From: Peiser, Benny [mailto:B.J.Peiser@livjm.ac.uk]
Sent: Friday, November 26, 2004 4:15 AM
To: cambridge-conference
Subject: CCNet: FORGET UFOs, FORGET ATLANTIS: HOLY GRAIL MANIA GRIPS
BRITAIN
CCNet 155/2004 - 26 November 2004
FORGET UFOs, FORGET ATLANTIS: HOLY GRAIL MANIA GRIPS BRITAIN
------------------------------------------------------------
For centuries the whereabouts of the Holy Grail, supposing it exists
at all, has exercised the minds of scholars and tested the endurance
of treasure hunters. Unsurprising, then, when the codebreakers of
Bletchley Park announced they were going to give details of a cryptic
inscription said to point to the location of the vessel which Christ
reputedly used at the Last Supper, the world's press turned out in force.
--Steven Morris, The Guardian, 26 November
2004
Richard Kemp, general manager of Shugborough, said the theory provided
another link between the monument and the Holy Grail. He said that the
previous connection was through the Poussin painting that he said showed
the family were interested in the Holy Grail by virtue of the painter's
apparent affiliation with the Knights Templar. The order was known as
the keepers of the Holy Grail. "This monument is the second piece of
evidence that there is a connection," he said.
--Katherine Haddonm, Press Association, 26 November
2004
But the publicity appears to have tantalised codebreakers from around
the world, who came up with ideas connected to numerology, UFOs, secret
messages to lost lovers
and even Nostradamus.
--Ian Herbert, The Independent, 26 November 2004
We're knights of the Round Table, we dance whene'er we're able. We do
routines and chorus scenes with footwork impec-cable, We dine well here
in Camelot, we eat ham and jam and Spam a lot. / We're knights of the
Round Table, our shows are for-mi-dable. But many times we're given
rhymes that are quite un-sing-able, We're opera mad in Camelot, we sing
from the diaphragm a lot. / In war we're tough and able, Quite
in-de-fa-ti-gable. Between our quests we sequin vests and impersonate
Clark Gable / It's a busy life in Camelot ....
--Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1975
(1) CODEBREAKER SCORES SUCCESS IN SEARCH FOR THE HOLY GRAIL
The Independent, 26 November 2004
(2) INSCRIPTION A 'SECRET MESSAGE FROM SECT': 'CONNECTION TO HOLY GRAIL'
Press Association, 26 November 2004
(3) THE MYTH OF THE HOLY GRAIL
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(4) STUDY SUGGESTS SLOW PLEISTOCENE EXTINCTION TOOK MORE THAN 25,000 YEARS
BBC News Online, 25 November 2004
(5) STUDIES SUGGEST HUMANS RESPONSIBLE FOR PLEISTOCENE EXTINCTIONS
New Scientist, 7 June 2001
(6) SEISMIC BLASTS AIM TO GET 'HOLE' STORY OF BAY'S CREATION
Bay Journal, 24 November 2004
(7) CORRECTION AND APOLOGY
(8) AND FINALLY: NEW SPECIES ARE DISCOVERED FASTER THAN OLD ONES GET WIPED OUT
Ananova, 24 November 2004
========
(1) CODEBREAKER SCORES SUCCESS IN SEARCH FOR THE HOLY GRAIL
The Independent, 26 November 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=586828
By Ian Herbert, North of England Correspondent
For 250 years, the cryptic inscription has exercised the minds of Britain's
finest theologians, historians and scientists, including Charles Darwin, Josiah
Wedgwood and, most recently, the Second World War code-breakers of Bletchley
Park.
But an anonymous American researcher was credited yesterday with the best stab
yet at what the letters D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M. - carved on the Shepherd's Monument
at Lord Lichfield's Shugborough estate in Staffordshire - might actually
signify.
The answer appears to be "Jesus (As Deity) Defy" - a message left by
an 18th century Christian sect Priory of Sion, which was forced to keep its
views secret since the Church of England thought they were heretical. On first
impressions, this rather perplexing answer may disappoint those who believed the
letters pointed the way to the final destination of the Holy Grail, the cup
Jesus is said to have used during the Last Supper. But Shugborough Hall was
holding on to its hopes last night, since the Priory of Sion was the spiritual
successor to the Knights Templar, who were known as the keepers of the Holy
Grail.
The stone monument, built around 1748, contains a carved relief of Nicholas
Poussin's Les Bergers d'Arcadie II in reverse. Beneath it are the letters. The
researcher, who applied standard codebreaking methods, initially came up with
the message "Jesus H Defy" but says the H stands for Christ, hence the
translation into "as deity". This is said to give the message a
meaning of defiance against prevailing Christian norms.
This theory is given weight by the common belief that Poussin was a Grand Master
of the Knights Templar. Its provenance is unexpected since Shugborough had
drafted in veteran codebreakers of Bletchley Park to crack the code six months
ago. But the publicity appears to have tantalised codebreakers from around the
world, who came up with ideas connected to numerology, UFOs, secret messages to
lost lovers and even Nostradamus.
Richard Kemp, the general manager of Shugborough, was convinced that the new
theory provided another link to the Holy Grail. The previous connection was
through Poussin's painting, which showed the Anson family who once owned
Shugborough were interested in the Holy Grail by virtue of the painter's
apparent Knights Templar affiliations.
Oliver and Sheila Lawn, who were code breakers during the Second World War, had
qualified praise for the "Jesus H Defy" theory. Mr Lawn said he was
"not sure" whether it was conclusive. "The person who propounded
this ... has done a more thorough job than most of the others," he said.
"He's made guesses but he's followed up the [historical] consequences more
thoroughly." Mrs Lawn, meanwhile, has a more romantic interpretation,
considering it to be a tribute by a lovelorn widower to his wife and her sister.
© 2004 The Independent
===========
(2) INSCRIPTION A 'SECRET MESSAGE FROM SECT': 'CONNECTION TO HOLY GRAIL'
Press Association, 26 November 2004
http://www.examiner.ie/pport/web/Full_Story/did-sgawnUDGmGbZcsgDQQ5wn3uAIg.asp
By Katherine Haddon
A MYSTERIOUS inscription on a British stately home monument is likely to be a
secret message from an 18th century Christian sect, Second World War
code-breakers said yesterday after spending months attempting to decipher it.
The significance of the sequence of letters on the Shepherd's Monument at the
Shugborough Estate in Staffordshire has baffled visitors for years. The marble
tablet, commissioned in 1748, features a carving of a Nicolas Poussin painting
with the letters D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M. underneath.
Now veteran code-breakers from Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, say the code is
likely to stand for 'Jesus (As Deity) Defy', a message from a sect called the
Priory of Sion.
The order had to keep its views secret because the Church of England, which
viewed Jesus as an earthly prophet, thought they were heretical. It had been
rumoured the riddle would reveal the location of the Holy Grail.
The theory has been put forward by an anonymous US researcher. Initially, he
came up with the message "Jesus H Defy" but says the H stands for
Christ, hence the translation into "as deity".
This gives the message a strong meaning of defiance against prevailing Christian
norms. The Priory of Sion held similar beliefs to the Knights Templar, to which
it was the spiritual successor - that Jesus was an earthly king, not a heavenly
one.
This theory is given weight by the common belief that Poussin was a Grand Master
of the Knights Templar.
The painting from which the carving is drawn, Les Bergers d'Arcadie, is housed
in the Louvre in Paris and has been subject to speculation over its possible
Masonic symbolism.
It provided some of the inspiration for Dan Brown's recent bestselling novel The
Da Vinci Code.
Richard Kemp, general manager of Shugborough, said the theory provided another
link between the monument and the Holy Grail.
He said that the previous connection was through the Poussin painting that he
said showed the family were interested in the Holy Grail by virtue of the
painter's apparent affiliation with the Knights Templar. The order was known as
the keepers of the Holy Grail.
"This monument is the second piece of evidence that there is a
connection," he said.
Copyright 2004, PA
=========
(3) HOLY GRAIL MANIA GRIPS BRITAIN
Has the mystery of the Holy Grail been solved?
The Guardian, 26 November 2004
New clue to mystery of Holy Grail
This is London, 26 November 2004
Researchers tackle 'Holy Grail' code
ABC Online, Australia, 26 November 2004
Code cracked as hunt for Grail goes on
The Scotsman, 26 November 2004
IT is one of the most enduring myths of Western European literature, a cryptic
message which has inspired tales from Arthurian legends to Dan Brown's best ...
Letters remain the holy grail to code-breakers
Telegraph.co.uk, 26 november 2004
For 250 years it defied all code-breakers. Darwin had a go; Dickens, and
Wedgwood too. But the 10-letter inscription ...
Codebreaker scores success in search for the Holy Grail
Independent, 26 November 2004
Holy Grail Riddle Solution 'To Be Revealed'
The Scotsman, UK - Nov 24, 2004
Experts to reveal Holy Grail code
BBC News, UK - Nov 24, 2004
Hope of solution to Holy Grail riddle
ic Birmingham.co.uk, UK - Nov 25, 2004
A team of Second World War codebreakers was today poised to reveal the solution
to a cryptic 18th century riddle in Staffordshire which is rumoured to reveal
...
Experts to reveal Holy Grail code
BBC Birmingham, UK - Nov 24, 2004
=============
(3) THE MYTH OF THE HOLY GRAIL
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Grail
In Christian mythology, the Holy Grail was the dish or cup, which Jesus used at
the Last Supper, or alternatively a vessel that caught his blood during his
crucifixion, or sometimes both. It was said to have the power to heal all
wounds. A theme joined to the Christianised Arthurian mythos relates to the
quest for the Holy Grail. The legend may be a combination of genuine Christian
lore with a Celtic myth of a cauldron endowed with special powers. Whether graal
is Celtic or Old French, it never refers to any cup or bowl but this.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, it was only after the cycle of Grail
romances was well established in identifying the cup of the Last Supper with the
Grail that late medieval writers came up with a false etymology from the fact
that in Old French, san grial means "Holy Grail" and sang rial means
"royal blood". Since then, Sangreal is sometimes employed to lend a
medievalizing air in referring to the Holy Grail. This connection with royal
blood bore fruit in a modern best-seller linking many historical conspiracies
(see below).
The Grail legend is believed by some to be a Gothic legend, which first came
together in the form of written romances, deriving perhaps from some
pre-Christian folkloric hints, in the later 12th and early 13th centuries. The
early Grail romances centered on Percival and were then woven into the more
general Arthurian fabric. The Grail romances were French; though they were
translated into other European vernaculars, no new essential elements were
added.
Also the Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table and the Holy
Grail are believed by some groups of scholars to be of Scythian Iranian origin.
(Sea Scott Littleton,C.: From Scythia to Camelot, New York 2000).
Myths of the Grail fall into two kinds of narratives: the history or fate of the
Grail and the quest for the Grail.
Fate of the Grail
The legend that the Grail was brought to Britain by Joseph of Arimathea, when he
travelled to the British Isles as the first Christian missionary to the country
and established the first Christian church in the British Isles made its
appearance in a verse romance, Joseph d'Arimathie, by Robert de Boron, composed
between 1170 and 1212.
A number of knights undertook the quest for the Grail, in tales that have become
annexed to the Arthurian mythos. Some of these tales tell of knights who
succeeded, like Percivale or the virginal Galahad; others tell of knights who
failed to achieve the grail because of their tragic flaws, like Lancelot. In
Wolfram's telling, the Grail was kept safe at the castle of Munsalvaesche (mons
salvationis) or Montsalvat, entrusted to Titurel, the first Grail-King. Some,
not least the monks of Montserrat, have identified the castle with the real
sanctuary of Montserrat in Catalonia.
The fate of the Holy Grail is unknown, with ownership attributed to various
groups (including the Knights Templar). There are cups claimed to be the Grail
in several churches like the Valencia cathedral. The emerald chalice at Genoa,
which was obtained during the crusades at Aleppo at great cost, has been less
championed as the Holy Grail since an accident on the road while it was being
returned from Paris after the fall of Napoleon revealed that the emerald was
green glass. Other stories claim that the Grail is buried beneath Rosslyn Chapel
or is to be found deep in the spring at Glastonbury Tor. The ultra-Catholic
mystic Anne Catherine Emmerich mentions the Grail in her visions, detailed in a
book, The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ (http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/10866).
Still other stories claim that the Grail was moved variously to either Nova
Scotia, or to Accokeek, Maryland by a priest aboard Captain John Smith's ship.
Quest for the Grail
The date of Grail sequences in the Welsh folktales, the Mabinogion are older
than the surviving manuscripts (13th century).There is an English poem Sir
Percyvelle, of the 15th century. Then the legends of King Arthur and the Holy
Grail were collected in the 15th century by Thomas Malory for his Morte D'
Arthur which gave the body of legend its classic form.
Important literary settings of Grail material include Chrétien de Troyes' Conte
du Graal (French, late 12th century, the first romance to mention the Grail) and
Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzifal (German, early 13th century). The parallels
between Conte du Graal and Parzifal are striking, but Wolfram stated that his
tale came from a Provençal lay of a certain Kyot (Guiot). Wolfram also states
that his romance is being transcribed for him, so the inference is that his
sources were not written. Kyot has never been identified, and many have
suggested that he does not exist.
Richard Wagner recast Wolfram's version of the legend in his opera Parsifal
(1883), opening the floodgates for the Grail in 20th century pop culture, both
camp and campy.
Three medieval relics
During the Middle Ages, three major contenders for the position of Holy Grail
stood out from the rest.
The earliest record of a chalice from the Last Supper is of a two-handled silver
chalice which was kept in a reliquary in a chapel near Jerusalem between the
basilica of Golgotha and the Martyrium. This Grail appears only in the account
of Arculf, a 7th-century Anglo-Saxon pilgrim who saw it, and through an opening
of the perforated lid of the reliquary where it reposed, touched it with his own
hand which he had kissed. According to him, it had the measure of a Gaulish
pint. All the people of the city flocked to it with great veneration. (Arculf
also saw the Holy Lance in the porch of the basilica of Constantine.) This is
the only mention of the chalice situated in the Holy Land.
There is a reference in the late thirteenth century to a copy of the Grail being
at Byzantium. This occurs in the 13th century German romance, the Younger
Titurel: "A second costly dish, very noble and very precious, was fashioned
to duplicate this one. In holiness it has no flaw. Men of Constantinople assayed
it in their land, (finding) it richer in adornment, they accounted it the true
grâl." This Grail was said to have been looted from the church of the
Bucoleon during the Fourth Crusade and sent from Byzantium to Troyes by Garnier
de Trainel, the then bishop of Troyes, in 1204. It was recorded there in 1610,
but it disappeared at the French Revolution.
Of two Grail vessels that survive today, one is at Genoa, in the cathedral. The
hexagonal Genoese vessel is known as the sacro catino, the holy basin.
Traditionally said to be carved from emerald, it is in fact a green Egyptian
glass dish, about eighteen inches (37 cm) across. It was sent to Paris after
Napoleon's conquest of Italy, and was returned broken, which identified the
emerald as glass. Its origin is uncertain; according to William of Tyre, writing
in about 1170, it was found in the mosque at Caesarea in 1101: "a vase of
brilliant green shaped like a bowl." The Genoese, believing that it was of
emerald, accepted it in lieu of a large sum of money. An alternative story in a
Spanish chronicle says that it was found when Alfonso VII of Castile captured
Almeria from the Moors in 1147 with Genoese help, un uaso de piedra esmeralda
que era tamanno como una escudiella, "a vase carved from emerald which was
like a dish". The Genoese said that this was the only thing they wanted
from the sack of Almeria. The identification of the sacro catino with the Grail
is not made until later, however, by Jacobus de Voragine in his chronicle of
Genoa, written at the close of the 13th century.
The other surviving grail vessel is the santo cáliz, an agate cup in the
cathedral of Valencia. It has been set in a medieval mounting and given a foot
made of an inverted cup of chalcedony. There is an Arabic inscription. The
earliest secure reference to the chalice is in 1399, when it was given by the
monastery of San Juan de la Peña to king Martin I of Aragon in exchange for a
gold cup. By the end of the century a provenance had been invented for the
chalice at Valencia, by which St Peter had brought it to Rome.
Casual metaphor
The legend of the Holy Grail is the basis of the use of the devalued term holy
grail in modern-day culture. This or that "holy grail" is seen as the
distant, all-but-unobtainable ultimate goal for a person, organization, or field
to achieve. For instance, cold fusion or anti-gravity devices are sometimes
characterized as the "holy grail" of applied physics.
Modern retellings
The Holy Grail, by Dante Gabriel RossettiThe combination of hushed reverence and
overheated chromatic harmonies of Richard Wagner's late opera Parsifal fatally
inflated the Holy Grail theme, while it brought the old medieval tale back into
a wider public consciousness. The high seriousness of the subject was also
epitomized in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painting (illustrated), in which William
Morris's soulful Titian-haired wife, at the time the painter's mistress, holds
the Grail like a champagne glass that she is about to make ring with a snap of
her long finger. The Grail was overripe, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail
(1975) deflated it and all pseudo-Arthurian posturings.
The Grail had turned up in movies before: it debuted in a silent Parsifal. In
The Light of Faith (1922), Lon Chaney attempted to steal it, for the finest of
reasons. The Silver Chalice, a novel about the Grail by Thomas B. Costain was
made into a 1954 movie (in which Paul Newman débuted), that is considered
notably bad by several critics, including Newman himself. Lancelot of the Lake
(1974) is Robert Bresson's gritty retelling. Excalibur, a more traditional
sex-in-armor representation of an Arthurian tale, in which the Grail is little
more than a prop. Brancaleone at the Crusades. The Fisher King and Indiana Jones
and the Last Crusade place the quest in modern settings, the one serious yet
unavoidably faintly camp, the other robustly self-parodying. The science fiction
television series Babylon 5 took the Quest into interstellar space in the 1994
episode "Grail".
For the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, who assert that their research
ultimately reveals that Jesus may not have died on the cross, but lived to marry
Mary Magdalene and father children, whose Merovingian bloodline continues today,
the Grail is a mere sideshow. Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code is
likewise based on the idea that the "real" Grail is not a cup but the
earthly remains of Mary Magdalene (again cast as Jesus' wife), plus a set of
ancient documents telling the "true" story of Jesus, his teachings and
descendants.
Copyright 2004, Wikipedia
===========
(4) STUDY SUGGESTS SLOW PLEISTOCENE EXTINCTION TOOK MORE THAN 25,000 YEARS
BBC News Online, 25 November 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/4042693.stm
New evidence casts doubt on the theory that sabre-toothed cats, mammoths and
other big North American mammals were driven to extinction by human hunting.
Genetic analysis of bison remains shows their populations started to crash
around 37,000 years ago - long before humans arrived in the New World.
The authors claim that climate change and other factors are a more likely
culprit in the extinction.
An international team has published their findings in Science magazine.
Until as recently as 20,000 years ago, North America had a range of large
mammals to rival the wildlife of present-day Africa.
The continent was home to woolly mammoth and mastodon, horses, camels, giant
ground sloths and bear-sized beavers, as well as sabre-tooths.
By about 10,000 years ago, most of these animals were gone. Some 70 North
American species disappeared - three-quarters of them large mammals.
This so-called "megafaunal extinction" has been blamed by some on
human hunters who appear in North America around 12,000 years ago.
But the latest research seriously questions this hypothesis. Scientists
extracted mitochondrial DNA from 442 bison remains found in the US, including
Alaska, Canada, Siberia and China.
Mitochondrial DNA comes from the cell's "power houses" and is
inherited through the maternal line only.
Keep refrigerated
Some of the best-preserved material used in the study was unearthed from beneath
the Alaskan permafrost by gold miners, some of whom even kept the remains
refrigerated until the scientists came to claim them.
Scientists stand a much better chance of extracting useful DNA sequences from
such frozen remains.
From this ancient genetic material, Alan Cooper at the University of Oxford, UK,
and colleagues were able to reconstruct a genetic history of bison over a period
of around 150,000 years.
Co-author Dr Beth Shapiro, also at Oxford, told the BBC News website: "When
people try to reconstruct processes that happened in the past, they devise
models based on the genetics of modern populations and extrapolate backwards in
time.
"But because we have ancient DNA from the specimens, we can actually look
at slices of time and see what the genetic diversity of that population
was."
Using mathematical analysis, the researchers were able to extract information
about bison population size through time.
Ancestral journey
During the late Pleistocene and Holocene Epochs (1.8 million years to the near
present), bison roamed across a territory called Beringia, an ice-free refuge
that stretched from eastern Siberia to the north-west of Canada.
Until around 37,000 years ago, there was a large, diverse population living in
Beringia. But after this date, the population's genetic diversity began to
decline dramatically.
The fall in numbers coincides with a warm period in which the steppe tundra that
bison like was covered by forests. These forests may have acted as a barrier to
bison dispersal and would have provided few sources of food.
This warm period was followed by cold, arid conditions.
"Some component of these ecological changes may have been sufficient to
stress bison populations across Beringia," the researchers write in their
research paper.
But John Alroy, a palaeobiologist at the University of California, Santa
Barbara, told Science: "I think the interpretation is overblown and not
supported by the data."
He points out that, in other areas, bison have managed to shrug off dramatic
shifts in climate.
The results show that modern bison are distinct from ancient Beringian bison.
They are descended from bison that spread southward through an ice-free corridor
from Beringia perhaps as early as 100,000 years ago.
© BBC MMIV
============
(5) STUDIES SUGGEST HUMANS RESPONSIBLE FOR PLEISTOCENE EXTINCTIONS
New Scientist, 7 June 2001
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns9999848
Detective work by two groups of researchers has fingered humans as the chief
suspects in two of palaeohistory's most intriguing murder mysteries - the
extinction of the giant animals and birds of North America and Australia more
than one hundred centuries ago in the Pleistocene era.
John Alroy, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa
Barbara used a computer model to test the theory that humans hunted some species
into oblivion. In his model, virtual humans hunted dynamic populations of 41
North American species. To Alroy's surprise, rather than it being hard to
achieve some extinctions, it was hard to avoid.
In other work, a team of geochronologists in the US and Australia used a new
trick to date the extinctions of 45 species from 28 sites in Australia.
"We find the extinctions happen across species and environments all at the
same time, shortly after humans arrive," says Linda Ayliffe at the
University of Utah in Salt Lake City. The researchers say the humans may have
hunted the megafauna or drastically altered the ecosystem, for example by
burning vegetation.
"Each of these papers is a tour de force," says Ross MacPhee of the
American Museum of Natural History in New York City, "one technically and
the other analytically." But MacPhee believes neither piece of work places
guilt squarely on the shoulders of our species. His team believes that emergent
diseases - the Ebola virus or HIV of their day - could be to blame (New
Scientist, 5 May, p 32).
Spectacular array
A spectacular array of North American animals disappeared around 11,000 years
ago, including the woolly mammoths, sabre-toothed cats and ground sloths.
Tens of thousands of years earlier, Australia experienced a similar extinction
of megafauna, including Genyornis, the heaviest bird known, and Thylacoleo
carnifex, a marsupial version of the lion. In each case, evidence has suggested
that human colonisation pre-dated the die-offs.
But the "blitzkrieg hypothesis" that humans were to blame is
controversial. "To some people that seemed intuitively wrong," says
John Alroy, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa
Barbara. "How could a few humans arrive and kill millions of animals?"
With a wide variety of initial assumptions, Alroy's model predicted that even
fairly inept human hunters would devastate certain species. Often these were
larger animals whose reproduction could not keep pace with the culling.
In fact, the model correctly forecast the fate of 32 out of 41 of the species.
This suggests to Alroy that for some of the animals death was inevitable, while
for others small changes in their circumstances could have made the difference.
Species demise
In Australia, only a single extinction, Genyornis, had been precisely dated to
follow soon after human colonisation about 50,000 years ago.
However, dating the demise of species has been difficult since the standard tool
of palaeobiologists, radiocarbon dating, is unreliable for samples older than
40,000 years. So it was not clear if Homo sapiens was at the scene of the crime
at the right time to trigger most extinctions.
Ayliffe and Richard Roberts of the University of Melbourne in Victoria and their
colleagues used two independent methods to date the sediments buried with the
fossils, rather than the fossils themselves.
Relevance today
One estimates the time since the sediments were last exposed to sunlight, the
other gauges the age of crystals in sediment layers above and below the fossils.
Their work suggests that all these species disappeared about 46,000 years ago.
More evidence will be needed to convict the blitzkrieg hypothesis. But all the
researchers agree that solving this ancient mystery may have important lessons
for saving today's endangered species.
"The answer makes a big difference in terms of what we can expect for the
future of our planet," says MacPhee.
More at: Science (vol 292, p 1888 and 1893)
Philip Cohen
Copyright 2004, New Scientist
============
(6) SEISMIC BLASTS AIM TO GET 'HOLE' STORY OF BAY'S CREATION
Bay Journal, 24 November 2004
http://www.bayjournal.com/article.cfm?article=2413
By Joanne Kimberlin
Crickets thrummed in the dark mist. A harvest moon glowed orange in the heavens.
The earth moved.
Thirty-five times.
It shuddered repeatedly as scientists detonated a 20-mile string of underground
explosives along Virginia's Eastern Shore this October. The concussions,
bouncing back from far below, will help to map the most detailed profile yet of
an ancient wound in the planet's crust: the 35-million-year-old Chesapeake Bay
impact crater.
Pushing the button was the easy part; reaching countdown required a diplomatic
endeavor worthy of the United Nations.
Scores of local landowners had to open their gates to dozens of scholarly
visitors-a remarkable consensus in a community that doesn't cotton much to
intrusion.
One by one, residents yielded to the common good-and to the long-winded,
high-wattage, caffeine-powered zeal of a wiry scientist from the Shenandoah
Valley, the man who loves the crater the most.
David Powars was one of the first scientists convinced of its existence-a notion
many of his colleagues had scoffed at for years. Now confirmed by a battery of
drill samples and other tests, the crater will be investigated deeper than ever
next fall, when a $1.5 million core hole punches 7,000 feet into its mysteries.
No one knows whether an asteroid or a comet gouged the one-mile-deep,
56-mile-wide crater beneath the Bay. But judging by the damage it caused, the
meteorite slammed into the planet at about 76,000 mph. The explosion, equal to
10 trillion tons of TNT, wiped out life for miles around, creating the largest
impact crater in the United States and the sixth-largest in the world.
FULL STORY at http://www.bayjournal.com/article.cfm?article=2413
=========
(7) CORRECTION AND APOLOGY
In the CCNet issue of 24 November, I included excerpts of an article by Youssef
M. Ibrahim
that focused on current attempts by the United Nations to prevent Iran from
acquiring
nuclear weapons. ('Iran's Nukes - What's The Problem?' http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclear-doctrine-04x.html).
In his article, Mr Ibrahim argues that Iranian military strategists were trying
to acquire
nuclear weapons only for defensive rather than offensive purposes, and that this
strategy
was "plausible as the Iranian ruling establishment, while defiant at times
is never reckless."
The CCNet headline asserted that by publishing this article, SpaceDaily.com and
UPI were
effectively "promoting" nuclear proliferation ('SPACE DAILY/UPI
PROMOTING NUCLEAR
PROLIFERATION').
This is an incorrect statement and I unreservedly withdraw this allegation. I
accept that the
personal views expressed by Mr Ibrahim do not reflect the views of
SpaceDaily.com or UPI and
take this opportunity to formally apologise for making an incorrect statement.
Benny Peiser
==========
(8) AND FINALLY: NEW SPECIES ARE DISCOVERED FASTER THAN OLD ONES GET WIPED OUT
Ananova, 24 November 2004
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1186370.html?menu=news.scienceanddiscovery
Some 13,000 new marine species have been discovered in the past year, according
to an international alliance of scientists.
The Census of Marine Life has also uncovered previously unknown migration routes
used by fish such as tuna and shark.
The $1bn 10-year project, which is building a huge database, involves
researchers in more than 70 countries.
The new knowledge will inform future conservation and fisheries policies,
reports the BBC.
"We're just skimming the surface," said Dr Ron O'Dor, chief census
scientist. "We know something about the first 100m at this point but we
know almost nothing about what lies down in the deep.
"Our analysis shows that if you catch a fish below 2,000m it is 50 times
more likely to be new to science."
The census has seen an exponential growth in knowledge in the 12 months since it
issued its last progress report.
More than 80,000 specimens were collected during an expedition to the
mid-Atlantic ridge
Some specimens are pulled up on trawls, counted and catalogued. Other organisms
are even tagged and tracked.
A remarkable picture of how life operates in the deep is beginning to emerge,
although vast areas of the world's oceans have yet to return any data at all.
Copyright 2004, Ananova
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