Was Mighty T. Rex ‘Sue’ Felled By A Lowly Parasite? (via ScienceDaily)
When pondering the demise of a famous dinosaur such as ‘Sue,’ the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex whose fossilized remains are a star attraction of the Field Museum in Chicago, it is hard to avoid the image of clashing Cretaceous titans engaged in bloody, mortal combat.
It is an image commonly promoted by museums and dinosaur aficionados. Sue’s remains, in fact, exhibit holes in her jaw that some believed were battle scars, the result of conflict with another dinosaur, possibly another T. rex.
But a new study, published in the online journal PLoS ONE, provides evidence that Sue, perhaps the most famous dinosaur in the world, was felled in more mundane fashion by a lowly parasite that still afflicts modern birds. The study, conducted by an international team of researchers led by Ewan D.S. Wolff of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Steven W. Salisbury of the University of Queensland, Australia, pins the demise of Sue and other tyrannosaurs with similar scars on an avian parasitic infection called trichomonosis, caused by a single-celled parasite that causes similar pathologies on the mandibles of modern birds, raptors in particular.
It is possible the infection in her throat and mouth may have been so acute that the 42-foot-long, 7-ton dinosaur starved to death….
Rocket Scientists Shoot Down Mosquitoes With Lasers
A quarter-century ago, American rocket scientists proposed the “Star Wars” defense system to knock Soviet missiles from the skies with laser beams. Some of the same scientists are now aiming their lasers at another airborne threat: the mosquito….
The scientists’ actual target is malaria, which is caused by a parasite transmitted when certain mosquitoes bite people. Ended in the U.S. decades ago, malaria remains a major global public-health threat, killing about 1 million people annually….
The scientists envision their technology might one day be used to draw a laser barrier around a house or village that could kill or blind the bugs. Or, laser-equipped drone aircraft could track bugs by radar, sweeping the sky with death-dealing photons.
