GS Paper: GS3-17.Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, Robotics, Nano-technology, Bio-technology and issues relating to Intellectual Property Rights.

The Tiki Formation in Madhya Pradesh, a treasure trove of vertebrate fossils, has now yielded a new species and two genera of cynodonts, small rat-like animals that lived about 220 million years ago.

Tiki Formation

• The Tiki Formation is a Late Triassic geologic formation in Madhya Pradesh.
• Dinosaur remains are among the fossils that have been recovered from the formation, although none have yet been referred to a specific genus.
• Phytosaur remains attributable to the genus Volcanosuchus have also been found in the Tiki Formation.
• The genera Tikiodon, Tikitherium and Tikisuchus and species Rewaconodon tikiensis, Hyperodapedon tikiensis and Parvodus tikiensis have been named after the Tiki Formation.

Findings of the new study

• The fossil teeth were studied for size, crown shape, structure of the cusps and compared with previously reported cynodonts.
• Cynodonts are important in evolutionary studies as this group ultimately gave rise to the present-day mammals.
• By studying their molar and premolar teeth, we see how they slowly evolved and modified.
• Their crown shape shows that these animals are actually intermediate forms that are very near to the mammalian line of evolution.
• Cynodonts and living mammals both belong to a group of egg-laying vertebrates (amniotes) called synapsids.
• The close relationship of cynodonts with living mammals is seen in their bones.

Azhdarchid pterosaurs, the giant reptiles that flew in the skies nearly 65 million years ago, had necks longer than that of a giraffe (i.e. more than 6fts).

What are pterosaurs?

• Pterosaurs are reptiles that are close cousins of dinosaurs, the first animals after insects to evolve powered flight.
• Some pterosaurs were as large as an F-16 fighter jet, while others were as small as a paper aeroplane.
• Pterosaurs went extinct about 65-66 million years ago (end of the Cretaceous period) and while they did not leave any of their descendants behind.
• One reason for this is that few pterosaurs lived in places where fossils tend to form, because of which their bones are preserved poorly.

Revise the geological timescale from your NCERT textbook.

Azhdarchid pterosaurs

• They are one type of pterosaur and one of the distinguishing characteristics about them is how big they were, especially their long necks.
• Some of these pterosaurs were the largest animals to have flown in the sky, with wingspans greater than 30 feet.
• The name azhdarchid, as per a blog on Scientific American comes from Azhdarcho, a Central Asian form named by Russian ornithologist and palaeontologist in 1984.

What have the researchers found?

• Researchers involved in this study were curious about how the reptile’s long neck functioned and how it was able to support the pterosaur’s body, allowing them to capture and eat heavy prey animals.

Researchers have described a pterosaur species with opposable thumbs, which could likely be the earliest-known instance of the limb.

Monkeydactyl

• The pterosaur species were reptiles, close cousins of dinosaurs and the first animals after insects to evolve powered flight.
• They evolved into various species; while some were as large as an F-16 fighter jet, others were as small as paper aeroplanes.
• The new pterosaur fossil was discovered in the Tiaojishan Formation of Liaoning, China, and is thought to be 160 million years old.
• It has now been described by an international team of researchers from China, Brazil, the UK, Denmark and Japan, and has been named Kunpengopterus antipollicatus, also dubbed “Monkeydactyl”.

What has the team found?

• “Antipollicatus” in ancient Greek means “opposite thumbs”, and it was attached to the name because the researchers’ findings could be the first discovery of a pterosaur with an opposed thumb.
• Researchers suggested that K. antipollicatus could have used its hand for grasping, which is likely an adaptation for arboreal life.

What makes it special?

• Opposability of the thumb enables the species to “simultaneously flex, abduct and medially rotate the thumb” in a way that one is able to bring the tip of the thumb to touch the tips of the other fingers.
• Along with humans, some ancient monkeys and apes also had opposable thumbs. Humans, however, have a relatively long and distally placed thumb, and larger thumb muscles.
• This means that humans’ tip-to-tip precision grip when holding smaller objects is superior to non-human primates.
• This is the reason that humans are able to hold a pen, unscrew an earring stopper, or put a thread through a needle hole.
• The grasping hands of primates developed as a result of their life in the trees — an opposable thumb made it easier for the common ancestor of all primates to cling on to tree branches.

Try this PYQ:

Q.Some species of plants are insectivorous. Why?

(a) Their growth in shady and dark places does not allow them to undertake sufficient photosynthesis and thus they depend on insects for nutrition

(b) They are adapted to grow in nitrogen deficient soils and thus depend on insects for sufficient nitrogenous nutrition

(c) They cannot synthesize certain vitamins themselves and depend on the insects digested by them

(d) They have remained in that particular stage of evolution as living fossils, a link between autotrophs and heterotrophs

The results from the Muon g-2 experiment show that fundamental particles called muons behave in a way that is not predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics.

After genetics, AI and the blockchain, Particle Physics is making several headlines these days. This is something intuitive.

What is Muon?

• Fermilab, the American particle accelerator, has released first results from its “muon g-2” experiment.
• These results spotlight the anomalous behaviour of the elementary particle called the muon.
• The muon is a heavier cousin of the electron and is expected to have a value of 2 for its magnetic moment, labelled “g”.
• Now, the muon is not alone in the universe.
• It is embedded in a sea where particles are popping out and vanishing every instant due to quantum effects.
• So, its g value is altered by its interactions with these short-lived excitations.

Main characteristic: Anomalous magnetic moment

• The Standard Model of particle physics calculates this correction, called the anomalous magnetic moment, very accurately.
• The muon g-2 experiment measured the extent of the anomaly and announced that “g” deviated from the amount predicted by the Standard Model.
• That is, while the calculated value in the Standard Model is 2.00233183620 approximately, the experimental results show a value of 2.00233184122.
• They have measured “g” to an accuracy of about 4.2 sigma when the results are combined with those from a 20-year-old experiment.
• This makes physicists sit up and take note, but it is not yet significant enough to constitute a discovery – for which they need a significance of 5 sigma.

The g factor

• The muon is also known as the fat electron.
• It is produced copiously in the Fermilab experiments and occurs naturally in cosmic ray showers.
• Like the electron, the muon has a magnetic moment because of which, when placed in a magnetic field, it spins and processes, or wobbles, slightly, like the axis of a spinning top.
• Its internal magnetic moment, the g factor, determines the extent of this wobble.
• As the muon spins, it also interacts with the surrounding environment, which consists of short-lived particles popping in and out of a vacuum.