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Four-legged Snake Fossil Stuns Scientists, Ignites Controversy
sciencehabit writes: Scientists have described what they say is the first known fossil of a four-legged snake. The limbs of the 120-or-so-million-year-old, 20-centimeter-long creature are remarkably well preserved and end with five slender digits that appear to have been functional (abstract). Thought to have come from Brazil, the fossil would be one of the earliest snakes found, suggesting that the group evolved from terrestrial precursors in Gondwana, the southern remnant of the supercontinent Pangaea. But although the creature's overall body plan—and indeed, many of its individual anatomical features—is snakelike, some researchers aren't so sure that it is a part of the snake family tree.
I agree, you can be a war veteran and a prisoner of war but you can not be a war 'hero' if all you did was sit in jail... and this is what John McCain ddid for almost the whole war.
Uh, you are aware that he did do other things in the war, right? Sitting in jail (by which you mean, POW camp) is not "all" he did. It was his 23rd bombing mission, not his first, on which he was shot down. And that by this time he'd been awarded the Navy Commendation Medal and the Bronze Star.
I'm no fan of McCain, but I don't like personal attacks. Criticize him for his politics, not his history.
I agree, you can be a war veteran and a prisoner of war but you can not be a war 'hero' if all you did was sit in jail... and this is what John McCain ddid for almost the whole war. Are we trying to say that if he wasn't shot down he would've defeated the Vietnamese army with his plane alone?
If you take the approach that (bravery && selflessness) != heroism, then you're right. He didn't jump out of a chopper and machine-gun down a platoon of the enemy. But having read and heard what Vietnam era prisionors went through, I have the highest admiration for anyone who lived through it. The one fact that he refused to be freed (because his father was an admiral) unless everyone captured before him was release is a remarkable display of selflessness.
For that, he is a hero.
Carbon dating is useless on fossils. Firstly because they are far too old for the ratio to be measurable, and secondly because they don't actually contain any carbon of atmospheric origin to date.
There are other forms of dating used for fossils though.