Science Special News

[Rasputin]

Ghost hunter Ed Warren dies

A trip to the movies 65 years ago changed the life of 14-year-old Lorraine Moran. She still remembers the movie, "The Strawberry Blonde," a romantic comedy starring James Cagney. But Ed Warren, an usher at the Stratford theater, made a far more lasting impression on Lorraine, now 79 and known worldwide for her gift of second sight, or clairvoyance. She said she looked up at young Ed, who then weighed no more than 140 pounds, and saw him not as a skinny teenager bounding up the stairs to his home in Bridgeport, but older and heavier — the image of the man as he looked when he collapsed of a heart ailment in 2001. Lorraine knew in a flash, and even wrote in her diary at the time, that she would spend the rest of her life with Ed Warren. He died Wednesday at his home under her care at the age of 79 after a lifetime of renown as a paranormal researcher and ghosthunter. "I will carry on this work, as a tribute to Ed," Lorraine Warren said Thursday from the couple's home on Knollwood Drive. "Yes, for him I'll do it. Yes, I will." Ed Warren made a living from a world that most people today don't admit or believe exists — the world of ghosts and malevolent spirits. He had said he lived in a haunted house as a child, which began a lifelong quest into the paranormal. Long before the 1980s movie "Ghostbusters" popularized the concept of ghosthunting, Ed and Lorraine were doing it in real life.

But not everyone had the Warrens' fascination with the paranormal and the occult. There are national organizations dedicated to debunking such phenomena, such as the Skeptics Society in Altadena, Calif., publishers of Skeptic magazine. "Paranormal investigation has been around 200 years and they've still gotten nowhere," said Pat Linsey, co-founder of the group. But Linsey said she had heard of Warren, such was their renown. Jerry Allen, 39, of Bridgeport, who had been Ed's nurse's aide nearly four years, said he had initially been a skeptic about the paranormal, but began changing his mind. "The more I saw all the phone calls come in" to the Warrens from people who needed help with spirit phenomena, Allen said, "I'm starting to believe it."

[Rasputin]

Fossils of new dinosaur found in Brazil

Brazilian paleontologists have discovered a new giant dinosaur species based on fossilized fragments of the herbivorous reptile that lived 80 million years ago. The Maxakalisaurus topai, of the Titanosauria group, was 13 meters (yards) long and weighed about nine tons.It had a large body, long tail and neck with a relatively small head. Some of the bones found had the marks of teeth on them, which led scientists to believe that the specimen was devoured by carnivorous dinosaurs after its death.The fossils date back to the Late Cretaceous period. They were found during excavations between 1998 and 2002 next to a highway in a place called Serra da Boa Vista in central-southern Minas Gerais state. It then took some time for the scientists to categorize the species and reconstruct the skeleton.The name of the species, Maxakalisaurus topai, derives from an Indian tribe, Maxakali, which lives in the area. Topa is a divinity that the tribe worships. It is a custom in Brazil to give native Indian names to paleontological finds.The find is extremely important as Maxakalisaurus topai is closely related to a highly evolved group of dinosaurs, called the Saltasaurinae, researcher Alexander Kellner said on Monday after presenting a reconstructed skeleton of the reptile in the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro .

The Saltasaurinae lived 70 million years ago and the fossils have only been found in Argentina."Among its specific traits are some peculiarities that we found in the vertebrae, especially a protuberating sacral vertebra ... It also has teeth with carinae (ridges), which we think served to better process the food," Kellner said.Dinosaurs from the Titanosauria group were the main herbivorous dinosaurs of the ancient super-continent known as Gondwana, which grouped Australia, India, Africa, South America and Antarctica some 200 million years ago.

[Rasputin]

Ancient raptors fed on early humans

A new study suggests that prehistoric birds of prey made meals out of some of our earliest human ancestors. Researchers drew this conclusion after studying more than 600 bones from modern-day monkeys. They had collected the bones from beneath the nests of African crowned eagles in the Ivory Coast Tai rainforest. A full-grown African crowned eagle is roughly the size of an American bald eagle, which typically weighs about 10 to 12 pounds.Punctures and scratches on many of the monkey skulls have led some researchers to rethink which animals may have preyed on our human ancestors, said W. Scott McGraw, the study's lead author and an associate professor of anthropology at Ohio State University.“It seems that raptors have been a selective force in primate evolution for a long time,” he said. “Before this study I thought that eagles wouldn't contribute that much to the mortality rate of primates in the forest.“I couldn't have been more wrong.”The results may also have important implications for the mystery surrounding the death of one human ancestor who lived about 2.5 million years ago.Archaeologists discovered the skull of a 3½-year old ape-like child in a cave in South Africa in 1924.

Researchers believed this child, called the Taung child (Australopithecus africanus), had been killed by a predatory cat. But McGraw said that puncture marks on the monkey skulls he examined closely resemble those found on the skull of the Taung child.“Eagles leave very distinctive beak and talon punctures around the face and in the eye sockets,” “The skull of the Taung child has these same kinds of puncture marks.”

[Rasputin]

Vatican exorcist: Hitler, Stalin 'possessed'

Adolf Hitler and Russian leader Stalin were possessed by the Devil, the Vatican's chief exorcist has claimed. Father Gabriele Amorth who is Pope Benedict XVI's 'caster out of demons' made his comments during an interview with Vatican Radio. Father Amorth said: "Of course the Devil exists and he can not only possess a single person but also groups and entire populations. "I am convinced that the Nazis were all possessed. All you have to do is think about what Hitler - and Stalin did. Almost certainly they were possessed by the Devil. "You can tell by their behaviour and their actions, from the horrors they committed and the atrocities that were committed on their orders. That's why we need to defend society from demons." According to secret Vatican documents recently released wartime pontiff Pope Pius XII attempted a "long distance" exorcism of Hitler which failed to have any effect. Father Amorth said: "It's very rare that praying and attempting to carry out an exorcism from distance works.

"Of course you can pray for someone from a distance but in this case it would not have any effect. "One of the key requirements for an exorcism is to be present in front of the possessed person and that person also has to be consenting and willing. "Therefore trying to carry out an exorcism on someone who is not present, or consenting and willing would prove very difficult.

[Rasputin]

Plan to store blueprints on the Moon

On 21 July 1969, we made one giant leap. Man walked on the moon, and, as one, America and the world rejoiced. But, since then, what purpose the moon? We know we can get there and what it looks like, but short of practising our long irons on the most expensive golf range in the galaxy, why would we want to go back? William Burrows knows why: to save mankind. Burrows is the spokesman for the elegantly named Alliance to Rescue Civilization (ARC), a body of American scientists and thinkers who think the moon is humanity's ultimate insurance policy. For the ARC, it represents a chance to save a back-up of the blueprint for life on Earth and, in the event of disaster, a few people, too. But is he for real, or is he just another science-fiction nutter?"Well, I can't vouch for that," says Burrows at his research centre in Stamford, Connecticut. "In fact, at an airforce base in Omaha, someone asked me whether I wrote fiction or non-fiction. I said, 'That depends on who you ask.'"Despite this self-deprecating manner, Burrows is something of an authority on the subject.

Now professor of journalism and mass communication at New York University, Burrows's early training was as an aviation and space reporter for The New York Times. From there, he developed into one of the country's leading space writers. In 1986, his book Deep Black caused a sensation when it exposed America's spy satellite programme. And, in 1999, his history of the first space age, This New Ocean, was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, and has since become the subject's standard work.

[Rasputin]

3000-yr-old "pyramid" discovered in China

Chinese archaeologists have discovered a group of ancient tombs shaped like pyramids, dating back at least 3,000 years, in Jiaohe City of northeast China's Jilin Province. The tombs, covering an area of 500,000 square meters (1,000 meters long and 500 meters wide), were found after water erosion exposed part of a mountain, revealing two of the tombs. Six smaller tombs had eroded away leaving no indications of their original scale and appearance, but the biggest tomb, located on the south side of the mountain, could clearly be discerned as a pyramid shape with three layers from bottom to top. The pyramid's square bottom is about 50 meters long and 30 meters wide, about the size of a basketball court, with an oval platform on the top, about 15 meters long and 10 meters wide. The tomb was made of stone and earth dug out from the hill. A stone coffin, surrounded by four screen boards and covered by a granite top, was placed on the top platform. The coffin appeared to belong to the king of an early tribe based on the dimensions of the site, according to experts with the Jiaohe Archaeological Research Institute.

The tombs are part of the Xituanshan cultural ruins site, which dates back 3,000 years to China's Bronze Age period. The ruins were excavated in Jilin in 1950. A lot of ancient hunting and domestic tools, including a stone knife and axe, as well as bronzeware and earthenware, have been unearthed from the stone coffin and other six smaller graves. The discovery will provide valuable clues on study of ancient funeral customs and the tomb structure and culture of ethnic groups in the area.

[Rasputin]

Original neanderthal found 150 years ago

It was the early part of August 1856 when two workers at a limestone quarry found strange-looking bones in a cave they were digging in the Neander Valley east of Dusseldorf. Thinking the bones belonged to a bear, the quarrymen showed them to a local amateur naturalist, Johann Carl Fuhlrott, who identified them as human and very old. Fuhlrott believed the 16 bone fragments he examined represented the remnants of an ancient human race, different from contemporary humans. But this view was not immediately accepted as it contradicted literal interpretations of the Bible and came before Charles Darwin's work about evolution was published. It took some years before the Neanderthal man gained acceptance as a species of the homo genus that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia. The first proto-Neanderthal traits appeared in Europe as early as 350,000 years ago, by 130,000 years ago full blown Neanderthal characteristics had appeared and by 50,000 years ago Neanderthals disappeared from Europe, although they continued in Asia to 30,000 years ago.

More than 300 examples of homo neanderthalensis have been found in different parts of Europe and the Middle East since the original discovery. But the bones found in the Neander Valley remains to this day the most popular and best researched prehistoric man in the world. "The Neanderthals were much further developed than we originally believed," according to Frankfurt-based palaeo-biologist Friedeman Schrenk.

[Rasputin]

Big Bang fails intergalactic shadow test

The apparent absence of shadows where shadows were expected to be is raising new questions about the faint glow of microwave radiation once hailed as proof that the universe was created by a "Big Bang." In a finding sure to cause controversy, scientists at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) found a lack of evidence of shadows from "nearby" clusters of galaxies using new, highly accurate measurements of the cosmic microwave background. A team of UAH scientists led by Dr. Richard Lieu, a professor of physics, used data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) to scan the cosmic microwave background for shadows caused by 31 clusters of galaxies. "These shadows are a well-known thing that has been predicted for years," said Lieu. "This is the only direct method of determining the distance to the origin of the cosmic microwave background. Up to now, all the evidence that it originated from as far back in time as the Big Bang fireball has been circumstantial. "If you see a shadow, however, it means the radiation comes from behind the cluster. If you don't see a shadow, then you have something of a problem. Among the 31 clusters that we studied, some show a shadow effect and others do not." Other groups have previously reported seeing this type of shadows in the microwave background.

Those studies, however, did not use data from WMAP, which was designed and built specifically to study the cosmic microwave background. If the standard Big Bang theory of the universe is accurate and the background microwave radiation came to Earth from the furthest edges of the universe, then massive X-ray emitting clusters of galaxies nearest our own Milky Way galaxy should all cast shadows on the microwave background. These findings are scheduled to be published in the Sept. 1, 2006, edition of the Astrophysical Journal. Taken together, the data shows a shadow effect about one-fourth of what was predicted - an amount roughly equal in strength to natural variations previously seen in the microwave background across the entire sky. "Either it (the microwave background) isn't coming from behind the clusters, which means the Big Bang is blown away, or ... there is something else going on," said Lieu. "One possibility is to say the clusters themselves are microwave emitting sources, either from an embedded point source or from a halo of microwave-emitting material that is part of the cluster environment.

[Rasputin]

UFO sightings over Norwich

A strange series of lights seen in the sky last week have prompted one group to ask for witnesses to come forward to help fuel the debate on whether we are being watched by beings from outer space. So far two people saw a black triangular craft appear in the sky above Low Road, but the Norfolk UFO Society (NUFOS) feels more people must have seen the mystery in the sky.The Evening News was contacted by one of the witnesses to the anomaly, which happened at 12.20am on August 23. A second man, a civil aviation worker at Norwich Airport, also reported seeing the lights in the sky.The aviation specialist, who did not want to be identified and said it was definitely not a stealth aircraft, was walking home from the cinema when he saw the craft about 50ft in the air, and judged it to nine feet by five feet by comparing it with nearby trees. He said: “A bright red ball just appeared. It glowed then turned blue and a triangular black glass type solid craft appeared. It pulsed various lights but there was no sound. It turned as if to look in my direction. “It fired off a light beam that jumped rapidly from house to house along Low Road. It then increased the light at the flat edge, I presume the back, and it just shot off in total silence towards the north. No sound at any time except a static fizz in the air

.”Witness Austin Paxman, of Norwich, contacted the Evening News and said he was taking a short cut across the Royal Norwich Golf Club when he saw the same craft, but from a different angle.He said: “There seems to be more and more UFO reports for Norwich and I am curious as to what is being done about it.”John Sayer, of NUFOS, said he would be interested to speak to people who have reported UFO incidents.He said: “This does appear to be a very detailed report and the fact they are in aviation lends it credibility - if they are telling the truth.“In a book by Timothy Good called Beyond Top Secret he says the hotspot for UFO activity in the UK in terms of reports to official bodies is the Norwich area.

[Rasputin]

Portable emergancy generator developed

A power generator that not only produces electricity but also refrigeration and water could help fulfill basic survival needs when disasters such as Hurricane Katrina wipe out utility stations. The heat-operated refrigeration system, developed by University of Florida engineers William Lear and Sherif A. Sherif, could offer a new paradigm for power companies that typically build large plants to service thousands of customers.Instead, the closet-sized generators would produce power, water and air conditioning for smaller communities such as apartment complexes, hospitals and warehouses — even neighborhoods. It is compact enough to fit inside a military jet or large truck, and is designed for use in war zones, hurricanes or other disasters.

The generators would be owned by the local utility company and connected to the power grid. And unlike large backup generators that are turned on only during emergencies, the University of Florida machines would run regularly to augment electrical needs during peak load demands, such as in the summer, and also work as backup generators during blackouts.

[Rasputin]

Da Vinci Code author on new exorcism book

Dan Brown, author of "The Da Vinci Code" is writing a book about exorcism with the apparent help of a former Roman Catholic archbishop from Zambia. Emmanuel Milingo, who was recalled to the Vatican after marrying a South Korean woman, reportedly met with representatives of Brown about working with him on a new novel, The Times of Zambia reported Wednesday. Brown and Milingo plan to meet in late September in England to discuss the project. Besides working with Brown on the new novel, Milingo is also said to have reached an agreement to collaborate with Sony Pictures on the production of a film based on Brown's earlier novel entitled "Angels and Demons." The Vatican has been worried about Milingo's since he disappeared from his residence outside Rome in June of this year. A month later he turned up in Washington, publicly calling for the Catholic Church to permit married clergy.

Milingo's apparent interest in Brown, whose novel cast aspersions on Catholicism, raises the specter of yet more trouble for the Vatican, as the former archbishop has already said publicly that the Roman Catholic Church has devil worshipers in it. Five years ago Milingo stunned the religious world by announcing his embrace of the Unification Church, led by the self-proclaimed Korean messiah, Sun Myung Moon, and his decision to marry a woman selected for him by Moon. Shortly after that, however, Pope John Paul II persuaded Milingo to recant and move to Rome where he lived quietly, without a pastoral assignment. Since his recent Washington appearance, Milingo has returned to his South Korean bride, and continued to push for a married clergy.

[Rasputin]

When real fairies help real people

Ken Korczak: He was one of the most brilliant and energetic astronomer of the previous century. George Ellory Hale was the driving force behind building the world’s largest observatory till then -- the 200-inch glass giant of Palomar. He also revolutionized our understanding of the sun, inventing the spectroheliograph, with which he made his discoveries of the solar vortices and magnetic fields of sun spots. And who was Hale’s primary science advisor? An elf. Beginning at age 42, Hale says a “little elf” appeared in his window sill and told him to get the Palomar project started. Hale says his “little elf” also advised him on other scientific work.Hales relationship with his “little elf” is documented in Helen Wright’s 1966 book, “Explorer of the Universe.” Some have disputed Wright's account of Hale’s elf, pointing out that the astronomer suffered from mental illness his entire life, while others have claimed that Hale’s frequent reference to his elf guide was merely a metaphor for his inner imagination. Yet, that’s not how Hale viewed it. Hale thought his elf was just that -- a living, breathing elf. Hale relied heavily on his “little elf.” His attitude toward his helper was remarkably similar to that of another great man, the writer Robert Louis Stevenson.

Stevenson gave us such classics as “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and “Treasure Island” but he had a guilty secret. Stevenson felt that he did not actually write these books by himself, but rather, the stories were given to him by fairies -- little people he called “Brownies.” Stevenson claimed the Brownies came to him in his sleep to give him story ideas, plots and narratives, and all he had to do when he woke up is write them down. Stevenson said: “The whole of my published fiction should be the single-minded product of some Brownie, some Familiar, some unseen collaborator, whom I keep locked up in the back of a garret ... the more I think of it, the more I am moved to press upon the world my question: Who are the Little People?”Who are they indeed? That’s the question writer, philosopher and ethnobotanist Terrence McKenna wondered about when he frequently confronted what he called “the machine elves.” McKenna describes the machine elves this way in his book, “True Hallucinations”: “Dozens of these friendly, fractal entities, looking like self-dribbling Fabergé eggs on the rebound had surrounded me and tried to teach me the lost language of true poetry.” Of course, one must take into account that McKenna only contacted these elves when smoking synthesized DMT, or under the influence of certain natural hallucinogens. Yet, the machine elves have been encountered independently by others researchers, including University of New Mexico's School of Medicine Professor of Psychiatry Rick Strassman.

Strassman was a researcher who administered more than 400 doses of DMT to some 60 subjects, many of whom said it put them in contact with the machine elves. Interestingly, the LSD-soaked music of Pink Floyd appears to make reference to the machine elves in their song "The Gnomes have Learned a New Way to Say Hoo-Ray?" Why is this significant? Because those who have encountered the machine elves say that they announce themselves by saying something like “hhhyeaaaaaayyy!” Finally, a primitive tribe of people in the Upper Amazon called the Witoto have a long tradition of contacting “little men” which very closely match the description of the machine elves encountered by modern psychotropic drug researchers and artists.As interesting as these cases are, the most fascinating case of an elf or fairy helping real people was told to me personally by a friend whom I met while working as a VISTA Volunteer in a homeless shelter in North Dakota. My friend, whom I’ll call Jubal, was also working as a volunteer at the shelter. He had a good job, but liked to help out at the shelter on weekends because Jubal had once been a homeless drug addict. He also suffered from a life-time of debilitating seizures and panic attacks. His attacks were caused by Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome which resulted from being attacked, mauled and almost killed by a bear when he was a child.Jubal was about to commit suicide after some 25 years of homeless wandering around the United States, and a daily diet of marijuana, booze and barbiturate pills. Jubal craved “downer” drugs because they were a way to stay calm and prevent panic attacks or full-blown seizures. Jubal was near the end of his rope -- but one day, he was saved by a fairy which called itself an “Elemental.”

Here is how he met this Elemental:Jubal learned an unusual method of creative visualization from the son of an anthropologist. The exercise consisted of staring intently at an ordinary potted plant. The idea was to focus all one's attention on the plant until you could visualize yourself as actually being on the plant -- as if you were a tiny bug crawling among the leaves and stems. Jubal discovered after much practice that he could do this very well. Before long, he was spending hours a day focused on his plant, and, in his words, “actually existing in the plant world.” Jubal spent many happy days just sitting on a leaf, or walking up and down his plant’s green stems and fronds. The plant world became so real to him, he said, that it was actually like a virtual reality experience -- it was as if he really was a tiny, bug-sized man crawling around on a giant plant. While inside his personal plant world, Jubal found that he could remain panic and drug free -- although as soon as he released his mind from the plant world, he would go right back to his old, shattered self. Still, his life began to improve somewhat because now he took far less drugs, and had far fewer panic attacks. The only drawback, of course, was that he had to spend many hours a day staring at a potted plant!But then something exceedingly strange happened one day. While walking blissfully along a stem in his personal plant world, he was shocked to suddenly discover that he was not alone in that world. Up ahead on the green stem was a fairy -- a little man with sharp features, wearing a tunic of dragonfly skin, green leggings and a soft red hat! Seeing the fairy, Jubal should have immediately suffered a panic attack, but that never happened in the plant world. Instead, the fairy provided him with detailed instructions on how he could “cure” all his conditions -- from his addictions to his panic attacks. To make a long story short, Jubal did what the fairy instructed, all of his problems disappeared, and the fairy continues to advise him to this day, he says.Again, one could question the sanity and mental state of someone like Jubal, who had been frying his brain for more than two decades with drugs. You might say: “I might start talking to fairies at that point too!” Fair enough, but remember, Jubal didn’t start communing with his fairy until he actually started freeing himself from drugs -- and his fairy has stayed with him in his new clean and sober life.

Incidentally, the story of the grueling task -- which was actually a quest -- that Jubal’s Elemental required him to perform is a long and detailed story, which I have documented in a 10,000-word story. Anyone interested can find more information about Jubal’s fairy-driven odyssey on my blog, which is linked below.In the meantime, when it comes to man’s relationship with the Little People of the Faery Realms, I think it’s best to keep an open mind, and also consider the probability that fairies or elves may actually exist, even if we can only commune with them in altered states of mind. Think of it this way: The human brain cannot pick up radio waves or satellite TV without some kind of mechanical aid to help our brains harvest this information from out of an environment of ambient energies that are swirling around us at each instant. Just as we need a satellite dish to capture, tune and interpret movies that are beaming down from outer space, we probably need other kinds of tools to tune in the existence of the Little People, who may also be living in close proximity with us in our environment -- if only we could open our minds to them.

[Rasputin]

Physics proves horror movies get it wrong

Who needs ghostbusters when you've got Newton, says a scientist who has used physics and maths to poke holes in the way Hollywood depicts ghosts and vampires. In a paper, published recently on the physics website arXiv, theoretical physicist Professor Costas Efthimiou of the University of Central Florida shows that when it comes to things supernatural, the figures just don't add up.For instance, the ability to walk through walls is a common talent of celluloid ghosts.But Newton's laws of physics suggest that if a ghost can walk it shouldn't be able to pass through walls, say Efthimiou and Cornell University postgraduate student Sohan Gandhi.Newton says a body at rest will remain at rest until it's acted on by an external force and for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction.So in order to walk, we apply a backward force on the floor with our feet, propelling the feet up and us forwards.But if a ghost can walk through walls, it must be "material-less", the authors argue, and incapable of exerting force.By the same token, a ghost that can walk through walls should also sink through the floor, and a ghost that can walk should be bouncing off the walls it tries to pass through."The depiction of ghosts walking contradicts the precept that ghosts are material-less," they write.Efthimiou and Gandhi also use the mathematical principle of geometric progression to rule out the existence of vampires.

They argue it would take just two and a half years for vampires to wipe out the entire human race from the day the first one appeared, based on the myth that vampires turn their victims into other vampires by sucking their blood.If vampires feed once a month, the great grandaddy of all vampires would have killed one human and produced one vampire in the first month. So in total there would be two vampires and one less human, or a tally of vampires 2, humans -1.By the next month, the 2 vampires would kill 2 humans, and so on. After n months there would be 2 x 2 x 2 ... x 2 = 2n, or a geometric progression with ratio 2."The vampire population increases geometrically and the human population decreases geometrically," they say.Using the principle of reductio ad absurdum, they conclude that vampires can't exist as their existence contradicts the existence of humans.

[Rasputin]

The day the Earth fell over

Submitted by Sharm: Earth might have spun on its side to keep its balance in the distant past, and could do so again, scientists reported today. Alaska was suddenly at the equator, the thinking goes. Scientists already know that the North Pole wanders over time. But a theory known as true polar wander suggests that if a very heavy object, like an oversized volcano forms far from the equator, the force of the planet's rotation would pull the object away from the axis the Earth spins around. Should a mass such as the very heavy volcano become unbalanced, Earth would tilt and rotate itself until the extra weight moves somewhere near the equator.Analyzed samples of ancient sediments found in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard show that such an event may have indeed happened in the past.

"The sediments we have recovered from Norway offer the first good evidence that a true polar wander event happened about 800 million years ago," said Adam Maloof, an assistant professor of geosciences at Princeton University. "If we can find good corroborating evidence from other parts of the world as well, we will have a very good idea that our planet is capable of this sort of dramatic change."

[Rasputin]

DNA test confirms 'beast' is dog

DNA tests have removed the veil of mystery from a creature that created a media and Internet sensation. It was just a dog -- 100 percent dog, according to the Sun Journal.The newspaper ordered up tests to end the speculation by readers who thought the creature may have been a Tasmanian devil, a dingo, a wolf, or coyote. Some of the more outlandish theories involve mutations and extraterrestrials.Dr. Yuri Melekovets, the laboratory director at HealthGene Corp. in Toronto, said he's certain the creature was just a dog.The animal, which was hit by a car while chasing a cat, was photographed by a resident. People in Turner speculated that it had been a mystery creature that killed pets and screamed at night , terrorizing residents.

It had a short snout, small ears, and blue eyes.State wildlife biologists and local animal control officers declined to go to Turner to examine the remains of the animal.Without any official findings, the creature obtained near-mythical status as word spread in the media and on the Internet. The newspaper obtained a paw from the animal's remains and ordered up its own tests.