1 00:00:00,880 --> 00:00:02,880 So, this is a story 2 00:00:02,904 --> 00:00:04,833 about how we know what we know. 3 00:00:05,690 --> 00:00:07,825 It's a story about this woman, 4 00:00:08,611 --> 00:00:10,547 Natalia Rybczynski. 5 00:00:10,912 --> 00:00:12,960 She's a paleobiologist, 6 00:00:12,984 --> 00:00:16,813 which means she specializes in digging up really old dead stuff. 7 00:00:16,837 --> 00:00:20,339 (Audio) Natalia Rybczynski: Yeah, I had someone call me "Dr. Dead Things." 8 00:00:20,363 --> 00:00:22,992 Latif Nasser: And I think she's particularly interesting 9 00:00:23,016 --> 00:00:24,930 because of where she digs that stuff up, 10 00:00:24,954 --> 00:00:29,149 way above the Arctic Circle in the remote Canadian tundra. 11 00:00:29,901 --> 00:00:32,956 Now, one summer day in 2006, 12 00:00:32,980 --> 00:00:36,171 she was at a dig site called the Fyles Leaf Bed, 13 00:00:36,195 --> 00:00:40,773 which is less than 10 degrees latitude away from the magnetic north pole. 14 00:00:40,797 --> 00:00:43,524 (Audio) NR: Really, it's not going to sound very exciting, 15 00:00:43,548 --> 00:00:47,578 because it was a day of walking with your backpack and your GPS 16 00:00:47,602 --> 00:00:51,680 and notebook and just picking up anything that might be a fossil. 17 00:00:51,704 --> 00:00:54,379 LN: And at some point, she noticed something. 18 00:00:54,403 --> 00:00:56,570 (Audio) NR: Rusty, kind of rust-colored, 19 00:00:56,594 --> 00:00:58,529 about the size of the palm of my hand. 20 00:00:58,553 --> 00:01:00,847 It was just lying on the surface. 21 00:01:00,871 --> 00:01:04,323 LN: And at first she thought it was just a splinter of wood, 22 00:01:04,347 --> 00:01:06,640 because that's the sort of thing people had found 23 00:01:06,664 --> 00:01:10,083 at the Fyles Leaf Bed before -- prehistoric plant parts. 24 00:01:10,107 --> 00:01:12,575 But that night, back at camp ... 25 00:01:12,940 --> 00:01:14,869 (Audio) NR: ... I get out the hand lens, 26 00:01:14,893 --> 00:01:17,290 I'm looking a little bit more closely and realizing 27 00:01:17,314 --> 00:01:19,718 it doesn't quite look like this has tree rings. 28 00:01:19,742 --> 00:01:21,306 Maybe it's a preservation thing, 29 00:01:21,330 --> 00:01:23,604 but it looks really like ... 30 00:01:23,628 --> 00:01:24,829 bone. 31 00:01:24,853 --> 00:01:27,742 LN: Huh. So over the next four years, 32 00:01:27,766 --> 00:01:30,700 she went to that spot over and over, 33 00:01:30,724 --> 00:01:36,260 and eventually collected 30 fragments of that exact same bone, 34 00:01:36,284 --> 00:01:37,945 most of them really tiny. 35 00:01:38,522 --> 00:01:42,958 (Audio) NR: It's not a whole lot. It fits in a small Ziploc bag. 36 00:01:42,982 --> 00:01:46,339 LN: And she tried to piece them together like a jigsaw puzzle. 37 00:01:46,941 --> 00:01:48,386 But it was challenging. 38 00:01:48,410 --> 00:01:51,230 (Audio) NR: It's broken up into so many little tiny pieces, 39 00:01:51,254 --> 00:01:55,512 I'm trying to use sand and putty, and it's not looking good. 40 00:01:55,536 --> 00:02:00,703 So finally, we used a 3D surface scanner. 41 00:02:00,727 --> 00:02:02,316 LN: Ooh! NR: Yeah, right? 42 00:02:02,340 --> 00:02:03,780 (Laughter) 43 00:02:03,804 --> 00:02:06,547 LN: It turns out it was way easier to do it virtually. 44 00:02:06,571 --> 00:02:09,341 (Audio) NR: It's kind of magical when it all fits together. 45 00:02:09,365 --> 00:02:11,564 LN: How certain were you that you had it right, 46 00:02:11,588 --> 00:02:13,733 that you had put it together in the right way? 47 00:02:13,757 --> 00:02:16,771 Was there a potential that you'd put it together a different way 48 00:02:16,795 --> 00:02:18,737 and have, like, a parakeet or something? 49 00:02:18,761 --> 00:02:20,126 (Laughter) 50 00:02:20,150 --> 00:02:23,790 (Audio) NR: (Laughs) Um, no. No, we got this. 51 00:02:24,242 --> 00:02:28,083 LN: What she had, she discovered, was a tibia, a leg bone, 52 00:02:28,107 --> 00:02:32,107 and specifically, one that belonged to a cloven-hoofed mammal, 53 00:02:32,131 --> 00:02:34,980 so something like a cow or a sheep. 54 00:02:35,004 --> 00:02:37,464 But it couldn't have been either of those. 55 00:02:37,488 --> 00:02:39,271 It was just too big. 56 00:02:39,822 --> 00:02:43,886 (Audio) NR: The size of this thing, it was huge. It's a really big animal. 57 00:02:43,910 --> 00:02:46,768 LN: So what animal could it be? 58 00:02:47,291 --> 00:02:49,871 Having hit a wall, she showed one of the fragments 59 00:02:49,895 --> 00:02:52,467 to some colleagues of hers in Colorado, 60 00:02:52,491 --> 00:02:53,751 and they had an idea. 61 00:02:54,244 --> 00:02:59,291 (Audio) NR: We took a saw, and we nicked just the edge of it, 62 00:02:59,315 --> 00:03:05,706 and there was this really interesting smell that comes from it. 63 00:03:06,521 --> 00:03:09,284 LN: It smelled kind of like singed flesh. 64 00:03:09,308 --> 00:03:11,941 It was a smell that Natalia recognized 65 00:03:11,965 --> 00:03:15,908 from cutting up skulls in her gross anatomy lab: 66 00:03:15,932 --> 00:03:17,096 collagen. 67 00:03:17,120 --> 00:03:19,777 Collagen is what gives structure to our bones. 68 00:03:19,801 --> 00:03:21,959 And usually, after so many years, 69 00:03:21,983 --> 00:03:23,134 it breaks down. 70 00:03:23,158 --> 00:03:27,506 But in this case, the Arctic had acted like a natural freezer and preserved it. 71 00:03:28,190 --> 00:03:31,813 Then a year or two later, Natalia was at a conference in Bristol, 72 00:03:31,837 --> 00:03:35,031 and she saw that a colleague of hers named Mike Buckley 73 00:03:35,055 --> 00:03:40,895 was demoing this new process that he called "collagen fingerprinting." 74 00:03:41,284 --> 00:03:44,927 It turns out that different species have slightly different structures 75 00:03:44,951 --> 00:03:46,103 of collagen, 76 00:03:46,127 --> 00:03:48,943 so if you get a collagen profile of an unknown bone, 77 00:03:48,967 --> 00:03:51,161 you can compare it to those of known species, 78 00:03:51,185 --> 00:03:53,723 and, who knows, maybe you get a match. 79 00:03:54,546 --> 00:03:57,825 So she shipped him one of the fragments, 80 00:03:57,849 --> 00:03:59,143 FedEx. 81 00:03:59,167 --> 00:04:02,977 (Audio) NR: Yeah, you want to track it. It's kind of important. 82 00:04:03,001 --> 00:04:04,254 (Laughter) 83 00:04:04,278 --> 00:04:05,469 LN: And he processed it, 84 00:04:05,493 --> 00:04:09,855 and compared it to 37 known and modern-day mammal species. 85 00:04:10,674 --> 00:04:11,951 And he found a match. 86 00:04:12,824 --> 00:04:17,436 It turns out that the 3.5 million-year-old bone 87 00:04:17,460 --> 00:04:21,090 that Natalia had dug out of the High Arctic 88 00:04:21,729 --> 00:04:22,923 belonged to ... 89 00:04:24,031 --> 00:04:25,348 a camel. 90 00:04:25,372 --> 00:04:27,103 (Laughter) 91 00:04:27,127 --> 00:04:31,425 (Audio) NR: And I'm thinking, what? That's amazing -- if it's true. 92 00:04:31,449 --> 00:04:33,501 LN: So they tested a bunch of the fragments, 93 00:04:33,525 --> 00:04:35,769 and they got the same result for each one. 94 00:04:36,197 --> 00:04:41,617 However, based on the size of the bone that they found, 95 00:04:41,641 --> 00:04:48,004 it meant that this camel was 30 percent larger than modern-day camels. 96 00:04:48,028 --> 00:04:51,218 So this camel would have been about nine feet tall, 97 00:04:51,242 --> 00:04:52,440 weighed around a ton. 98 00:04:52,464 --> 00:04:53,515 (Audience reacts) 99 00:04:53,539 --> 00:04:54,588 Yeah. 100 00:04:54,612 --> 00:04:58,105 Natalia had found a Giant Arctic camel. 101 00:04:58,129 --> 00:05:00,271 (Laughter) 102 00:05:02,396 --> 00:05:04,714 Now, when you hear the word "camel," 103 00:05:04,738 --> 00:05:08,663 what may come to mind is one of these, 104 00:05:09,507 --> 00:05:12,871 the Bactrian camel of East and Central Asia. 105 00:05:12,895 --> 00:05:16,380 But chances are the postcard image you have in your brain 106 00:05:16,404 --> 00:05:19,959 is one of these, the dromedary, 107 00:05:19,983 --> 00:05:22,411 quintessential desert creature -- 108 00:05:22,435 --> 00:05:26,754 hangs out in sandy, hot places like the Middle East and the Sahara, 109 00:05:26,778 --> 00:05:28,258 has a big old hump on its back 110 00:05:28,282 --> 00:05:30,799 for storing water for those long desert treks, 111 00:05:30,823 --> 00:05:34,204 has big, broad feet to help it tromp over sand dunes. 112 00:05:34,918 --> 00:05:40,930 So how on earth would one of these guys end up in the High Arctic? 113 00:05:41,719 --> 00:05:44,506 Well, scientists have known for a long time, turns out, 114 00:05:44,530 --> 00:05:47,092 even before Natalia's discovery, 115 00:05:47,116 --> 00:05:52,734 that camels are actually originally American. 116 00:05:52,758 --> 00:05:58,458 (Music: The Star-Spangled Banner) 117 00:05:58,482 --> 00:05:59,941 (Laughter) 118 00:05:59,965 --> 00:06:01,496 They started here. 119 00:06:01,520 --> 00:06:06,354 For nearly 40 of the 45 million years that camels have been around, 120 00:06:06,378 --> 00:06:09,537 you could only find them in North America, 121 00:06:09,561 --> 00:06:12,814 around 20 different species, maybe more. 122 00:06:12,838 --> 00:06:16,083 (Audio) LN: If I put them all in a lineup, would they look different? 123 00:06:16,107 --> 00:06:18,542 NR: Yeah, you're going to have different body sizes. 124 00:06:18,566 --> 00:06:20,478 You'll have some with really long necks, 125 00:06:20,502 --> 00:06:22,747 so they're actually functionally like giraffes. 126 00:06:23,345 --> 00:06:26,417 LN: Some had snouts, like crocodiles. 127 00:06:26,441 --> 00:06:30,025 (Audio) NR: The really primitive, early ones would have been really small, 128 00:06:30,049 --> 00:06:32,552 almost like rabbits. 129 00:06:32,576 --> 00:06:35,423 LN: What? Rabbit-sized camels? 130 00:06:35,447 --> 00:06:36,884 (Audio) NR: The earliest ones. 131 00:06:36,908 --> 00:06:39,143 So those ones you probably would not recognize. 132 00:06:39,167 --> 00:06:41,357 LN: Oh my God, I want a pet rabbit-camel. 133 00:06:41,381 --> 00:06:43,425 (Audio) NR: I know, wouldn't that be great? 134 00:06:43,449 --> 00:06:44,621 (Laughter) 135 00:06:44,645 --> 00:06:47,304 LN: And then about three to seven million years ago, 136 00:06:47,328 --> 00:06:50,136 one branch of camels went down to South America, 137 00:06:50,160 --> 00:06:53,114 where they became llamas and alpacas, 138 00:06:53,138 --> 00:06:56,060 and another branch crossed over the Bering Land Bridge 139 00:06:56,084 --> 00:06:57,520 into Asia and Africa. 140 00:06:57,544 --> 00:06:59,965 And then around the end of the last ice age, 141 00:06:59,989 --> 00:07:03,088 North American camels went extinct. 142 00:07:03,893 --> 00:07:06,313 So, scientists knew all of that already, 143 00:07:06,337 --> 00:07:12,413 but it still doesn't fully explain how Natalia found one so far north. 144 00:07:12,437 --> 00:07:17,111 Like, this is, temperature-wise, the polar opposite of the Sahara. 145 00:07:17,135 --> 00:07:19,636 Now to be fair, 146 00:07:19,660 --> 00:07:21,343 three and a half million years ago, 147 00:07:21,367 --> 00:07:25,466 it was on average 22 degrees Celsius warmer than it is now. 148 00:07:25,490 --> 00:07:28,425 So it would have been boreal forest, 149 00:07:28,449 --> 00:07:32,363 so more like the Yukon or Siberia today. 150 00:07:32,853 --> 00:07:36,559 But still, like, they would have six-month-long winters 151 00:07:36,583 --> 00:07:38,806 where the ponds would freeze over. 152 00:07:38,830 --> 00:07:40,298 You'd have blizzards. 153 00:07:40,322 --> 00:07:43,933 You'd have 24 hours a day of straight darkness. 154 00:07:43,957 --> 00:07:46,938 Like, how ... How? 155 00:07:46,962 --> 00:07:51,120 How is it that one of these Saharan superstars 156 00:07:51,144 --> 00:07:54,375 could ever have survived those arctic conditions? 157 00:07:54,399 --> 00:07:57,375 (Laughter) 158 00:07:57,399 --> 00:08:01,087 Natalia and her colleagues think they have an answer. 159 00:08:01,632 --> 00:08:03,642 And it's kind of brilliant. 160 00:08:04,700 --> 00:08:11,233 What if the very features that we imagine make the camel so well-suited 161 00:08:11,257 --> 00:08:13,225 to places like the Sahara, 162 00:08:13,249 --> 00:08:16,661 actually evolved to help it get through the winter? 163 00:08:17,448 --> 00:08:22,145 What if those broad feet were meant to tromp not over sand, 164 00:08:22,169 --> 00:08:25,189 but over snow, like a pair of snowshoes? 165 00:08:25,792 --> 00:08:28,593 What if that hump -- which, huge news to me, 166 00:08:28,617 --> 00:08:30,991 does not contain water, it contains fat -- 167 00:08:31,015 --> 00:08:32,594 (Laughter) 168 00:08:32,618 --> 00:08:36,219 was there to help the camel get through that six-month-long winter, 169 00:08:36,243 --> 00:08:37,920 when food was scarce? 170 00:08:37,944 --> 00:08:41,657 And then, only later, long after it crossed over the land bridge 171 00:08:41,681 --> 00:08:46,099 did it retrofit those winter features for a hot desert environment? 172 00:08:46,123 --> 00:08:50,197 Like, for instance, the hump may be helpful to camels in hotter climes 173 00:08:50,221 --> 00:08:52,693 because having all your fat in one place, 174 00:08:52,717 --> 00:08:55,458 like a, you know, fat backpack, 175 00:08:55,482 --> 00:08:58,010 means that you don't have to have that insulation 176 00:08:58,034 --> 00:08:59,793 all over the rest of your body. 177 00:08:59,817 --> 00:09:02,067 So it helps heat dissipate easier. 178 00:09:02,555 --> 00:09:05,396 It's this crazy idea, 179 00:09:05,420 --> 00:09:10,967 that what seems like proof of the camel's quintessential desert nature 180 00:09:10,991 --> 00:09:14,691 could actually be proof of its High Arctic past. 181 00:09:15,832 --> 00:09:19,542 Now, I'm not the first person to tell this story. 182 00:09:19,566 --> 00:09:24,516 Others have told it as a way to marvel at evolutionary biology 183 00:09:24,540 --> 00:09:27,893 or as a keyhole into the future of climate change. 184 00:09:28,855 --> 00:09:31,092 But I love it for a totally different reason. 185 00:09:31,751 --> 00:09:34,513 For me, it's a story about us, 186 00:09:34,537 --> 00:09:36,505 about how we see the world 187 00:09:36,529 --> 00:09:38,833 and about how that changes. 188 00:09:39,658 --> 00:09:43,030 So I was trained as a historian. 189 00:09:43,054 --> 00:09:47,307 And I've learned that, actually, a lot of scientists are historians, too. 190 00:09:47,331 --> 00:09:48,880 They make sense of the past. 191 00:09:48,904 --> 00:09:54,229 They tell the history of our universe, of our planet, of life on this planet. 192 00:09:54,741 --> 00:09:56,218 And as a historian, 193 00:09:56,242 --> 00:10:00,613 you start with an idea in your mind of how the story goes. 194 00:10:01,196 --> 00:10:03,681 (Audio) NR: We make up stories and we stick with it, 195 00:10:03,705 --> 00:10:05,427 like the camel in the desert, right? 196 00:10:05,451 --> 00:10:07,897 That's a great story! It's totally adapted for that. 197 00:10:07,921 --> 00:10:10,150 Clearly, it always lived there. 198 00:10:10,174 --> 00:10:14,476 LN: But at any moment, you could uncover some tiny bit of evidence. 199 00:10:14,500 --> 00:10:16,699 You could learn some tiny thing 200 00:10:16,723 --> 00:10:20,682 that forces you to reframe everything you thought you knew. 201 00:10:20,706 --> 00:10:24,484 Like, in this case, this one scientist finds this one shard 202 00:10:24,508 --> 00:10:26,255 of what she thought was wood, 203 00:10:26,279 --> 00:10:31,317 and because of that, science has a totally new and totally counterintuitive theory 204 00:10:31,341 --> 00:10:34,956 about why this absurd Dr. Seuss-looking creature 205 00:10:34,980 --> 00:10:36,512 looks the way it does. 206 00:10:36,536 --> 00:10:41,940 And for me, it completely upended the way I think of the camel. 207 00:10:41,964 --> 00:10:46,346 It went from being this ridiculously niche creature 208 00:10:46,370 --> 00:10:48,719 suited only to this one specific environment, 209 00:10:48,743 --> 00:10:54,031 to being this world traveler that just happens to be in the Sahara, 210 00:10:54,055 --> 00:10:57,180 and could end up virtually anywhere. 211 00:10:57,880 --> 00:11:03,855 (Applause) 212 00:11:14,396 --> 00:11:15,854 This is Azuri. 213 00:11:16,589 --> 00:11:19,469 Azuri, hi, how are you doing? 214 00:11:19,493 --> 00:11:22,041 OK, here, I've got one of these for you here. 215 00:11:22,065 --> 00:11:24,111 (Laughter) 216 00:11:24,135 --> 00:11:28,318 So Azuri is on a break from her regular gig 217 00:11:28,342 --> 00:11:30,565 at the Radio City Music Hall. 218 00:11:30,589 --> 00:11:32,738 (Laughter) 219 00:11:32,762 --> 00:11:34,344 That's not even a joke. 220 00:11:34,717 --> 00:11:36,454 Anyway -- 221 00:11:36,478 --> 00:11:40,835 But really, Azuri is here as a living reminder 222 00:11:40,859 --> 00:11:45,106 that the story of our world is a dynamic one. 223 00:11:45,130 --> 00:11:49,837 It requires our willingness to readjust, to reimagine. 224 00:11:49,861 --> 00:11:54,138 (Laughter) 225 00:11:54,162 --> 00:11:55,613 Right, Azuri? 226 00:11:55,637 --> 00:12:02,053 And, really, that we're all just one shard of bone away 227 00:12:02,077 --> 00:12:04,307 from seeing the world anew. 228 00:12:04,926 --> 00:12:06,086 Thank you very much. 229 00:12:06,110 --> 00:12:12,531 (Applause)