A Dinosaur Appears to Have Died on the Exact Spot They Later Built a Dinosaur Museum, Burying Its Fossil Underneath It
As the Denver Museum of Nature and Science explained in Catalyst, its online magazine, the ancient bone fragment was buried some 763 feet below the institution's parking lot, making it the oldest and deepest such fossil to be discovered within city limits.
Beyond the coincidence of finding a dino bone underneath a museum of natural history, however, the way the bone was found also defies belief.
Back in January of this year, researchers began drilling underneath the museum's parking lot to see if Earth's subsurface temperatures could heat and cool it sustainably. This "geothermal heating," as it's called, uses the same principle as hot springs, making this now-experimental form of renewable energy one of the oldest in the world.
Once the two drill rigs got going, the scientists behind the project — which was carried out with a $250,000 grant from Colorado's governor, Jared Polis — decided to see what else they could find when digging deep into the Earth's crust.
As a paper about the incredible find in the Rocky Mountain Geology journal explains, the scientists not only discovered interesting geological samples within the 2.5-inch sample core, but also, by pure chance, the nearly 70-million-year-old partial dinosaur bone.
"It's basically like winning the lottery and getting struck by lightning on the same day," explained museum geology curator James Hagadorn in an interview with Catalyst. "No one could have predicted that this little square foot of land where we started drilling would actually contain a dinosaur bone beneath it!"
Naturally, it took some fine-tuned research to determine that the bone was, in fact, from a dinosaur — and even still, the researchers behind the find can't say for sure what exact species it was or how it died. Ultimately, as explained in the Rocky Mountain Geology paper, the bone was determined to be a vertebral fragment from an ornithopod, a broad paleontological classification for bipedal, herbivorous dinosaurs from the Cretaceous period.
As the museum detailed in a press release, the find wasn't just incredible because of the sheer chance of it all.
"This fossil comes from an era just before the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs," Hagadorn, the museum's geology curator, explained. "This is a scientifically and historically thrilling find."
As Rocky Mountain Geology notes, these sorts of "urban paleontological discoveries" are indeed rare — but when they do happen, they "ignite public interest in science and deepen our connection to nature."
More on dinosaurs: Paleontologists Find Skeleton That Weirdly Looks Exactly Like Barney the Purple Dinosaur
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Medscape
23 minutes ago
- Medscape
Potential Practice-Changer in Cystectomy Care
A 30-day course of prophylactic antibiotics following robot-assisted radical cystectomy significantly reduces the incidence of urinary tract infections (UTIs) and related complications, researchers have found. However, experts urge caution in interpreting the findings due to methodological limitations of the study. The researchers, led by Ahmed A. Hussein, MD, PhD, of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York, randomized 77 patients undergoing robot-assisted radical cystectomy to receive either standard postoperative care or a 30-day course of oral antibiotics — either trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole or nitrofurantoin — starting at discharge. Ahmed A. Hussein, MD, PhD The primary endpoint was the occurrence of symptomatic UTIs within 90 days, defined by a positive urine culture (> 105 CFU/mL) and clinical symptoms such as fever or flank pain. Dramatic Reduction in UTIs, Costs None of the 37 patients in the antibiotic group developed a UTI within 90 days compared with 10 of 40 patients (25%) in the group who received standard care ( P < .001). The antibiotic group also experienced significantly fewer infectious complications within 90 days of the procedure or discharge (14% vs 43%; P = .006) and readmissions related to infection (5% vs 30%; P = .007). The number needed to treat to prevent one UTI was calculated at 4 (95% CI, 2.5-7.0). 'This is very significant, as infectious complications are the most common after cystectomy and the main reason for readmission within 30 days of surgery. To bring this down from 25% to 0% improves patient care and saves a lot of resources for a procedure that is known for significant morbidity and for a very vulnerable patient population,' said Hussein, whose group published their findings in the Journal of Urology . The approach led to significant savings. Hussein and his colleagues found the mean cost of care after the procedure fell by roughly $9000 in the antibiotic group ( P =.007), with total 90-day costs more than $8000 lower ( P = .022). This figure included expenditures associated with readmissions, any additional procedures, medications, and drains. No increase in adverse events or high-grade complications was observed in the antibiotic arm, the researchers reported. Hussein said he believed the cost savings are generalizable to other institutions and health systems. 'Radical cystectomy is a highly morbid procedure with significant rate of complications regardless of open or robotic approach. Infections remain very significant,' he said. 'While the choice of antibiotic may vary based on the local hospital antibiograms, we believe the approach — should be equally effective. We encourage all centers considering this approach to review their retrospective data and to determine the most appropriate antibiotic for their patient population,' he added. Editorial Perspective: Promising but Preliminary Nicholas H. Chakiryan, MD, from the Department of Urology, Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Oregon, noted the lack of placebo control and blinding in the study may have introduced bias. 'If clinicians know a patient is on antibiotics, they may be less likely to diagnose a UTI,' he wrote in a commentary on the study. In a separate commentary, Luigi Nocera, MD, from ASST Spedali Civili in Brescia, and Alessandro Viti, MD, from Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele in Milan, both in Italy, echoed these concerns and highlighted the gender imbalance between groups. More women, who are generally at higher risk for UTIs, were in the arm that received standard care (35% vs 14%; P = .036). They also pointed to the exclusion of patients with renal dysfunction and the absence of long-term data on antimicrobial resistance. 'Although extended antibiotic prophylaxis following [robotic cystectomy] appears to significantly reduce infectious morbidity and healthcare costs, its routine adoption requires caution,' Nocera and Viti wrote. 'Future large-scale, blinded, placebo-controlled trials with proper stratification are essential to guide evidence-based clinical practice without undermining antibiotic stewardship principles.' Methodological Rigor and Limitations 'The study employed a robust definition of UTI, requiring both microbiological and clinical criteria, which strengthens its validity compared to prior studies that included asymptomatic bacteriuria,' Nocera and Viti wrote. All patients received intravenous ertapenem at anesthesia induction, and only 4% had ureteral stents. Compliance with the antibiotic regimen was high, with 68% of patients completing the full 30-day course. 'Before we designed the RCT [randomized controlled trial], we actually reviewed our retrospective data that were published in the Journal of Endourology ,' Hussein said. 'So this RCT was based on the sensitivities that our previous patient had, and therefore, we were expecting that these chosen antibiotics would work. There was really no significant difference among the two groups when it comes to adverse events.' Despite its limitations, the trial provides the highest level of evidence to date supporting extended antibiotic prophylaxis after cystectomy. 'This represents the highest quality data on the subject and is likely to change practice for many urologic oncologists, myself included,' Chakiryan wrote. Still, widespread adoption should await confirmation from larger, multicenter, placebo-controlled trials, he added. 'This study moves the needle,' he wrote, 'but we're not at the finish line yet.' The sources cited in this story reported having no relevant financial conflicts of interest.
Fast Company
an hour ago
- Fast Company
‘Johnny Mnemonic' predicted our addictive digital future
In the mid-1990s, Hollywood began trying to envision the internet (sometimes called the 'information superhighway') and its implications for life and culture. Some of its attempts have aged better than others. Perhaps the most thoughtful is the 1995 film Johnny Mnemonic, the screenplay for which was written by cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson, based on his 1981 short story. The film tells the story of Johnny (played by Keanu Reeves), whose vocation is couriering large amounts of data uploaded to a digital memory bank installed in his brain. As Johnny is asked to carry more and more data, his memory bank crowds out or burns away his own organic memories. Desperate to earn enough for a brain operation to restore them, he agrees to a final, dangerously large data haul that may cost him his life. Johnny Mnemonic brought Gibson's projections of our online future to millions who might never have encountered them in his books. A fan of Gibson's books (especially Neuromancer), I remember watching the movie in the mid-2000s and thinking that its effort to visualize and expand the world of the short story felt plasticky and forced. Critics at the time saw something similar, with The New York Times calling it 'incomprehensible' and 'visually garish,' Variety condemning it as a 'confused mess of sci-fi clichés,' and Roger Ebert awarding it just two out of four stars. But in 2025, Johnny Mnemonic hits me differently. The internet is 30-some years old, and many of Gibson's most prescient ideas have now been more fully realized. If Johnny Mnemonic got some of the details wrong, its larger metaphorical themes of tech addiction, transhumanism, and our drift toward digital spaces have only become more clear. I think Gibson was feeling the zeitgeist of a future moment when we all have to decide how much of our organic lives we're willing to give away as our digital lives grow larger. This story is part of 1995 Week, where we'll revisit some of the most interesting, unexpected, and confounding developments in tech 30 years ago. This tension between digital and organic memory arguably began at the turn of the century, when Google established itself as the de facto directory of the information available online. Suddenly, we had access to a vast public store of shared knowledge, data, and content. Studies soon showed that people were forgoing committing information to (organic) memory because they knew it was readily available via Google. Researchers from Columbia, Harvard, and the University of Wisconsin discovered the 'Google Effect' in a 2011 study, which showed that people are far more likely to remember where data is stored than the actual data itself. Increasingly, the value of consumer tech products seems to be measured by their ability to addict—by how much of the user's time and brain space they can claim. Addiction hijacks the brain, reserving more and more time and attention for the object of desire. Every major technology wave in the last three decades has resulted in increased dependency on digital devices and content. Mobile phones proved remarkably addictive. A number of recent studies peg our daily use at between 3.5 and 4.5 hours per day. Pew Research found in early 2024 that 16- to 24-year-olds (tomorrow's adults) often spend more than six hours a day looking at their smartphones. Numerous studies have shown strong correlations between smartphone addiction and mental and physical health problems, including anxiety, depression, poor sleep, and academic struggles. Mobile phone makers have been forced to add features to help people moderate their screen time, but usage continues to rise. The social media revolution in the 2010s introduced highly addictive digital spaces where almost three-fourths of Americans now spend an average of 2 hours and 10 minutes per day (and that's just a third of their total online time). The addictiveness was and is a feature, not a bug. 'The thought process that went into building these applications . . . was all about: 'How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?'' Facebook founding president Sean Parker said at an Axios event in 2017. Congress has introduced several bills to restrict addictive design, but none have passed. In the mid-2010s, Facebook discovered that angry, hyperpartisan content was even more potent catnip for keeping people scrolling and posting. In the 2020s, TikTok 's AI algorithm set a new standard for addictiveness. It processes thousands of signals indicating a user's tastes and beliefs to serve a tailor-fit stream of short videos designed to keep them swiping. The app reached 2.05 billion users worldwide in 2024, with users averaging around an hour per day. A 2024 Pew Research report found that about 58% of U.S. teens use TikTok daily, including 17% who said they use it 'almost constantly.' These tech waves build on each other. Internet usage increased with mobile devices; mobile usage increased with the social web. Generative AI apps may prove even more addictive and intrusive. OpenAI's ChatGPT is the fastest-growing consumer app in history, amassing 100 million users just two months after launching in late November 2022, and 500 million weekly active users by March 2025. ChatGPT generates everything from computer code and companionship to custom images and video. Internet sites and social platforms no longer rely strictly on human-created content—they'll soon generate much of it using AI. This might be a personalized companion, a business coach, or even a version of a loved one who's gone, like the ghostly AI character who advises Johnny in the film. This is likely to further increase the share of our time spent in digital spaces. These technologies capture our brains by capturing our attention, but the tech industry is already developing devices that capture space in our physical bodies—just like Johnny's memory bank. Neuralink's brain–computer interface (BCI) is implanted in the brain and can translate brain activity to communicate with external tech devices. In the near future, we may choose to use such interfaces to augment our brains with specialized knowledge bases or connect 'memory prosthetics' that allow us to store, retrieve, or even offload memories digitally. Some in AI circles even believe the only way humans can stay relevant in the age of AI is by integrating AI models with their brains. Human–computer fusion is a major theme in Gibson's work. In Neuromancer (arguably Gibson's most revered book), the protagonist Case has a bodyguard/sidekick named Molly who has implanted cybernetic eyes that see in the dark, display data to her, and improve her spatial vision during fights. His characters often use 'dermal sockets' in the skull behind the ear to gain new skills (like operating weapons or vehicles). Case and Johnny use these neural interfaces to plug their brains and nervous systems into an alternative, digital world referred to as 'cyberspace' or 'the matrix.' The best-known description of this realm comes from Neuromancer: 'A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation . . . A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.' In the decades after Johnny Mnemonic, tech companies would invest heavily in developing virtual reality spaces for both consumers and businesses. Companies like Second Life, Microsoft, Magic Leap, Oculus Rift, and more recently Meta and Apple, have taken up the chase. But so far, the tech industry's attempts at creating entertaining, social, and functional digital spaces have failed to go mainstream. After Facebook sunk billions into building the 'metaverse'—even appropriating part of the term as its company name—mainstream consumers decided it wasn't the new digital 'town square' and not a place they wanted to spend their time. But that was mainly due to shortcomings in the hardware and software, not a cultural rejection (like with video phones or Google Glass). As extended reality (XR) hardware gets smaller, more powerful, and more comfortable, and digital experiences become more believable, XR could yet go mainstream. It could still become another wave of addictive technology that traps users in digital space. Gibson's presentation of technology in Johnny Mnemonic betrays an awareness of its addictive qualities. Johnny's last and biggest courier job looks like a drug deal. He meets a crew of Chinese underworld figures in a Beijing hotel room to pick up the data. The upload procedure itself, with its careful assortment of digital paraphernalia, smacks of an allegory to administering a dangerous drug like heroin. Because Johnny lacked enough space in his memory bank for the data, his post-upload reaction looks like an overdose. His body shakes. He grinds his teeth. He perspires heavily. After staggering to the bathroom, he's physically jolted by hallucinatory flashes of the data as it bursts through the limits of his memory bank and into his brain. Staring into the mirror, he discovers his nose is bleeding. Later, Johnny's love interest, Jane (Dina Meyer) is shown to suffer from a tech-related disease. She has a system of interconnected contact points on her inner forearm—like the track marks of a junkie. She suffers from a condition called NAS (nerve attenuation syndrome), or the 'black shakes,' a neurological disorder caused by overexposure to computers and other electronics. Asked for the cause of NAS, Henry Rollins's Spider character (an anti-corporate activist and underground cybernetic doctor) gestures around at all the electronic equipment in his lab and huffs: 'All this . . . technological civilization, but we still have all this shit 'cuz we can't live without it!' Later in the film, an associate named J-Bone (Ice-T) informs Johnny that the data he's carrying is actually the cure for NAS, complete with clinical trials data, and the property of a big pharma multinational. The company, Pharmakom Industries, had been hiding the cure from the public to continue selling drug treatments for the disease's symptoms. That too has a prophetic ring. In 2025, I already reserve a large part of my cognitive capacity for my online, digital life. Most of us do, and we're already shouldering a heavy cognitive load of digital information—and paying for it. We're more stressed, depressed, isolated, and lonely. As digital devices like Neuralink bring the digital world even closer to our brains, the side effects may become more visceral. By giving up part of his brain to someone else's data, Johnny gave up part of his memories. He gave up part of his identity—part of himself. At times, as data burst from the limits of his memory bank, pieces of it flashed in his mind like broken images and mingled with flashes of his own, real memories. One day, an AI implant may introduce a foreign intelligence into our brains that mixes with our organic, 'earned' knowledge and experience. Did Johnny ever wonder where the digital part of him ended and his real self began? Will we?
Medscape
an hour ago
- Medscape
Environmentally Friendly Inhalers Fall Short on Patient Tolerance
Changing to a dry powder inhaler (DPI) was associated with more healthcare use by adult patients with asthma, based on data from approximately 260,000 individuals. The Veterans Health Administration adopted a formulary change in 2021 that switched from the standard budesonide-formoterol metered-dose therapy to fluticasone-salmeterol dry powder therapy, but differences in patient outcomes after the change have not been well-studied, wrote Alexander Rabin, MD, of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and colleagues. The change affected hundreds of thousands of veterans, and the researchers wanted to understand how this large-scale shift in prescribing affected clinical outcomes, Rabin said in an interview. The formulary change was driven by a contract renegotiation and cost considerations rather than environmental concerns, but there is great interest in understanding differences in clinical outcomes between metered-dose inhalers (MDIs) and DPIs because DPIs lack the aerosol propellants that may contribute to global warming, Rabin noted. 'The VA's [Veterans Affairs] policy shift created a natural experiment to study the clinical effects of switching from MDIs to DPIs on a broad scale,' he said. The researchers used data from the US VA healthcare system from January 2018 through December 2022 to design a matched observational cohort study and a within-person self-controlled case series (SCCS). They measured rescue medication use, emergency department visits, and hospitalizations before and after the formulary change. The study population for the SCCS included 260,268 patients with asthma who switched from the standard metered-dose therapy to dry powder therapy; the median age was 71 years, and 91% were men. Although the period of DPI use was associated with a 10% decrease in albuterol fills compared with periods of MDI use, it was associated with a 2% increase in prednisone fills, a 5% increase in all-cause emergency department visits, a 6% increase in respiratory-related emergency department visits, an 8% increase in all-cause hospitalizations, a 10% increase in respiratory-related hospitalizations, and a 24% increase in pneumonia-specific hospitalizations. The cohort study included 258,557 patients who switched to a DPI and matched patients who did not. The mean age in this group was 68.9 years; 94% were men. At 180 days after the switch, patients who switched to a DPI experienced increases in all-cause hospitalizations compared with those who didn't switch (16.14% vs 15.64%). Patients who switched also had more respiratory-related hospitalizations and pneumonia-related hospitalizations compared with the control group (3.15% vs 2.74% and 1.15% vs 1.03%, respectively). However, no differences in mortality were noted. The researchers had heard anecdotally from colleagues and patients that the DPI version of fluticasone-salmeterol might be less well tolerated than MDI budesonide-formoterol, Rabin told Medscape Medical News . 'Still, we were surprised to see evidence of worse outcomes, including increased emergency department visits and hospitalizations for COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] and asthma exacerbations,' he said. 'We had hoped the transition might be neutral or even beneficial because the fluticasone-salmeterol DPI is both less expensive and more climate-friendly than the budesonide-formoterol MDI, but the data showed there was an association with increased healthcare utilization after the switch,' he noted. Data Support Flexible Prescribing In light of the study findings, the researchers are working with the VA Pharmacy Benefits Management Services to review the formulary decision and consider more flexibility around prescribing budesonide-formoterol when clinically appropriate, Rabin said. 'This experience also highlights a broader opportunity: To improve how large systems implement medication or device changes,' he said. 'Transitions like these can create confusion or disruption for patients and clinicians alike, but better communication, training, and support could help ensure that changes are both clinically effective and patient-centered,' he said. 'We don't yet know whether the worse outcomes were due to differences in the medications themselves (fluticasone vs budesonide), the delivery devices (DPI vs MDI), or the way the switch was implemented,' Rabin told Medscape Medical News . The researchers are collecting qualitative data from veterans and providers to understand their experiences with the formulary change, he said. 'As the healthcare community looks to reduce the environmental impact of respiratory care, it is essential that we do so in ways that protect, and ideally improve, patient outcomes. Sustainable solutions must be safe, effective, and equitable for those we serve,' he added. Nonmedical switching of medications because of insurance coverage or other reasons not decided by clinicians is happening more frequently, said David M. Mannino III, MD, pulmonologist and professor at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, in an interview. The VA population tends to be sicker, poorer, and more complicated than the general medical population; therefore, the increased use of health resources was not unexpected, said Mannino. 'In general, it is a bit more difficult to use a DPI, so in many practices, sicker patients tend to be on MDIs or nebulizers,' he noted. 'Forcing patients to switch might cause complications if they are not able to properly use the device they were switched to,' he said. The current study looked at the data in different ways, and the findings for a higher risk for pneumonia and emergency department visits were consistently increased, although there was no increased risk for death, he said. 'These data are compelling,' Mannino told Medscape Medical News . 'I think the VA system that instituted these changes needs to take a close look at these data and consider whether other factors need to be included in future decision-making,' he said. The current study had limitations inherent in its design, such as a lack of data that any of the medication was taken vs prescribed, Mannino noted. Other options, such as nebulizers, could be used in some patients, and newer medications now available to treat COPD might be an adequate alternative to inhalers, he added.
