Could buried hydrogen help save the world, and more…

*** How history’s largest ape met its end ***

For nearly two million years, a gigantic ape, three meters tall and weighing a quarter of a tonne, lived in what is now southern China, before mysteriously disappearing. Exactly why the Gigantopithecus Blacki went extinct has been a huge mystery for paleontologists, especially because other apes were able to thrive at the time. Now a massive study, co-led by geochronologist Kira Westaway of Macquarie University, reveals their size was a disadvantage, and left them unable to adapt to a changing climate. The research was published in the journal Nature.

*** People with PTSD process their trauma as if it’s happening in the present ***

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is characterized by intrusive thoughts that cause people to relive their trauma. In a new study in the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists have figured out that this is reflected in brain activity. Daniela Schiller, a professor of neuroscience and psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, said their brains respond differently with traumatic memories than with ordinary memories, causing the traumatic memories to feel as if they are happening in the present, rather than the past.

*** Paleontologists identify animal skin 4½ times older than the last dinosaurs ***

A fossilised skin sample discovered in an Oklahoma cave is the oldest skin sample ever identified. It belonged to a reptile species that lived nearly 300 million years ago. Ethan Mooney, a paleontology masters student at the University of Toronto, said this skin fossil gives insight into how the first vertebrate animals adapted to a more protective with the critical transition from ocean to land. Their research was published in the journal Current Biology.

*** How an octopus told us the West Antarctic ice sheet collapsed ***

Scientists are trying to learn when the West Antarctic Ice Sheet last collapsed, in order to learn when it might happen again. In a new study, published in the journal Science, Sally Lau at James Cook University analyzed the DNA of Turquet’s octopuses, which have been scuttling around the Antarctic sea floor for millions of years. These octopuses are today separated by massive ice sheets, but by looking at when different populations were able to breed throughout history, they could see when the ice wasn’t there.

*** Geologic Hydrogen could be clean, green and plentiful ***

More than a century ago we discovered that there were rich deposits of energy buried deep in Earth, and so oil and gas became the foundation of our industrial civilization. Now history might be repeating itself as scientists think there could be massive amounts of clean, green hydrogen hiding underground as well. Quirks producer Jim Lebans spoke with Geochemist Barbara Sherwood Lollar from the University of Toronto, and geologist Geoffrey Ellis from the United States Geological Survey to understand where this hydrogen has come from, how much there is, and what its potential could be as an energy resource.