Dinosaur dancefloor discovered

According to the BBC scientists have identified an amazing collection of dinosaur footprints on the Arizona-Utah border in the US.

Located within the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, the marks were long thought simply to be potholes gouged out of the rock by years of erosion. A paper describing the 190-million-year-old footprints is published in the palaeontology journal Palaios.

"Get out there and try stepping in their footsteps, and you feel like you are playing the game 'Dance Dance Revolution' that teenagers dance on," says Professor Marjorie Chan from the University of Utah. "There must have been more than one kind of dinosaur there," she adds. "It was a place that attracted a crowd, kind of like a dance floor."

The site covers about a third of a hectare and records dinosaur movements around what was probably a watering hole during the Early Jurassic Period, when the US south-west was covered with a field of sand dunes larger than the Sahara Desert. Investigation of the site reveals at least four dinosaur species were present, with the animals ranging from adults to youngsters. "The different size tracks [2.5-50cm] may tell us that we are seeing mothers walking around with babies," says Winston Seiler, who worked on the project.

As well as footprints, the site also records tail-drag marks - which are up to seven metres in length. The scientists say the dinosaur prints were locked into sandstone after being covered by shifting dunes. They became exposed through erosion and will eventually disappear through erosion, too.

Were the dinosaurs laid low by insects?

A huge meteorite around 65m years ago is believed to have caused massive global climate change that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. However, according to a new theory they may have in fact been pushed to extinction by insects .

According to a new hypothesis by entomologists George and Roberta Poinar the later part of the dinosaurs' era saw an explosion in insect diversity and in the process dealt a double whammy to the reptiles - they spread disease and contributed to a transformation of vegetation which the plant-eating reptiles failed to adapt to.

"We can't say for certain that insects are the smoking gun, but we believe they were an extremely significant force in the decline of the dinosaurs," said Poinar. "Our research with amber shows that there were evolving, disease-carrying vectors in the Cretaceous period, and that at least some of the pathogens they carried infected reptiles. This clearly fills in some gaps regarding dinosaur extinctions."

In the gut of one biting insect preserved in amber - fossilised tree sap - from that era, the team has found the pathogen that causes the parasitic disease leishmaniasis, and in another they found a type of malaria parasite that infects birds and lizards. By inspecting fossilised dinosaur faeces, the team also found parasitic microbes that are carried by insects.

In addition to spreading disease, insects were busy pollinating flowering plants. These gradually took over from seed ferns, cycads and gingkoes. If herbivorous dinosaurs could not adapt to this new diet they would have gone hungry.

Poinar believes that the most popular theory for the dinosaurs' demise - that a meteorite impact changed the global climate - falls short because the extinction took too long. "Other geologic and catastrophic events certainly played a role. But by themselves, such events do not explain a process that in reality took a very, very long time, perhaps millions of years. Insects and diseases do provide that explanation."

I have no idea whatsoever if Poinar’s hypothesis holds water but it does sound intriguing

The Real IRA finally to see sense and give up violence

The Omagh bombing 1998 perpetrated by the Real IRA

The real IRA, (who were responsible for the Omagh bombing) are expected to say this week that that it is to renounce violence. Apparently it has agreed on a peaceful strategy with the Irish National Liberation Army and the Continuity IRA as a result from finally realising the mass of opposition to terrorism.

One dissident republican source said ‘While the violence goes on the Provos can paint those opposed to their strategy as mad bombers and killers. There must be an alternative republican strategy to Sinn Fein and the sell-out at Stormont, but it must be political and peaceful.'

Dissident organisations have been under severe pressure ever since the Omagh bomb nine years ago. Twenty-nine people and two unborn babies died when a Real IRA bomb ripped apart the centre of the Co Tyrone market town in August 1998. To date no one has yet been jailed in relation to the massacre. The Real IRA stood condemned across the world for what was the single biggest atrocity of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Its leader Michael McKevitt, the Provisional IRA's former 'quarter master general' was later arrested and jailed for directing terrorism.

A recent meeting in Derry brought together ex-prisoners and republicans opposed to Sinn Fein sitting in what they see as a 'partitionist' government at Stormont. Ex-IRA prisoner Danny McBrearty organised the conference that was attended by 200 delegates. He confirmed that the gathering formulated a way for an alternative republican strategy.

A republican veteran who attended said recent sporadic attacks in Newry and Belfast were only 'having a nuisance value. 'It's clear from our own people that the appetite for a war has long gone. An INLA source also confirmed this weekend that the three terror groups were united in acknowledging that there was no support for armed struggle. 'It's time we listened to the people and gave them a real political alternative,' the source said.

It’s time we listened to the people.... Well duh! The Real IRA is another of those dinosaur organisations running around not realising it died a while before! It is a marginal group that stood even less chance of success through terrorism than the Provisional IRA (and that was no chance itself). The organisation (presumably in the form of the 32 county sovereignty movement) will be pipsqueak organisation at the fringes of Northern Ireland politics but better that than violence.

Rhode Island Rex

From?

Scientists have finally found a genetic link between dinosaurs and birds. Tiny pieces of protein extracted from a 68-million-year-old dinosaur bone have given scientists the first genetic proof that the Tyrannosaurus rex is a distant cousin to the modern chicken.

"It's the first molecular evidence of this link between birds and dinosaurs," said John Asara, a Harvard Medical School researcher, whose results were published in the journal Science. Scientists have long suspected that birds evolved from dinosaurs based on a study of dinosaur bones, but until recently, no soft tissue had survived to confirm the link.

To?

That changed in 2005 when Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University reported finding soft tissue, including blood vessels and cells, in a T. rex bone dug out of sandstone from the fossil-rich Hell Creek Formation in Montana. Schweitzer, in another study appearing in this week's issue of Science, found that extracts of T. rex bone reacted with antibodies to chicken collagen, further suggesting the presence of birdlike protein in dinosaur bones.