Tyrannosaurus regina

Several weeks ago I reported on the discovery of a very-well-preserved thigh bone from a T. Rex in Montana. Now, the same team of paleontologists are back with news that T.Rex is actually T.Regina. Sexing dinosaur fossils isn’t the easiest thing in the world, especially if you only have a thigh bone to go on, but this particular thigh bone was very well preserved, with intact soft tissue still preserved within the 70 million year old specimen.

What allowed Dr. Mary H. Schweitzer and her colleagues to declare “She’s a girl”? In addition to the blood vessels discovered within the bone, the researchers also discovered medullary tissue. This is a kind of tissue, formed in the presence of estrogen, that acts as a calcium reserve within the bone, used in making eggs. Previously only found in ovulating female birds, this finding is one of the clearest links between dinosaurs and birds yet found.

Speaking of birds…

Bird flu

Avian flu, bird flu, H5N1—all names for an influenza virus that’s been jumping the species barrier in Asia recently. The virus is endemic in its host population—mainly ducks–which carry it but are not affected, and also in chickens and other avian livestock in southeast Asia. As H5N1 is not a strain that has infected humans before, we have no natural immunity to it, and that is something that is worrying a lot of epidemiologists. In 1918, an influenza pandemic was responsible for between 40 million and 50 million deaths. That strain, H1N1, was exceptionally pathogenic and had a mortality rate of around 2 percent. Currently, H5N1 is known to have infected 88 people and of those, over 50 have died. While the thought of a pandemic virus with 60 percent mortality is something that should keep you awake at night, should H5N1 start to spread the actual figure would be closer to 9 percent, not quite as scary, but still enough to kill millions. Unfortunately, this is becoming more likely, as more person-to-person transmission is reported.

There is also little we could do to stop a pandemic—H5N1 is mutating, and as yet there is no vaccine. Trials are underway in the US on one vaccine, although it is generated in chicken eggs, a method that does not yield large quantities. Even though we have the technology to raise a vaccine in cultured cells, no such flu vaccine has been approved for human use. Tamiflu and Relenza, antivirals made by Roche and GSK, may help, but stocks are limited in industrialized nations, and non existent elsewhere. The UK is fairly well prepared, with enough reserves to treat up to a quarter of its citizens. The US, on the other hand, would only be able to treat about 1 percent. The effects of a pandemic on the global economy would be just as disastrous, as the SARS outbreaks in southeast Asia have shown. It has been almost 40 years since the last influenza pandemic, and as such we’re probably overdue.

Opportunity the dune buggy

After a month-long spell trapped in a sand dune, Opportunity, one of the two Mars rovers, has broken free and is continuing along its way. The wheeled probe became trapped in a dune at the end of April and lost traction. Since then, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory had been attempting to maneuver the robot out of its bunker. Success was signaled with images sent back from the Martian surface showing wheel tracks stretching out behind it. Opportunity and Spirit, its sibling, have been a resounding success, lasting well beyond their predicted 90-day lifespans. In contrast to so many Martian missions, they continue to send back valuable data about our nearest planetary neighbor.

And amid budget cuts at NASA, plans were announced for a return to Mars in 2008 by a new probe, named Phoenix, as it has risen from the ashes of previous unsuccessful missions, Mars Surveyor and Mars Polar Lander.