Dinosaurs struggled to survive long before asteroid hit
MIAMI: Dinosaurs struggled to survive for tens of millions of years before they finally went extinct, an event widely blamed on the environmental fallout from an asteroid strike, researchers said Monday.
The argument offers the latest salvo in a long-running debate among scientists over the state of dinosaur health in their final years on Earth -- some say they were flourishing, while others say they were strongly in decline.
“While a sudden apocalypse may have been the final nail in the coffin, something else had already been preventing dinosaurs from evolving new species as fast as old species were dying out,” said lead author Manabu Sakamoto, a paleontologist at the University of Reading, in Britain.
For the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers combed through fossil records from around the world and performed a statistical analysis showing that various species of dinosaurs were going extinct at a faster pace than new ones were emerging for a period of at least 40 million years prior to the cosmic debris that smashed into what is modern-day Mexico. — AFP
‘Limited’ activity at N. Korea nuclear test site — US think-tank
SEOUL: Recent satellite images show only “limited” activity at North Korea’s nuclear test site, despite reports that Pyongyang is on the verge of conducting a fifth underground test, a US think-tank said yesterday.
But while the images contain l i t t le to suggest a tes t i s imminent, analysts at the USKorea Institute at Johns Hopkins University noted that North Korea has become increasingly expert at masking its preparation work.
South Korean President Park Geun-HyetoldhercabinetMonday that intelligence sources had detected signs that Pyongyang was preparing a new test, an assessment echoed the same day by her defence ministry.
North Korea is gearing up for a rare and much-hyped ruling party congress early next month, at which leader Kim Jong-Un is expected to take credit for pushing the country’s nuclear weapons programme to new heights.
Numerous analyst s have suggested the regime might carry out a fifth nuclear test as a display of defiance and strength just before the congress opens.
In its analysis yesterday, the US-Korea Institute said the most recent satellite imagery of the Punggye-ri test site showed “very limited activity”, although key areas were clear of snow and being maintained. — AFP