Tomorrow humanity will receive a message from Mars ● A long way to the death of an iconic species from the past ● Marsupials have an evolutionary advantage over all other mammals

Tomorrow humanity will receive a message from Mars

Tomorrow, at 22:00 Romanian time, Terra will receive a message that looks like it could be from an extraterrestrial civilization. Don’t worry, we tell you from the beginning that we have not yet contacted any intelligent entity from any other planet. But we must be ready for it. At least that’s how the European Space Agency sees things.

More precisely, at the specified time, the radio message will be transmitted by the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), a module created by ESA and Roscomos, which was launched in 2016. From there, from the orbit of the planet Mars, the message will reach Earth in about 16 minutes, where it will be able to be received by astronomical observatories.

The idea is that the message will be coded, and the observatory staff as well as volunteers from the general public will be invited to decipher it. Essentially, the ESA simulates a situation in which humanity would face a scenario such as receiving an alien message.

Here you can trace all the details from the transmission of the message to its reception on Earth, as well as how the message was deciphered (if it was deciphered).

A long way to the death of an iconic species from the past

The name gorgonopsida may not mean much to those who have not come across the term before. In fact, this group of animals dominated Earth’s ecosystems long before the dinosaurs appeared. Gorgonopsids were the top predators of the late Paleozoic and the top of the food chain in a world dominated by animals with features shared between mammals and reptiles.

The world of these animals completely disappeared 252 million years ago, when the largest of all known extinctions began. Then 9 out of 10 animal species became extinct due to the catastrophic domino effect caused by the eruption of the Siberian supervolcano. And here we return to gorgonopsids and the largest specimens that ever lived.

They belonged to the species Inostrancevia, a species whose representatives often reached 3-4 meters in length. They were feline animals with dagger fangs, but their features still retained their reptilian forms. Moreover, the species was found exclusively on the territory of Siberia, so it is believed that Inostrancevia, a species that multiplied near the epicenter of the supervolcano, would have been one of the first victims.

A recent discovery from South Africa, published yesterday in Current Biology, shows us a fact that few expected. Namely, the fossil remains of Inostranevia at a distance of more than 12,000 kilometers from the place where they should exist.

The authors of the study claim that a group of animals of the mentioned species would have made an epic journey from one end to the other of the supercontinent Pangea to escape the danger from the north. It should also be noted that the entire process of extinction lasted more than a million years, it did not happen in a few days.

Thus, several representatives of the Inostrancevia species would have entered a completely new environment where, for unknown reasons, large predators had already disappeared before the eruption of the Siberian supervolcano. In fact, it was the perfect environment for an apex predator. But they couldn’t stand it here either.

Inostrancevia disappeared at the end of the Old Age of Life (Paleozoic), like most other living things since that time. In fact, their epic trek across Pangea only postponed the inevitable end.

Marsupials have an evolutionary advantage over all other mammals

All mammals living today are grouped into three categories: marsupials, marsupials, and placentals. And obviously, as the name implies, they all differ in the way they reproduce. In fact, starting with this method, researchers believed that they could trace their evolutionary path, from primitive forms (monotreme) to the most advanced (placental), marsupials are a transitional form.

Everything is not quite so, a team of researchers from the USA, Great Britain and France showed in a study published in the journal Current Biology. In fact, marsupials would be the most advanced mammals, currently enjoying an advantage that other mammals did not have.

The evidence we now have indicates that the common ancestor of modern mammals lived about 180 million years ago and, like monopods, reproduced through eggs. This group of animals split 160 million years ago into monogamous and marsupials. At least that’s what he said. Then marsupials would have evolved into placental mammals, with the difference depending, in particular, on the period of gestation and development of the embryo.

If in marsupials, for example, pregnancy lasts about a month and an embryo the size of a bean is born, then in placental mammals pregnancy can last up to 22 months, and the cub is fully developed at birth. Thus, marsupials were considered a transitional stage in the evolution of mammals.

It turned out that this idea was wrong. Even if we do not currently have a clear explanation for these evolutionary steps, one possibility would be that the reproductive system of marsupials allows them to survive at a higher rate than that of placentals. For example, with a lack of resources, a placental-pregnant female may die along with her cubs. The same cannot happen with marsupials, which may abandon young when resources are scarce.

It seems to be this evolutionary advantage that allowed marsupials to get from North America to Australia via Antarctica as early as 80 million years ago. A path that many placental mammals could not complete.

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