.
Read some of their work here:
doi.org/10.1038/s41591-026-0…
doi.org/10.1111/acel.70635
doi.org/10.1038/s43587-023-0…
doi.org/10.1038/s43587-025-0…
doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2024…
doi.org/10.1038/s43587-024-0…
Holtz retweeted
Hunter-gatherers are romanticized as naturally generous. But this generosity is the result of repeated resource extraction through forceful demands, complaints, ridicule, gossip and ostracism. Equality emerges from self-interest and coercion.
theconversation.com/hunter-g…
