Science Friday - Lab-Grown Meat Approval, Underground Climate Change, Utahraptor. July 14, 2023, Part 2

Episode Date: July 14, 2023

We have a new podcast! It’s called Universe Of Art, and it’s all about artists who use science to bring their creations to the next level. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.   Where’s The Beef? Lab-Grown Meat Gets U.S. Approval People have been looking for meat-alternatives for decades. Vegetarians avoid animal products for many reasons, from concerns over animal treatment and slaughtering practices to the meat industry’s climate impacts. Methane from cows and other livestock contribute about 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions. There have been plant-based alternatives on the market for awhile now, but another method has quietly gained steam over the past decade: meat grown in a lab, using cultured cells. This past June, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved two companies—Eat Just and Upside—to grow and sell cultivated chicken products in the U.S. Lab-developed beef will likely be next, while some companies are even working on cultivated pet food meat. (Lab-grown mouse meat kibble, anyone?) But will growing tissue in a lab actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and … will people even want to eat it? Joining Ira to discuss this beefy topic is Casey Crownhart, climate reporter at the MIT Technology Review, who talks about how this kind of meat is made in a lab, the challenges the industry faces, and what lab-grown beef patty tastes like.   How Rising Temperatures Are Shifting The Ground Beneath Chicago As global temperatures rise, cities are typically hotter than rural areas. Tall buildings trap heat and temperatures don’t drop nearly as low at night. Out of sight, just below the surface, it’s also getting hotter. Scientists are beginning to document the unexpected consequences of underground climate change. A new study measuring the phenomenon used sensors to track increasing temperatures underground in Chicago and map how the earth has shifted beneath the city as a result. Ira talks with the lead researcher of the study, Dr. Alessandro Rotta Loria, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University, based in Chicago, Illinois.   A Fish By Any Other Name: Inside The Effort To Bring ‘Copi’ To Dinner People who live near freshwater rivers or lakes are likely familiar with Asian Carp. The fish are not native to the U.S., but over the last few decades their populations have exploded in waterways like the Mississippi River Basin and the Illinois River. Over the last few years, there’s been a major PR campaign to move away from the name Asian Carp, in favor of a new name: “Copi.” The reason is two-fold: First, it joins a general trend of moving species’ names away from nationalistic associations, considering anti-Asian hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic. The other goal is to make the fish sound more delicious—creating a market that would incentivize fishing the Copi, hopefully reducing their populations. Joining Ira to talk about this is Jim Garvey, director of fisheries, aquaculture and aquatic sciences at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois.   Thanks To A Mesozoic Hot Spot, We Finally Know How Old The Utahraptor Is Sometimes Jim Kirkland wishes he had been alive 150 years ago. That’s when the golden age of North American dinosaur discovery began, and early titans of paleontology crisscrossed the Rocky Mountains unearthing dozens of new species that became household names, from the Stegosaurus to the Brontosaurus to the Triceratops. But a close second to that era is what Kirkland gets to see these days in Utah. “I am doing that kind of discovery right now,” Kirkland said. “I’m just lucky to be alive.” Kirkland, Utah’s state paleontologist, uncovered and named the Utahraptor in 1993. The deadly predator became the official state dinosaur in 2018. To read the rest, visit sciencefriday.com.   To stay updated on all-things-science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters. Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Listener supported, WNYC Studios. This is Science Friday. I am I. Refleto. Later in the hour, how the heat from warm concrete and urban buildings is moving the earth under the cities, and what action might we try to counteract it? Plus, paleontologists in Utah have finally learned the true age of a famous raptor found in the state. We'll talk with a local reporter about how they did that. But first, people have been looking for alternative. to meat for decades. Methane from cows and other livestock contribute about 15% of all greenhouse

gas emissions. Vegetarians, they stay away from meat and some people aren't comfortable with slaughtering practices. There have been plant-based alternatives on the market for quite a while now, but another method has quietly gained steam over the past decade, meat grown in a lab, using cultured cells. This June, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, gave approval to two companies to make and sell cultivated chicken products in this country. But will this new method actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions and will people even want to eat it? Joining me now to give us an update about this project is my guest who's been reporting on this topic, Casey Crownheart, climate reporter at MIT Technology Review.

She's based in New York. Welcome back to Science Friday. Thanks so much for having me back. Nice to have you. So lab-grown meat just got a significant green light last month. Can you talk about the journey that meat alternatives have had for the last couple of decades? Yeah. So you touched on this a little bit, but it's been a long road for lab-grown or cultivated meat. Theoretically, this possibility has kind of been around for decades.

Experiments picked up in the early 2000s. NASA got into this game. But in 2013, there was this big demonstration. the first lab-grown hamburger was made, and it was fed to food critics. But that cost over $300,000 to make at the time. But it was kind of a spark for the field. And so we started to see startups getting launched in, you know, the early and mid-2010s. And recently, companies have kind of started to hit more milestones. You know, cultivated meat was approved for the first time in Singapore in 2020.

And now with this approval for the U.S. market, it's been a lot of big steps for this industry. Give me an idea of how you actually make lab grown meat. How does that work? Yeah, totally. So you start out with an animal. So you can either take kind of a little sample of muscle tissue from a living, probably a young animal, or you can take cells from an egg. Like, that's how they do chicken. You know, and so all animals are made up of cells. And so what scientists can do is isolate those cells and then grow them in a controlled way in a lab, basically in giant stainless steel tanks. So you'll have. cells kind of floating around in this salty, sugary broth growing and multiplying. It kind of might look a little bit like a brewery, basically. But yeah, so these cells grow in these tanks, and then eventually they can get filtered out from the liquid that they're floating around in once they've grown and divided enough. And then companies can take those cells and do a little bit of extra processing to turn it into some sort of meat product.

So they can, you know, kind of press it together into patties or, you know, grow it in, another extra step to kind of turn it into a final meat product. Wow. Does it actually look like meat? I know you've had a chance to taste a burger grown in the lab. Tell me what it looks like. What was the experience? What did it taste like?

And did you sort of feel like a little queasy at first when you bit in? Yeah, I wasn't queasy at all about it. I don't know. Maybe it's just because I've spent a good amount of time in labs. But I was just really excited to taste it. The company that I tried food from is called Ohio Valley, and they're trying to do lab-grown burgers. The product that I got to try was a blended product.

You know, there were kind of plant-based burgers on the market today, like impossible or beyond meat. My takeaway was that the texture wasn't quite the same as, you know, burgers that I usually eat. But I thought it tasted a good amount like a hamburger. So I don't know. It's really tough to kind of imagine eating this kind of stuff that's grown in the lab. every day, but when I did it, it didn't really feel all that weird. So that sort of reminds me when I tasted veggie burgers. You know, they were really close to hamburgers, but just sort of knew they weren't.

Yeah, yeah. It's not quite the same. But I mean, I'm interested to see that the field is still developing. I think texture is one of the things that a lot of companies are really trying to work on. So we'll see if they can get, I don't know, even better. Yeah, I know you've done a lot of reporting on this topic. Is that because you have a special relationship with meat? Have you been a vegetarian?

I did a very brief stint as a vegetarian when I was growing up. I think this is a common experience for people in my generation. At one point you find a video on YouTube of slaughterhouse conditions. And so that's what happened to me. I was probably like 12 or 13 and I was absolutely horrified. And so I swore that I would never eat meat ever again. And I didn't last very long because, I mean, meat is just so central to our culture and to, you know, social life and everything.

So major props to people who are able to kind of totally cut meat out of their diet when they're, you know, raised to eat meat. But I just, I found it really difficult. And so, you know, today, there's a lot of kind of concerns about meat also from a climate perspective. And as a climate reporter, I kind of try to cut down on the meat in my diet. But yeah, today I'm sort of a half and a half. I'm not a full vegetarian. and I'm not a vegan. But I am really interested in kind of alternatives and cutting down on on animal-based meat personally. That's interesting to hear because I know you came from a really big meat-eating family, right? Yeah, I did. My dad took me hunting growing up. It was very central to kind of our diet and how we grew up. You know, we ate the meat that my dad would hunt or that we would,

you know, go with him. So yeah, I think that's part of it, too. It's a lot based on kind of your cultural background and like where you come from for sure. Yeah. You talked a bit about cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions. Is it clear cut do we know at the moment if lab grown meat is actually better for the environment? Might there be steps about the footprint that you have to go through? Yeah, this is, it's been a big question for the field, I think especially as these first approvals have started to come through. Climate impacts is one of the big promises of lab grown meat. You know, you would need less land to raise animals. You would have less cows around burping out methane if you were able to do all of this in, you know, reactors and big factories. And ideally, eventually, you could even

power the whole thing with renewable energy. There are concerns, though, because what the reality of lab-grown meat looks like today isn't exactly, you know, optimized to cut down on emissions. We don't have a ton of renewable energy available. And also the industry is kind of borrowing a lot of techniques from biopharmaceuticals. So these kind of processes where companies can grow cells for pharmaceutical products. And so you might imagine that those kind of inputs have to be really, really purified, really, really filtered and really clean. So it takes a lot of energy and resources to do that. And so if you look at what companies are doing in labs today, and obviously without powering things with renewable energy, the climate impacts can be pretty bad from what

lab grown meat looks like today, actually. But I would say the industry is in its early days. Companies are working to use products that won't have to go through this intense kind of purification, won't use so much energy to make. And they really want to be able to offer a product that's affordable and also better for the climate. So I think the kind of takeaway for me is that we're not quite there yet on a lab grown meat product that is a climate savior. But that's kind of the road is pointing towards a lower. emissions product. Yeah, let's go down that road. Let's imagine 10 years down the road and they have

solved these problems. Maybe the costs of this will go down. It turns out to be more environmentally friendly to grow meat in a lab. Now, the question is, do you think people will actually shift their habits and buy this? And I asked because veggie burgers were a big hit when they were first introduced and now not so much. Yeah, I mean, it's a really good question. And we've seen, you know, some of that with the plant-based meat market as well, that, you know, there's a lot of interest in beyond an impossible, but at least in the U.S., it's kind of cooled off a little bit in the past year or so. I will say that if companies are really able to kind of nail a replacement that's really, really similar to meat, which I don't think that plant alternatives or like things

like black bean burgers or these kind of new age plant replacements have been able to do, if companies are able to make a product that is basically the same thing as a burger and it's, you know, affordable or even cheaper, I think that people would sign on. But I don't think it's going to be trivial to get people over that kind of ick factor of, you know, something that's grown in the lab. And that's why a lot of companies actually don't really like the term lab grown meat. You know, you see a lot of these products, you know, the USDA and FDA approvals were for the term cultivated chicken. And, and And so that's the word that they're trying to use to kind of start getting people more comfortable with this idea of meat that's produced in a different way. And, you know, what they say is that, you know, when we're talking about burgers, we don't say a slaughtered burger or like a slaughtered meat. So I don't know, it's interesting to kind of think about how much we do or don't think about where our food products come from. And that's interesting that you bring it up because some people might say, well, you're worried about an ick factor with lab grown meat. What about the ick factor of slaughtering all these animals? Exactly.

Yeah. It's different because this is something that we're just used to. We don't even think about it. This is how, you know, people have gotten meat for centuries, thousands of years. So I don't know. Yeah, it's interesting. You mentioned this a bit earlier when you said you tested the beef burgers. Where is the beef here?

I mean, it is beef next on the list? Do you think it will leapfrog the chicken industry? Yeah. So some of the companies are looking at beef. You know, cows are really kind of the worst for the climate as far as animals that we eat. They have kind of the highest emissions per gram of meat. And so some companies are looking at doing beef. I think we will see burgers probably on the list of approvals before too long. I'm also really interested in the fish industry. I think there are a couple of companies doing cultivated like tuna and salmon. Oh, really? Yeah. And so I think those are products that I am very interested to hopefully get to try before too long. Maybe you'll just turn right into a food reporter, you know. They get this climate reporting stuff. The possibility is open. It is, I did find, though, like when I was reporting the story, doing the taste test of the lab grown burger, it's really hard to describe the experience of tasting something, you know, kind of trying to convey the text.

and taste of a product. And so, yeah, major props to people who write about food and kind of try to share that experience because it's such a subjective thing. It's such a personal thing, I think, how we eat. Yeah. Well, thank you, Casey. Thanks so much, Ira. Casey Crownheart, climate reporter for the MIT Technology Review.

And if you want to see a picture of the cultivated meatburger that Casey tried, head over to ScienceFriiday.com slash fake meat. We have to take a break and when we come back, underground climate change. What is it? And how is it moving the ground beneath our cities? This is Science Friday from WNIC Studios. This is Science Friday. I'm Irafledo.

As the song says, it's hot too darn hot all around the world. This week, the Earth had its hottest day ever recorded. The record for hottest day on Earth was broken again for the second day in a row. Earth reaching its highest temperature on record for a fourth day in a row. And in the U.S., a brutal heat wave continues in the southwest and Puerto Rico, with temperatures reaching 110 degrees and beyond. Meteorale just expect the rest of the summer to be exceptionally hot due to both climate change plus the El Niña weather pattern.

And long stretches of hot weather are tough on a human body, as you can probably tell, often sending people to the emergency room. In fact, a report for the Center for American Progress predicts that in the U.S., there will be 235,000 emergency department visits and 56,000 hospital admissions due to extreme heat this summer with a price tag of roughly $1 billion, and cities often fare the worst. Buildings trap in the heat and temperatures don't drop down at night like they do in rural areas. But out of sight, just below the surface, it's also getting hotter, something called underground climate change with some unexpected consequences. A study released this week used sensors to track

increasing temperatures underground in Chicago and how the earth has shifted beneath the city due to rising temperatures. Joining me to tell us more about his research is my guest, Dr. Alessandro Rada Lauria, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University based in Chicago. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. So let's start with the basics here, shall we? What is underground climate change? What's driving it? Fill us in on this. So underground climate change is a phenomenon that oftentimes is also called subsurface urban heat islands. It characterizes most, if not all urban areas worldwide, all cities. It's a phenomenon that origin is from two causes.

localized drivers that consist of underground structures such as building basements, parking garages, train tunnels, subway tunnels, but also district in lines and so on and so forth, that continuously reject heat in the ground as a result of anthropogenic activity. And the second cause, it's a diffused driver that, as you mentioned in the introduction, consists of what we call meteorological urban heat islands or surface urban heat islands. The idea is that construction materials at the surface of cities, so building envelopes, absorb heat, typically coming from solar radiation or vehicles traveling, and release that heat at night. So typically, cities are warmer than their surrounding rural areas. And on top of that, we know that there also is global warming,

that is basically warming up the atmosphere. And so a portion of all of that heat over time diffuses underground. So basically, underground climate change results from really drivers that are themselves in the ground and also it's exacerbated by what happens on the surface. So what happens underneath these cities, these underground heat islands, as you call them, as the underground temperatures rise? These subsurface heat islands have been classically studied from various perspectives that include an environmental sense perspective because rising temperatures in the subsurface can represent a threat for the health of subsurface ecosystems.

They have been studied from a public health perspective because temperatures in underground environments such as train and subway tunnels can be so hot that people feel thermal discomfort or they can even suffer from heat-induced diseases. The problem has also been started from a transportation engineering perspective because, again, as a result of these extreme temperatures, there is evidence that the rails of trains traveling underground are often at the onset of buckling, forcing them to slow down or even stop with, as you can imagine, costs, a significant cost over year.

Recently, the problem has been studied from an energy perspective because all of these heat can be reutilized. But surprisingly, before we initiated this research program with my group, there was no study of underground climate change from a civil engineering perspective. And so the rationale of what we did

basically consists of the fact that materials such as soils, rocks, and concrete, deformed when subjected to temperature variations. And so the overarching question that we asked ourselves when we started this work was what is the influence of these temperature variations in the ground and specifically on the ground deformations and what are the impacts of these ground deformations on the performance of civil infrastructure. So you set up wireless sensors to track the temperatures beneath Chicago's downtown, right? Just to learn the stuff that you don't know. Correct. So the idea of

was really to deploy this Internet of Things solution that basically consists of wireless temperature sensors that we installed in several environments at the surface, but especially in the subsurface of the Chicago Loop District, with the main aim to measure the temperature in those environments that eventually will cause heat diffusing towards the ground. And so with the overall aim to characterize underground climate change for Chicago, not only we developed that tool, but we also created a computer model, a three-dimensional

computer model of the entire district. It basically reproduces virtually all, or at least most of the heat sources that are present in such a district, including, again, building basements, parking garages, tunnels, and so on and so forth. Then we use a digital tool to basically simulate and retrieve the temperature that we are observing today in the underground and use the model not only to study what likely happened in the past very thoroughly, but also what is likely to happen in the future. Can you tell from the model what kind of reaction the civil engineering part of this equation has? What will the structures

be affected? Will the ground shake? Or what did you discover? We were able to assess that over the years there have been significant temperature variations in the ground. And this is supported also by data that, again, we gather on site. And as a result of these temperature variations that are deformation, so the ground is deforming and, like, soils and rocks are basically moving. Is that a bad thing? So a priori, it's not necessarily a bad thing. But the magnitude of the ground movements that we quantified,

it's sufficient to be potentially concerning on a case-by-case basis. So the idea is that based on the results of our study, we were able to quantify vertical ground displacement exceeding 10 millimeters, so half an inch. And it is recognized in civil engineering that ground movements of this order of magnitude can be problematic for the so-called operational performance of civil infrastructure. So what I think it's important to stress at this stage is that underground climate change is not a phenomenon that is likely to threaten the safety of people. It's not a phenomenon that will lead to the collapse, the failure of structure.

But it's a phenomenon that can affect, again, on a case-by-case basis, the conditions of normal use, the day-to-day operation of buildings, the aesthetic requirements of buildings, and the durability of buildings. So if you're getting a movement of like a half an inch, as you say, could that not lead to structural cracks in the buildings? So typically, the underground structure themselves could be prone to cracking. The idea is that excessive ground movements can result in angular distortions of structural memphis, that can result in a wanted settlement that can also cause tilting.

And as we mentioned, cracking. Now, the reason why cracking, if excessive, is a problem, or at least can become a problem, is that cracks, especially in reinforced concrete structures, facilitate the permeation of water towards their reinforcement. And so, as you can imagine, as you know, eventually that can lead to corrosion. And this is why we're talking about the durability of buildings. So you're talking about the long-term effect. of this continuing over and over again the heat over a span of years?

This phenomenon, so underground climate change and the associated rises in subsurface temperature are slow. We're talking about heating rates of, at least for the loop, 0.5 degrees Celsius per years. The results of our work support that these deformations are significant. And based on this assessment, we postulate that underground climate change could have contributed to at least some of the observed operational issues that have been seen in Chicago over the last century, such as, again, cracking and problems that affected foundations. So, classically, these problems were attributed to inappropriate design techniques and or construction methods, and I fully concur on the assessment.

What I postulate is that temperature variations associated with underground climate change could have contributed to those observed an issue without even realizing it. And so I think that key will be now to really monitor this phenomenon, not only in Chicago, but I would say in general urban areas worldwide, to assess what are the specific types of civil structures and infrastructures that are prone to problems. What parts of Chicago that you measured are the hottest underground? I mean, how much hotter is it underground versus, let's say, above ground that you measured? Basically, the higher temperature variations are observed where the buildings are denser, like they're closer to each other.

If you can think about this problem as follows, like basically, you can imagine that around each building basement or underground parking garage, there is a bubble of heat that is forming over there. time again slowly but continuously so the denser are the buildings that the more this bubble of heat will be pronounced and so this is a characteristic that as you can imagine varies depending on the city they do consider with respect to the temperature anomalies that we quantified for Chicago they are up to 27 degrees Fahrenheits with respect to the undisturbed ground temperature So the idea is that if buildings were not there, the ground temperature, which we also can measure around Chicago will be of the order of 52 degrees Fahrenheit. And what we have quantified for the loop is that value plus up to 27 degrees Fahrenheit. Wow. So that's how much warmer it is.

Yes. Locally, yes. On average, the ground has warmed significantly less because again, these bubbles of here, heat are relatively localized around underground structures, but locally these temperature variations can be significant, and so locally they can represent a problem. Well, you know, that leads me to this question, because more and more buildings are using the underground for heating and cooling. I'm talking about geothermal energy, right? Where you sink pipes into the ground. The fact that the ground may be getting warmer in the area where these buildings are, might that affect geothermal at all? So, yeah, absolutely.

So as the Department of Energy says geothermal energy is a renewable energy source that is always on. It's actually the only one. And so geothermal technologies such as vertical or horizontal borehole heat exchangers are very powerful, like our powerful tools to really harness energy from the ground and transfer to buildings to meet space heating and cooling needs, but also hot water production needs. Now, when you are in an urban area, you not only have geothermal energy, but as we are saying, you also have these waste thermal energy. So it's like that in a city, you would have an extra amount of heat that you could harness.

And this is what, like the scientific communities used to call the geothermal potential of cities. And so these geothermal technologies represent one mitigation approach to really hamper the intensity of underground climate change. To me, we could call it mitigation strategy number two. Prior to that, there is what I think we could call mitigation strategy number one, which, in my opinion, is the most rational approach consisting of the retrofit of buildings and the application of thermal insulations in underground building enclosures. So the idea is that we take action directly at the source of the phenomenon. So we really hamper, we minimize the amounts of waste heat,

that are rejected in the ground. If you just joined us, we're talking about underground climate change with civil and environmental engineer, Dr. Alessandro Radaloria. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Do you think buildings need to be retrofitted to conquer this or just the building of new buildings? That's a great point. So new buildings, since in most countries worldwide,

they are nowadays designed and built according to energy efficiency and sustainability principles. So new buildings will not contribute significantly, if at all, to underground climate change. Because again, through their thermal insulation and optimal characteristics, they will involve very minimal amounts of heat that are rejecting the ground over time.

So underground climate change is not a phenomenon that will really affect new cities, but it's a phenomenon that affects by design older cities. We should acknowledge that most of the cities that we have around us are already there. So cities around us are old. And so especially if you go in the older world like in Europe, in cities like Rome, Paris, London, and so on and so forth, those are the cities that are most prone to problems. And those are the cities where underground climate change will be more intense. So tell me what's next for your research. What are the other

questions you're looking to answer. So the research we have carried out with my group to date has been really exploratory. So now we have highlighted that we have in front of us a potential problem that might have already represented a problem in the past and will likely represent a problem in the future depending on the city considered. I think I have two ambitions. The first one is to study not only with computer models, but especially through sensing instrumentations on site, what are the types of seeded structures and infrastructures that are most sensitive to underground climate change and the deformations caused by underground climate change? So, for example, I would be thrilled to be able to collaborate with the city of Chicago to see whether we could

install some sensing instrumentation to monitor from now on what is happening under key buildings, for example. And so this is really ambition of our One. Ambition number two is to develop models, so computer models, data-driven models, through which we can basically simulate the influence and impacts of underground climate change much more expediently compared to what I did with the server, computational server that we have at Northwestern, because a tool like that will very rarely, if not, kind of never be available in practice. So the idea for developing these tools would be to really have a some means to simulate and predict the influence and impacts of underground climate change,

not only for scientific and engineering purposes, but also for decision-making. The idea is that with these tools we could create for Chicago, for the entire city of Chicago, first of all, not only for the loop, but for the entire city of Chicago and for any other city worldwide, maps, like heat maps that will basically tell us where it's hot underground, so that then we could decide what we can do about that, and we can decide whether we want to go for mitigation strategy number one or number two or something else. This is fascinating. I really didn't know much about underground heat islands and living, you know, in New York. We know all about the ones above ground, but not the ones underground,

Dr. Radaloria. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you so much for this opportunity. Dr. Alessandro Radaloria, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University based in Chicago. We have to take a break. And when we come back, a push to rename an abundant freshwater fish. We'll tell you why. Stay with us. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. And now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNNO. St. Louis Public Radio News. Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. Back in 1993, just as Jurassic Park was

jump-starting a new interest in paleontology, A group of scientists gave a name to a brand new dinosaur they found near the town of Moab, Utah. They named the predator Utah Raptor, and it's been a point of pride in the state for the last, what, 30 years. Well, now new research shows that Utah Raptor is even older than previously thought, maybe 10 million years older. And scientists are learning more about this remarkable site in southeastern Utah and what it can tell us about the world that Utah hunted it. Here to tell us more is reporter David Condos, who's been following the story for KUER. He's based in St. George, Utah. David, welcome back to Science Friday. Thank you for having me, Ira. Nice to have you back. Okay, tell us what we know about Utah Raptor. What does it look like? Does Jurassic Park give us a pretty good idea?

Yeah, so if that's the image you have in your mind is the Velociraptors from Jurassic Park, that's actually not too far off. So the Utah Raptors are closer in size to those velociraptors from the movie. They're about as tall as a human, whereas the actual velociraptors would be closer to like the size of a chicken or a turkey. So still ferocious, but much smaller. But yeah, the Utah Raptor was huge. I mean, they weighed more than 600 pounds and they had these, you know, 10-inch claws that they would just tear prey apart with. So definitely not something you'd want to run into. No, I do not run into one of them.

And now let's talk about the site where this discovery was made. It's kind of, I understand, a perfect place to find fossil records. And in your story, you'll call it a dino bone gold mine. Why? Why? Tell us about that. Yeah. So the site is called Sykes Quarry, and it's a pretty remote spot just north of Arches National Park in eastern Utah, if you know where that is.

Yeah, I do. The site was, part of what makes it special is it was one of these mass mortality events. So like envision like a quicksand pit type of scenario where some of these plant-eating dinosaurs would go in there. They'd get stuck. Predators like Utah Raptors would come by and they'd say, oh, man, here's some free food. And they'd come over to take a bite and then they'd get stuck too. And then they'd all kind of sink down and it would end up perfectly preserving their fossils. Like what the paleontologists I talked to told me was, you know, what killed them, buried them.

And so it was very fast and very good for preservation of their bones. And so, you know, over the course of a decade, this big research team, so, you know, 10 scientists from four states, they've been working at this site to cut out this nine-ton block of rock that just packed, you know, dozens of Utah Raptor fossils in there. And so it's a special thing for these scientists. You know, a lot had to go right over millions and millions of years to have a discovery like this. And how cool is that?

Researchers are now using this unique site to find. find the real age of the Utah Raptor? Is that what's going on there? Yeah, so that's one of the big discoveries is they told me they finally confirmed the Utah Raptor's age for the first time. And so how they did that is when they pulled out that nine-ton block, like I was saying, that revealed these layers of rock kind of that were left behind there when they pulled that out. And it was these undisturbed layers of rock from millions and millions of years ago. And so they used these two types of isotopic dating. So uranium lead and carbon 12 and carbon 13, and they used those in tandem and also confirmed it with other things like the record of plant fossils that were found among the fossils at this site,

and they placed it at 135 million years ago, which like you said, it's more than 10 million years earlier than originally thought. Why is that so important? The kind of bigger, broader significance is that it helps fill in this gap in the overall fossil record. You know, the scientists told me that there had been this kind of hole in scientific knowledge around the transition between the Jurassic and the Cretaceous period. And so about 25 million years of this gap because it was just hard to find rocks from that period. And, you know, anything can happen when you're talking about that many millions of years. So it was this

big gap in scientific knowledge that's now starting to get filled because of this discovery. And kind of the other reason why it's significant among these scientists is because it's helping legitimize the methods that they use. The type of fossil dating and the kind of combination of things they used to date it were a bit experimental. And so it was actually kind of hard for them to get funding for this project. And so they're hoping that this discovery will help future scientists do this type of work. And right now there's a boom in paleontology in this area. A lot of discoveries being made? Yeah, yeah. So it's interesting because, I mean, you think about you know, paleontology in the mountain west. A lot of dino hunters, you know, a hundred plus years ago

in places like Wyoming and Montana were making these big discoveries that were kind of caused by people just stumbling across fossils that they would see near train depots. So think about like the transcontinental railroad, you know, going through Wyoming and Montana in the late 1800s, people would stumble upon things and then discoveries would kind of snowball from there. But in this part of Utah, you know, it's pretty desolate. You know, much of, much of this kind of central South East part of Utah has been pretty inaccessible for humans for most of our country's history. And some examples to illustrate that, you know, there's a mountain range nearby that Henry Mounds that was one of the last mountain ranges mapped in the U.S.

And the only interstate highway through this area wasn't completed until 1990. Wow. So these fossils have been kind of, you know, kept in the ground a little bit longer than some other areas. And I talked with Jim Kirkland, who's the Utah State paleontologist, who was a part of this work. And he told me that, you know, it's exciting for him because the work he's able to do in Utah now is basically like what those scientific pioneers were doing, you know, way back then. Utah has the best record of the Mesozoic anywhere in the world. And now it really starting to get international attention. You know, for me, it's real exciting.

I just wish I had another hundred years to check this stuff out. Yeah. So Utah is kind of having this moment, having this golden age of paleontology now. and there's a lot more research coming into these remote areas, scientists coming from all over the world and realizing what's here. Well, thank you. Thank you very much, David. Thanks for filling us in on the Utah Raptor. All right. Thank you, Ira.

David Condos, reporter for KUER, based in St. George, Utah. If you live by a freshwater river or a lake, you're likely familiar with the Asian carp. Yes, these fish are not native to the U.S., but over the last few decades, they've gotten into waterways like the Mississippi River Basin and the Illinois River. A major PR campaign now is underway to move away from the name Asian carp and towards the name Copey. One big reason? To rebrand the fish as a sustainable, responsibly sourced food. Joining me to talk about this is my guest, Jim Garvey, director of the Center for Fisheries, Agriculture, and Aquatic Sciences at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois.

Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you for having me, Ira. You're quite welcome. There's a lot of thought that goes into changing a name. So what was the origin of the word copi? Did I get it right? Is it copi? Yeah, it's copi.

Copi is short for copious. So when you're thinking about Big Hadder Asian Carps, as they're called, they're quite abundant. They jump out of the water. Sometimes hit people in the face when they're driving a boat, for example. And so they're copious. There's a lot of them out there. And so what we would like to do is have people, when they think about copi, they think about a copious fish and doing their part by eating them so that they can control their abundance in the environment.

Walk me through how much, how much of a problem that this fish is in the Illinois waterways? Copi actually stands for four different species of big-headed carp from Asia. one is the grass carp, one is the big-headed carp, one is the silver carp, and the last one is a fish called the black carp. These four species were aquacultured in China for well over several thousand years because they are very valuable in what we call polyculture, because they eat at different levels of the food chain. So they did very well in China and other parts of Asia. and so when they were introduced here into the United States, they found some really great opportunities in our lakes and rivers and did very well. They were introduced in the early 70s, late 60s,

as food fish and potential fish that could control problems with water quality because they eat algae or tiny plants in the water. But once they escaped from ponds, they started to proliferate and became a real problem when they reached the Illinois River in the late 90s, early 2000s, and their abundance started to explode. And then they began to get dangerously close to the Great Lakes. And the Great Lakes already have a huge history of invasive species

that are very destructive, like zebra mussels and sea lamp rays. I think the last thing any of us want is another potential group of invasive species to get in there and have negative economic and ecological effects. I'll bet. And why is it so important to change the name from Asian carp? Well, there's a couple issues here. One is that, in my opinion, carp should be respected just like any other organism. Yes, they're invasive.

Yes, they're a problem, and they can cause economic and ecological problems. But, again, they should be respected from the perspective that they are important to Chinese culture and other Asian cultures for, very long time. And so by placing the name Asian in front of it, there could be a negative cultural connotation to it. So I agree with this. There has been a push by the federal government folks and then the rest of us biologists that are out there to maybe get rid of the moniker of Asian under that. We all know they come from the continent of Asia. So big-headed carbs is probably a better way to describe this fish. Now, in terms of the name carp, common carp,

which is not part of the four basic copi species, has been around for well over a century and has a very negative connotation, at least among some parts of the fishing public. And so because of this negative carp connotation, the idea is, well, maybe we should move to a name that's more desirable to the consumer, because what we're trying to do is get people to eat copy, eat them to extinction if possible. And so Kobe is the name that has been introduced and hopefully it will stick. You know, it's part of an ethnic Jewish diet. There's something called the gefilta fish.

Oh, yeah. And you know, it's made from carp. Yeah. Maybe there's a market here. Well, there probably is. In fact, there is copy processed and sent to Israel as one of the exports of this fish. There's exports all around the world from Illinois and other areas where they're invading the U.S. They are sent to Africa and other places.

So these fish are very valuable culturally and obviously nutritionally for many, many countries around the globe. It's just in the United States we're trying to get people to eat more of them because they are a good fish to eat. You know, when we talk about invasive species, we usually talk about them in context. of them wreaking havoc on native species? Is that, so what's going to happen eventually if you can't get people to eat more Copey? Yeah. In fact, there's a lot of research being done in the last 10 years or so that is suggesting

that there has been a negative impact of these four species on native fishes here in the U.S. Maybe not as much as we expected, because when an invasive species comes in, it usually pushes out the native species from their niche. What we found is that perhaps these species have sort of fit themselves better into the ecosystem than maybe other species have, but there are certain concerns. For example, the Black Cope, Black Carp, which is a lesser known of the four species, eats muscles. And the reason we should care about that is because the Central U.S., Mississippi River, for example, Illinois River has some of the highest diversity of freshwater mussels in the world.

And so the concern is that these black carp are going to come in and bunch those native species. This is Science Friday from WLMIC Studios. You know, when you describe the fish, it makes me think of Chilean sea bass. Yes. Which is also a name-changed fish, right? Yeah, so there's many species across the world that had bad rap. and it's usually reflected in their name. I believe Orange Ruffy was called slimehead, for example.

Chilean sea bass was the Patagonian Toothfish. So when you heard those names, typically you would potentially have a negative connotation to it. Someone wouldn't want to necessarily eat a slime head. But when you change the name, you begin to realize that, hey, this is not a bad thing to eat. In fact, it's quite delicious. and we think that the average consumer might take to the name Copee a little bit more than the name Carp, which might have a negative connotation to it. Well, if I don't live in that part of the country, can I go to my supermarket and get a Copee Carp?

That's a good question. Ten years ago, no. However, over the last six months or so, there has been a real push to try to get these fish into not only a regional market but into a national market. So there has been talks among the processors to get the fish basically going nationwide. So that's the hope. The biggest problem with all of this is that there's plenty of opportunity to fish Cope. The problem is that there are not enough fisher people out there to fish them and definitely not enough processing plants to package the fish and get them in the market to meet hopefully what will be a growing demand.

Wow. Well, I'd actually like to find some because I'd like to cook some up. What would be the best way to prepare my copy fight? Yeah, well, first thing, Ira, check your mailbox one day. Maybe you'll get a package. I'll make sure it's on ice. I was going to say, make sure it's frozen. These fish are best prepared in many, many ways.

They can be literally, it's a blank canvas. They can be like a crab cake. They can be served traditionally in soups, believe it or not. The heads, for example, you may think fish had soup sounds strange. But the head, if you watch any cooking shows or you cook yourself, you know that there's a lot of collagen in that head, which creates a lot of umami, really good mouth feel and broths, a few may, for example.

So they can be used in a whole lot of different ways. Also, there's other products that can come out of these fish. For example, the collagen can be used in healthcare products. So there's a lot of ways that you can use COPI, not just for food, but for other kinds of products as well. Animal food, dogs, cats? Absolutely. One of the primary uses of them right now is for fertilizer or. put into animal feed. That's perfectly fine, but that does not pay a lot. So when you're a person

out there busting your behind to fish for these animals, putting them into fertilizer is not going to get you a good return on your effort. By placing more demand on these fish and then hopefully the market increases so that there's a little bit more price, you're going to get more incentive for folks to go out and spend their time in their own. money to fish these out of the water. Jim, that's about all the time we have for this fish story. I'm looking for that fish, maybe not in my mailbox, but Jim Garvey, Director of Center for Fisheries, Aquaculture, and Aquatic Sciences at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thanks so much,

Aaron. Take care. If you missed any part of the program or you would like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. I'm Ira Flato.