Top 5 discoveries of the year 2020 are sure to amaze you even amidst the grave pandemic. The year 2020 got marked as a dark spot in the history of mankind, it still did give us a few discoveries to even out the record. Let’s have a look at the top 5 discoveries of the year 2020, that are also enlisted on the National Geographic.
1)The oldest material found on earth is even older than our solar system.
When billions of years ago, the sun came into existence, many events took place alongside. A lot of dust was produced as a by-product of a dying star and got caught up in a meteorite. The meteorite later crossed paths with the earth’s orbit and threw a lot of dust on the earth’s surface. This dust further amalgamated into the rocks and generated an extremely hard material. Now, this material is believed to be the oldest material found on earth to date. The latest related research of the material reveals its age to be somewhere between 4.6 billion and 7 billion years. Researchers believe that this primordial dust exists only in five percent of the meteorites known and is extremely difficult to research upon.
2)The first tyrannosaur embryos discovered
Now, we know that a tyrannosaur was one of the most fierce carnivore dinosaurs that roamed the earth. Researchers lately have discovered the remains of tyrannosaur embryos. The researchers though expected the remains of tyrannosaurs to be bigger. But on the contrary, they found out extremely tiny shells or eggs, only a few inches long. Facts about these shells were first unearthed at two different sites i.e. at Horseshoe Canyon Formation in Alberta, Canada in 2018. And another site being the Two Medicine Formation in Montana in 1983. Researchers further reveal the age of these embryos to be nearly 71 to 75 million years old.
3)Details of an armored dinosaur’s last meal
In yet another dinosaur related discovery, researchers have even successfully found out the remains of the armored dinosaur’s last meal. These remains were found sitting intact in the dinosaur’s stomach. Now the dinosaur turned out to be a nodosaur that ate a lot of fern plant, only a couple of hours before its death. It is thus among the top 5 discoveries of the year 2020 as the remains of nodosaur are more than a hundred million years ago.
4)One of the top 5 discoveries of the year 2020 –Oldest Homo Erectus Skull found in South Africa
In an enthralling discovery, students of La Trobe University (Australia) found scattered skull pieces. Supposing that they belong to some baboon, both the researchers gathered the pieces to study. They assembled the pieces and found them to be of a homo Erectus. This makes it the oldest homo Erectus skull, which is nearly two million years old to be found in South Africa. Hence it finds a place in the top 5 discoveries of the year 2020 and will certainly give a boost for the search of our ancestors.
5)Reef taller than Empire State Building- the tallest reef found in 120 years
A team of Australian researchers on the Schmidt Ocean Institute vessel wanted to map the Great Barrier Reef seafloor. But they accidentally found a coral measuring 1640 feet, which is only one of the eight coral towers in that region. Well, now the researchers are analyzing the related ecosystems with it and are progressively finding new species of water animals.
Also Read: Machines that understand human goals
Conclusion:
Though the year 2020 dusked, but it left the world with some amazing discoveries as foods for our minds. These top 5 discoveries of the year 2020 are sure to take the world in a new direction in their respective fields.
