GLENDALE, Ariz. — Seattle Seahawks free safety Quandre Diggs was carted off the field at State Farm Stadium on Sunday after breaking his right fibula and dislocating his ankle.
Diggs’ ankle was put back into place, coach Pete Carroll said after the 38-30 win over the Arizona Cardinals.
Carroll said Diggs will stay behind in Arizona. Teammate Tyler Lockett asked Carroll for permission to stay with Diggs and will do so, according to Carroll.
“He’ll be back,” Carroll said about Diggs recovering from the injury.
Diggs, who’s in the final year of his contract, was in tears as he left the field. Cornerbacks D.J. Reed and Sidney Jones, among others, were visibly upset once Diggs went down with around 10 minutes left in Seattle’s season finale against the Arizona Cardinals.
Diggs, 28, has arguably been the Seahawks’ MVP this season with a team-high five interceptions. He was named the NFC’s starting free safety last month in his second straight Pro Bowl selection.
Diggs wanted a new contract from the Seahawks this past offseason but did not get one. Instead, the team tweaked the final year of his current deal as a compromise. Diggs was briefly out of practice during training camp while finalizing an insurance policy, which he sought as financial protection in the absence of a new deal.
He had three tackles, including a tackle for loss, before his injury Sunday.
The scene on Sunday was somewhat reminiscent of what happened in 2018 with Earl Thomas, Diggs’ predecessor at free safety. Thomas, who had sought a new deal from the Seahawks that offseason and didn’t get one, broke his leg at State Farm Stadium in Week 4.
Until recently, one of the biggest myths in science was that all dinosaurs have been extinct for the past 65 million years. But thanks to new fossil discoveries that filled in our knowledge about avian dinosaurs, we now know that only some dinosaurs went extinct following an asteroid collision with Earth – others survived and gave rise to the birds we live with today.
To figure out how this evolution occurred, researchers in Chile carried out a strange but fascinating experiment in 2016. They manipulated the genes of regular chickens, causing them to develop tubular, dinosaur-like fibulas on their lower legs – one of the two long, spine-like bones you’ll find in a drumstick.
In avian dinosaurs such as the Archaeopteryx, the fibula was a tube-shaped bone that reached all the way down to the ankle. Another bone, the tibia, grew to a similar length alongside it.
As evolution progressed through to a group of avian dinosaurs known as the Pygostylians, the fibula became shorter than the tibia and sharper and more splinter-like towards the end, and it no longer reached the ankle.
While modern bird embryos still show signs of developing long, dinosaur-like fibulae, as they grow, these bones become shorter, thinner, and also take on the splinter-like ends of the Pygostylian bones, and never make it far enough down to the leg to connect with the ankle.
Researchers, led by João Francisco Botelho from the University of Chile, decided to investigate how this transition from a long, tubular fibula in dinosaurs to a short, splinter-like fibula in birds actually came to be.
They achieved this by inhibiting the expression of a gene called IHH or Indian Hedgehog (seriously), which saw their chickens continue to grow the long, dinosaur-like fibulae that originated in their embryonic form.
In doing so, the team discovered something bizarre. Regular bone development sees cell division and therefore growth halt in the shaft long before the ends stop growing, but in modern chickens, the growth of the fibula halts first at the ends.
This means the fibulae of modern chickens are actively blocked from reaching the lengths of their ancient relatives’ bones.
(Botelho et al., Evolution, 2016)
Publishing their observations in the journal Evolution in February 2016, the researchers suggested that the early maturation of the lower end of the fibula in modern chickens is prompted by a bone in the ankle, called the calcaneum.
“Unlike other animals, the calcaneum in bird embryos presses against the lower end of the fibula,” the team explained in a press release at the time. “They are so close, they have even been mistaken for a single element by some researchers.”
The team suggested that in regular chickens, interactions between the calcaneum and the end of the fibula result in signals that are similar to the ones that prompt the bone shaft to stop growing, preventing the fibula from reaching anywhere near the ankle bone.
But when the Indian Hedgehog gene was turned off, the calcaneum strongly expresses the gene Parathyroid-related protein (PthrP), which allows for growth at the ends of bones. This caused their chickens to grow long fibulae that connected with the ankle, just like they would in the Archaeopteryx.
“Experimental downregulation of IHH signaling at a postmorphogenetic stage led to a tibia and fibula of equal length,” the team wrote in the report. “The fibula is longer than in controls and fused to the fibulare, whereas the tibia is shorter and bent.”
Unfortunately, the ‘dino-chickens’ did not make it to the hatching stage, but the point of the research wasn’t to raise them into adulthood but to figure out the biological processes that led to the transition from dinosaur legs to modern bird legs.
“The experiments are focused on single traits to test specific hypotheses,” one of the team, Alexander Vargas, explained. “Not only do we know a great deal about bird development, but also about the dinosaur-bird transition, which is well-documented by the fossil record. This leads naturally to hypotheses on the evolution of development, that can be explored in the lab.”
This wasn’t the first time dinosaur traits have been ‘recreated’ in modern chickens. In 2015, the same team achieved the growth of dinosaur-like feet on their chickens, and a separate team in the US managed to grow a dinosaur-like ‘beak’ on its chicken embryos.
Watch below to see how lead researcher and renowned paleontologist, Jack Horner, managed to do it:
The research was published in Evolution.
A version of this article was first published in March 2016.
HOUSTON — Charlie Morton’s season ended in the third inning of the 2021 World Series.
X-rays revealed that Morton, the Atlanta Braves’ veteran starting pitcher, suffered a fractured right fibula early in Game 1 on Tuesday night, seemingly after getting hit by a 102.4 mph comebacker off the bat of Houston Astros first baseman Yuli Gurriel to begin the bottom of the second.
Morton, 37, retired the next two batters, then came back to strike out Jose Altuve to begin the bottom of the third before exiting. Morton noticeably grimaced while delivering the last pitch to Altuve — a sweeping curveball dotted at the bottom of the strike zone — and promptly hobbled out of the game after getting checked on by an athletic trainer.
Morton’s injury prompted Braves manager to turn to late-game reliever A.J. Minter a lot earlier than he would have anticipated and is a serious blow for the Braves, who entered the World Series with a three-man rotation that also included Max Fried and Ian Anderson. The Braves were already planning a bullpen game in Game 4 and will need another one in Game 5 unless Fried comes back on short rest.
Morton, signed through at least the 2022 season, went 14-6 with a 3.34 ERA in 185⅔ innings during the 2021 regular season. He was appearing in his third World Series — for his third different team — in a five-year span. The Braves said he will be ready for spring training.
Atlanta will be able to replace him on the roster before Wednesday’s Game 2.
