The world’s oldest fossilised forest was uncovered in Somerset last week. We head to palaeobotanist, Dr Christopher Berry’s, lab at Cardiff University to learn about these cladoxylopsids. They lived 390 million years ago and although they are not the ancestors of today’s trees, they reveal some extraordinary evolutionary secrets.
Also, Marnie speaks to Dr Chris Thorogood of the University of Oxford Botanic Gardens about his new book Pathless Forest: The Quest to Save the World’s Largest Flowers. Called “Rafflesia” plants and found in the remotest parts of South East Asia, their flowers burst from the rain forest floor the size of pumpkins and are critically endangered. Chris talks of his world of extreme fieldwork and hair-raising expeditions, braving leeches, lizards and lethal forest swamps, to discover the rarest of rare blooms.
Plus, the Wildlife Trust’s Making Friends with Molluscs campaign starts today, and I’m sure many gardeners will declare this an impossible task! We visit some allotments in Bristol to find out how people are managing slug and snail populations. And chat to Brian Eversham from the Trust of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire, who explains why these garden creatures should be considered our friends, not foes.
And finally, Dr Stewart Husband from last week’s programme returns to answer more of your burning questions about your tap water.
Protein folding; Hyabusa sample return; Holiday Covid testing
26/11/2020
COVID Operation Moonshot; Big Compost Experiment; Gulf of Mexico meteorite and new life
mRNA vaccinations; bacterial space miners; Artemis accords
COVID in families; earthquake under Aegean Sea; Camilla Pang wins science book prize
A new saliva gland, Bill Bryson on the Human Body, and the return of the Dust Bowl
COVID reinfections, Susannah Cahalan questions psychiatry and sense of smell and COVID
Test and trace - how the UK compares to the rest of the world; Linda Scott's book The Double X Economy
08/10/2020
Brian May's Cosmic Clouds 3-D; How fish move between waterbodies and Jim Al-Khalili's take on physics
Royal Society Science Book Prize - Gaia Vince; Biodiversity loss and Science Museum mystery object
COVID-19 in Winter, Acoustics of Stonehenge and Dog years
Coronavirus: The types of vaccine; How the UK is scaling up vaccine production
Bird and dinosaur skull evolution; the wonders of yeast and Science Museum mystery object
What does the science say about the COVID risks of schools reopening? Dolphin ear autopsy
Smart bricks, The Royal Academy of Engineering awards for pandemic engineering solutions and detecting SARS-Cov-2 in sewage
Land use and zoonoses, California's earthquake risk and the Tuatara genome
How sperm swim, the theory of soil & the Big Compost Experiment update
Science Museum mystery objects; home security camera security and Rosalind Franklin at 100
Pre-prints over peer review during the COVID pandemic and roads and birds
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