Science Friday - The Navajo Researcher Reviving A Desert Peach | A New Dino With Blade-Like Horns

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

Bringing back Southwest peach orchards won’t be easy, but researchers are on the lookout for remaining trees—and they need help. And, the newly discovered Lokiceratops is challenging paleontologists’ understanding of how horned dinosaurs evolved and existed together. How A Navajo Plant Researcher Is Reviving A Desert PeachWhen you think of states known for their peaches, Utah might not be at the top of your list. But there is a variety—the Southwest peach—that grows in this arid landscape, and Native communities have cultivated this tree since the 1600s. But many of the orchards were intentionally destroyed by colonizers hundreds of years ago, and the remaining trees are now scattered across the region.A local scientist and member of the Navajo Nation is on a mission to track down Southwest peach trees so we can learn more about how these peaches are so well-suited to grow in the desert.At a live event in Salt Lake City in March, Host Flora Lichtman spoke with Reagan Wytsalucy, plant scientist and assistant professor at Utah State University Extension in San Juan County, Utah. She researches traditional Native American crops, including the Southwest peach.Meet Lokiceratops, A Giant Dinosaur With Blade-Like HornsThe Intermountain West is a dinosaur nerd’s dream because it’s such a hotspot for fossils. Some of the most famous dino fossils in the world, like T. rex, triceratops, and stegosaurus can be found in western North America. So, of course, Science Friday couldn’t go to Salt Lake City, Utah, without digging into some dinosaur science.At a live event in Salt Lake City in March, Host Ira Flatow spoke with the scientists behind the discovery of Lokiceratops, a large dinosaur with impressive horns that was unveiled in 2024. Dr. Mark Loewen, vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Utah and the Natural History Museum of Utah; and Savhannah Carpenter, paleontologist and school outreach coordinator at the Natural History Museum of Utah, discuss how they figured out Loki was a new dinosaur, the process of describing and naming the fossil, and what it taught them about dino evolution.Transcripts for each segment will be available 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.

This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. Today on the podcast, the search for the Southwest Peach. But first, recorded live from the Eccles Theater in Salt Lake City, we meet Loki Seratops, a funky lime green elephant-sized dinosaur with blade-like horns all over its head. This is not an animal that wants to hide. This is an animal that wants to stand out and say, I'm sexy. The Intermountain West is a... a dinosaur nerds dream because it's such a hot spot for fossils.

And some of the most famous dino fossils in the world, like T-Rex, Triceratops, can be found in western North America. So of course we couldn't come out to Utah without digging into, you know, some info about dino science. And today we are going to meet a fossil that was just unveiled last year, a spectacular horn dinosaur named Loki Ceratops. that's welcome to the people who worked on Loki. They're right here with us. Savannah Carpenter, paleontologist, school outreach coordinator at the Natural History Museum of Utah, and Dr. Mark Lowen, vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Utah, and the Natural History Museum of Utah.

Welcome to Science Friday. Nice to have you. Thank you. Thank you. It's great to be here. Mark, all right, let me begin with you. Take me back to the beginning. Where did Loki Seratops come from?

So Loki Seratops came from the badlands in a river valley just about six miles south of the Canadian United States border in Montana. It was dug up by commercial collectors on a private ranch, and it was sold to a museum in Denmark. And we have a partnership with that museum in Denmark, the Museum of Evolution. And so scientists from there and from the University of Utah and the Natural History of Museum of Utah got to look at this dinosaur for the first time and figure out just what it might be. And that Savannah, at what point did you start to think, uh-huh, we've got something new here. Yeah, there's a few other serotopsians that were from the same area that Loki Seratops was discovered in.

But when we started to sort of lay out all the bones and figure out which is what and figure out how they all fit together, like a big old puzzle, sort of started to become clear. not any of the other things. One of these things is not like the other. And we realize this is actually something totally unique and brand new to science. Well, we don't like to see it? Yeah.

Well, let's have the reveal of Locyseratops right here. Wow. Wow. This is, I mean, I wasn't, Mark, I wasn't expecting it's lime green. I mean, it's like a flavor, you know. Well, you know, it's pretty exciting. If you look at this dinosaur, it's got all kinds of projections going off of its head.

This is not an animal that wants to hide. This is an animal that wants to stand out and say, I'm sexy. Well, it's certainly doing that tonight. And it has so many horns on it, right? Savannah, it looks like, what, a triceratops has one central horn, but I'm counting at one, two, three, four, maybe five. Horns on this? Yes, yeah.

It is the most ornate horned dinosaur ever found. We wanted to bill it as the horniest dinosaur ever, but that got the Nix. Not in Utah. No. Wow. Okay, the name Loki. Mark, where does that come from? So again, the museum that first acquired this specimen is from Denmark.

So often when we think about a name for a dinosaur, we're thinking about, you know, Will we use some god from mythology and things like that? So we settled on the Norse god Loki. He's the trickster. He's got wide blades. And so that kind of reminded us of some of these ornaments on the top of the frill. At the same time, you'll notice there's a little horn on one side and a bigger horn on the other side. That actually reminded us of reindeer.

So this animal is actually called Loki Seratops rangiformis, which literally translates to Loki's horned face that looks like a caribou or a reindeer. Makes sense to me. And this dinosaur, the fossil, had to be put together, right? Like many fossils, they don't come whole, they come in a bunch of pieces. How difficult was that to do?

Yeah, it was definitely a big job. We kind of had a big jumble of bones. and our job was to figure out what bone was what, and then also put it together, kind of like a puzzle, like I mentioned earlier. So we sort of laid them all out on a table, figured out which pieces go with the skull, which pieces go below the skull, and sort of just created it from there, one bone at a time.

Savannah and I are working on at least five new relatives of this dinosaur from right here in Utah. So there's lots of work to be done. We're just scratching the surface. We really don't know anything about dinosaurs. And that's an honest fact. You know, we've found less than 0.01% of the dinosaurs that ever lived for sure. So when I say we don't nothing, we really know nothing about the world of the dinosaurs.

We're just trying to reconstruct it. I remember being around a table with all the pieces of this dinosaur, and we actually thought that it was a different dinosaur. You know, it was actually sold to the Museum of Evolution as a dinosaur called Medusa's Herodon. which comes from a mile and a half away at the same level. So we were sure that it was going to be that. But when we started to put it together, and we saw a completely different pattern of the frill,

Savannah and I just looked at each other and we're like, this is new. And this is new means we get to name it, which is pretty cool. You guys really get into your work, don't you? It's easy. We have the most fun job, I think. So it's not hard to be excited about dinosaurs when you're a dinosaur nerd. Yeah, and it's a good place to be a dinosaur.

That's right. And where did it live? What was the environment it was living in Mark? Tell me about what it was like there. So this animal lived at the edge of a giant seaway that cut North America in half. So it's actually living in the swamps of the seaway that would have been kind of like Louisiana. We know that there was vegetation in the water, lots of low deciduous trees. And it's about 100 miles away from the mountains, which are pretty much in the same place as they are in Glacier, National Park.

So this animal is living out on the floodplain. It's living alongside duck-billed dinosaurs. There's a giant cousin of Tyrannosaurus that's trying to eat it. We find little fish. We find crocodiles. We find all kinds of things in the ecosystem. So we're interested not just in what does the dinosaur look like, but what are the other things that live? live alongside the dinosaurs.

Let's go to a question from the audience over here. What would it be the main power scheme on these dinosaurs? So one of the things about this dinosaur is we recognize that it has all these projections off the top of its frill. We think that these are actually very closely related to some of the structures that we see in birds, like a cassowary. So we actually pattern the coloration of this animal off of birds being very bright.

Another thing about it is we actually find the skin of a very closely related animal right here in Utah called Nisuto Ceratops. Nisutoceratops has the skin pattern that you'll actually see on this mount, and it's very much like the shoulder of a chameleon. So in some ways, we picked the leopard chameleon as a model for the colors that we would see. Keep in mind, This animal is larger than an elephant living in an ecosystem where it's not trying to hide.

Its size protects it from the predators that it lives with. So we tried to go with the colors that we see in birds, especially on the ornaments on the top of the skull. Savannah, can you look at the fossil? Are there any details that clued you into what Loki's life was like? Oh, yes. So one of my favorite features that this fossil has is something called a possible. pathology. It actually has a little bit of a hole on the side of its squamossal, part of its frill, where it had an injury. We do see pathologies and plenty of dinosaurs, things like T-Rex that has

broken bones from ankylosaur clubs and triceratops with little holes from where it maybe fought other triceratops or was bit by a T-Rex or something. So I really like looking at pathologies. I think it's kind of cool to see that, you know, this animal has lived a long and hard life, perhaps. It's injured and he's walking through the swamp and doing his best. Maybe he got in a fight. Maybe he walked into a branch like I am often to do. So, you know, that's kind of a, it makes him a little bit more personable, this dinosaur, I think. Yeah, his personal look at it.

Savannah, there is this huge issue in paleontology, a struggle between public places and the private collector, right? That's been going on forever. How does Loki fit into this? Yeah, so like we mentioned earlier, Loki Seratops was found on private land, and that happens all the time here in the United States. The laws do say if you find something on private land, that is yours, and that is often a death sentence for a dinosaur. It's not going to be studied, not going to go to a museum, right? We kind of lucked out that the Museum of Evolution in Denmark sort of swooped in and rescued this dinosaur. It's actually there on display now and still accessible for researchers.

and we were allowed to do science on it. So even though it was found on private land and sold privately, this really is like a fairy tale ending for that type of sale. Like this dinosaur, it turned out perfectly for Loki Seratops. Does Loki, Mark, teach you anything about dinosaur evolution? Again, since we thought it was that other dinosaur, when we actually start looking at it, there's four different dinosaurs that are very similar,

all living at the same place in an area smaller than down. downtown Salt Lake City. So when I was taught paleontology back 20 years ago, we could never have that many dinosaurs and the same place at the same time if they're closely related. Turns out we didn't know anything about that. These things are like birds. If you took all of these skeletons of birds of paradise today and took all their feathers off, a paleontologist would have a hard time telling them apart.

But of course, there's over 15 different species and lots of different variations. We're looking at dinosaurs way more like birds now. We're starting to understand that these animals are evolving like birds. Let's go to a question from the audience over here. I'm Arwin, and my question is, since you said they're in a very small location, is that because they only lived there? or is it because that's an ideal habitat to preserve the fossils? These kids ought to be sitting up here, I think, asking these questions.

Wow. Great question. It's actually a miracle of the way that the ice sheets melted and cut a little area around the Milk River in Montana and Alberta. And so there's a small area where all of the sediments have been carved down and in those carved-down sediments, we call them coolies, there are fossils. And so this is just a little area in which the ice melt rivers wash down and wash this out, and so we have it preserved. Wow.

And one other thing I learned since coming here to Utah is that you discovered this as an undergraduate. This is your first dino find, our first dino find. How exciting is that? It's so exciting. Yeah, that's one of my favorite parts of this story is that I got to do this as an undergraduate learning to do paleontology. I love talking about that with potential students and current students because I think a lot of people don't realize as an undergrad, you can absolutely still contribute to science, right? And so I'm really excited to have been able to do that as part of my time at University of Utah. Thank you. Mark, you have a little more experience.

This is what, your 13th, 14th? 15 maybe, something like that. But it never gets old, right? Never gets old. Never gets old. And we have more than 15 that we're working on. There's lots of dinosaurs that we still have to tell you about. And we're as excited about them as you are.

We did a show about dinosaurs a few months ago. Actually, one of the kids in the audience asked to pay a lot of dollars is the best question. How do you know if it's a rock or if it's a fossil? And she said, I lick it. Is that a technique you guys use at all? The lick test. Yes, the lick test.

My first summer digging up dinosaurs, I didn't have an eye for what was fossil yet. And so I definitely hiked around just sort of licking things. What does it taste like? How do you know the difference? Ah, yeah. So bone is porous, kind of spongy. And that means when you lick it,

It'll actually stick to your tongue in a way that a rock just won't. So, you know, it is a good last-ditch test. But they do taste like dirt. Do not lick things you find, though. Go ahead. There's a question here. Hi, I'm Joanna. And I'm just wondering if you use DNA testing at all on these,

or if they're just too old, then you can't. I'm going to take this just because I taught this in class on Thursday. And a couple of my students are in the audience, so they'll enjoy. this. Is she a plant in the audience? No. DNA has a half-life of 521 years.

So the oldest DNA that we can get is about 6.8 million, and that's about the limit. Maybe a little bit farther. We're never going to get the DNA of dinosaurs out of the bones.

But there is DNA from dinosaurs all over the world belonging to the 18,000 species of birds that are still alive, that are dinosaurs. So people who have been talking about bringing back the dinosaurs have been doing things like trying to get those genes to express, to get the dinosaur features that you think of with a dinosaur

to express in bird DNA, things like teeth, elongated bony tails, things like that. And did you know, we have never cloned a bird or an insect. The only thing that we can clone today are mammals and not all of them, right? So we're a long ways from cloning dinosaurs because dinosaurs are like birds. You know, we can't clone birds. We can't clone reptiles.

I'm not going to say we never could, but we have the problem of where are you going to get the DNA? And then how are you going to do it? Is Loki your favorites? Do you each have favorite dinosaurs? Is Loki your favorite? I mean, for me, it's the only dinosaur I've helped name, so it's a no-brainer for me. A little more complicated when you've named, you know, 15 plus. So my favorite dinosaur, by far, has got to be Microraptor.

It's got wings on its arms. It's got wings on its legs. And it's iridescent pink, green, purple. So, yeah, I've got to go with a chicken-sized X-wing Velociraptor. Well, I don't think we can top that as a final question. Really cool. Thank you very much for both of you. This has been so much fun, Savannah Carpenter,

paleontologist and school outreach coordinator at the Natural History Museum of Utah. And Dr. Mark Lohen, vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Utah and the Natural History Museum of Utah. Thank you both. Thank you, Ira. Thank you. After the break, inside the search for a. hearty peach that grows in the southwest desert and has its roots in Navajo history.

My favorite one that I've tried so far actually has like a cinnamon spice flavor to it. This is Science Friday. I'm Flora Lickman, live with KUER from the Eccles Theater in Salt Lake City, Utah. We are now approaching one of my favorite micro-seasons, peach season. Now, when you think of states known for their peaches, I'm going to guess that Utah probably is not at the top of your list, but in fact, there is a variety of peach, the southwest peach that grows in Utah's arid landscape. Native communities cultivated this peach tree here since the 1600s, but many of the orchards have been lost over time, and the remaining trees are now scattered across the state. But a local scientist and a member of the Navajo Nation is on a mission to track. back down southwest peach trees so we can learn more about how you grow a peach in the desert, how it does it.

Reagan-White-Sluisi is a plant scientist and assistant professor at Utah State University Extension in San Juan County, Utah. She researches traditional Native American crops, including the southwest peach. And she's based in Blanding Utah. Reagan, welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. Thank you. Okay.

What is this peach's backstory? Is it native to Utah? How did it get here? So that is the question. It is thought that the peaches have been traded before Spanish settlers coming across from Mexico into the southwest, that that trading was done in advance of their settlement. So the earliest recording that I've found, and if somebody else has found something earlier, please let me know, but was in 1630 by Friar Day Alonzo Benavitas as he was making his way from Mexico up the Rio Grande to get to Santa Fe,

making the first account of thousands of fruit trees planted along the Rio Grande, being grown by the Native Americans that lived along the Rio Grande. Thousands. Thousands. Wow, so huge orchards. Vast, very vast orchards, yes. Okay, so for the people listening at home who are not with us tonight in this theater, what does the peach look like?

So it's a small, like the size of an apricot. They can be white-fleshed, yellow-fleshed. They have a light blush color. Sometimes on the inside, I've actually found a peach that had a little bit of red flesh. There's a photo of that going around on the internet. You can look it up. That's the exact one. When I bit into it, I was like, I have to take a picture of this. And so, yeah, they're freestone. But yeah, very small like an apricot. I have to know what they taste like. There is an assortment of flavors. So there's your typical peach flavor. There's what I like to relate to something similar, like a musk melon. A lot of the white flesh peaches taste more like musk melon. There is some that taste kind of like canned peaches.

Some of them, the peel is slightly astringent, so you kind of get this bitter, sweet mix of a flavor that can come across. And then my favorite one that I've tried so far, actually has like a cinnamon spice flavor to it. Do we know why they taste different? Is it based on where they're growing or what the habitat is? It's definitely just a genetic variability among them. Wow.

So it feels like the $64 million question is, how do these peaches grow here? Do we know? So Native Americans have been very successful. If anyone is aware of how Native Americans have saved seed and adapted their crops to be able to thrive in the desert climate. It's just a matter of what we would do, you know, what it appears to be good, what appears to be growing good, a way of assisted selection throughout, you know, saving seed, and then replanting those seeds as necessary to replicate the crops so that way we have a food source.

And is there something in their genes that allows them to deal with the sort of landscape that they're in? We are still looking at the genetics, so we don't have that completely narrowed out. We've done a brief study kind of just looking at, well, what is the population variability between each of the communities that we've been able to identify? Because there's very few of them left in our communities, and so they were very difficult to track down. So that was the first thing that we started to do was, is there any connection of these peaches to modern peach cultivars that are commonly found in nurseries, the fruit commercial production? production industry for peaches. And so far, they're so inbred, they've been so isolated in their

communities that they are just not having any relationship to anything other than their own community itself. They're so imbred that they're even regionally inbred within themselves. So peaches found in Hopi are regionally inbred and localized to Hopi conditions. Same thing with peaches found in Navajo Mountain area or peaches found in Canyon DeShay. we are still exploring and collecting samples to continue the genetic work with them to be able to identify some of the variability. So yeah, that's part of it. We've done studies where we've looked at just drought tolerance, so we've controlled them in like containerized systems in the greenhouse and looked at how well they recover after being put underneath drought circumstances where they're basically wilting in a greenhouse, so very hot.

And we've rehydrated them. We completed these cycles over and over. And they just recovered a lot better. They put on more leaf growth. They just performed so much better than any of the other cultivars that we were testing them against. Where did you first learn about the peach? I was a little girl growing up. And I first had heard the story from my dad probably when I was about eight.

Had no idea. I didn't really think much of it. What was the story? They were just talking about how they were just talking about how they were. were peaches and there's corn and, you know, they're talking about all these different crops. So it's the first time it was mentioned to me. And my father would reiterate that every so often. And it wasn't until I was going to college, my first year of college, I was actually wanting to be a wedding planner. And I know, go figure. And so I was like, this isn't for me. I was actually

trying to get a business degree. And I was like, I don't need a business degree to become a wedding planner. And so I was like, but I need a degree because it's something my mother always reiterated to my sisters and I is get a degree, make sure you can sustain yourself. You don't know what's going to happen. If you marry somebody, you don't know what's going to happen. And I lived by that. So I was thinking, what is it that I could do? And I went to my father. I was like, you know me best. I don't know what to do. And I don't like to be a person that does not have a plan in place or know the direction that I'm going. I don't like to be idle. And so I, I asked him and he says, go up to Utah State University, get a degree in agriculture, your sister's up there, you'll be close to family, and see if you can bring back the peaches, see if you can help our people bring back their agriculture.

So there I went. And you just, it's amazing. That was it. I took his advice. So that's over 10 years ago. Why is this peach so important to you? You know, as I started this pathway, one thing that was very lacking in my upbringing was that I had a disconnect in my heritage, who I am as Native American, being Dene. And I had always thought, you know, I want to live a life where I can be able to represent who I am. And so I married somebody from the Zuni Pueblo, and he started to teach me a lot of these things in our home.

And that started to open up my mind and my heart to be able to start thinking about how do I need to be receptive to working with my people who are more often than not commonly misunderstood in many ways. And I was one of them that was at a mindset where I was misunderstanding my own people. I guess I would explain it as maybe potentially undermining their abilities or their credibility. to how traditional methods are done because it's not proven to be a scientific method or a viable way of a lifestyle, you know. And not understanding exactly what that lifestyle is also creates another misconception of what is it that I need to understand or how do I need to understand you in order to be able to either uptake your lifestyle or to be able to respect what it is that you do. And so I went down a pathway of rediscovery of myself in this. And so a lot of my passion comes first and foremost of me starting to figure out what my identity is through this research project.

So I understand that you're looking for these trees. Yes, I am looking for these trees. I'm still looking. We have found quite a bit within the Navajo. And there are a handful of samples that I've collected from the Hopi tribe. I've identified the remaining orchards within the Zuni Pueblo, but they are not bearing fruit, or if there is a tree, there's like two trees that do bear fruit, but the squirrels oftentimes get them before anybody can get them. When you find a tree, what happens?

When I find a tree, I first and foremost, I work with the people that know about these orchards or where these trees exist. Who is the caretaker? I identify that. That's respect to them, respect to their families, respect. to their ancestors who had planted these trees. And from that step on, we go and we investigate. We look at how well they are being taken care of. Are they thriving enough to be able to bear fruit?

You know, what kind of scientific samples can we collect from this that can be useful for the data, whether it's for genetic purposes, whether it's for looking at fruit analysis, whether it's for seed preservation to germinate a new tree from the seed, because these are all seed propagated trees historically. and seeing if we can preserve the germplasm from these trees and then be able to isolate that to be able to have more trees generate and healthy production systems that are tribally practiced or have tribal practices managing them is what I want to say.

And then making sure that they're genetically pure so we can start giving seeds back to the community. Okay, so would it be helpful if some friendly Utah residents were on the lookout for these trees? Yes. Yes, it would be. I need help. There's a lot of people that have started reaching out to me and said, hey, I know. I think there was a tree that was given to me by, you know, some Navajo people or for some Hopi people. Could these be part of it? Could you utilize the genetic resource from these trees? Could you utilize some seeds?

So anything is helpful at this point in time because we're trying to piece together a pathway of history. We've been able to use corn to try and understand trading between Native American tribes and the early American history. We could also potentially use peaches to do that and see what trading looked like across the North American continent potentially. Thank you so much, Reagan. Give it up for Reagan. Reagan-Wiastellusi is a plant scientist and assistant professor at Utah State University Extension in San Juan County, Utah. Thank you so much. Hey, before we wrap up, if you want to learn more about the Southwest Peach, we've got some resources for you on our website,

ScienceFriday.com slash peach. You'll find a story from KUERR reporter David Condos and a guide to spotting the Southwest Peach. That's at sciencefriiday.com slash peach. Hey, Flora here. One of my favorite parts about working on Science Friday is getting to interact with you. You all remind me every day that no matter what,

what pops up as I do scroll, the world is actually filled with curious, smart, hilarious people. And at Science Friday, we depend on you in lots of different ways. You make the show better with your questions and your comments and your insights. And we've always depended on your support to keep the lights on. As you probably know, because you listen to this podcast, it is a tenuous time for science and for independently produced public media. So listener support is now more crucial than ever. And it doesn't even need to be a lot. If every listener gave just $2, Science Friday would be funded for the year.

I'm not kidding. If Science Friday is something that adds value to your life and you can swing it, please go to sciencefriiday.com slash support to make your donation today. That's science friday.com slash support. And thanks. That's about all the time we have for now. a lot of people help make this show happen. Sandy Roberts.

Robin Casmer. Charles Bergquist. George Harper. I'm Ira Flato. Thanks for listening.