AI provides new tools to study extinct species for 50,000 years ago
University of Turin researcher Beatrice Demart, Josephine Stiller of the University of Copenhagen, and Matthew Collins of Cambridge and Copenhagen University share the story of Alphafold.
Can the burning marks of ancient eggshells explain the disappearance of the giant flightless bird genyornis newtoni? This ostrich-sized “Thunderbird” is called “The Demon-Duck of Doom” because of its huge head, and disappeared from the Australian fossil record about 50,000 years ago. The discovery of burnt eggshells has led scientists, including a team of scientists led by Gifford Miller at the University of Colorado Boulder, to suggest that their extinction was caused by early humans eating eggs. I did.
However, the evidence was not clear. The burning eggshells looked too thin to come from such a large bird. Were they the size of a large turkey, not from much smaller ones?
To determine whether genyornis was extinct by human intervention, scientists had to prove that the fragments of the burnt shell were actually from eggs laid by genyornis. That led to a new problem. The DNA of these eggshells died in the hot sands of the Australian desert over a period of 50,000 years. Instead, researchers turned to proteins and artificial intelligence to fill the gap.
A truly interdisciplinary team of protein experts such as ancient fossils, bird genetics, and archaeology cracked eggshell codes and looked into what led to the end of Thunderbirds. Spoiler alert: Evidence suggests that these obviously tasty large eggs were indeed from genyornis.
Read the full paper by Beatrice, Josephine, Matthew and colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
