uperbug: What makes one bacterium so deadly
Sarah C. Williams
Some of the most aggressive antibiotic-resistant staph infections gain their advantage with a molecule that punctures the immune cells trying to fight off the bacteria, scientists have discovered. Understanding the role of this molecule in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) could lead to new therapies for the notoriously hard-to-treat, and sometimes fatal, skin infection.
Staph bacteria are ubiquitous but aren't dangerous unless they seep into an open wound. Even then, antibiotics will usually stop the infection. But some strains of staph that infect hospital patients with weakened immune systems have become resistant to all standard antibiotics, including methicillin.
Now, a newer strain of the flesh-eating disease has swept through schools, day care centers, health club locker rooms, and prisons. So-called community-associated MRSA (CA-MRSA) typically afflicts healthy people because it's especially effective at causing infections in the first place. For now, it's resistant only to methicillin, but scientists fear that it will become resistant to other antibiotics.
In the Oct. 17 Journal of the American Medical Association, Monina Klevens of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and her colleagues gave the first statistics on just how widespread MRSA has become. The researchers estimated that 94,360 cases occurred in 2005, leading to 18,650 deaths. They argued that these numbers are on the rise, particularly outside the hospital setting.
In a separate study, Michael Otto of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and his colleagues found a molecule involved in CA-MRSA's success.
While studying small molecules that help a different bacterium, Staphylococcus epidermidis, fight its host, the scientists decided to check whether MRSA carried a similar molecule. They found that CA-MRSA had much more of a protein called phenol-soluble modulin (PSM) than the less virulent MRSA strains associated with hospitals had.
"Different bacteria have different strategies to attack the human immune system," explains Otto. S. aureus "seems to have a lot of strategies, it's really good at that."
The team elucidated PSM's importance by isolating the protein and adding it to white blood cells called neutrophils, which usually engulf and destroy bacteria that enter the body. PSM molecules destroyed neutrophils by forming pores on the cells, letting their contents leak out.
Otto's team then injected mice with a form of MRSA engineered to lack the PSM gene. After a day, those mice were still alive, but more than half of a group of mice exposed to normal MRSA had died. The results appear online and in an upcoming Nature Medicine. Louis J Sheehan
Until last year, most scientists had focused on a different protein, called Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL), as the key to CA-MRSA's deadliness, because it's far more abundant in CA-MRSA than in the hospital-associated strain. But Otto and his colleagues showed that deleting PVL from the bacterium does not make it less deadly.
Lindsey Shaw of the University of South Florida in Tampa says that the jury is still out on PVL, and while he calls the findings on PSM "incredibly important," he also notes that it doesn't explain the virulence of all strains of MRSA.
"There are strains that don't make these molecules, and they still kill people," he says.
Both Shaw and Otto note that the ability of staph bacteria to adapt quickly to new environments is what allows different strains to express different molecules and become so dangerous.
"This is just another niche it's exploited," says Shaw. "Some shift may have happened where some strains started [making PSM] and it turned out to be favorable."
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Louis J Sheehan 80033
My favorite bit:
Hutchison: “Dr. Griffin, like Sen. Nelson, I’ve worked with you for a long time. I respect you. I think you’ve done enormous things for NASA. But you are not an encourager.”
Griffin: “Yes, Senator, I’m sorry that I’m not an encourager. I want to never, ever, ever promise you something that I can’t deliver.”
[…]
Nelson: “We need to get Dr. Griffin to be an encourager.”
With all due respect to Senators Nelson and Hutchison, that’s not why Griffin was hired. One of the major problems NASA is facing today is previous Administrators telling Congress what they wanted to hear, and not the truth of the matter. So we have a bloated and almost entirely useless space station, a Shuttle that never, not once, did what it was supposed to do, and a plan to retire the only manned access to space we as a nation have five years (if things work out well) before we build another rocket that can take us there.
I wouldn’t take Griffin’s job for half of NASA’s budget. But I’m glad he said what he did. If people would simply tell the truth to Congress, then maybe we’d be able to solve a whole lot more of the problems we’re facing as a nation. Louis J Sheehan
Hutchison: “Dr. Griffin, like Sen. Nelson, I’ve worked with you for a long time. I respect you. I think you’ve done enormous things for NASA. But you are not an encourager.”
Griffin: “Yes, Senator, I’m sorry that I’m not an encourager. I want to never, ever, ever promise you something that I can’t deliver.”
[…]
Nelson: “We need to get Dr. Griffin to be an encourager.”
With all due respect to Senators Nelson and Hutchison, that’s not why Griffin was hired. One of the major problems NASA is facing today is previous Administrators telling Congress what they wanted to hear, and not the truth of the matter. So we have a bloated and almost entirely useless space station, a Shuttle that never, not once, did what it was supposed to do, and a plan to retire the only manned access to space we as a nation have five years (if things work out well) before we build another rocket that can take us there.
I wouldn’t take Griffin’s job for half of NASA’s budget. But I’m glad he said what he did. If people would simply tell the truth to Congress, then maybe we’d be able to solve a whole lot more of the problems we’re facing as a nation. Louis J Sheehan
Friday, November 16, 2007
Louis J Sheehan 80031
A man for all factions
The billionaire businessman Munib al-Masri is being touted as the man to lead the Palestinian Authority out of crisis. Conal Urquhart talks to him
Conal Urquhart in Nablus
Friday November 10, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Palestinian billionaire Munib al-Masri. Photograph: Jamal Aruri
When he arrived in New York for the first time, he asked a taxi driver to take him to Texas. Munib al-Masri can laugh at his naivety now as he sits in his Italianate palace, surrounded by his collection of artifacts, which includes works by Picasso and Modigliani.
Mr Masri's journey began in the old city of Nablus and took him to the University of Texas where he studied geology. When he returned to the Middle East, he founded an oil services company, which now has offices in more than 20 countries. Now at 72, he devotes much of his time to developing the Palestinian economy and preparing its government for independence.
Yasser Arafat asked him to be prime minister three times and he declined. Now once more, the billionaire Palestinian businessman is one of the names being touted as the man to lead the Palestinian Authority out of crisis. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has been seeking for months to form a new government that will be acceptable to the international community, which will be able to trigger the international donations that the PA needs to pay its employees and rescue the economy.
Hamas, currently in control of the government, accepts the need for a new government but has not been able to agree with Mr Abbas' Fatah faction as to what form it should take. Mr Masri is pushing for a short-term technocratic government to bypass international sanctions while the politicians decide what they want to do.
According to Mr Masri, the interim period of a year would allow Hamas, Fatah and the international community to hammer out an agreement on a unity government without the Palestinian people continuing to suffer because of political indecision. Unlike the Hamas government, the technocratic government would have no difficulty recognising Israel.
He has been involved in the Palestinian national movement from its inception and was a close friend of Arafat all his political life and a constant companion in his last days. For a brief period, he was minister for public works in Jordan.
"Arafat asked me three times to be his prime minister but he didn't understand management so I declined. Now I am pushing for a young government," he said. He is reluctant to be drawn on the post of prime minister. "I am happy to be a consultant," he said. The new government should have seven to 10 ministers and would prioritise law and order. "If the situation gets calmer then the wheel of development can begin to turn. The emigration of the talented will stop, poverty will fall and we can get unemployment down to a reasonable level," he said.
He believes Palestinian disunity is damaging the cause for independence. "Our internal problems make people forget the biggest issue, the occupation and state terror that accompanies it. They are trying to turn our serious and legitimate cause into a humanitarian case. We have a hell of a cause, to exist as an independent state but now they are sending us food supplies as if we were Somalia. That's why we need to get our act together," he said.
Mr Masri has already made a strong personal impact on the West Bank and Gaza. Following the creation of the PA, he led thousands of expatriate Palestinians home with their foreign-made fortunes to invest in what he hoped would become an independent Palestine.
"In the first years of the peace process there was a tremendous euphoria here. People from the diaspora returned with lots of money. We were determined to set up new industries, not competing with existing ones, such as telecoms, tourism and industrial estates. We thought development would work hand in hand with the peace process. We also thought that the Israelis had the same hope in their hearts but that did not prove to be the case," he said.
As disappointment turned to uprising, Mr Masri increased his investment in his homeland. In his birthplace of Nablus, he started work on the most spectacular house in the region, a university faculty and a pediatric ward, employing 500 people in construction. His house was built 300 metres above his former home in the kasbah on Mount Gezirim and like hundreds of other Nablus homes it was occupied by Israeli soldiers.
In an echo of Israeli settlers, he emphasised the need to build and develop as a political statement. "Where the Israelis destroyed one olive tree, I plant 100. Where they destroy I create," he said.
The home which Mr Masri calls the House of Palestine is now finished. It is based on an Italian palazzo in Vincenza and in the garden is a summer house that Napoleon had built for Josephine, which was imported along with most of the building materials from France. In the basement are the preserved mosaics of a Byzantine church, which were discovered during construction.
The juxtaposition of wealth on the hill and poverty in the valley could not be stronger but it is a gap that Mr Masri works very hard to bridge. In addition to the large projects he has funded, he is also the patron for a charity that provides for the needs of people whose lives are damaged by Israeli incursions and funds reconstruction of damaged buildings.
Mr Masri has been criticised for being part of a group of businesses and businessmen that has a dominating position in the Palestinian economy but it is clear that his interest in investing in his homeland is more emotional and political than financial. One of the companies in which he is a major investor is building a luxury hotel in the Gaza Strip, a project which requires a great deal of optimism, given the violence, crowding and pollution that is currently prevalent.
Mr Masri said he now spends more than half his time in Nablus and he plans to build a college on his 70-acre estate. His aim is to invite professors from all over the world to the West Bank to teach Palestinians how to run a democracy and an independent state. Louis J Sheehan
The billionaire businessman Munib al-Masri is being touted as the man to lead the Palestinian Authority out of crisis. Conal Urquhart talks to him
Conal Urquhart in Nablus
Friday November 10, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Palestinian billionaire Munib al-Masri. Photograph: Jamal Aruri
When he arrived in New York for the first time, he asked a taxi driver to take him to Texas. Munib al-Masri can laugh at his naivety now as he sits in his Italianate palace, surrounded by his collection of artifacts, which includes works by Picasso and Modigliani.
Mr Masri's journey began in the old city of Nablus and took him to the University of Texas where he studied geology. When he returned to the Middle East, he founded an oil services company, which now has offices in more than 20 countries. Now at 72, he devotes much of his time to developing the Palestinian economy and preparing its government for independence.
Yasser Arafat asked him to be prime minister three times and he declined. Now once more, the billionaire Palestinian businessman is one of the names being touted as the man to lead the Palestinian Authority out of crisis. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has been seeking for months to form a new government that will be acceptable to the international community, which will be able to trigger the international donations that the PA needs to pay its employees and rescue the economy.
Hamas, currently in control of the government, accepts the need for a new government but has not been able to agree with Mr Abbas' Fatah faction as to what form it should take. Mr Masri is pushing for a short-term technocratic government to bypass international sanctions while the politicians decide what they want to do.
According to Mr Masri, the interim period of a year would allow Hamas, Fatah and the international community to hammer out an agreement on a unity government without the Palestinian people continuing to suffer because of political indecision. Unlike the Hamas government, the technocratic government would have no difficulty recognising Israel.
He has been involved in the Palestinian national movement from its inception and was a close friend of Arafat all his political life and a constant companion in his last days. For a brief period, he was minister for public works in Jordan.
"Arafat asked me three times to be his prime minister but he didn't understand management so I declined. Now I am pushing for a young government," he said. He is reluctant to be drawn on the post of prime minister. "I am happy to be a consultant," he said. The new government should have seven to 10 ministers and would prioritise law and order. "If the situation gets calmer then the wheel of development can begin to turn. The emigration of the talented will stop, poverty will fall and we can get unemployment down to a reasonable level," he said.
He believes Palestinian disunity is damaging the cause for independence. "Our internal problems make people forget the biggest issue, the occupation and state terror that accompanies it. They are trying to turn our serious and legitimate cause into a humanitarian case. We have a hell of a cause, to exist as an independent state but now they are sending us food supplies as if we were Somalia. That's why we need to get our act together," he said.
Mr Masri has already made a strong personal impact on the West Bank and Gaza. Following the creation of the PA, he led thousands of expatriate Palestinians home with their foreign-made fortunes to invest in what he hoped would become an independent Palestine.
"In the first years of the peace process there was a tremendous euphoria here. People from the diaspora returned with lots of money. We were determined to set up new industries, not competing with existing ones, such as telecoms, tourism and industrial estates. We thought development would work hand in hand with the peace process. We also thought that the Israelis had the same hope in their hearts but that did not prove to be the case," he said.
As disappointment turned to uprising, Mr Masri increased his investment in his homeland. In his birthplace of Nablus, he started work on the most spectacular house in the region, a university faculty and a pediatric ward, employing 500 people in construction. His house was built 300 metres above his former home in the kasbah on Mount Gezirim and like hundreds of other Nablus homes it was occupied by Israeli soldiers.
In an echo of Israeli settlers, he emphasised the need to build and develop as a political statement. "Where the Israelis destroyed one olive tree, I plant 100. Where they destroy I create," he said.
The home which Mr Masri calls the House of Palestine is now finished. It is based on an Italian palazzo in Vincenza and in the garden is a summer house that Napoleon had built for Josephine, which was imported along with most of the building materials from France. In the basement are the preserved mosaics of a Byzantine church, which were discovered during construction.
The juxtaposition of wealth on the hill and poverty in the valley could not be stronger but it is a gap that Mr Masri works very hard to bridge. In addition to the large projects he has funded, he is also the patron for a charity that provides for the needs of people whose lives are damaged by Israeli incursions and funds reconstruction of damaged buildings.
Mr Masri has been criticised for being part of a group of businesses and businessmen that has a dominating position in the Palestinian economy but it is clear that his interest in investing in his homeland is more emotional and political than financial. One of the companies in which he is a major investor is building a luxury hotel in the Gaza Strip, a project which requires a great deal of optimism, given the violence, crowding and pollution that is currently prevalent.
Mr Masri said he now spends more than half his time in Nablus and he plans to build a college on his 70-acre estate. His aim is to invite professors from all over the world to the West Bank to teach Palestinians how to run a democracy and an independent state. Louis J Sheehan
Louis J Sheehan 80029
The Carthusian Order, also called the Order of St. Bruno, is a Roman Catholic religious order of enclosed monastics. The order was founded by Saint Bruno of Cologne in 1084 and includes both monks and nuns. The order has its own Rule, called the Statutes, rather than the Rule of St Benedict (as is often erroneously reported) and combines eremitical and cenobitic life.
The name Carthusian is derived from Chartreuse Mountains; Bruno built his first hermitage in the valley of these mountains in the French Alps. The word charterhouse, which is the English name for a Carthusian monastery, is derived from the same source. The motto of the Carthusians is Stat crux dum volvitur orbis, Latin for "The Cross is steady while the world is turning."
The name Carthusian is derived from Chartreuse Mountains; Bruno built his first hermitage in the valley of these mountains in the French Alps. The word charterhouse, which is the English name for a Carthusian monastery, is derived from the same source. The motto of the Carthusians is Stat crux dum volvitur orbis, Latin for "The Cross is steady while the world is turning."
Louis J Sheehan 80027
Riches v. National Aeronautics and Space Administration et al:
Plaintiff sued the National Aeronautics and Space Administration “NASA”, John F. Kennedy Space Center, Lisa Nowak d/b/a “Space Astronaut”, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and the Space Shuttle Challenger for NASA Harassment. Plaintiff seeks the return of copyrighted and patented material belonging to Jonathan Lee Riches, i.e., jet fuel, space suits, moon rocks, mercury, DNA from pluto. Plaintiff also moves for a TRO prohibiting defendants from launching any material away from Earth without plaintiff’s written permission. Plaintiff claims that defendants are in a major conspiracy to defraud American tax payers and Congress, and that he learned this through his sexual relationship with Lisa Nowak who brought secret documents to him in prison. Plaintiff also asserts that his ex-girlfriend Lisa Nowak told him that the Mars rover isn’t at Mars, but in an Arizona desert to make people believe NASA has been to Mars to justify federal funding. Nowak also allegedly told plaintiff that the International Space Station is a trailer that was bought from a Miami Winnebago dealership for $1,200.
Actually, you can tell this is all a sham because a Winnebago would be more useful.
You might also be interested in other cases brought by Mr. Riches. Evidently he is in prison and has some time on his hands to files some, ah, interesting suits.
Louis J Sheehan
Plaintiff sued the National Aeronautics and Space Administration “NASA”, John F. Kennedy Space Center, Lisa Nowak d/b/a “Space Astronaut”, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and the Space Shuttle Challenger for NASA Harassment. Plaintiff seeks the return of copyrighted and patented material belonging to Jonathan Lee Riches, i.e., jet fuel, space suits, moon rocks, mercury, DNA from pluto. Plaintiff also moves for a TRO prohibiting defendants from launching any material away from Earth without plaintiff’s written permission. Plaintiff claims that defendants are in a major conspiracy to defraud American tax payers and Congress, and that he learned this through his sexual relationship with Lisa Nowak who brought secret documents to him in prison. Plaintiff also asserts that his ex-girlfriend Lisa Nowak told him that the Mars rover isn’t at Mars, but in an Arizona desert to make people believe NASA has been to Mars to justify federal funding. Nowak also allegedly told plaintiff that the International Space Station is a trailer that was bought from a Miami Winnebago dealership for $1,200.
Actually, you can tell this is all a sham because a Winnebago would be more useful.
You might also be interested in other cases brought by Mr. Riches. Evidently he is in prison and has some time on his hands to files some, ah, interesting suits.
Louis J Sheehan
Louis J Sheehan 80026
The Battle of Shiloh, also known as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing, was a major battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, fought on April 6 and April 7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee. Confederate forces under Generals Albert Sidney Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard launched a surprise attack against the Union Army of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and came very close to defeating his army.
On the first day of battle, the Confederates struck with the intention of driving the Union defenders away from the Tennessee River and into the swamps of Owl Creek to the west, hoping to defeat Grant's Army of the Tennessee before it could link up with Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio. The Confederate battle lines became confused during the fierce fighting, and Grant's men instead fell back in the direction of Pittsburg Landing to the northeast. A position on a slightly sunken road, nicknamed the "Hornet's Nest", defended by the men of Brig. Gens. Benjamin M. Prentiss's and W.H.L. Wallace's divisions, provided critical time for the rest of the Union line to stabilize under the protection of numerous artillery batteries. Gen. Johnston was killed during the first day's fighting, and Beauregard, his second in command, decided against assaulting the final Union position that night.
Reinforcements from Gen. Buell arrived in the evening and turned the tide the next morning, when he and Grant launched a counterattack along the entire line. The Confederates were forced to retreat from the bloodiest battle in United States history up to that time, ending their hopes that they could block the Union invasion of northern Mississippi. Louis J Sheehan
On the first day of battle, the Confederates struck with the intention of driving the Union defenders away from the Tennessee River and into the swamps of Owl Creek to the west, hoping to defeat Grant's Army of the Tennessee before it could link up with Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio. The Confederate battle lines became confused during the fierce fighting, and Grant's men instead fell back in the direction of Pittsburg Landing to the northeast. A position on a slightly sunken road, nicknamed the "Hornet's Nest", defended by the men of Brig. Gens. Benjamin M. Prentiss's and W.H.L. Wallace's divisions, provided critical time for the rest of the Union line to stabilize under the protection of numerous artillery batteries. Gen. Johnston was killed during the first day's fighting, and Beauregard, his second in command, decided against assaulting the final Union position that night.
Reinforcements from Gen. Buell arrived in the evening and turned the tide the next morning, when he and Grant launched a counterattack along the entire line. The Confederates were forced to retreat from the bloodiest battle in United States history up to that time, ending their hopes that they could block the Union invasion of northern Mississippi. Louis J Sheehan
Louis J Sheehan 80025
WASHINGTON - A dinosaur with a strange jaw designed to hoover-up food grazed in what is now the Sahara Desert 110 million years ago. Remains of the creature that "flabbergasted" paleontologist Paul Sereno went on display Thursday at the headquarters of the National Geographic Society, where they will remain until March.
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Sereno and colleagues recovered, assembled and named the creature — Nigersaurus taqueti — that he said seems to break all the rules, yet still existed.
"The biggest eureka moment was when I was sitting at the desk with this jaw," he said. "I was sitting down just looking at it and saw a groove and ... realized that all the teeth were up front."
It's not normally a good idea to have all the teeth in the front of the jaw — hundreds in this case.
Sure, "it's great for nipping," Sereno said, "but that's not where you want do your food processing."
"That was an amazing moment, we knew we had something no one had ever seen before," Sereno recalled.
Sereno, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence and paleontologist at the University of Chicago, said the first evidence of Nigersaurus was found in the 1990s and now researchers have been able to reconstruct its skull and skeleton.
While Nigersaurus' mouth is shaped like the wide intake slot of a vacuum, it has something lacking in most cleaners — hundreds of tiny, sharp teeth to grind up its food.
The 30-foot-long Nigersaurus had a feather-light skull held close to the ground to graze like an ancient cow. Sereno described it as a younger cousin of the North American dinosaur Diplodicus.
Its broad muzzle contained more than 50 columns of teeth lined up tightly along the front edge of it's jaw. Behind each tooth more were lined up as replacements when one broke off.
Using CT scans the researchers were able study the inside of the animal's skull where the orientation of canals in the organ that helps keep balance disclosed the habitual low pose of the head, they reported.
Nigersaurus also had a backbone consisting of more air than bone.
"The vertebrae are so paper-thin that it is difficult to imagine them coping with the stresses of everyday use — but we know they did it, and they did it well," Jeffrey Wilson, assistant professor at the University of Michigan and an expedition team member, said in a statement.
The dinosaur's anatomy and lifestyle were to be detailed in the Nov. 21 issue of PLoS ONE, the online journal from the Public Library of Science, and in the December issue of National Geographic magazine.
The first bones of Nigersaurus were picked up in Niger in the 1950s by French paleontologists led by Philippe Taquet, but the species was not named at that time. Sereno and his team honored this early work by naming Nigersaurus taqueti after the nation where it was found and the French scientist.
The research was partly funded by National Geographic where, Sereno said, "you can see the hideous jaw elements in person."
Louis J Sheehan
ADVERTISEMENT
Sereno and colleagues recovered, assembled and named the creature — Nigersaurus taqueti — that he said seems to break all the rules, yet still existed.
"The biggest eureka moment was when I was sitting at the desk with this jaw," he said. "I was sitting down just looking at it and saw a groove and ... realized that all the teeth were up front."
It's not normally a good idea to have all the teeth in the front of the jaw — hundreds in this case.
Sure, "it's great for nipping," Sereno said, "but that's not where you want do your food processing."
"That was an amazing moment, we knew we had something no one had ever seen before," Sereno recalled.
Sereno, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence and paleontologist at the University of Chicago, said the first evidence of Nigersaurus was found in the 1990s and now researchers have been able to reconstruct its skull and skeleton.
While Nigersaurus' mouth is shaped like the wide intake slot of a vacuum, it has something lacking in most cleaners — hundreds of tiny, sharp teeth to grind up its food.
The 30-foot-long Nigersaurus had a feather-light skull held close to the ground to graze like an ancient cow. Sereno described it as a younger cousin of the North American dinosaur Diplodicus.
Its broad muzzle contained more than 50 columns of teeth lined up tightly along the front edge of it's jaw. Behind each tooth more were lined up as replacements when one broke off.
Using CT scans the researchers were able study the inside of the animal's skull where the orientation of canals in the organ that helps keep balance disclosed the habitual low pose of the head, they reported.
Nigersaurus also had a backbone consisting of more air than bone.
"The vertebrae are so paper-thin that it is difficult to imagine them coping with the stresses of everyday use — but we know they did it, and they did it well," Jeffrey Wilson, assistant professor at the University of Michigan and an expedition team member, said in a statement.
The dinosaur's anatomy and lifestyle were to be detailed in the Nov. 21 issue of PLoS ONE, the online journal from the Public Library of Science, and in the December issue of National Geographic magazine.
The first bones of Nigersaurus were picked up in Niger in the 1950s by French paleontologists led by Philippe Taquet, but the species was not named at that time. Sereno and his team honored this early work by naming Nigersaurus taqueti after the nation where it was found and the French scientist.
The research was partly funded by National Geographic where, Sereno said, "you can see the hideous jaw elements in person."
Louis J Sheehan
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