Speaker 1: It's time for some strange science. Strange it's like weird science,
Speaker 1: but strange. A couple of good ones. Today there was
Speaker 1: a beast, a newly identified basteton Bastatodon, thought to have
Speaker 1: been a leopard sized dog, basically at the top of
Speaker 1: its food chain the same time that our ancestors were
Speaker 1: evolving from the monkiness. These findings, published in the Journal
Speaker 1: of Vertebrate Paleontology Fascinating Classified ads by the way, said
Speaker 1: that the creature would have likely preyed on primates, very
Speaker 1: early elephants and hippos and high raxes. What is a
Speaker 1: high rex in the forest of Egypt which is now
Speaker 1: a desert? Of course. The paleontologist and the lead author
Speaker 1: of this from Mansoura University and the American University in Cairo,
Speaker 1: said they meticulously excavated layers of rock dating a back
Speaker 1: of our own thirty million years. And they say, just
Speaker 1: as they were about to wrap it up for the day,
Speaker 1: a team member spotted something remarkable, a very large set
Speaker 1: of teeth sticking out of the ground. His excited shout
Speaker 1: brought the team together marked the beginning of an extraordinary discovery.
Speaker 1: A nearly complete skull of an ancient apex carnivore A
Speaker 1: dream for any vertebrate paleontologist, if you say so. The
Speaker 1: skull was unearthed during their team's expedition to the Faiyume Depression,
Speaker 1: which is in the Egyptian desert to the west of
Speaker 1: the Nile River, fame for its fossils, for its ancient
Speaker 1: Egyptian artifacts and digs there have revealed a window of
Speaker 1: about fifteen million years, they say, of evolutionary history of
Speaker 1: mammals in Africa, Bastetadon Bastetidon belonging to an ancient group
Speaker 1: of carnivorous and mammals known as I'm not even going
Speaker 1: to try it. The predators had hyena like teeth, and
Speaker 1: they said the evolved long before the modern day carnivores
Speaker 1: like cats and dogs, and they hunted in the African
Speaker 1: ecosystems after the extinction of the dinosaurs. If you are
Speaker 1: looking for a way to fuel your vehicle, there are
Speaker 1: new vast reserves, they say, of white hydrogen that may
Speaker 1: exist within mountain ranges. White hydrogen has gained the attention
Speaker 1: recently because it has a potential to replace fossil fuels.
Speaker 1: It was only a couple decades ago that some scientists
Speaker 1: started saying that the fuel even existed within the Earth's crust.
Speaker 1: In now, what they're saying are pretty large amounts the
Speaker 1: natural or geologic hydrogen, And they've talked about how it forms,
Speaker 1: about where it might be located, and the main problem
Speaker 1: has been working out where to find volumes of it
Speaker 1: that are large enough that would be useful considering how
Speaker 1: much energy we use every single day around the Earth.
Speaker 1: So to find answers, they put together some computer models
Speaker 1: to simulate the movement of the tectonic plates and then
Speaker 1: point areas where the right conditions would exist for generating
Speaker 1: again white hydrogen geologic hydrogen, and they found that mountain
Speaker 1: ranges like the Pyrenees and the European Alps are potential hotspots.
Speaker 1: The hydrogen, of course, is produced when water produces only water,
Speaker 1: i should say, when burned, has long been eyed as
Speaker 1: a safe green fuel, especially for aviation for steel making,
Speaker 1: But a lot of commercial hydrogen is made using the
Speaker 1: fossil fuels, so it completely cancels out whatever sort of
Speaker 1: climate saving power you have, which is why when the
Speaker 1: Earth makes it itself that's going to be a much
Speaker 1: more tantalizing prospect, you could talk about it. White hydrogen
Speaker 1: really started being talked about in the late eighties. In Mali,
Speaker 1: a water well exploded a worker was leaning over the
Speaker 1: edge with a cigarette and the well was covered, but
Speaker 1: was unplugged in twenty eleven has and it's been producing
Speaker 1: oxygen that helps power the local village. This is one
Speaker 1: of those places where it just naturally occurs and they
Speaker 1: were able to harvest it. You can find it in
Speaker 1: the United States, it's been found in Australia, it's been
Speaker 1: found in France. The problem is it's not a lot,
Speaker 1: and they're hoping that they're going to be able to
Speaker 1: find a place that has a lot of this white
Speaker 1: hydrogen and then somehow get it out and use it
Speaker 1: to power all of our vehicles and phones and AI
Speaker 1: computers and things like that. And then finally, scientists at
Speaker 1: the University of Bristol have used a powerful supercomputer to
Speaker 1: create a picture of Earth's distant future and to predict
Speaker 1: when we're all going to die. And I think they're
Speaker 1: getting it wrong because it doesn't say anything about the asteroid.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty thirty two, they said temperatures would predicted
Speaker 1: will be exceeding one hundred and four degrees in some areas,
Speaker 1: some reaching over one hundred and twenty two. Combine that
Speaker 1: with dense humidity, it will push conditions beyond the limits
Speaker 1: for most mammals, including the mammals that look a lot
Speaker 1: like you and I