BBC Learning English

Words in the News

8th October 2010
Oldest dinosaur footprints found

Scientists have found dinosaur-like footprints in a 250-million-year-old rock, suggesting that

first dinosaur-like creatures emerged up to nine million years earlier than previously thought.
Our Science Correspondent, Pallab Ghosh reports:

These earliest dinosaur-like animals were about the size of domestic cats. They would have
weighed two or three pounds (1 to 1.5 kilos) and walked on four legs.

But what's really intrigued scientists is that they date from two million years after the worst
mass extinction event in the history of the planet.

It was a time when volcanic eruptions, sudden global warming and a stagnation of the
oceans wiped out more than 90% of all life on Earth.

Up until recently scientists thought that dinosaurs emerged 15 to 20 million years after this
event. But the new footprints suggest that they arose directly as a result of the devastation,
filling a gaping ecological void. Without the mass extinctions there would have been no
dinosaurs.

Pallab Ghosh, BBC News, London

Words in the News British Broadcasting Corporation 2010

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Vocabulary and definitions

dinosaur large reptile that lived around 200 million years ago

mass extinction large number of deaths in a relatively short period of time

volcanic eruptions explosions of ash, fire and liquid rock coming out of the
earth

global warming increased average temperatures across the world

stagnation inactivity

wiped out completely destroyed

devastation destruction

gaping very wide

ecological connected with plants, animals and the environment

void area of empty space

More on this story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11481232

Read and listen to the story and the vocabulary online:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/2010/10/101008_witn_dinosaur_page.shtml

Words in the News British Broadcasting Corporation 2010

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