Science Friday - Tomb Of Egyptian King Unearthed | Why The Internet Was Captivated By A Hideous Fish

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Finding the original tomb of the royal is one of the most significant developments in Egyptian archeology in recent history. Also, a video of a gloriously creepy anglerfish inspired tears and poetry online. But why was this deep-sea dweller near the surface at all?Royal Tomb Of Egyptian King Thutmose II UnearthedA British-Egyptian team has made one of the most significant Egyptian archeological finds in recent history: the tomb of pharaoh King Thutmose II, who ruled sometime between 2000 and 1001 BCE. This is the first tomb of a pharaoh unearthed since Tutankhamun’s in 1922.Thutmose II’s mummified remains were found two centuries ago, but they had been moved from his original tomb, the location of which remained a mystery until now. Part of the reason why his tomb’s location was such a mystery was that Thutmose II was buried in an area associated with the wives of Egyptian kings, about 1.5 miles west of Egypt’s famous Valley of the Kings.Joining Host Flora Lichtman to talk about this and other science stories of the week is Maggie Koerth, science writer and editorial lead of CarbonPlan, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.Why The Internet Was Captivated By A Hideous FishLast week, a viral video likely floated to the top of your feed: a rare black seadevil anglerfish, which looks like a floating head with a frightening amount of teeth and two cloudy eyes, swimming in azure waters. The fish showed up near Spain’s Canary Islands, off the northwestern coast of Africa. It made the news because it was spotted near the surface, while anglerfish normally reside in the deep ocean.So why was she paddling so close to the surface? Was she sick? How unusual is this? And also, why do they even look like that? We had questions.Host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Kory Evans, assistant professor of biosciences at Rice University, to separate fact from fish-ction. He also explains new research he helped conduct about the evolutionary history of anglerfish, which could help explain why they look the way they do.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 Flora Lichten. This week, archaeologists report one of the biggest Egyptian archaeological finds in modern history. The tomb of a pharaoh, King Tutmost II. This is the first pharaoh tomb fined in over a hundred years. The last one was King Tuts in 1920. Joining me to sift through the details of this story and other news from the week is Maggie Kerth, science writer and editorial lead of Carbon Plan based in Minneapolis. Welcome back, Maggie. Thanks for having me. All right. Let's talk about this very cool discovery. Who was buried in this tomb? So this is the tomb of Tutmos II. He's actually a dynastic predecessor of King Tutankhammon. So he died around 1479 BC, which is about 150 years before King Tut took the throne.

So this tomb was found in 2022. And at the time, archaeologists actually thought it might be a Queen's burial because it was really close to some other queenly tombs, including the wife of King Tuttmos II, Hatshepsit. But there was a ton of ancient flood damage in this tomb, and it had destroyed a lot of the interior, and it had also cemented dirt and debris in front of the door. So it actually took a really long time to get in there and start figuring out whose tomb it really was. What's really interesting about this, though, is that his body was not there. So what they found was this kind of empty tomb. There are relics that have his name on them that they kind of tie this to King Tetmos.

But his body was actually discovered back in the 19th century in an entirely different location far away. Why? Well, so the floods. So the archaeologists say that this tomb shown signs that it was severely flooded out shortly after it was completed. And there's also evidence that most of his burial goods and his body were moved shortly after that. So this was the tomb that was dug for him, that was made for him, that he was originally buried in. And then it just got flooded out and he got moved elsewhere. Why did it take so long to find this tomb? There's just a lot of things buried out there. And they, from what I can tell, they just discovered the stairs of this while they were doing other.

excavations in the area. Let's move on. A lot of listeners are living in a world right now that is covered with regular old ice, Earth ice. There's a new finding about some weird alien ice. What's that about? Yeah. Well, so they're calling this plastic ice, but it's not really plastic.

It just has plasticity. So this stuff has a crystalline molecular structure like ice, but the individual molecules in that structure are able to kind of rotate around in a way that's more like how molecules in water move. So plastic ice could be molded or deformed. And the descriptions that scientists gave to reporters at science news make it sound a little like those gushy gel packs you kind of sometimes get with flowers at the grocery store. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yes, of course. Yes. Yeah. Right. Nobody's actually touched it, though. So getting plastic ice to form in a lab for the first time, required temperatures higher than 300 Celsius

and a pressure of nearly 900,000 PSI. And for context, the bottom of the Marianas Trench is about 16,000 PSI. Wow. So high temperature, high pressure. Right. Yes. That's interesting. I think of ice is cold. I do as well. But it turns out that there are weirdly a lot. lot of different forms of ice, at least 20 of them. And they all have different crystalline structures that form because of different temperature and pressure combinations. So the natural ice that you and I are most familiar with, you can call it Natty Ice if you wanted to. That has... I will. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. They has a kind of honeycomb lattice. Ice 7, in contrast, has this dense cube structure. like a Rubik's cube. And this newly observed ice is actually a plastic form of ice seven. So same

cube structure, more molecular wiggles. Would it clink in a drink? That's really my burning question about this. That is an interesting question. They did not say, but the regular, degular ice seven, that has been found on earth inside of diamonds. Whoa. Where might this plastic ice be found? Well, so up until recently, it was only theoretical. Scientists think it might have once existed inside of the high-pressure centers of icy moons like Europa back when they were still forming. Wow. Let's head back to Earth. There's some troubling news out of the southwest. Tell me about this measles outbreak. Yeah, it's bad. Cases more than doubled over the last week. So as of Wednesday, there were 58 cases, 13 hospitalizations across five West Texas counties. And most of them are in this one very rural

county called Gaines County, south of Lubbock. So this is a county with a population density of like 14 people per square mile, which is lower than average in the U.S. for even unincorporated areas. And the fact that measles is spreading this fast in a place that's that isolated tells you a lot about measles and about the drivers of this outbreak. Yeah, well, what does, what does it tell us? Well, so measles is really good at spreading from person to person. It's one of the most contagious viruses out there. You know, people who aren't vaccinated, 90% of them who get exposed will get measles. And Gaines County has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the entire state, according to reporting by the Texas Tribune. So the outbreak has been centered in the county's

Mennonite community, and they tend to mostly avoid the health care system in general. How can people protect themselves from measles? So the big thing is just get vaccinated and vaccinate your kids. You know, a lot of people can recover safely at home from measles, but babies and younger children are really vulnerable. Kids can end up so dehydrated, they can't even cry. It's pretty common for it to lead to pneumonia in younger children, and it can cause more rare lethal complications like brain inflammation. It's also able to suppress the immune system for months

after infection, which is a big deal when we're also in the middle of one of the worst flu seasons in recent memory. Let's move on to a more hopeful health story. There's a new study about a man who seemed almost certain to develop Alzheimer's because of his genes, but he's symptom-free and he's in his 70s. Tell me about this. Yeah, yeah. So there's this really cool story in science this week. And the man is Doug Whitney. His family had had multiple cases of a rare form of genetically linked Alzheimer's. His mother had it. 11 of her 13 siblings had it. They were all experiencing symptoms by the time they were in their 50s. And 14 years ago, Whitney enrolled himself in this large trial at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He was 61 at the

time. He had no symptoms of the disease, and he sort of assumed he had managed to just, like, not get the genetic mutations that had harmed so many of his family members. But from the studies that he enrolled himself in, it turned out that he actually had at least one of these mutations. And the brain scans showed that his brain was full of the kind of amyloid beta plaques that are usually the first step to developing Alzheimer's, but he was fine, and he continues to be fine. Wow. So what's, do scientists understand what's happening? There's still a lot of trying to figure out, but though he had like these amyloid protein plaques in his brain, Alzheimer's patients usually have these tangles of a different kind of protein called tau, and the interaction between

the two proteins might be what hastens cognitive decline. So one of the things the scientists are trying to figure out is why he has plaques but no tangles. And they still aren't sure. One really cool hypothesis about why he doesn't have these cow tangles is that he was a shipboard mechanic in hot boiler rooms as a job for many, many years. And it turns out there are changes in the cerebral spinal fluid that happen when the human body is protected. protecting itself from extreme heat that can also protect itself from misfolded proteins like tangles. So the scientists are speculating that it might turn out that his job ended up protecting him from Alzheimer's.

Wow. Does this point to any new avenues for treatment or prevention? It's all really still in very early stages of research. So it's not really leading to treatments yet, but studying Whitney is really helping researchers understand how Alzheimer's works. And eventually, it might also tell us a lot about how the process of the disease could be slowed. Okay, last story. We now know that coral can go for a walk. I need every detail. So this is not like big reef corals that live in huge stationary communities. This is a species of coral called a mushroom coral. they're kind of roundish, they're squishy, they have like that stone-like structure, but it's on the inside of their bodies. So they look a little bit, like the videos I watch, they look a

little bit like a living muffin top. Sounds familiar. Yeah, yeah, I know. But the scientists have known for a very long time these things can move in so much as that they're not in the same place where you left them from day to day. And in the 80s, Japanese scientists caught it on camera for the first time. But now researchers are using better equipment to really measure and sort of see and understand how that movement happens. And it's weird little hops. That's what I was going to ask, what does it look like? Yeah, they hop. They kind of like gear their bodies up and just sort of like throw themselves forward just a tiny bit. And then they just do that again over and over and over. And in about six hours, a mushroom coral can cross a piece of paper

the short way. Oh, I love it. I love it so much. The mushroom coral and the hair is what it's serving for me. Yes. We should all embrace the philosophy of the mushroom coral and just take our time. Can they walk away from their boiling ocean habitat? I mean, slowly. Thank you so much, Maggie. Thank you. Maggie Kerth's science writer and editorial lead of Carpin Plan based in Minneapolis. After the break, the biggest meme under the sea, the anglerfish, we're going deep. The question that we all kind of wondered is, you know, how and why did the deep sea anglerfish get so weird. That's a question the marine biology community wonders about. Yeah, all the time.

Last week, a viral video likely floated to the top of your feed. A rare black sea devil angler fish, which basically looks like a floating head with a frightening amount of teeth. and two teeny tiny cloudy beady eyes. It made the news because it was spotted near the surface close to Spain's canary islands and usually angler fish reside in the deep ocean. So why was she paddling so close to the surface? Was she sick? How unusual is this? Also, why do these fish even look like this? I have a lot of questions. So we are using this fish hook as an excuse to do an in-depth look at this hideous creature. Here to break down fact from fishkin is my guest, Dr. Corey Evans, Assistant Professor of Biosciences at Rice University, based in Houston,

Texas. Corey, welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for having me. Corey, as a marine biologist who studies anglerfish, what was your reaction to this video? Yeah, my reaction at first was I thought it was AI. I remember waking up in the morning and just seeing this video posted without any context on Instagram. And I'm looking and I'm like, zoom in really, really close just to make sure that, you know, I'm not being fooled. And I'm I'm looking, I was like, man, the fin motion, this looks like a real fish, but what is it doing here? Why is it bathed in sunlight? These fishes live in, you know, the absence of light. They live so deep under the ocean that light doesn't penetrate. So seeing this fish in broad daylight was super

disorienting and confusing. Why do you think, what's it like for you to have to see sort of this huge amount of interest that this little fish is generated? It's so exciting. And it's funny because a lot of folks got really, really excited about it. And then they found out the fish was about like four inches long or something like that. Then they were still excited about it. And I thought that was really cool. There's poems being written about, you know, the kind of the sad part about this fish, finally seeing the light of day and then dying later. Yeah, let's hear one. With her final breaths, her little body swam at the possibility just to say goodbye, proving to the world that beautiful things do come from the darkness in which we cannot see.

Were you like, my girl is finally getting the attention she deserves? Exactly. That's kind of how I felt, yeah. Why was this fish up there? Do you have any theories? So I think the fish might have been sick. Oftentimes when fish gets sick, they do kind of exhibit weird behaviors, and it can actually kind of become like a runaway effect as well. You know, as you move from a deep place to a more shallow place, gas will continue to expand, kind of surface faster and faster. I was surprised, A, that it was so intact that close to the surface, because usually if a fish comes up really fast, it'll look all disfigured like our friend

the blobfish. So the fact that this fish was looking good, you know, aside from the fact that it died shortly after, was actually really surprising. Let me run another theory by you. Could she have been on a hero's journey to see the light? I would like to believe that she was on a hero's journey. There's been some debate as to whether or not the eyes of the anglerfish can even perceive that much light. But I want to believe that they could. So obviously these are really strange-looking creatures. For me, they're hideous, but also, like, I can't look away. Like, I'm obsessed. I understand that your research may help explain why anglerfish look this way. Yes. Yeah. So I was part of this larger research team that was interested in reconstructing

first the evolutionary history of anglerfishes, and then asking the question that we all kind of wondered is, you know, how and why did the deep sea anglerfish get so weird. That's a question, the marine biology community. wonders about? Yeah, all the time. And it's not just anglerfish that are doing this. Like, lots of fish go deep and get super weird and freaky and we don't have a clear answer why. Well, how did you study that and what did you find? Yeah. So the first part was building kind of the tree of life or the tree of relationships for anglerfish. And then from there, we ask some questions like, how fast is the traits evolve across this anglerfish group? And one of the early hypotheses is

that maybe the deep sea angler fish just evolved really, really quickly. And that's how they got so weird and freaky. Wait, wait. So are you saying that if you evolve more quickly, you're more likely to look freaky? It can certainly help you look freaky. Yeah. It can get you to a freaky place. Really?

Yeah, especially in fish. And you evolve quickly because you're in a really extreme environment. Is that typically why? Yeah. And when you're in a really extreme environment, I guess the threshold for what works is really, really tight. So you're really constrained. There are only a few solutions.

And if you're not already there when you're in that extreme environment, you really need to get there fast. Otherwise, you go extinct. So when these anglerfishes colonize the deep sea, we thought that, okay, maybe we would see, you know, really rapid rates of evolution because this is a really constraining environment. Is that what you found? No, actually.

What? It was crazy. This is a plot twist. Okay. Yeah, there's a plot. So the pelagic ones that we saw in the video, they're deep water, but they're not. touch on the bottom. They didn't evolve quickly when they got there. It just seems like they were

able to get away with more things. So when you think about evolution, you're taught, like, oh, it's a survival of the fittest. But for fish, in my experience, what I've learned is it's more the survival of the, like, they're like fit enough. That, that rings true across the animal kingdom, certainly in our species. Yeah, it's like, I can do this and it doesn't kill me. And so I can just keep, you know, diverging and evolving these weird new adaptations. And it's, it's not counting against me. So it looks like there was a relaxation of constraints, especially surrounding their skull shape and their eye shape and their body shape in these deep sea kind of pelagic angler fishes. Because they're not competing with other animals? Or like, why would there be fewer

constraints in that environment versus another environment? Yeah, it's possible that there's less density of fishes. So there's less competition. The way that they hunt also changes. So you're not, like, anglofishes aren't chasing down prey in the water column that is waiting for things to be attract this to their lures, and then they'll just grab them. These guys, their whole, like, life is just bobbing around. So you don't want to expend too much energy because you don't know when your next meal is coming. So you want to just make sure you have a big stomach, big jaws, and, you know, do as little else as possible. Sounds like my ideal lifestyle. Yeah, and that's the game. And it turns out there's a lot of ways

to do that. And anglerfishes have explored many of them. Okay, so I've been watching the TikToks of people crying as they watch this anglerfish video, which may be more of an indication of like how we're all just hanging on by a thread right now. But it sounds like you don't think she was risking at all to see the sunlight. Is there another poetic fact you can share about anglerfish that we can tuck in door tackle box, you know, to draw on during dark times? You want poetic facts? I can give you a poetic fact. So when a male ingot fish is born, they don't grow to be those big kind of toothy jawed females that you see instead.

The males are usually either smaller or like these small little pair of. tac poles that attach to them. And when they attach to a female anglerfish, they actually integrate their circulatory system. So the blood is circulating through the female will then begin to circulate through the male. And they'll basically kind of fuse together. And the female basically uses that male as a sperm sac. So yeah, whenever it's done to reproduce, they don't have to look for males. They have them attached. So they spawn together that way. So that's kind of romantic in a way. I mean, they're taking codependency to another level. Exactly. And sometimes female angler fish will have like multiple males kind of attached to them as well.

Oh, good for you, girl. I know, good for her, right? And this is just kind of a way to solve that problem of finding a mate in complete darkness. Corey, I love talking to you about this. Thank you so much. Yeah, anytime. Dr. Corey Evans is an assistant professor of biosciences at Rice University. And that is about all we have time for.

Lots of folks helped make the show happen, including Santiago Flores. Dee Petersman. Samares. Emma Gomez. Jackie Hirschfeld. I'm Flora Lichten. Thanks for listening.