THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY OCTOBER 4,2007
723 NEW LAMPSHIRE - LAWRENCE KS
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8A NEWS
SCIENCE
Experts release details of new duck-billed dino
BROCK VERGAKIS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SALT LAKE CITY - The world, it seems, was its salar bar.
Scientists are amazed at the chomping ability of a newly described duck-billed dinosaur. The herbivore's powerful jaw, more than 800 teeth and compact skull meant that no leaf, branch or bush would have been safe, they say.
"It really is like the Arnold Schwarzenegger of dinosaurs — it's all pumped up," said Scott Sampson, curator of the Utah Museum of Natural History.
The newly named Gryposaurus monumentensis, or hook-beaked lizard from the monument, was discovered near the Arizona line in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 2002 by a volunteer at the site. Details about the 75-million-year-old dinosaur, including its name, were published in the Oct. 3 edition of Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
Duck-billed dinosaurs were previously known to have been among the most imposing herbivores, with hundreds of teeth and a body that could knock down trees.
Gryposaurus monumentensis, at least 30 feet long and 10 feet tall with a robust jaw and thick bones, was like a duck-billed dinosaur on steroids, said paleontologist Terry Gates.
"It's basically the Cretaceous version of a weed-whacker," he
said. "You have a very formidable herbivore."
Although paleontologists said Wednesday that the dinosaur could eat just about any plant it wanted, scientists still aren't sure what it dined on.
Southern Utah is now a rocky desert with few trees, but 75 million years ago it was a dinosaur haven that looked something like Louisiana today, Gates said.
"It's very humid and wet, with lots of ponds and lots of rivers and creeks flowing through it. It was very lush," he said.
Sampson said fossils of duckbilled dinosaurs once lived throughout the northwestern part of North America. The newly discovered version has a smaller skull that allowed it to apply more force to what it was eating.
"By shortening the skull, you can get more power per bite. The shrinking of the skull and the robustness of the jaw and snout all lead me to think this guy was made to eat." Gates said.
However, the duck-billed dinosaur's teeth and size would not have been much of a defense against area predators such as the tyrannosaur. Scientists also aren't sure if the new dinosaur was a loner or traveled in herds for protection because so few skeletal remains have been found.
It's one of several questions scientists are hoping to answer, along with how and why different species of the duck-billed dinosaur developed.
NATION
Associated Press
An unidentified television photographer interviews officer Nick W. Borys of the Georgetown, Colo., Police Department about the five maintenance workers trapped in a pipe at an Xcel Energy hydroelectric power plant. A fire started in the facility near the small mountain community on Tuesday. Rescue workers were toiling to reach the workers as night fell on the mountains.
Fire kills 5 trapped workers
Machine in hydroelectric plant starts chemical blaze
JUDITH KOHLER ASSOCIATED PRESS
GEORGETOWN, Colo. — Five workers trapped at least 1,500 feet underground survived an initial chemical fire at a hydroelectric plant, but died before emergency workers could rescue them.
Investigators were trying to determine how they died, and the county coroner's office was working Wednesday to identify the workers and remove their bodies.
Crews who entered from the bottom of the sloping tunnel to put out the fire discovered the bodies late
Tuesday, Clear Creek County under-
sheriff Stu Nay said.
They were among a group of nine contract maintenance workers in the tunnel when a machine used to coat the inside of the 12-foot-wide pipe with epoxy caught fire. Xcel Energy spokeswoman Ethnie Groves said. Xcel refused to release the name of the contractors' employer.
Exactly what burned is still under investigation, Xcel spokesman Mark Stutz said Wednesday.
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Four workers below the fire were able to scramble out of the bottom of the 4,000-foot-long tunnel. Two of the four were treated for chemical inhalation, and one was airlifted to a hospital, Groves said.
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The coroner's office was working to identify the workers, whose names had not been released early Wednesday.
Officials initially expressed hope that the trapped workers could be saved. Groves first reported that authorities had communicated with the five by radio about 45 minutes after the fire broke out, and that the men said they were unhurt.
The nine workers were sealing the inside of the pipe to prevent corrosion when equipment they were using malfunctioned and ignited a fire at 2 p.m.
"We want to express our deepest sympathies to the families, friends and co-workers of those who died," said Tim Taylor, president and chief executive of Public Service Company of Colorado, an Xcel Energy Inc. company. "Certainly, we'll be working closely with the authorities to investigate what happened."
The underground tunnel delivers water from a reservoir to turbines
that generate electricity and empties into a second, smaller reservoir. The plant, technically called a pumped storage facility, is located high in the Rocky Mountains.
Xcel said the tunnel initially rises 1,500 feet at a gentle sloping angle, then another 1,500 feet at a 15-degree angle. The pipe then rises 1,000 feet at a 55-degree angle before running vertical for its final 50 feet.
The smoldering fire broke out about halfway into the pipe. The five workers were trapped at the junction of the 15-degree pipe and the 55-degree pipe, Xcel said.
Personnel from at least a dozen agencies, including a mine rescue crew and an Alpine rescue team, rushed to the site 2 miles outside Georgetown, a former mining town with mountain views. Victorian buildings and bighorn sheep that attract tourists.
Officials lowered breathing masks and piped in oxygen to the men, who had scrambled up the tunnel and sought shelter behind a temporary valve used to prevent water from seeping into the pipe, said Maj. Rick Albers of the Clear Creek County sheriff's department.
At 5:40 p.m., the mine crew entered the bottom of the tunnel to extinguish the fire. At the top of the tunnel, rescuers waited to rappel their way down to reach the workers but authorities later said they decided it would be safer to reach the workers from the bottom.
The hydroelectric plant generates electricity by releasing water from the top reservoir into the lower reservoir, then pumping the water back to the upper reservoir. It was completed in 1967.