Episode 4: Why Christmas might have fewer gifts, Dinosaurs were once cat-sized

Full Episode description

This festive season, grocery stores the world over may find fewer toys, furniture, clothes and other such items. After the pandemic, people started buying more things both on ecommerce portals and in person once the neighbourhood stores opened. As a result, factories in Asia – which is where most of the world gets its stuff, started producing more. But in the meanwhile, another little crisis had been brewing.

This was the shipping crisis – some ports were still closed or had fewer workers to handle the goods due to covid. In some other ports, they were unable to handle large ships or ships with newer designs. As a result of all these problems, there were only a few ports open to handle many ships. This meant, long queues of ships waiting to offload their contents in a few ports.

All this means, that the time it takes for things to go around the world has gone up.
So, this Christmas, Santa might just have a lighter sleigh.

Palaeontologists have found that ancient dinosaurs (over 240 million years ago) might have just been cat-sized. A 2-million year long rain spell may have led to the development of bigger sized dinosaurs, that could survive the rains. This long rainy spell was very likely caused by a big, huge, volcanic eruption, that happened over many phases. To find out how scientists understand the relationship of fossil age and the changes in the animals, listen to our podcast.

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