B6 Science
February 24– March 2, 2011
The Epoch Times
Did Dinosaurs Become Extinct
65.5 Million Years Ago?
Food for Thought:
Experiences and Meanings
‘No experience is in itself a cause of success or
failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our
experiences—the so-called trauma—but instead
New technology dates 64.8-million-year-old sauropod bone
make out of them whatever suits our purposes.
We are not determined by our experiences but are
By STEPHANIE LAM
self-determined by the meaning we give to them;
Epoch Times Staff
Scientists have unearthed a dinosaur bone dated to be 64.8 million
years old, according to a study published online Jan. 26 in Geology.
The fossil is a femur bone of
the sauropod species Alamosaurus sanjuanensis. The species is
a herbivorous dinosaur that can
reach up to 20 meters (about 67
feet) in length.
The bone was dated using uranium-lead (U-Pb) dating, “based
on the decay of two different U-isotopes, 238U and 235U,” Dr. Larry
Heaman of the University of Alberta in Canada told The Epoch
Times. “These two isotopes decay
at a known rate over time to two
lead isotopes, 206Pb and 207Pb
respectively.”
“What is new about our approach
to dating dinosaur bone is that we
use relatively new technology to
measure the uranium and lead
isotopic composition of bone,” said
Heaman.
“This new technology is called
laser ablation inductively coupled
plasma mass spectrometry. We
prepare a thin slice of the bone and
then aim a 160-micron-diameter
laser beam at selected parts. The
laser pulses liberate tiny particles
from the bone. These particles
are transported to a plasma where
they are dissociated and ionized.
The ionized particles are accelerated into a mass spectrometer and
the isotopic composition of lead is
determined.”
This technique allows the fossil to be dated directly, as apatite,
which is a major component of
bone mineral, can incorporate uranium, Heaman said. This makes
the dating more accurate than
other methods that determine the
age of fossils from substances in
the surrounding area.
“The new technique we developed
is more accurate than previous unsuccessful attempts at direct dating
of bone because the geochemistry
of bone can be complex and disturbed by interaction with fluids
subsequent to fossilization,” he
said.
“Our technique allows us to identify pristine parts of bone that are
not disturbed. These well-preserved domains are typically very
small, so the ability to specifically
access the material in these undisturbed domains has been key to
the success of the technique.”
This discovery of a 64.8-millionyear-old sauropod fossil “confounds
the long-established paradigm
that the age of dinosaurs ended
between 65.5 and 66 million years
ago,” a University of Alberta press
and when we take particular experiences as the
basis for our future life we are almost certain to
be misguided to some degree. Meanings are not
determined by situations. We determine ourselves
by the meanings we ascribe to situations.’
—Alfred Adler, in his book ‘What Life Should Mean to You’
Alfred Adler is a medical doctor and psychiatrist. He founded individual psychology, a field aimed at studying an individual as a
unified whole instead of studying different aspects of the individual
separately.
CRETACEOUS-TERTIARY EXTINCTION? Scientists have unearthed a sauropod bone dated to be 64.8 million years old,
700,000 years later than the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event that was previously thought to have killed all dinosaurs.
Courtesy of Larry Heaman
release said.
It was previously believed that
non-avian dinosaurs became extinct during the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event, which happened about 65.5 million years ago,
700,000 years earlier than the bone
was dated.
“The fossil-bearing layer that contains the young bone we dated is
located above the K/T [CretaceousTertiary] boundary, a boundary
identified in many places worldwide that has an anomalous content of iridium, an element that is
abundant in meteorites. This has
led to the theory that a giant meteorite event occurred at this time
and is the single reason why so
many species went extinct,” Heaman said.
He continued: “There is some
debate about the age of this boundary, but the most recent Geologic
Time Scale places this boundary at
65.5 Ma [million years ago]. More
recent studies have proposed the
boundary is even older (66.0 Ma).
“At face value, if dinosaurs were
all killed off by this event, then
there should be no bones preserved
in layers above the K/T boundary.
Scientists have proposed that, in
cases like the layer we studied, dinosaur bones located above the K/T
boundary were not originally deposited there; they are older, and
through erosion and re-deposition
NEW DATING TECHNOLOGY: A photo of the instrument used to date the
fossil. The laser workstation is in the middle of the photo and the top looks like a
microscope. Courtesy of Larry Heaman
have been move to this site at a later
time post-K/T event.
“The age that we obtained for the
dinosaur bone is in fact younger
than the K/T boundary, so this is
the first direct evidence that some
dinosaurs survived this event. It
opens the question as to what ac-
Was it navigating the Nazca Lines?
By BELINDA MCCALLUM
Yet another UFO encounter has
been recorded for 2011, this time
in Peru in footage taken from a light
aircraft on New Year’s Day.
According to the video on YouTube, two medical professionals
took an early morning flight in a
Cessna plane to observe the Nazca
Lines in Peru, near the foothills of
the Andes.
In the YouTube video, at around
3’28, the aircraft is flying through
rain clouds when suddenly a UFO
appears in a hole in the clouds, about
20 to 30 feet from the plane and
seemingly on a collision course.
The gray disk rapidly changes
course and disappears back into
the clouds, all within the space of a
couple of seconds. Subsequent slow
footage and still-frame analysis of
the incident clearly shows a flying
saucer-shaped object.
Is it possible that the UFO was
an alien craft navigating above the
mysterious Nazca Lines?
These geoglyphs have puzzled
modern man since they were discovered in the 1920s. They are not
visible from the ground but are
highly visible from the air, crisscrossing the world’s driest desert,
where they persist due to the lack
of rain and wind.
They may have been created by
the Nazcas, who lived from 200
B.C. to A.D. 700, but their function
is unclear. For many years, it has
been theorized that they are associ-
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Epoch Times Staff
UFO in Peru Nearly Strikes Plane
Epoch Times Staff
Cannabis Use Linked With
Psychosis Onset, Study Finds
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ated with UFOs because they are
only visible from high altitudes.
In 1941, history professor Paul
Kosok watched a sunset directly
above one of the lines and hypothesized that they could mark the positions of the sun and other stars at
different times of the year, describing the lines as “the largest astronomy book in the world,” according
to National Geographic.
But the idea has since been refuted by astronomers, who showed
that there are no meaningful associations between the lines and celestial objects.
Nevertheless, the theory was
popularized by Erich von Däniken,
who wrote “Chariots of the Gods,”
proposing that the lines are “an airfield ... built according to instructions from an aircraft.” Some of the
lines could also be signals to extra-
terrestrials, who may have visited
Peru during the time of the Nazca
people, subsequently leading to
them worshiping these “gods,” National Geographic reported.
Another hypothesis, the subterranean water theory, suggests that
the lines signify geological faults
where water flows underground,
which would have been vital to
people dwelling in the desert.
Some shapes like trapezoids
mark fault lines directly, while others point to these lines. And others
mark aquifer boundaries or points
where the direction of water flow
changes. If correct, the lines are
actually “a complex map of underground water resources,” National
Geographic suggests.
See a video of the UFO at http://bit.
ly/dMBTBd
NEW PLANETS: An artist’s
conception of a simultaneous
transit of three planets in front
of the sun-like star Kepler-11
observed by NASA’s Kepler
spacecraft on Aug. 26, 2010.
Kepler discovered six new planets
orbiting Kepler-11. Tim Pyle/NASA
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tually caused the dinosaurs to go
extinct and could destroy a 30-yearold paradigm that all dinosaurs
were killed by a giant meteorite
impact at 65.5 Ma.”
Researchers have found a link between the onset of psychotic illness
and the use of cannabis at a young
age, according to a study published
online in the journal Archives of
General Psychiatry on Feb. 7.
In this study, results were re-analyzed from 20,000 patients with
schizophrenia or other psychotic
disorders in 83 previous studies.
The researchers hoped to distinguish whether cannabis advances
the onset of severe mental illness,
rather than abuse of other psychoactive substances such as alcohol.
Lead author Dr. Matthew Large
from the University of New South
Wales (UNSW) in Australia said
according to a press release that
substance use is very common in
people treated in mental health settings, and schizophrenics are more
likely to use substances than other
people in the community.
The study found that schizophrenia is brought on earlier by an average of 2.7 years in cannabis users
and 2 years in broad substance
users, compared with non-users.
However, alcohol was not associated with a significantly earlier age
at onset of psychosis.
“Results of this study are conclusive and clarify previously conflicting evidence of a relationship between cannabis use and the earlier
onset of a psychotic illness, with
evidence supporting the theory
that cannabis use plays a causal
role in the development of psychosis in some patients,” said Large in
a UNSW press release.
“The results of this study provide
strong evidence that stopping or reducing cannabis use could delay or
even prevent some cases of psychosis,” Large said.
He said that even if psychosis is
inevitable, a delay of two to three
years in its onset “could allow many
patients to achieve important developmental milestones of late adolescence and early adulthood that
could lower long-term disability
arising from psychotic disorders.”
“The results of this study confirm the need for an ongoing public
health warning about the potentially
harmful effects of cannabis,” Large
concluded, according to the release.
However, the causality underlying
the relationship between cannabis
and mental illness has not been revealed: Does cannabis cause schizophrenia, or does it bring it out in vulnerable people? Either way, cannabis
is clearly associated with psychosis.
The study suggests that using
cannabis precipitates schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders,
perhaps by disrupting brain development or an interaction between
genetic and environmental factors. The findings do not support
the theory that people who develop
schizophrenia are more likely to use
substances, because alcohol use was
not associated with a younger age
at onset of psychosis.
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