YouTube/Science Fellow
There was plenty about this past year that we’d probably all like to forget. Here at Early Chirp, however, we like to focus on the positive — and there was a lot of good news in 2022 too.
Let’s start with a review of some discoveries that will surely go down in the history books as monumental moments.
Natovenator polydontus
It’s not every year that we get evidence of a previously undiscovered dinosaur species, but it happened this year in Mongolia.
A group of scientists found a near-complete skeleton of the ancient birdlike animal, which they believe lived much of its life in the water and was highly adept at diving to capture prey.
Its name translates to “swimming hunter with many teeth,” which seems pretty appropriate.
Early surgeons
We might think of surgical amputations as a fairly modern medical development, but our collective understanding of the procedure changed a lot in 2022.
Earlier this year, researchers in Borneo uncovered a skeleton that seemed to show a young adult whose leg was amputated some 31,000 years ago.
It’s the earliest limb amputation ever discovered — and the prehistoric patient is believed to have survived for years after the leg was removed.
Centuries-old shipwrecks
Beach erosion has a lot of negative consequences, but it also led to the discovery of a previously hidden shipwreck off the coast of Florida. After a pair of hurricanes battered the Atlantic coast earlier this year, archaeologists identified the wooden ship that is believed to have gone down in the 1800s.
On the other side of the country, archaeologists found the remains of a Spanish galleon that wrecked off the coast of Oregon nearly 200 years earlier. Experts believe it was on a trip from the Philippines to Mexico at the time of the 1693 wreck.
