Letter From Tehran: The Black Day In June
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Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Sarah Palin and the Witchdoctor
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/26798219#26798219
This video is a scary notion. Sarah Palin praising a preacher is a self confirmed witch-hunter! And she credits this man as the reason she became Governor. I'm sorry, but this woman scares the crap out of me. McCain, I can handle, Palin, uh-uh.
This video is a scary notion. Sarah Palin praising a preacher is a self confirmed witch-hunter! And she credits this man as the reason she became Governor. I'm sorry, but this woman scares the crap out of me. McCain, I can handle, Palin, uh-uh.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Viking Age Triggered by Shortage of Wives?
Viking Age Triggered by Shortage of Wives?
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
Sept. 17, 2008 -- During the Viking Age from the late eighth to the mid-eleventh centuries, Scandinavians tore across Europe attacking, robbing and terrorizing locals. According to a new study, the young warriors were driven to seek their fortunes to better their chances of finding wives.
The odd twist to the story, said researcher James Barrett, is that it was the selective killing of female newborns that led to a shortage of Scandinavian women in the first place, resulting later in intense competition over eligible women.
"Selective female infanticide was recorded as part of pagan Scandinavian practice in later medieval sources, such as the Icelandic sagas," Barrett, who is deputy director of Cambridge University's McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, told Discovery News.
Although it's believed many cultures throughout world history have practiced female infanticide, said Barrett, he admits that "it is difficult to identify in the archaeological record," so the claim "must remain a hypothesis."
To strengthen the argument, however, Barrett has reviewed and dismissed several other proposed causes for the Viking Age.
Improved seafaring technologies are often cited as the trigger, but he points out that an earlier migration from Scandinavia to Britain took place in the fifth and sixth centuries.
"Thus the development of the Viking ship cannot have been a cause of movements of this kind," he said. "Ships capable of carrying warriors over long distances are a necessary pre-requisite for the Viking Age, but clearly they did not cause it."
What's more, he points out, the sailing time from Norway to Ireland is quite short -- perhaps a week using vessels of the time -- so the Vikings were probably capable of raiding Ireland well before the official start of their reign of terror.
The study is published in the current issue of Antiquity.
Barrett also dismisses other proposed causes of the Viking Age, such as climate change, overpopulation in Scandinavia, economic woes and more.
An intriguing archaeological clue is that much of the bounty plundered from Britain -- particularly from monasteries -- wound up later in the graves of Viking wives. The items included precious metals, fine cloth, jewelry and other handicrafts.
Barrett's analysis of Nordic historical records found that Scandinavian men often served as warriors, frequently forming "military brotherhoods," until they were able to marry and establish their own households, which were key to prestige and power.
According to Barrett, honor and religious fatalism -- the idea that the time and manner of death is predestined -- also fueled the Vikings, helping explain why men were willing to risk death in violent battles and risky seafaring. The Viking religion held that "the cosmos began in the frozen emptiness...and will end in fire with the last battle," said Barrett.
Despite the infanticide, he still believes the Vikings "highly valued" women. Aside from lavishing bridal prospects with plundered goods, they held solemn burials at sea for women. In fact, one of the most important known Viking Age burials, involved numerous goods and two female skeletons encased in a ship called the Oseberg.
Soren Sindbaek, assistant professor of medieval and Renaissance archaeology at Denmark's University of Aarhus, told Discovery News that the new paper "is very right in pointing out the inadequacy" of former explanations for the Viking Age.
"We need indeed to seek for an individual, social motivation behind the fact that a large number of young men chose to set out on extremely risky voyages in hopes of acquiring wealth and esteem in foreign lands," Sindbaek said.
"Barrett points to the wish of disadvantaged young men to acquire resources necessary to set up a family as crucial," he added. "This is the 'marriage imperative,' which I think Barrett succeeds in substantiating within the limitations of the evidence."
Barrett suggested additional studies on the Vikings since would help "to understand how small-scale societies -- and issues of a very human scale -- can have a large impact on world history, positive and/or negative."
Copyright © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC. The number-one nonfiction media company.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/09/17/viking-women.html
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
Sept. 17, 2008 -- During the Viking Age from the late eighth to the mid-eleventh centuries, Scandinavians tore across Europe attacking, robbing and terrorizing locals. According to a new study, the young warriors were driven to seek their fortunes to better their chances of finding wives.
The odd twist to the story, said researcher James Barrett, is that it was the selective killing of female newborns that led to a shortage of Scandinavian women in the first place, resulting later in intense competition over eligible women.
"Selective female infanticide was recorded as part of pagan Scandinavian practice in later medieval sources, such as the Icelandic sagas," Barrett, who is deputy director of Cambridge University's McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, told Discovery News.
Although it's believed many cultures throughout world history have practiced female infanticide, said Barrett, he admits that "it is difficult to identify in the archaeological record," so the claim "must remain a hypothesis."
To strengthen the argument, however, Barrett has reviewed and dismissed several other proposed causes for the Viking Age.
Improved seafaring technologies are often cited as the trigger, but he points out that an earlier migration from Scandinavia to Britain took place in the fifth and sixth centuries.
"Thus the development of the Viking ship cannot have been a cause of movements of this kind," he said. "Ships capable of carrying warriors over long distances are a necessary pre-requisite for the Viking Age, but clearly they did not cause it."
What's more, he points out, the sailing time from Norway to Ireland is quite short -- perhaps a week using vessels of the time -- so the Vikings were probably capable of raiding Ireland well before the official start of their reign of terror.
The study is published in the current issue of Antiquity.
Barrett also dismisses other proposed causes of the Viking Age, such as climate change, overpopulation in Scandinavia, economic woes and more.
An intriguing archaeological clue is that much of the bounty plundered from Britain -- particularly from monasteries -- wound up later in the graves of Viking wives. The items included precious metals, fine cloth, jewelry and other handicrafts.
Barrett's analysis of Nordic historical records found that Scandinavian men often served as warriors, frequently forming "military brotherhoods," until they were able to marry and establish their own households, which were key to prestige and power.
According to Barrett, honor and religious fatalism -- the idea that the time and manner of death is predestined -- also fueled the Vikings, helping explain why men were willing to risk death in violent battles and risky seafaring. The Viking religion held that "the cosmos began in the frozen emptiness...and will end in fire with the last battle," said Barrett.
Despite the infanticide, he still believes the Vikings "highly valued" women. Aside from lavishing bridal prospects with plundered goods, they held solemn burials at sea for women. In fact, one of the most important known Viking Age burials, involved numerous goods and two female skeletons encased in a ship called the Oseberg.
Soren Sindbaek, assistant professor of medieval and Renaissance archaeology at Denmark's University of Aarhus, told Discovery News that the new paper "is very right in pointing out the inadequacy" of former explanations for the Viking Age.
"We need indeed to seek for an individual, social motivation behind the fact that a large number of young men chose to set out on extremely risky voyages in hopes of acquiring wealth and esteem in foreign lands," Sindbaek said.
"Barrett points to the wish of disadvantaged young men to acquire resources necessary to set up a family as crucial," he added. "This is the 'marriage imperative,' which I think Barrett succeeds in substantiating within the limitations of the evidence."
Barrett suggested additional studies on the Vikings since would help "to understand how small-scale societies -- and issues of a very human scale -- can have a large impact on world history, positive and/or negative."
Copyright © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC. The number-one nonfiction media company.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/09/17/viking-women.html
Friday, September 12, 2008
Neanderthals Conquered Mammoths, Why Not Us?
Neanderthals Conquered Mammoths, Why Not Us?
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
Sept. 9, 2008 -- They may have been stronger, but Neanderthals looked, ate and may have even thought much like modern humans do, suggest several new studies that could help explain new evidence that the early residents of prehistoric Europe and Asia engaged in head-to-head combat with woolly mammoths.
Together, the findings call into question how such a sophisticated group apparently disappeared off the face of the Earth around 30,000 years ago.
The new evidence displays the strengths and weaknesses of Neanderthals, suggesting they were skilled hunters but not as brainy and efficient as modern humans, who eventually took over Neanderthal territories.
Neanderthal Vs. Woolly Mammoth
Most notably among the new studies is what researchers say is the first ever direct evidence that a woolly mammoth was brought down by Neanderthal weapons.
Margherita Mussi and Paola Villa made the connection after studying a 60,000 to 40,000-year-old mammoth skeleton unearthed near Neanderthal stone tool artifacts at a site called Asolo in northeastern Italy. The discoveries are described in this month's Journal of Archaeological Science.
Villa, a curator of paleontology at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, told Discovery News that other evidence suggests Neanderthals hunted the giant mammals, but not as directly. At the English Channel Islands, for example, 18 woolly mammoths and five woolly rhinoceroses dating to 150,000 years ago "were driven off a cliff and died by falling into a ravine about 30 meters (over 98 feet) deep. They were then butchered."
Villa, however, pointed out that "there were no stone points or other possible weapons" found at the British site.
"At Asolo, instead there was a stone point that was very probably mounted on a wooden spear and used to kill the animal," she added.
Several arrowheads were excavated at the Italian site, but the one of greatest interest is fractured at the tip, indicating that it "impacted bone or the thick skin of the mammoth."
Other studies on stone points suggest that if such a weapon were rammed into a large beast, it would be likely to fracture the same way.
What's For Dinner?
There is no question that Neanderthals craved meat and ate a lot of it.
A study in this month's issue of the journal Antiquity by German anthropologists Michael Richard and Ralf Schmitz found that Neanderthals went for red meat, not of the woolly mammoth variety, but from red deer, roe deer, and reindeer.
The scientists came to that conclusion after grinding up bone samples taken from the remains of Neanderthals found in Germany and then analyzing the isotopes within. These forms of chemical elements -- in this case, carbon and nitrogen -- reveal if the individual being tested lived on meat, fish or plants, since each food group has its own carbon and nitrogen signature.
Richard and Schmitz conclude that the Neanderthals subsisted primarily on meat from deer, which they probably stalked in organized groups.
The researchers say their findings "reinforce the idea that Neanderthals were sophisticated hunters with an advanced ability to organize and communicate."
Villa agrees.
"Neanderthals are no longer considered inferior hunters," she said. "Neanderthals were capable of hunting a wide range of prey, from dangerous animals such as brown bears, mammoths and rhinos, to large, medium and small-size ungulates such as bison, aurochs, horse, red deer, reindeer, roe deer and wild goats."
Enter Homo Sapiens
Fossils suggest that Neanderthals and modern humans coexisted in Western Europe for at least 10,000 years. While there is a smattering of evidence that the two species interbred, most anthropologists believe the commingling was infrequent or not enough to substantially affect the Homo sapiens gene pool.
New evidence supports that notion, while also revealing that the world's first anatomically modern humans retained a few Neanderthal-like characteristics.
Several papers in the current Journal of Human Evolution describe the world's first known people, which shared bone, hand and ankle features with Neanderthals and possibly also Homo erectus.
John Fleagle, professor of anatomical sciences at Stony Brook University, who worked on the early human research, told Discovery News that the shared characteristics "are just primitive features retained from a common ancestor."
Neanderthal Brain Power
It's known that Neanderthals had more robust skeletons than modern humans, with particularly strong arms and hands, but were the two groups evenly matched in brainpower?
A new study in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides some intriguing clues.
Marcia Ponce de Leon of the University of Zurich's Anthropological Institute and Museum and her colleagues virtually reconstructed brain size and growth of three Neanderthal infant skeletons found in Syria and Russia.
"Neanderthal brain size at birth was similar to that in recent Homo sapiens and most likely subject to similar obstetric constraints," Ponce de Leon and her team concluded, although they added that "Neanderthal brain growth rates during early infancy were higher" than those experienced by modern humans.
It appears, therefore, that while Neanderthal brains grew at about the same rate as ours, they had a small size advantage.
Trade-Offs in Evolution
But bigger is not always better in terms of brain function. Modern humans evolved smaller, but more efficient, brains.
Ponce de Leon and her colleagues suggest, "It could be argued that growing smaller -- but similarly efficient -- brains required less energy investment and might ultimately have led to higher net reproduction rates."
On the down side for people, however, brainpower efficiency doesn't come without a cost.
"Our new research suggests that schizophrenia is a byproduct of the increased metabolic demands brought about during human brain evolution," explained Philipp Khaitovich of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Shanghai branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Cards Evenly Stacked
Weighing the pros and cons of each species, Neanderthals and modern humans may have been evenly matched when they shared European land, with more and more scientists puzzling over how such an advanced, human-like being became extinct.
University of Exeter archaeologist Metin Eren hopes the latest findings will not only change the image of Neanderthals, but also the direction that future research on these prehistoric hominids will take.
"It is time for archaeologists to start searching for other reasons why Neanderthals became extinct while our ancestors survived," Eren said.
"When we think of Neanderthals, we need to stop thinking in terms of stupid or less advanced and more in terms of different," he added.
Copyright © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC. The number-one nonfiction media company.
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
Sept. 9, 2008 -- They may have been stronger, but Neanderthals looked, ate and may have even thought much like modern humans do, suggest several new studies that could help explain new evidence that the early residents of prehistoric Europe and Asia engaged in head-to-head combat with woolly mammoths.
Together, the findings call into question how such a sophisticated group apparently disappeared off the face of the Earth around 30,000 years ago.
The new evidence displays the strengths and weaknesses of Neanderthals, suggesting they were skilled hunters but not as brainy and efficient as modern humans, who eventually took over Neanderthal territories.
Neanderthal Vs. Woolly Mammoth
Most notably among the new studies is what researchers say is the first ever direct evidence that a woolly mammoth was brought down by Neanderthal weapons.
Margherita Mussi and Paola Villa made the connection after studying a 60,000 to 40,000-year-old mammoth skeleton unearthed near Neanderthal stone tool artifacts at a site called Asolo in northeastern Italy. The discoveries are described in this month's Journal of Archaeological Science.
Villa, a curator of paleontology at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, told Discovery News that other evidence suggests Neanderthals hunted the giant mammals, but not as directly. At the English Channel Islands, for example, 18 woolly mammoths and five woolly rhinoceroses dating to 150,000 years ago "were driven off a cliff and died by falling into a ravine about 30 meters (over 98 feet) deep. They were then butchered."
Villa, however, pointed out that "there were no stone points or other possible weapons" found at the British site.
"At Asolo, instead there was a stone point that was very probably mounted on a wooden spear and used to kill the animal," she added.
Several arrowheads were excavated at the Italian site, but the one of greatest interest is fractured at the tip, indicating that it "impacted bone or the thick skin of the mammoth."
Other studies on stone points suggest that if such a weapon were rammed into a large beast, it would be likely to fracture the same way.
What's For Dinner?
There is no question that Neanderthals craved meat and ate a lot of it.
A study in this month's issue of the journal Antiquity by German anthropologists Michael Richard and Ralf Schmitz found that Neanderthals went for red meat, not of the woolly mammoth variety, but from red deer, roe deer, and reindeer.
The scientists came to that conclusion after grinding up bone samples taken from the remains of Neanderthals found in Germany and then analyzing the isotopes within. These forms of chemical elements -- in this case, carbon and nitrogen -- reveal if the individual being tested lived on meat, fish or plants, since each food group has its own carbon and nitrogen signature.
Richard and Schmitz conclude that the Neanderthals subsisted primarily on meat from deer, which they probably stalked in organized groups.
The researchers say their findings "reinforce the idea that Neanderthals were sophisticated hunters with an advanced ability to organize and communicate."
Villa agrees.
"Neanderthals are no longer considered inferior hunters," she said. "Neanderthals were capable of hunting a wide range of prey, from dangerous animals such as brown bears, mammoths and rhinos, to large, medium and small-size ungulates such as bison, aurochs, horse, red deer, reindeer, roe deer and wild goats."
Enter Homo Sapiens
Fossils suggest that Neanderthals and modern humans coexisted in Western Europe for at least 10,000 years. While there is a smattering of evidence that the two species interbred, most anthropologists believe the commingling was infrequent or not enough to substantially affect the Homo sapiens gene pool.
New evidence supports that notion, while also revealing that the world's first anatomically modern humans retained a few Neanderthal-like characteristics.
Several papers in the current Journal of Human Evolution describe the world's first known people, which shared bone, hand and ankle features with Neanderthals and possibly also Homo erectus.
John Fleagle, professor of anatomical sciences at Stony Brook University, who worked on the early human research, told Discovery News that the shared characteristics "are just primitive features retained from a common ancestor."
Neanderthal Brain Power
It's known that Neanderthals had more robust skeletons than modern humans, with particularly strong arms and hands, but were the two groups evenly matched in brainpower?
A new study in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides some intriguing clues.
Marcia Ponce de Leon of the University of Zurich's Anthropological Institute and Museum and her colleagues virtually reconstructed brain size and growth of three Neanderthal infant skeletons found in Syria and Russia.
"Neanderthal brain size at birth was similar to that in recent Homo sapiens and most likely subject to similar obstetric constraints," Ponce de Leon and her team concluded, although they added that "Neanderthal brain growth rates during early infancy were higher" than those experienced by modern humans.
It appears, therefore, that while Neanderthal brains grew at about the same rate as ours, they had a small size advantage.
Trade-Offs in Evolution
But bigger is not always better in terms of brain function. Modern humans evolved smaller, but more efficient, brains.
Ponce de Leon and her colleagues suggest, "It could be argued that growing smaller -- but similarly efficient -- brains required less energy investment and might ultimately have led to higher net reproduction rates."
On the down side for people, however, brainpower efficiency doesn't come without a cost.
"Our new research suggests that schizophrenia is a byproduct of the increased metabolic demands brought about during human brain evolution," explained Philipp Khaitovich of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Shanghai branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Cards Evenly Stacked
Weighing the pros and cons of each species, Neanderthals and modern humans may have been evenly matched when they shared European land, with more and more scientists puzzling over how such an advanced, human-like being became extinct.
University of Exeter archaeologist Metin Eren hopes the latest findings will not only change the image of Neanderthals, but also the direction that future research on these prehistoric hominids will take.
"It is time for archaeologists to start searching for other reasons why Neanderthals became extinct while our ancestors survived," Eren said.
"When we think of Neanderthals, we need to stop thinking in terms of stupid or less advanced and more in terms of different," he added.
Copyright © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC. The number-one nonfiction media company.
"House" star Hugh Laurie joins TV's richest list
"House" star Hugh Laurie joins TV's richest list
By Nellie Andreeva
2 hours, 2 minutes ago
11 September 2008
He is the star of the biggest drama on television. Now Hugh Laurie is poised to become one of the highest-paid actors on TV with a new deal to continue on Fox's "House."
The British actor's salary is expected to rise to about $400,000 an episode, or more than $9 million a year, under a pact with producer Universal Media Studios.
Laurie, 49, who had humble beginnings on "House" with a starting salary in the mid-five figures in 2004, got his first major salary bump in summer 2006 when his per-episode fee was upped to $250,000-$300,000 an episode.
The list of highest-paid actors on drama series is now topped by departing "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" leading man William Petersen ($600,000 per episode) and "24's" Kiefer Sutherland (close to $500,000), who both serve as executive producers on their series.
Just as Sutherland's Jack Bauer is synonymous with "24," curmudgeonly medical genius Dr. Gregory House is at the heart of "House." The role has earned Laurie two Golden Globes and three Emmy nominations.
He also would get some sort of producing credit on the medical drama, which returns for a fifth season Tuesday. The deal also adds another year to Laurie's contract on the series, assuring he will stay on at least through the 2011-12 season.
This past season, the medical drama averaged 16.7 million viewers, the second-highest-rated scripted series behind ABC's "Desperate Housewives."
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
By Nellie Andreeva
2 hours, 2 minutes ago
11 September 2008
He is the star of the biggest drama on television. Now Hugh Laurie is poised to become one of the highest-paid actors on TV with a new deal to continue on Fox's "House."
The British actor's salary is expected to rise to about $400,000 an episode, or more than $9 million a year, under a pact with producer Universal Media Studios.
Laurie, 49, who had humble beginnings on "House" with a starting salary in the mid-five figures in 2004, got his first major salary bump in summer 2006 when his per-episode fee was upped to $250,000-$300,000 an episode.
The list of highest-paid actors on drama series is now topped by departing "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" leading man William Petersen ($600,000 per episode) and "24's" Kiefer Sutherland (close to $500,000), who both serve as executive producers on their series.
Just as Sutherland's Jack Bauer is synonymous with "24," curmudgeonly medical genius Dr. Gregory House is at the heart of "House." The role has earned Laurie two Golden Globes and three Emmy nominations.
He also would get some sort of producing credit on the medical drama, which returns for a fifth season Tuesday. The deal also adds another year to Laurie's contract on the series, assuring he will stay on at least through the 2011-12 season.
This past season, the medical drama averaged 16.7 million viewers, the second-highest-rated scripted series behind ABC's "Desperate Housewives."
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Myth of Dwarf Dinos in Dracula Country Confirmed
Myth of Dwarf Dinos in Dracula Country Confirmed
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
June 13, 2008 -- In 1900, the sister of an eccentric Austro-Hungarian aristocrat named Baron von Nopsca found a tiny bone on the baron's family estate in Transylvania, a historical region in present-day Romania. The baron, who was a dinosaur buff, identified the bone as belonging to a dwarf dino that likely once lived on an island in the region.
The motorcycle-riding baron's outrageous theories were ridiculed and largely dismissed, but now new evidence suggests his proposed island of dwarf dinosaurs did indeed exist in the land of the mythical, blood-drinking Count Dracula.
"Bram Stoker's [Dracula] tale is without a very sustainable historical background, but that is not the case here," lead researcher Vlad Codrea told Discovery News.
Dwarfed Bones Support the Claims
Codrea, a professor of biology and geology at University Babes-Bolyai in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and colleague Pascal Godefroit recently found several bones belonging to Zalmoxes shqiperorum, an herbivorous dinosaur with forelimbs that were much shorter than its hindlimbs.
The findings have been accepted for publication in the journal Comptes Rendus Palevol.
"Obviously it was a dwarf dinosaur," said Codrea, who compared the dinosaur to its Rhabdodon relatives from southern France and northern Spain. Rhabdodon, meaning "fluted tooth," measured just over 14 feet long, which, in itself, is a relatively small size for a dinosaur. Zalmoxes, on the other hand, was only 7 to 10 feet long.
The dwarf dinosaur has been classified as belonging to the iguanodont dinosaur group. These Mid Jurassic to Late Cretaceous animals included duck-billed dinos. Some members of the group could weigh up to eight tons and reach 50 feet in length.
Codrea and Godefroit unearthed the newly found bones in a red clay deposit at the Jibou Formation in Somes Odorhei, Romania.
More Mini Dinosaurs
The small Romanian dinosaur was apparently not a loner.
"Zalmoxes had in Transylvania select dinosaur company," Codrea said. "All were dwarves."
He explained that after the initial discovery on Nopsca's estate, the baron set off on his motorcycle to excavate various parts of his homeland. Over the years he found bones belonging to multiple dwarfed species.
These included a sauropod named Magyarosaurus dacus, which looked like a tiny version of a brontosaurus or diplodocus, and the ankylosaur Strutiosaurus transilvanicus, whose body was covered by many tiny bones that formed a protective shield.
A duck-billed dinosaur called Telmatosaurus transylvanicus was also excavated in the area, along with several carnivorous dinos, such as Velociraptorinae indet, Euronychodon and Paronychodon.
The Island Effect
Although many scientists scoffed at the notion of tiny dinosaurs inhabiting Transylvania, imminent paleontologist David Weishampel, fresh out of graduate school, became intrigued by the baron's finds, which he investigated first-hand in Romania.
Weishampel, who now works in the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at Johns Hopkins University, came to the conclusion that Nopsca was right -- very small dinosaurs really did live in Romania during the Late Cretaceous (around 70 to 65 million years ago).
He also agreed with the baron's theory that life in isolation on an island, which Weishampel has named Hateg Island, led to the dino dwarfism.
"Hateg was an eastern European island that existed throughout most of the Cretaceous," Weishampel told Discovery News. "It was colonized by the dinosaurs, turtles, crocodiles and various other animals that lived in subtropical to temperate shallow marine environments."
The new research suggests Hateg Island might have connected to mainland Transylvania at one point on the northeastern side, but scientists are still piecing together the region's geological history.
What is clear, however, is that the dinosaurs must have evolved away from other parts of Europe, since such isolated groups tend to be smaller or larger than normal, due to condensed ecosystems that result in size extremes.
On the Other End of the Scale
A few years ago, two of Codrea's colleagues from Bucharest, along with French paleontologist Eric Buffetaud, described "a new giant pterosaur" from Cretaceous Transylvania that was "remarkable for its very large size and for the robustness of its large skull."
The new pterosaur turned out to have a wingspan of 40 feet or more. Its scientific name, Hatzegopteryx thambema, appropriately means "Hateg Island Monster."
The flying reptile's head alone was nearly 10 feet long. Its skull was so long that Buffetaud's team wondered how the creature could have ever taken flight, but the researchers discovered that thin bones enclosing small air pockets gave the monster "strength and lightness."
Recreations of Hateg Island now therefore take on quite a psychedelic dream-like picture, with dwarf Transylvania dinosaurs living in relative tropical splendor, while flying monstrous reptiles swoop overhead.
Codrea explained that the pterosaur originally came as "an intruder, a visitor arrived from far away areas," and could fly over large distances that prevented it from locking into the island miniaturizing pattern of evolution.
The Baron's Tragic Ending
Baron von Nopsca did not live to see his theories validated.
He embarked on a motorcycle tour of Italy and Europe with his lover and secretary, Bayazid Doda, an Albanian Muslim, seated in his sidecar. The two men ran out of money and cut their journey short in Vienna where, in a rage, the baron drugged Doda's tea to render him unconscious. He then shot Doda before turning the gun on himself in 1933 when he was 56 years old.
Despite the baron's inner demons, other researchers now mostly support his theories, which included not only his work on dinosaurs, but also plate tectonics. Weishampel believes his work was so important that he's taken a year off to study it further and to write a related book.
Codrea and his colleague are also still exploring Transylvania's dinosaurs. They plan to publish information on even more finds there soon.
"I'm sure that Nopsca would be pleased about our discoveries, if he were alive," Codrea said. "He was an enthusiastic paleontologist and he believed in his research."
He added, "Sometimes, when I'm in the field, I have the strange sensation that he is somewhere near…"
Copyright © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC. The number-one nonfiction media company.
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
June 13, 2008 -- In 1900, the sister of an eccentric Austro-Hungarian aristocrat named Baron von Nopsca found a tiny bone on the baron's family estate in Transylvania, a historical region in present-day Romania. The baron, who was a dinosaur buff, identified the bone as belonging to a dwarf dino that likely once lived on an island in the region.
The motorcycle-riding baron's outrageous theories were ridiculed and largely dismissed, but now new evidence suggests his proposed island of dwarf dinosaurs did indeed exist in the land of the mythical, blood-drinking Count Dracula.
"Bram Stoker's [Dracula] tale is without a very sustainable historical background, but that is not the case here," lead researcher Vlad Codrea told Discovery News.
Dwarfed Bones Support the Claims
Codrea, a professor of biology and geology at University Babes-Bolyai in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and colleague Pascal Godefroit recently found several bones belonging to Zalmoxes shqiperorum, an herbivorous dinosaur with forelimbs that were much shorter than its hindlimbs.
The findings have been accepted for publication in the journal Comptes Rendus Palevol.
"Obviously it was a dwarf dinosaur," said Codrea, who compared the dinosaur to its Rhabdodon relatives from southern France and northern Spain. Rhabdodon, meaning "fluted tooth," measured just over 14 feet long, which, in itself, is a relatively small size for a dinosaur. Zalmoxes, on the other hand, was only 7 to 10 feet long.
The dwarf dinosaur has been classified as belonging to the iguanodont dinosaur group. These Mid Jurassic to Late Cretaceous animals included duck-billed dinos. Some members of the group could weigh up to eight tons and reach 50 feet in length.
Codrea and Godefroit unearthed the newly found bones in a red clay deposit at the Jibou Formation in Somes Odorhei, Romania.
More Mini Dinosaurs
The small Romanian dinosaur was apparently not a loner.
"Zalmoxes had in Transylvania select dinosaur company," Codrea said. "All were dwarves."
He explained that after the initial discovery on Nopsca's estate, the baron set off on his motorcycle to excavate various parts of his homeland. Over the years he found bones belonging to multiple dwarfed species.
These included a sauropod named Magyarosaurus dacus, which looked like a tiny version of a brontosaurus or diplodocus, and the ankylosaur Strutiosaurus transilvanicus, whose body was covered by many tiny bones that formed a protective shield.
A duck-billed dinosaur called Telmatosaurus transylvanicus was also excavated in the area, along with several carnivorous dinos, such as Velociraptorinae indet, Euronychodon and Paronychodon.
The Island Effect
Although many scientists scoffed at the notion of tiny dinosaurs inhabiting Transylvania, imminent paleontologist David Weishampel, fresh out of graduate school, became intrigued by the baron's finds, which he investigated first-hand in Romania.
Weishampel, who now works in the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at Johns Hopkins University, came to the conclusion that Nopsca was right -- very small dinosaurs really did live in Romania during the Late Cretaceous (around 70 to 65 million years ago).
He also agreed with the baron's theory that life in isolation on an island, which Weishampel has named Hateg Island, led to the dino dwarfism.
"Hateg was an eastern European island that existed throughout most of the Cretaceous," Weishampel told Discovery News. "It was colonized by the dinosaurs, turtles, crocodiles and various other animals that lived in subtropical to temperate shallow marine environments."
The new research suggests Hateg Island might have connected to mainland Transylvania at one point on the northeastern side, but scientists are still piecing together the region's geological history.
What is clear, however, is that the dinosaurs must have evolved away from other parts of Europe, since such isolated groups tend to be smaller or larger than normal, due to condensed ecosystems that result in size extremes.
On the Other End of the Scale
A few years ago, two of Codrea's colleagues from Bucharest, along with French paleontologist Eric Buffetaud, described "a new giant pterosaur" from Cretaceous Transylvania that was "remarkable for its very large size and for the robustness of its large skull."
The new pterosaur turned out to have a wingspan of 40 feet or more. Its scientific name, Hatzegopteryx thambema, appropriately means "Hateg Island Monster."
The flying reptile's head alone was nearly 10 feet long. Its skull was so long that Buffetaud's team wondered how the creature could have ever taken flight, but the researchers discovered that thin bones enclosing small air pockets gave the monster "strength and lightness."
Recreations of Hateg Island now therefore take on quite a psychedelic dream-like picture, with dwarf Transylvania dinosaurs living in relative tropical splendor, while flying monstrous reptiles swoop overhead.
Codrea explained that the pterosaur originally came as "an intruder, a visitor arrived from far away areas," and could fly over large distances that prevented it from locking into the island miniaturizing pattern of evolution.
The Baron's Tragic Ending
Baron von Nopsca did not live to see his theories validated.
He embarked on a motorcycle tour of Italy and Europe with his lover and secretary, Bayazid Doda, an Albanian Muslim, seated in his sidecar. The two men ran out of money and cut their journey short in Vienna where, in a rage, the baron drugged Doda's tea to render him unconscious. He then shot Doda before turning the gun on himself in 1933 when he was 56 years old.
Despite the baron's inner demons, other researchers now mostly support his theories, which included not only his work on dinosaurs, but also plate tectonics. Weishampel believes his work was so important that he's taken a year off to study it further and to write a related book.
Codrea and his colleague are also still exploring Transylvania's dinosaurs. They plan to publish information on even more finds there soon.
"I'm sure that Nopsca would be pleased about our discoveries, if he were alive," Codrea said. "He was an enthusiastic paleontologist and he believed in his research."
He added, "Sometimes, when I'm in the field, I have the strange sensation that he is somewhere near…"
Copyright © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC. The number-one nonfiction media company.
Odysseus' Bloody Homecoming Dated to 1178 B.C.
Odysseus' Bloody Homecoming Dated to 1178 B.C.
Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press
June 24, 2008 -- Using clues from star and sun positions mentioned by the ancient Greek poet Homer, scholars think they have determined the date when King Odysseus returned from the Trojan War and slaughtered a group of suitors who had been pressing his wife to marry one of them.
It was on April 16, 1178 B.C. that the great warrior struck with arrows, swords and spears, killing those who sought to replace him, a pair of researchers say in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
Experts have long debated whether the books of Homer reflect the actual history of the Trojan War and its aftermath.
Marcelo O. Magnasco of Rockefeller University in New York and Constantino Baikouzis of the Astronomical Observatory in La Plata, Argentina, acknowledge they had to make some assumptions to determine the date Odysseus returned to his kingdom of Ithaca.
But interpreting clues in Homer's "Odyssey" as references to the positions of stars and a total eclipse of the sun allowed them to determine when a particular set of conditions would have occurred.
"What we'd like to achieve is to get the reader to pick up the 'Odyssey' and read it again, and ponder," said Magnasco. "And to realize that our understanding of these texts is quite imperfect, and even when entire libraries have been written about Homeric studies, there is still room for further investigation."
Their study potentially adds support to the accuracy of Homer's writing.
"Under the assumption that our work turns out to be correct, it adds to the evidence that he knew what he was talking about," Magnasco said. "It still does not prove the historicity of the return of Odysseus," he said. "It only proves that Homer knew about certain astronomical phenomena that happened much before his time."
Homer reports that on the day of the slaughter the sun is blotted from the sky, possibly a reference to an eclipse. In addition, he mentions more than once that it is the time of a new moon, which is necessary for a total eclipse, the researchers say.
Other clues include:
* Six days before the slaughter, Venus is visible and high in the sky.
* Twenty-nine days before, two constellations -- the Pleiades and Bootes -- are simultaneously visible at sunset.
* And 33 days before, Mercury is high at dawn and near the western end of its trajectory. This is the researchers' interpretation, anyway. Homer wrote that Hermes, the Greek name for Mercury, traveled far west to deliver a message.
"Of course we believe it's amply justified, otherwise we would not commit it to print. However we do recognize there's less ammunition to defend this interpretation than the others," Magnasco said.
"Even though the other astronomical references are much clearer, our interpretation of them as allusions to astronomical phenomena is an assumption," he added in an interview via e-mail.
For example, Magnasco said, Homer writes that as Odysseus spread his sails out of Ogygia, "sleep did not weigh on his eyelids as he watched the Pleiades, and late-setting Bootes, and the Bear."
"We assume he means that as Odysseus set sail shortly after sunset, at nautical twilight the Pleiades and Bootes were simultaneously visible, and that Bootes would be the later-setting of the two," Magnasco explained. "It is a good assumption because every member of his audience would know what was being discussed, as the Pleiades and Bootes were important to them to know the passage of the seasons and would be very familiar with which times of the year they were visible. Remember the only calendar they had was the sky."
Since the occurrence of an eclipse and the various star positions repeat over different periods of time, Magnasco and Baikouzis set out to calculate when they would all occur in the order mentioned in the "Odyssey."
And their result has Odysseus exacting his revenge on April 16, 1178 B.C.
Copyright © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC. The number-one nonfiction media company.
Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press
June 24, 2008 -- Using clues from star and sun positions mentioned by the ancient Greek poet Homer, scholars think they have determined the date when King Odysseus returned from the Trojan War and slaughtered a group of suitors who had been pressing his wife to marry one of them.
It was on April 16, 1178 B.C. that the great warrior struck with arrows, swords and spears, killing those who sought to replace him, a pair of researchers say in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
Experts have long debated whether the books of Homer reflect the actual history of the Trojan War and its aftermath.
Marcelo O. Magnasco of Rockefeller University in New York and Constantino Baikouzis of the Astronomical Observatory in La Plata, Argentina, acknowledge they had to make some assumptions to determine the date Odysseus returned to his kingdom of Ithaca.
But interpreting clues in Homer's "Odyssey" as references to the positions of stars and a total eclipse of the sun allowed them to determine when a particular set of conditions would have occurred.
"What we'd like to achieve is to get the reader to pick up the 'Odyssey' and read it again, and ponder," said Magnasco. "And to realize that our understanding of these texts is quite imperfect, and even when entire libraries have been written about Homeric studies, there is still room for further investigation."
Their study potentially adds support to the accuracy of Homer's writing.
"Under the assumption that our work turns out to be correct, it adds to the evidence that he knew what he was talking about," Magnasco said. "It still does not prove the historicity of the return of Odysseus," he said. "It only proves that Homer knew about certain astronomical phenomena that happened much before his time."
Homer reports that on the day of the slaughter the sun is blotted from the sky, possibly a reference to an eclipse. In addition, he mentions more than once that it is the time of a new moon, which is necessary for a total eclipse, the researchers say.
Other clues include:
* Six days before the slaughter, Venus is visible and high in the sky.
* Twenty-nine days before, two constellations -- the Pleiades and Bootes -- are simultaneously visible at sunset.
* And 33 days before, Mercury is high at dawn and near the western end of its trajectory. This is the researchers' interpretation, anyway. Homer wrote that Hermes, the Greek name for Mercury, traveled far west to deliver a message.
"Of course we believe it's amply justified, otherwise we would not commit it to print. However we do recognize there's less ammunition to defend this interpretation than the others," Magnasco said.
"Even though the other astronomical references are much clearer, our interpretation of them as allusions to astronomical phenomena is an assumption," he added in an interview via e-mail.
For example, Magnasco said, Homer writes that as Odysseus spread his sails out of Ogygia, "sleep did not weigh on his eyelids as he watched the Pleiades, and late-setting Bootes, and the Bear."
"We assume he means that as Odysseus set sail shortly after sunset, at nautical twilight the Pleiades and Bootes were simultaneously visible, and that Bootes would be the later-setting of the two," Magnasco explained. "It is a good assumption because every member of his audience would know what was being discussed, as the Pleiades and Bootes were important to them to know the passage of the seasons and would be very familiar with which times of the year they were visible. Remember the only calendar they had was the sky."
Since the occurrence of an eclipse and the various star positions repeat over different periods of time, Magnasco and Baikouzis set out to calculate when they would all occur in the order mentioned in the "Odyssey."
And their result has Odysseus exacting his revenge on April 16, 1178 B.C.
Copyright © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC. The number-one nonfiction media company.
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