Dinosaurs could survive cold conditions

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent

Dinosaurs could have lived and reproduced in much colder climates than we orginally thought. Photo: Lonely Planet

Palaeontologists have unearthed a rich variety of dinosaur fossils in an area that would have been one of the most northerly regions of the world in the period just before the giant reptiles died out, between 65 and 68 million years ago.

At the time, the world was far warmer and the continents were still to move to their current positions. Northeastern Russia, where the remains have been found, would have been just 1,000 miles from the North Pole, inside what is now called the Arctic Circle. Average temperatures would have been around 50F (10C).

Fossil hunters found remains of duck billed dinosaurs, fossilised teeth belonging to relatives of the heavily armoured Triceratops and even teeth belonging to relatives of the giant meat eater Tyrannosaurus rex.

The palaeontologists, based at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, also found fragments of dinosaur egg shells alongside the Arctic dinosaur remains, providing the first proof the animals were able to reproduce in these relatively cold, northern climates.

Dinosaurs have typically been thought of as being tropical creatures, but the discovery suggests they were able to survive in far colder conditions than had been appreciated.

One of the most common theories for the extinction of the dinosaurs was that the global climate cooled to the point that the animals could not survive. But the new discovery suggests dinosaurs were capable of adapting to cold conditions.

Professor Pascal Godefroit, who led the research on the polar dinosaurs, believes they faced a far more speedy decline, most likely caused by a massive meteor impact around 66 million years ago.

"For the first time we have firm evidence that these polar dinosaurs were able to reproduce and live in those relatively cold regions," he said.

"There is no way of knowing for sure, but dinosaurs were probably warm blooded just like modern birds, which are the direct descendants of dinosaurs.

"We have no remains of cold-blooded reptiles such as turtles, crocodilians and lizards in that area which suggests it was too cold for them.

"The dinosaurs were incredibly diverse in polar regions – as diverse as they were in tropical regions. It was a big surprise for us."

Among the dinosaur remains to have been found at Kakanaut, in northeastern Russia, include fossils of bipedal herbivores known as Ornithopods along with larger, lumbering plant eaters, similar to Ceratop dinosaurs, known as Edmontonia.

Teeth belonging to small meat eaters, including the 6ft long Troodon, which carried retractable claws, and relatives of the Velociraptors made famous by Jurassic Park, known as Dromaeosaurids were unearthed.

Remains of large tyrannosaurid dinosaurs, relatives of the formidable Tyranosaurus Rex, were also discovered.

Previously the most northerly dinosaur remains to be found have been in Alaska, but scientists have always assumed the creatures migrated south during the winter months to avoid the cold and long periods of darkness.

Professor Godefroit and his team, however, now claim they have evidence to suggest dinosaurs were year round residents of high latitudes and fed on evergreen plants during the winter. They have reported their findings in the German journal Naturwissenschaften.

He believes that the findings that so many dinosaurs were living in relatively cold regions right up until the time they became extinct, provides strong evidence against theories that climate change gradually killed them off.

Instead he believes debris thrown up by the meteor impact that created the Chicxulub Crater, on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, blanketed the atmosphere and reduced the amount of sunlight reaching the planet's surface.

This would have caused a dramatic reduction in the amount of plant life on the planet, which would have caused a rapid collapse in the food chain as the large plant eating dinosaurs died out, as well as the meat eaters that preyed upon them.

He said: "The meteor impact would have led to the equivalent of a global polar night that could have lasted for several years. Even the polar dinosaurs that were used to finding food in such conditions would have struggled for that length of time."

Robert Spicer, from the Open University, told the scientific journal Nature that the findings show that dinosaurs were far more robust than had been realised.

He said: "It makes me ask very serious questions about what could make animals that were resilient enough to live under these conditions to suddenly go extinct."

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Docs: Many Men Have "Small-Penis Syndrome"

(WebMD) Eighty-five percent of women are pleased with their partner's penis proportions — yet many normal men suffer "small-penis syndrome," urologists report.

Small-penis syndrome is the anxiety of thinking one's penis is too small — even though it isn't. It's a totally different condition from having a truly tiny tinkler, a condition known by the cold, clinical name of micropenis.

Urologists Kevan R. Wylie of Royal Hallemshire Hospital and Ian Eardley of St. James Hospital in Leeds, England, review the literature on penis size in the June issue of the urology journal BJU International. They urge doctors not to laugh away these very real worries over an imaginary defect.

"It is very common for men to worry about the size of their penis," Wylie says in a news release. "It is important that these concerns aren't dismissed as this can heighten concerns and anxieties."

Wylie and Eardley note that studies of penis size are remarkably consistent. The average erect penis is about 5.5 to 6.2 inches long and 4.7 to 5.1 inches in circumference at midshaft.

A truly diminutive dangler — a micropenis — is less than 2.75 inches long when erect, Wylie and Eardley calculate.

Few men suffer this condition. Yet 45 percent of men want a bigger penis, the researchers find. No wonder the Internet is rife with offers of "miraculous" penis-lengthening schemes.

There is slight evidence that some of them, such as the Phallosan extender system and the Penistretcher device, may result in slightly lengthening the
stretched length of a flaccid penis. But Wylie and Eardley note that there is far too little peer-reviewed research to know whether these devices — or
others like them — offer any real benefit.

Similarly, the researchers note that plastic surgeons have been touting
their ability to make a man's flaccid or erect penis larger. Again, they note, these techniques are unproven except for cases of true deformity. And they warn that serious complications may ensue.

Wylie and Eardley recommend that urologists take men's concerns seriously.
If education and counseling doesn't do the trick, they advise psychotherapy for men whose obsession over penis size is interfering with their lives.

By Daniel DeNoon
Reviewed by Louise Chang

© 2007 WebMD, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Charles Darwin's research to prove evolution was motivated by his desire to end slavery

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent

Science historians Adrian Desmond and James Moore have compiled compelling new evidence which reveals Darwin was passionately opposed to slavery and this was the moral impetus behind his work.

Private notes and letters uncovered by the pair reveal that Darwin's opinions on slavery were far stronger than had previously been believed.

Notebooks from his five year voyage on HMS Beagle, during which Darwin first began to form his famous theories on natural selection, detail his revulsion at the slavery he witnessed in South America.

The historians have also discovered letters written by Darwin's sisters, cousins and aunts that reveal the family as highly active abolitionists. Darwin's grandfather and uncles were also key members of the anti-slavery movement.

The pair claim in a new book that Darwin partly chose to highlight the common descent of man from apes to show that all races were equal, as a rebuttal to those who insisted black people were a different, and inferior, species from those with white skin.

They say Darwin attempted to show that his theory of sexual selection, where traits seen as desirable but which give no competitive advantage to a species are passed down through generations, was responsible for differences in appearance between races of both animals and humans.

Professor James Moore, from the department of history of science at the Open University, said that Darwin originally shied away from tackling the origins of humans in his book On the Origin of Species, which was published in 1859, as it was a controversial subject.

"We are not trying to explain away all of Darwin's work as being due to his passion for emancipation, but our argument is that his passion for racial unity is what drove him to touch this untouchable and treacherous subject," he said.

"Darwin was finally goaded into starting his work on the origins of man in 1865 by a rising tide of scientific belief that the races were separate species."

The new book, called Darwin's Sacred Cause, examines notes that Darwin made during his voyage on the Beagle. After visiting Brazil he wrote of his disgust at the slavery he saw in the country.

From an entry on July 3 1832, just one year before the Slavery Abolition Act was passed in Great Britain, he said: "The state of the enormous slave population must interest everyone who enters the Brazils... I hope the day will come when they will assert their own rights & forget to avenge these wrongs."

In notebooks he used while drawing up his theory of natural selection, he also made references to slavery. He wrote: "Do not slave holders wish to make the black man other kind?... from our origin in one common ancestor we may be all netted together."

Darwin also describes the brutality of slavery in his best-selling journal about his Beagle voyage and recalls staying opposite an old lady near Rio de Janeiro who kept thumbscrews to crush the fingers of her female slaves. He also tells of how a young boy was whipped "thrice" for handing him a glass that was not clean.

Correspondence between Darwin and a Jamaican magistrate Richard Hill, a former slave who went on to oversee disputes between former slave owners and emancipated slaves, also reveals some of the naturalist's views.

He writes to Hill just a few months before publishing On the Origin of Species to congratulate him on his work for the "sacred cause of humanity".

Professor Moore claims that Darwin's family were instrumental in helping the biologist form his opinions on slavery. His grandfather was Josiah Wedgwood, who founded the famous china factory and was an active anti-slavery campaigner.

Darwin's uncles included Josiah Wedgwood II, an abolitionist MP, while his aunts, cousins and sisters wrote many letters and donated money to the cause.

Professor Moore added: "Darwin's mother died when he was eight years old, so his sisters brought him up with help from their Wedgewood cousins. He was under the influence of these highly principled and liberal thinking ladies who taught him about anti-cruelty and the sin of slavery."

Next month will mark the 200th anniversary since Darwin's birth, while in November scientists will celebrate 150 years since his seminal work On the Origin of Species was published.

Many supporters of Darwin's work have used his theories to argue against the existence of God and the need for religion, while the controversy that followed the publication of his work is now seen to have mainly been on religious grounds.

In fact, Darwin was a religious man until relatively late in his career, often shying away from speaking publicly about the controversy his research had provoked.

Professor Moore and his co-author Adrian Desmond will present their new theory at a lecture and book launch at Imperial College London on Monday 9 February.

Mr Desmond, an honorary research fellow at University College London, said: "Darwin doesn't overtly refer to slavery and racism as his motivation for writing Descent of Man and On the Origin of Species, but it is there lurking in the background.

"I don't think anyone has really looked at how strong his belief in anti-slavery was, and this could be why it has been overlooked.

"What he was saying was that if you accept evolution, then you don't accept the view that black people are a separate species. It is clear that he believed the same as his grandfathers – that slaves were men and brothers."

Professor Armand Leroi, an evolutionary biologist at Imperial College London who is presenting a documentary What Darwin Didn't Know on BBC 4 on Monday, said although the new theories outlined in the book did not change Darwin's achievements, it gave a fresh insight into his motivations.

He said: "We as evolutionary biologists tend to view Darwin as being very much motivated by the things that motivate us, which is the explanation for the diversity of all the things in the world.

"Origin of the Species is a classic scientific work as it has no obvious social agenda, although when you read the journal of his voyage on the Beagle it becomes clear he was horrified by the slavery he saw and how it weighs upon him."

The Darwin's Sacred Cause book launch takes place at 6pm on Monday 9 February 2009 in the Great Hall on Imperial College London's South Kensington campus.

Entry is by advance free ticket only. Tickets can be reserved by emailing events@imperial.ac.uk

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