Photo highlights from T-Rex World Championship Races
The Sunday event started in 2017 as a pest control company's team-building activity.
The actual dinosaur roamed the planet between 65 million and 67 million years ago. A study published four years ago in the journal Science estimated about 2.5 billion of the dinosaurs roamed Earth over the course of a couple million years.
Hollywood movies such as the 'Jurassic Park' franchise have added to the public fascination with the carnivorous creature.
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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Men become infested with parasites after receiving infected organs across multiple states
Two New England men have been left riddled with parasitic worms after receiving a common organ transplant. The patients, 61 and 66, had each received one kidney each from the same donor, who was from the Caribbean. The first patient, who was not named, received the transplant from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and initially improved. But 10 weeks later, the man was re-admitted due to suffering from severe thirst and abdominal discomfort. A large purple rash, like a constellation of bruises, had also erupted across the skin of his stomach. The second patient, who was also unnamed, received their transplant at Albany Medical Center in New York and also improved at first. Eleven weeks later, however, he was also re-admitted with fatigue, worsening kidney function and a plummeting white blood cell count. Doctors were initially stumped as to what could be behind the complications, having ruled out Covid, the flu and bacterial infections — after a course of antibiotics did not improve their symptoms. However, samples from the first patient's abdomen, lungs and skin revealed a small ringworm called Strongyloides stercoralis. The second patient, meanwhile, was also found to have larvae from Strongyloides stercoralis in his stool. The bizarre cases were revealed in The New England Journal of Medicine last month, with doctors treating them as a cautionary tale for better regulation surrounding organ donation. Transplant organs, donors and recipients normally go through a battery of tests to minimize the risk of the organs being rejected by the body. Blood is tested for antibodies that might attack other tissues, while donors and recipients are both evaluated for infectious diseases like HIV and hepatitis. They are also usually tested for parasitic infections, but it's possible the donor was not evaluated for these. About 48,000 organ transplants take place in the US every year, of which kidney transplants are the most common — making up two-thirds of these procedures. The most common complication of the procedure is infection, which is common since recipients have to take medications that suppress their immune system. Doctors treating one of the man called the New England Donor Services and found the kidney donor had antibodies for Strongyloides, meaning the donor had encountered the parasite at some point. The recipients only had Strongyloides antibodies after their procedures and not before, meaning they likely got it from their organ donor. Strongyloides is a roundworm parasite that spreads by directly penetrating human skin that gets into contact with soil. Infections lead to stomach aches, diarrhea and rashes, but most patients don't know they're infected. The CDC doesn't consistently track US cases, though it's estimated Strongyloides hospitalizes thousands each year. The first patient was treated with ivermectin, a deworming drug touted for but largely unproven to treat conditions like Covid and cancer. The second patient received ivermectin and the similar drug albendazole. Both men have fully recovered.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Mysterious underground base tied to deadly UFO encounters may exist after decades of rumors
Rumors that a secret mountain base in the US controlled by aliens has been swirling for 50 years, but locals and UFO researchers are convinced it's real. The base allegedly sits inside Archuleta Mesa in New Mexico, but has gained the nickname ' Alien Mountain' because of the conspiracy theories, strange phenomena, and alleged eyewitness accounts all tied to the nearby town of Dulce. While there's no physical evidence that a base has somehow been carved out inside the large mountain, UFO researchers have continued to examine the claims surrounding the facility, including a battle with aliens that reportedly left 66 people dead. Since the 1970s, residents have claimed they've seen UFOs, extraterrestrials, and even genetic experiments that look like human-alien hybrids walking around the town. Geraldine Julian, a Dulce resident, told the Santa Fe New Mexican: 'The whole town of Dulce, whoever you want to talk to, they'll tell you what they've seen, a lot of them.' The local community hasn't just seen things in the sky, as they've taken photos of strange craft around the mountain, as well as unexplained cow mutilations in nearby fields. Recently, declassified records have revealed how the US government could have created the massive complex inside Archuleta Mesa, using a machine that literally melts rock instead of drilling. The records may one day help prove the stories of at least one alleged whistleblower, who claimed he survived that deadly encounter with the aliens hiding inside the government facility. UFO and government conspiracy researcher John Greenewald was able to uncover documents revealing that a machine called the Subterrene was built and tested in the 1970s. The Subterrene is a nuclear-powered tunneling machine developed to bore through rock and soil by melting them with extreme heat, creating smooth, glass-lined tunnels. It was created by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, just 100 miles from the site of the alleged New Mexico base inside Archuleta Mesa. Although the declassified documents confirmed that the Subterrene exists, there were no records of it being used to build Dulce Base. If the mountain base does exist, however, one man already revealed what it looks like, claiming that Dulce Base has seven floors devoted to genetic experiments, extraterrestrial technology, mind control, and housing for alien beings. The man who allegedly saw the inside of Dulce Base was Phil Schneider, a self-proclaimed former government engineer and geologist. Before he died in 1996, Schneider repeatedly claimed that he suffered severe injuries, including the loss of several fingers, during a deadly battle with aliens inside the complex. According to Schneider, who never showed proof of his government ties, 66 military personnel and government workers perished in the fight after a human team accidentally drilled into an alien-controlled section of the base. Schneider also made unsubstantiated claims that the US government was creating hundreds of these mountain bases around the nation using advanced technology. At UFO lectures, Schneider would also reveal a piece of metal that he claimed was alien technology from the Dulce base, and that it was now being used in US stealth aircraft. The rumors of a mysterious Dulce base go back to the mid-1970s, when New Mexico State Police officer Gabe Valdez was one of many locals who started finding the mangled remains of cattle near the mountain. These cows hadn't been killed by a local predator. They appeared to have been surgically disassembled, with specific organs removed and all the blood drained out. In local radio interviews, Valdez also claimed that gas masks, glow sticks, and other equipment had been left behind at the scene of the attacks. In 1979, Albuquerque businessman and physicist Paul Bennewitz claimed he intercepted unusual electronic signals near Dulce. He would go on to theorize that the signals were coming from an underground base being used by both aliens and the US government, a theory that became widely shared among UFO researchers at the time. However, Bennewitz's claims were later dismissed by the UFO community after several researchers discovered declassified Air Force documents linking the businessman to a government disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting UFO stories. Despite being seemingly debunked by the Air Force documents in the 1990s, locals in Dulce continue to maintain that the mountain is a true UFO hotspot. 'It's not just a fairy tale,' Julian said in 2016. 'All the things are true, and I believe every last one of them, too, because I've seen it myself.' Julian added in an interview with KOAT that she saw one of the genetic experiments allegedly created in Dulce Base, saying that it was a 'goat with a tail' from the waist down, but had the upper body and head of a human. Other locals said they've seen the ground open up near the mountain, with steam coming out of the opening. Dory Vigil, a Dulce resident who captured a photo of a UFO near Archuleta Mesa, said he'd take a lie detector test to prove he and others in the community aren't making up what continues to be seen in this small town of just 2,700 people.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
The US plans to begin breeding billions of flies to fight a pest. Here is how it will work
The U.S. government is preparing to breed billions of flies and dump them out of airplanes over Mexico and southern Texas to fight a flesh-eating maggot. That sounds like the plot of a horror movie, but it is part of the government's plans for protecting the U.S. from a bug that could devastate its beef industry, decimate wildlife and even kill household pets. This weird science has worked well before. 'It's an exceptionally good technology,' said Edwin Burgess, an assistant professor at the University of Florida who studies parasites in animals, particularly livestock. 'It's an all-time great in terms of translating science to solve some kind of large problem.' The targeted pest is the flesh-eating larva of the New World Screwworm fly. The U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to ramp up the breeding and distribution of adult male flies — sterilizing them with radiation before releasing them — so they can mate ineffectively with females and over time cause the population to die out. It is more effective and environmentally friendly than spraying the pest into oblivion, and it is how the U.S. and other nations north of Panama eradicated the same pest decades ago. Sterile flies from a factory in Panama kept the flies contained there for years, but the pest appeared in southern Mexico late last year. The USDA expects a new screwworm fly factory to be up and running in southern Mexico by July 2026. It plans to open a fly distribution center in southern Texas by the end of the year so that it can import and distribute flies from Panama if necessary. Fly feeds on live flesh Most fly larvae feed on dead flesh, making the New World screwworm fly and its Old World counterpart in Asia and Africa outliers — and for the American beef industry, a serious threat. Females lay their eggs in wounds and, sometimes, exposed mucus. 'A thousand-pound bovine can be dead from this in two weeks,' said Michael Bailey, president elect of the American Veterinary Medicine Association. Veterinarians have effective treatments for infested animals, but an infestation can still be unpleasant — and cripple an animal with pain. Don Hineman, a retired western Kansas rancher, recalled infected cattle as a youngster on his family's farm. 'It smelled nasty,' he said. 'Like rotting meat.' How scientists will use the fly's biology against it The New World screwworm fly is a tropical species, unable to survive Midwestern or Great Plains winters, so it was a seasonal scourge. Still, the U.S. and Mexico bred and released more than 94 billion sterile flies from 1962 through 1975 to eradicate the pest, according to the USDA. The numbers need to be large enough that females in the wild can't help but hook up with sterile males for mating. One biological trait gives fly fighters a crucial wing up: Females mate only once in their weekslong adult lives. Why the US wants to breed more flies Alarmed about the fly's migration north, the U.S. temporarily closed its southern border in May to imports of live cattle, horses and bison and it won't be fully open again at least until mid-September. But female flies can lay their eggs in wounds on any warm-blooded animal, and that includes humans. Decades ago, the U.S. had fly factories in Florida and Texas, but they closed as the pest was eradicated. The Panama fly factory can breed up to 117 million a week, but the USDA wants the capacity to breed at least 400 million a week. It plans to spend $8.5 million on the Texas site and $21 million to convert a facility in southern Mexico for breeding sterile fruit flies into one for screwworm flies. How to raise hundreds of millions of flies In one sense, raising a large colony of flies is relatively easy, said Cassandra Olds, an assistant professor of entomology at Kansas State University. But, she added, 'You've got to give the female the cues that she needs to lay her eggs, and then the larvae have to have enough nutrients." Fly factories once fed larvae horse meat and honey and then moved to a mix of dried eggs and either honey or molasses, according to past USDA research. Later, the Panama factory used a mix that included egg powder and red blood cells and plasma from cattle. In the wild, larvae ready for the equivalent of a butterfly's cocoon stage drop off their hosts and onto the ground, burrow just below the surface and grow to adulthood inside a protective casing making them resemble a dark brown Tic Tac mint. In the Panama factory, workers drop them into trays of sawdust. Security is an issue. Sonja Swiger, an entomologist with Texas A&M University's Extension Service, said a breeding facility must prevent any fertile adults kept for breeding stock from escaping. How to drop flies from an airplane Dropping flies from the air can be dangerous. Last month, a plane freeing sterile flies crashed near Mexico's border with Guatemala, killing three people. In test runs in the 1950s, according to the USDA, scientists put the flies in paper cups and then dropped the cups out of planes using special chutes. Later, they loaded them into boxes with a machine known as a 'Whiz Packer.' The method is still much the same: Light planes with crates of flies drop those crates. Burgess called the development of sterile fly breeding and distribution in the 1950s and 1960s one of the USDA's 'crowning achievements.' Some agriculture officials argue now that new factories shouldn't be shuttered after another successful fight. 'Something we think we have complete control over — and we have declared a triumph and victory over — can always rear its ugly head again,' Burgess said.
