DINOSAUR FOOTPRINTS MADE 150 MILLION YEARS AGO in the bedrock of what is now Yemen are the first to be discovered in the Arabian Peninsula, say scientists.

The two separate trackways were made by a herd of 11 sauropods, and a lone two-legged plant-eating dinosaur belonging to the ornithopod family.

They went unnoticed for so long because they were covered by rubble and debris. The fossil record in the area is very sparse, with only a handful of dinosaur remains known to science.

A Yemeni journalist stumbled upon the first set of impressions in the village of Madar north of the capital Sana’a.

They were later classified as belonging to an ornithopod, a large, common, two-legged dinosaur that flourished from the Late Triassic Period to the Late Cretaceous Period.

It’s the first time we’ve found dinosaur trackways in the Arab Peninsula so it really is a first, said Dr Schulp. As a result, we know virtually nothing about the animals that once roamed this area. This discovery shows that several different kinds of dinosaur were abundant in the region and starts to fill a large gap in our knowledge of what was going on in the Middle East during the age of the dinosaurs.

Read the entire article by Helen Briggs: Science reporter, BBC News at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7410032.stm

Alligator Blood May Lead To Powerful New Antibiotics

Alligators often engage in violent fights over territories And mates, and scientists have puzzled over why their wounds rarely get infected.

Now researchers think the secret lies in the reptiles’ blood.

Chemists in Louisiana found that blood from the American alligator can successfully destroy 23 strains of bacteria, including strains known to be resistant to antibiotics.

In addition, the blood was able to deplete and destroy a significant amount of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

…Such peptides are also found in the skin of frogs and toads, as well as in Komodo dragons and crocodiles…

When the alligator serum was exposed to HIV the researchers found that a good amount of the virus was destroyed.

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