An action thriller by Jock Miller


Fossil fuel has an ageless affinity with dinosaurs. To create oil, dinosaurs died.


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The perfect energy storm is sweeping over the United States: Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown has paralyzed nuclear expansion globally, BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill has stalled deep water drilling, Arab oil countries are in turmoil causing doubt about access to future oil, the intensity of hurricanes hitting the Gulf’s oil rigs and refineries has intensified due to global warming, and the nation’s Strategic Oil Supply is riding on empty.

As the energy storm intensifies, the nation’s access to Arab oil, once supplying over sixty percent of our fossil fuel, is being threatened causing people to panic for lack of gas at the pumps, stranding cars across the country and inciting riots.

The U.S. Military is forced to cut back air, land, and sea operations sucking up 58% of every barrel of oil to protect the nation; U.S. commercial airlines are forced to limit flights for lack of jet fuel; and businesses are challenged to power up their factories, and offices as the U.S. Department of Energy desperately tries to provide a balance of electric power from the network of aged power plants and transmission lines that power up the nation.

The United States must find new sources of domestic fossil fuel urgently or face an energy crisis that will plunge the nation into a deep depression worse than 1929.

The energy storm is very real and happening this very moment. But, at the last moment of desperation, the United States discovers the world’s largest fossil fuel deposit found in a remote inaccessible mountain range within Alaska’s Noatak National Preserve surrounding six and a half million acres.

Preventing access to the oil is a colony of living fossil dinosaurs that will protect its territory to the death.

Nobody gets out alive; nobody can identify the predator--until Dr. Kimberly Fulton, Curator of Paleontology at New York’s Museum of Natural History, is flown into the inaccessible area by Scott Chandler, the Marine veteran helicopter pilot who’s the Park’s Manager of Wildlife. All hell breaks loose when Fulton’s teenage son and his girlfriend vanish into the Park.

Will the nation’s military be paralyzed for lack of mobility fuel, and will people across America run out of gas and be stranded, or will the U.S. Military succeed in penetrating this remote mountain range in northwestern Alaska to restore fossil fuel supplies in time to save the nation from the worst energy driven catastrophe in recorded history?

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New Computer Model Uses DNA to Identify Earth’s Most Distinctive Birds

Oilbird, the world's most evolutionarily distinct bird. Image: Walter Jetz

Of all the birds on Earth, perhaps none is more unique than the South American oilbird, which 90 million years ago hopped onto its own branch of the evolutionary tree and has been on it ever since.

The oilbird perches atop a new analysis of avian distinctiveness: how old each species is, and whether they have close relatives.

By this metric, the most distinct species are truly one-of-a-kind. “It’s millions of years of evolutionary information that’s distinct to the species,” said evolutionary biologist Walter Jetz of Yale University.

The new analysis, led by Jetz and published April 10 in Current Biology, used a computer model that turned genetic data, the fossil record and previously-proposed taxonomic trees into a new evolutionary tree of birds.

Just because a species isn’t distinct, of course, doesn’t mean it’s not special: If yellow warblers vanished, for example, North America would be a far less cheerful place. But at least there are other other warblers. If the giant ibis or California condor goes extinct, though, there’s nothing else remotely like it.

“Those millions of years of evolutionary history would be lost,” said Jetz.
Hoatzin, the 3rd most evolutionarily-distinct species. Kate/Flickr
Jetz emphasized that distinctiveness isn’t just a matter of coloration, anatomy, and other aesthetics. It’s also reflected in habits and behaviors and life histories, perhaps even in cognitive abilities and molecules. After 80 million years of evolution, oilbirds probably make some pretty interesting proteins.

Some evolutionarily distinctive birds, including ostrich and osprey, are relatively common. Others, however, such as Christmas Island frigatebirds and the great ibis, are imperiled. We have a special obligation to protect these species, says Jetz.

His team is trying to use these data to come up with a conservation strategy, identifying key habitats where with relatively little effort, humans could save 60 percent of this evolutionary distinctiveness. They’ve also developed a website where you can look at the distinctiveness of birds in your own area.

Evolutionarily distinct birds often don’t occur in biodiversity hotspots, said Jetz, and aren’t appreciated as exceptional by birdwatchers and nature-lovers. He hopes that will change.

“Just looking at an oilbird, I feel like I’ve gone back 60 million years. You say to yourself, ‘You’re a bird from a different time!,’” said Jetz. “I wish that as many people as possible, as many future generations, get to experience this, too


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