“Best of Insight”: An independent journalist based in Sacramento returns from his latest reporting trip from Ukraine. Also, an 80-million-year-old plant fossil discovered in Placer County has helped fill a significant gap in the fossil record.

Ukraine

You can measure war by atrocious loss, from lives to livelihoods, and a way of life rooted in familiar comfort that is ripped away beyond repair. In Ukraine, the death toll and diaspora at the hands of Russia cannot be ignored. But you can also understand the toll of war by what and who remains.  Their stories capture the heart of what once was as well as the drive to endure the painful costs of a war with no end in sight.  Martin Kuz is an independent journalist based in Sacramento. His father fled Ukraine following WWII, never able to return. Martin spent the past 12 months traveling to his father’s homeland, first arriving in the days leading up to the invasion, and then returning again in the summer during an all-out war that continues today.  Kuz’ reporting from last year can be found in SacTown Magazine and The Christian Science Monitor from August and April. Insight spoke with Martin upon just landing back in California from his latest three-week reporting trip this time in Eastern Ukraine. We sat down and talked on the one-year anniversary of the official start of the war.

Fossilized fruit in Granite Bay

More than three decades ago, construction workers unearthed something unusual while building new homes in Granite Bay. They discovered a fossilized plant buried for eons. The ancient plant was collected by researchers at Sierra College and preserved in its Natural History Museum in Rocklin. There it sat for decades, and only recently has its scientific significance been realized. A curious professor from the University of Kansas took a closer look at the fossil, and after careful examination, released a study suggesting this discovery has helped close a critical gap in the fossil record. It reveals the ancestors of an incredibly diverse family of flowering plants that we enjoy today, including close relatives of coffee and potatoes which evolved during the last days of the dinosaurs. Insight sat down with Richard Hilton, professor of earth sciences at Sierra College, and Brian Atkinson, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas, who shared the fascinating story of this fossil tens of millions of years in the making.