Spanning The Globe May 2026
- marketingc8
- May 13
- 3 min read
It’s time to go spanning the globe for anatomy news and notes!
Walking Snake
You read that right. Not talking snakes—walking snakes.
According to an article in Science Daily, a fossil found in Argentina is helping scientists slither up on a better understanding of how snakes evolved. The specimen they found belongs to an ancient, rear-limbed snake that lived nearly 100 million years ago. The species was Najesh rionegrina and it revealed that early snakes held onto their hindlimbs for a long time before the rise of the limbless snakes we know today.
“The findings also challenged a popular older idea about snake origins. Instead of beginning as small burrowers, the evidence from Najash pointed to ancestors of modern snakes that were larger-bodied animals with wide mouths. The fossils also showed that early snakes held onto their hindlimbs for a long time before the rise of the mostly limbless snakes alive today,” the article states.
“Our findings support the idea that the ancestors of modern snakes were big-bodied and big-mouthed—instead of small burrowing forms as previously thought,” explained Fernando Garberoglio, from the Fundación Azara at Universidad Maimónides, in Buenos Aires, Argentina and lead author on the study.
Fernando Garberoglio has been studying this issue for quite some time. He’s quoted extensively in a 2019 New York Times article about snakes going limbless.
“Evolutionary Compromise”
Speaking of evolution, we loved this article in News Drum, running down the ways in which the human body is a “patchwork” of evolutionary compromise.
The spine, for instance, should have done a better job adapting when we went bipedal. As quadrupedal tree-dwellers, the spine worked as a “flexible beam” to allow for smooth movement from branch to branch but not many changes were made as we asked the spine to support more body weight and to also keep us somewhat flexible. The result is herniated discs and degenerative changes that affect the spine’s most important function—protecting the spinal cord.
Then there’s the neck and the laryngeal nerve. The nerve controls the body’s rest and digest functions. It’s a branch of the vagus nerve. It also connects the brain to the larynx. Then why does it descend from the brain to the chest, and then loop around back to the voice box? Why? “This detour is not a clever design, but a historical leftover from our fish-like ancestors when the nerve took a straightforward path around the gill arches. As necks lengthened over evolutionary time, the nerve was stretched rather than rerouted,” the article states.
And then there’s the pelvis. The problem? Childbirth. So, women, this one’s for you. The pelvis is trying to balance “two competing demands: efficient bipedal walking and birthing large-brained infants.”
This tension, the article points out, “has shaped not only anatomy but also social behavior, encouraging cooperative care and cultural adaptations around childbirth.”
Weird Stuff
And we highly recommend this brief video from CBC News: “The weird stuff space does to the human body.”
Who wasn’t fascinated by the recent journey of the Artemis II mission around the moon and back? It was billed as one of the test missions on the road to developing more human presence on the moon and to help us reach Mars.
NASA, the video highlights, used the mission (in part) to keep learning about space travel’s impact on how we respond to life in outer space.
On the recent voyage, the spaceship carried six sensors to measure radiation exposure and the four astronauts wore a wrist gadget called AVATAR, A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response that allowed scientists to compare how astronaut bone marrow fared during the journey. The work, in fact, might help with treatments for those who need radiation therapy here on Earth.
Scientists also studied the impact of space travel on the immune system. They’ve know that space will “reactivate” viruses, such as shingles, that are dormant on Earth. So all the astronauts took dry saliva samples routinely for a record of viral activity.
Another a big part of Artemis was measuring how the brain responded to nine days in space with four people crammed in a capsule the size of a minivan. So the astronauts wore a space-age smart watch called Archer. The data collected measured sleep quality and movement patterns; psychological stress; cognitive performance; and teamwork dynamics.
Of course, a nine-day flight is one thing. A flight to Mars is estimated to take seven to nine months.
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