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Credit: American Museum of Natural History
In early February, scientists announced that they'd found our long-lost common ancestor: a tiny, furry creature with a tail that emerged after the dinosaurs disappeared. This ancient animal, about the size of a shrew or a rat, was the grand-mammal of all placentals that came after it. But because the scientists pieced together their knowledge of the animal from a deep stash of data rather than bones or fossils, they didn't get to give it a neat Latin name.
"The reconstruction in the paper is very scientific, but it's an ancestor that we don't have a fossil of," Stony Brook University's Maureen O'Leary, one of the scientists who put its parts together, told NBC News. "We can tell what its anatomy looked like... [but] it's not something you can open a drawer and see." So scientists couldn't put a name on it. And what stuck was: "hypothetical common ancestor."
If you think that's a mouthful, you're not alone. When the science-loving soundmasters at RadioLab first heard about the furry critter and its odd name, it struck them as distinctly ... unfuzzy. And O'Leary seemed to agree, RadioLab's Molly Webster writes. In fact, she joked, they may be able to do better.
RadioLab jumped on it. They're teaming up with New York's American Museum of Natural History to let anyone help pick a name. You're invited to contribute to the naming contest by tweeting using the hashtag #nameyourancestor all the way until March 5. RadioLab and AMNH and a team of scientists will pick their favorites. Then, everyone gets to vote on their top choice from the final list. While "hypothetical common ancestor" won't be scrubbed from the scientific record, our ancient furry friend might wind up with a more endearing nickname.
Some early entries include: Dwight Shrewte, Shrewquille O'Neal, Tooth-billed ratypus, Katherine, Steve, and Paw. Ready, set, tweet! And share your suggestions in the comments below.
Via The Atlantic, RadioLab
Leave a Comment:
Twitter is completely stupid. Why ask a bunch of #stupidkids for candidates when the real scientists may have plenty of good suggestions already.
Does social media really need to be involved in every aspect of the world? (Especially STUPID forms of it like Twitter)
Seriously a scientific process and twitter has a hand in it, well any credibility was just sent packing. Being a genealogist for over 30 years I can tell that we are related somehow and someway. I would bet and I am not a scientist that all organisms since time began are related at some molecular level.
Start Your Family Tree w/ Me!<,/a>
On a positive note, this particular effort to utilize the power of the world wide web and catalogue the sum total knowledge of all participants is LONG overdue. Think about this project as having the same kind of impact on several fields of paleobiology and ancient geneology as the national crime database had on law enforcement.
Fewer and fewer things slip through the cracks. "Suspects" are also more likely to be put into their propper place in the chain of events in both examples. (LOL)
Having Twitter and its users involved is dubious at best in my opinion, but I suppose to get the attention a project like this deserves, it needs to go through such social media.
It's just a name, so having the twits in the Twittersphere chime in doesn't actually affect the integrity of the underlying science. Though stunts like this don't affect the science either way, there is nonetheless good reason for doing it. Science-skeptical conservative wackos are always trying to defund science. It's a constant struggle to get grant money for important scientific research, so scientificos have to play the politics of popularity in order to remain relevant in a sickened society whose citizenry have forgotten how much it owes science for every year of extended lifespan, every medical breakthrough, and every modern convenience.
politicusssed raticuss pre-hominus (translation:old world rat, new world: barrack and newts uncle)
The theorized ancient ancestor of common mammals? I'd go for either Adam Rat or Genesis Shrew. Allowing for the second part to be replaced by a more technical name given to the older mammals (it's doubtful that such ancient mammals were recognizeable as rats or shrews).
As for whether using Twitter undermines the legitimacy of the scientific process here, I don't think so. Furthermore, I think that kind of attitude - that science needs to be protected from the influence of the lowest-common-denominator mainstream - is harmful to science in the long run. The idea that science needs to be kept out of reach of mass consumption (mass media in this case) reinforces the assumption that science is only for the smartest and the elite. We shouldn't be afraid of science being influenced by the masses, rather we should be afraid that the masses might become isolated from science.
"science is only for the smartest and the elite. We shouldn't be afraid of science being influenced by the masses, rather we should be afraid that the masses might become isolated from science."
Too late by about three decades!
The simple fact is that if somebody can only speak ONE measly language, they don't have a broad enough horizon to have anything really useful to add to the discussion. Call it elitist all you want, but scientific nomenclature is based primarily on Latin and Greek - and if you don't at least know a few of the key roots, anything you'd suggest would be absolutely worthless.