Gun Runner: Gunman Ran Down 2 Cops And Kidnapped Another While Fleeing Arrest
By Peter Barker
A man in Washington, D.C., has been arrested after he knocked two police officers to the ground and kidnapped a third.
The suspect, Natango Robinson, was being pursued at the 500 block of Kennedy Street in the U.S. capital on Oct. 22. Uniformed members of the Metropolitan Police Department’s Fourth District were alerted to a male suspect with a handgun chasing another male.
The Metropolitan Police Department said in a statement that officers arrived at the scene and engaged the suspect.
As they were patting Robinson down, they found a handgun tucked into his waistband. A struggle occurred, but the suspect managed to escape and bolted toward his car — with the cops in pursuit.
Robinson jumped behind the wheel and attempted to drive away. Two of the officers grabbed him and tried to pull him out of the vehicle.
Robinson overpowered the officers and essentially kidnapped the third, who was still in the car.
He drove two city blocks with the officer in the vehicle, ignoring repeated commands to pull over, according to a police statement. The officer then discharged his service weapon, striking the suspect. The officer exited the moving vehicle and fell into the roadway. Robinson kept driving, despite sustaining a gunshot wound.
Two of the officers required treatment, but their injuries were not life-threatening. A third sustained minor injuries.
The suspect was later arrested after police found him at a local hospital receiving treatment for non-life-threatening injuries.
He was charged with felony assault on a police officer while armed, kidnapping while armed, unlawful possession of a firearm, resisting arrest and several other felonies.
Robert Conte, MPD Chief, said: “It just really speaks to the brazenness of this individual to chase somebody down the street with a gun in broad daylight.
“The officer was actually, literally kidnapped, if you will, in the back seat of the vehicle while this guy is driving down two or three blocks from the initial point of the stop.”
The officer who fired the shot is on administrative leave, according to police policy, while his body-cam footage is reviewed.
The suspect’s trial date was not specified.
This has been a tough year for Washington, D.C. police. About 140 officers — 73 from the Capitol Police and 65 from the Metropolitan Police Department — were injured during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, the departments said.
Separately, 134 officers from the Metropolitan Police Dept. are listed as line-of-duty deaths by the Officer Down Memorial Page.
Edited by Fern Siegel and Kristen Butler
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VIDEO: Home Alone Horror: Three Kids Lived In Abandoned House With Mummified Remains Of Brother
Three children who were abandoned in an apartment, along with the skeletal remains of their 9-year-old brother, were rescued Oct. 24 by sheriff’s deputies after a 15-year-old in the apartment called in a report.
The three children — the 15-year-old and his two younger siblings — may have been living alone in the apartment for approximately a year with no adult, according to the Harris County, Texas, Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said on Twitter: “Heartbreaking. … ”Units found three juveniles abandoned in an apartment. Skeletal remains, possibly of another juvenile, were also found inside the unit.”
During a press conference on th evening of Oct. 24, Gonzalez said it was a “very horrific situation” and that it was “very tragic.”
“I have been in this business for a long time and I have never heard of a scenario like this. It caught me by surprise,” he said.
Gonzalez said the children had been abandoned.
“The 15-year-old stated his parents have not lived in the apartment with he and his two siblings for several months,” the sheriff’s office said in a homicide report.
The sheriff said in addition to rescuing the children, ages 15, 10 and 7 years old, deputies had recovered the “skeletal remains of what appears to be a juvenile.” The names of the children were not released.
“Both of these [younger] children appeared malnourished and showed signs of physical injury. All three children were transported to the hospital to be assessed and treated for their injuries,” the sheriff’s office said in its homicide report.
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office Homicide Unit, Child Abuse Unit, and Crime Scene Unit responded to the scene, the sheriff’s office said, and “the mother of the children and her boyfriend have been located and are being interviewed by homicide investigators.
“The manner and cause of death will be determined by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences. This is an active investigation.”
Gonzalez said his staff have been deeply affected by the gruesome discovery, and the office is working to identify the deceased child’s next of kin to help determine “how it got to this point.” They are also working to find a legal guardian for the surviving siblings.
The three rescued children were in the care of Child Protective Services as of this report.
Harris County, with a population was 4,731,145, is the most populous county in Texas and the third most populous county in the United States.
Edited by Judith Isacoff and Kristen Butler
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Meet Gary, The Robot That Can Tidy The House And Do The Laundry
By Brian Blum
He’s about the height of Dobby the house elf from the Harry Potter books. And he never balks at taking on a repetitive or boring task. He doesn’t mind cleaning toilets, picking up socks or moving packages in a warehouse.
His name is Gary, and he’s a robot for your home or business.
The height of a 10-year-old, with a speed of 3.1 mph and a weight of about 88 pounds, Gary is coming in early 2022 from Petah Tikva-based startup Unlimited Robotics.
Gary is currently “naked,” saidGuy Altagar, co-founder and CEO of Unlimited Robotics. This doesn’t mean Gary has no clothes (although he doesn’t) but rather that the robot hasn’t yet received all his programming instructions.
But that will soon change, as developers begin to create apps for Gary, who got his name from the initials of Altagar’s three children — Gali, Rani and Yaeli.
Despite that playful backstory, Gary is not intended to be cute.
“Amazon is developing something very cute,” Altagar said, referring to the conversational interface powering products such as Alexa. ElliQ, from Israeli startup Intuition Robotics, is intended to serve as a companion for seniors — also cute.
“We are not in the cute industry,” Altagar said. “We are in the functional, practical industry.”
Doing laundry, watering plants
Indeed, Gary wasn’t designed to play your favorite tunes on demand or to connect a video call to your grandkids.
Instead, Gary could remove dirty towels from the laundry basket and put them in the washer (great for the gym or at home). He can water the plants, load the dishwasher and open jars.
In a restaurant, he could serve food or greet customers at the door. In a hotel, he could strip the bedsheets or replenish the shampoo and conditioner.
Gary can carry up to 11 pounds in his two robotic arms (although he hasn’t quite mastered the art of folding clothes, Altagar says). His sensors and cameras include one to take a 3D view of a room and an infrared camera to see in the dark.
Gary is available for pre-order from the Unlimited Robotics website. He doesn’t come cheap at $5,900 (there’s an installment plan of $100 a month), but already 80 people have paid the $99 fee to reserve a spot on the waiting list.
Download a new function
While plenty of other companies are developing robots (Boston Dynamics has several models, including a new personal robot dog, Astro), what sets Unlimited Robotics apart is its “app store” for robots.
You want a new function for Gary? Just download it and you’re all set. If a developer chooses to charge for its app, Unlimited Robotics will take a 30 percent cut.
Unlimited Robotics is providing tools that allow any programmer to create apps without having to learn robotics-specific software. If a developer uses Python or JavaScript, for example, Unlimited Robotics’ Ra-Ya platform (named after Altagar’s mother, Raya) will translate that code to work on its robotics hardware.
Being able to seamlessly translate from one language to another “opens huge opportunities for software developers to build applications not just for the web or mobile, but for robots, too,” Altagar said.
Ra-Ya is not just for Gary. If a Xiaomi or a Samsung were to develop a four-legged robot with six arms (Gary has two arms and wheels), Ra-Ya converted apps will work on them too.
Altagar even envisions apps that extend what today’s single-function robotic devices can do — imagine a future Roomba with an “arm” attachment that can clean your windows.
Getting to that point is not a simple process.
“The app would have to identify what is a window, learn how to map it and get training in how to clean it,” Altagar said.
Ra-Ya’s software translation tech needs to know how to connect code in JavaScript to the robot’s computer vision, navigation and machine learning infrastructure.
A sociable robot
When a Gary first comes to your home or business, he’s somewhat of a blank slate. An app may tell him what to do in broad strokes, but he needs some personal orientation.
“The host will teach Gary,” Altagar said. “He’ll explain to Gary which room is the bedroom and where the socks are that need to be picked up. After the first interaction, Gary will ask for feedback. The host will explain to Gary what he did that was good or bad and Gary will improve for the next time.”
Gary’s a sociable guy — whatever he learns in your house or facility, he’ll share with all the other Garys connected via the Internet.
“Mapping your particular house may not be relatable to other users but understanding what a sock is or the optimal way to pick it up, or how to hold a cup of coffee, is something that can be shared,” Altagar said.
Gary is not a real-world version of Rosie from “The Jetsons.” In fact, the robot was intentionally designed as a male, Altagar said. “We didn’t want to create an approach where a woman is ‘serving’ a family.”
Fires to toys
Altagar doesn’t have a robotics background — he studied law and economics at Tel Aviv University and launched a mobile gaming startup. Although that company didn’t succeed, Altagar’s entrepreneurial spirit had been kindled.
Robotics
The impetus for Gary was to help firefighters.
“In 2019, there were a lot of fires, in California and in Israel,” Altagar said. “The only solution was to send up airplanes to release water. We thought, could we create a robot to enter into the heart of the fire and release water and other materials there?”
Gary the fireman proved to be a tad more ambitious than Altagar was ready to take on.
“But with three little kids in my house, leaving their toys everywhere and my back breaking from picking up their mess, this is where the idea came from.”
Altagar teamed up with Eli Kolberg from Bar-Ilan University’s faculty of engineering, and Martin Gordon, today the company’s chief technology officer and chief product officer, respectively. The company employs 26 people — 22 in Petah Tikva and the others in Colombia and Georgia.
Unlimited Robotics raised seed money from Wix CEO Avishai Abrahami and is finalizing a $15 million Series A funding round.
Unlimited Robotics plans to host a hackathon in December, for developers to create apps to test on Gary.
Machines and mankind
Altagar hopes to see his robots in hotels, hospitals, nursing facilities, sports stadiums, schools, libraries, museums and, of course, homes.
While Gary is not meant to put anyone out of a job, he is debuting at a time when many industries, from restaurants to hospitality, are having a hard time finding staff.
“We are on the edge of entering into a new era in which machines and mankind will be living together,” Altagar said.
“Robots are already in our warehouses and our logistics centers, where people don’t see them. We believe robots will move closer in proximity to humans in the next year or two.”
Could Gary be hacked? Altagar insists Unlimited Robotics is “using the best security measurements we can find.”
And Gary will not listen to your conversations (like Amazon’s Alexa) or take pictures without your permission. He’ll come with a hood that you can place over his head to guarantee he’s not watching or recording.
“We don’t care if you wear blue or red socks,” Altagar says. “That information is not going outside of your house. What we care about is the shape of the sock, because we want to improve Gary’s abilities.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk gave the whole field of personal robotics a boost in August when he revealed that the electric car manufacturer is working on a “Tesla Bot,” a humanoid robot designed — like Gary — to handle “tasks that are unsafe, repetitive or boring.”
“That made people start to pay more attention to this industry,” Altagar said.
For more information, click here.
Produced in association with Israel21C.
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VIDEO: We Really Are Great Actors, Says ‘Squid Game’ Actor
By Beau Dacanay
One of the actors in the Netflix his series “Squid Game” has hit back at online jibes about bad acting by the show’s “VIP” characters.
Geoffrey Giuliano, who has a role in one episode as VIP 4 — an eccentric gay billionaire who tries to seduce a waiter — said the portrayal was “exactly as the director wanted.”
Despite the success of the violent series — Netflix’s top original series of all time — fans have mocked his and other VIP roles with jokes that the actors were “dragged in off the street” and that the scripts sound like they were written with Google Translate.
Speaking from his home in Thailand, Giuliano rebutted suggestions that the actors are at fault for the bizarre portrayals of “depraved rich Western men.”
The 68-year-old author and actor, who was the only VIP to be unmasked in the series, said: “This wasn’t just a director, he was the writer-director, so he had a vested interest in seeing his vision on the screen and that’s what he got.
“We didn’t deviate one grain of rice from what he wanted to what we did. I think the performance was fine, absolutely fine, better than fine.
‘We … don’t second guess this director because he just made $900 million for a lot of people who have their hands in that pie, and he’s a genius, he’s a lovely guy.”
“Squid Game” director Hwang Dong-hyuk faced 10 years of rejections while trying to get his script produced before it was taken up by Netflix and began airing in September.
The show follows people struggling with crippling debt as they enter a twisted competition to win a life-changing $38 million. It became the most streamed show in 94 countries.
Critics have lambasted the roles of the VIPs — rich foreigners who are invited to bet huge sums of money on which of the players will survive the show’s sadistic children’s games
Giuliano said that much of the criticism comes from a lack of understanding of the series and about Korean culture, as it was not intended to please a Western audience. He said the VIPs are portrayed in a way that caters to “Korean sensibilities” and their view of foreign men.
“It was a Korean series written by Koreans, directed by Koreans, funded by Koreans, for Koreans in the Korean language in the country of Korea. It’s not ‘Godfather II’ and was never intended to be.
“The fact that America and all these other Western countries like it is a bit of a mystery to me.”
Giuliano draws parallels between the cartoon-like exaggerated roles of the VIPs to characters in Stanley Kubrick’s “Clockwork Orange.”
“The director sought me out from thousands of people to fly me in from Hollywood to do this part, which also dispels the myth that we were picked up off the streets, like I’m some sort of expat English teacher. Nothing wrong with that, but I’m a professional actor.”
Giuliano also talked about the cringe-worthy sexual jokes that VIP 4 makes while watching players cross a bridge made of glass — a portrayal he said works for Korean audiences.
“You need to understand that the awkward juxtaposition of a loud obnoxious American voice into that Korean drama with Korean sensibilities was the director’s choice, vision and mandate, so what’s the problem? This is like a complaint in search of a problem. We did what we were paid to do, we did the script as it was written.
“Others in the cast have had problems with millions of people lodging some kind of complaint, which I feel is baseless. I’ve watched that thing with a jaundiced eye and thought ‘where did I go wrong’ but no, it’s fine. Either I’m crazy or they’re wrong, but there’s no problem on my end.
“I’m in the most popular film in the history of television; it’s like the Beatles, it’s like Titanic, it’s like some crazy phenomena, like an asteroid hitting the Earth, and I’m riding this thing all the way to my next job.”
Edited by Judith Isacoff and Kristen Butler
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VIDEO: Ex-squid-ite! ‘Squid Game’ Star Loves Fan’s Recreation Of Red Light, Green Light Game
A reenactment of a famed scene from the first episode of the hit Netflix TV series “Squid Game” has earned a Russian fan praise from one of the show’s stars.
The creator of the reenactment, who gave his name as Feo, is from the northeastern Russian region of Yakutia. He shared this reenactment clip of the scene in which contestants participating in the first game have to get past a giant doll without moving when she turns around. If they fail, they are killed. (For the uninitiated, the “Squid Game” is about “hundreds of cash-strapped players who accept a strange invitation to compete in children’s games. Inside, a tempting prize awaits — with deadly high stakes,” the Netflix series description says.)
As a Russian, Feo replaced the doll seen in the Netflix series with a Russian “babushka” one. The video has notched up thousands of likes since being posted, even garnering the attention of South Korean actor Heo Sung-tae, who plays gangster and game contestant Jang Deok-su in the show.
The star shared the reenactment footage on his own Instagram account and added a note to it saying (in Russian) that it was “the best” and “well done” to congratulate its creator.
In an interview, Feo said he wanted to put a Russian spin on the game depicted in the series and was thrilled to hear from one of the series’ stars.
“I was just watching the series, and suddenly the thought came to me ‘What if this series were filmed in Russia? How would it look?
“Then I decided to recreate the ‘red light, green light’ scene from the series where a huge doll was looking for people who are moving when she says ‘red’. But instead of a doll, I put the famous Russian doll and instead of decorations on the wall, there are Russian apartment buildings.”
Working with visual effects is nothing new to Feo.
“I create scenes in 3D. I used to work in game development at the Mytona company, which develops games for mobile phones. I’m completely freelance now.”
Part of the series’ appeal, Feo says, is its intermixing children’s games with deadly ones.
“I also really liked the locations, costumes, and the visual effects.”
Feo feels “Squid Game” is superior to the competition-based motifs seen in “The Hunger Games” and “Battle Royale,” the 2000 Japanese film by Kinji Fukasaku, saying that while the latter is a classic, the “Squid Game” is “a new breath in this genre. I liked it more. It had more creative solutions.”
Feo’s favorite “Squid Game” character is Seong Gi-hun, played by Lee Jung-jae. “He is both a loser and a very lucky person at the same time. He is also kind and cunning.”
Edited by Matthew B. Hall and Kristen Butler
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Holy Smoked: Arsonist Torched Jesus Statue
By Peter Barker
A man from Florida was arrested after he set fire to two homes and a statue of Jesus Christ.
James Lee Harris was arrested after setting fire to a statue of Jesus outside the Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church in Beverly Hills, Florida, on Oct. 22.
Officers were dispatched to the church after several reports were called in, according to the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office.
A witness at the scene told members of the police and fire department they saw a white male wearing a black leather jacket and tan shorts running across the parking lot toward the front of the church.
The witness claims to have seen the suspect pouring liquid out of a gasoline can onto a tree and around a statue of Jesus before setting both on fire.
The officers at the scene reviewed the church’s security camera footage and found a man matching the witness’s description. Harris was recorded trying to light propane tanks on fire next to the building.
In addition, the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office received a call from a resident who saw a man attempt to set their garden fence on fire. He also covered several windows and doors with a flammable liquid.
Citrus County Fire Rescue was dispatched to another fire linked to the suspect. A home badly damaged after it went up in flames on South Wadsworth Avenue in Beverly Hills.
Security footage linked the fires to Harris.
“Through strong community efforts, Harris’ whereabouts were obtained, and he was taken into custody shortly before 10 p.m. After being read his Miranda Rights, Harris confessed to setting all three fires,” the sheriff’s office said.
Harris is being held at the Citrus County Detention Facility on a $36,000 bond.
Citrus County Sheriff Mike Prendergast said: “Not only is arson dangerous, but in some cases can be deadly. No one in our community was injured during Harris’ tirade of inconceivable acts. I applaud our deputies, Community Crimes Detectives, and our partners at Citrus County Fire Rescue for working swiftly and diligently to keep our community safe from further harm.”
Prendergast thanked witnesses “for coming forward so quickly with invaluable information” to help solve the crime.
The suspect’s trial date has not been confirmed by the sheriff’s office, but Harris has been charged with four counts: arson to a dwelling, criminal mischief, arson to a church and criminal mischief to a church.
No motive has been given for Harris’ crimes.
Edited by Fern Siegel and Kristen Butler
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Pfizer Jab 90 Percent Effective In Preventing Adolescent COVID-19
By Jon Schiller
Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine is extremely effective in preventing coronavirus infections among youths between the ages of 12 and 18, a new Israeli study finds.
According to the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine last week, Pfizer’s vaccine has been found 90 percent effective in preventing new cases of infection among adolescents, and 93% effective in preventing the spread of symptomatic infection within seven to 21 days of the second dose.
The study, conducted by Clalit Health Services, relied on data from about 185,000 participants, comparing roughly 94,000 youths who received the vaccine against an equal sized unvaccinated group.
The effectiveness of Pfizer’s vaccine against the Delta variant has been confirmed as well, as the study was conducted between June and September of this year — a time when the Delta variant was the most prevalent SARS-CoV-2 strain within Israel.
According to Ran Balicer, Clalit Medical’s chief innovation officer, the Israeli government-sponsored mass vaccination campaign is what provided the opportunity to conduct this study.
“As Israel embarked on a large vaccination campaign for its adolescents in the last few months, this provided us a unique opportunity to assess the vaccine’s effectiveness among adolescents,” he said.
Though this study does prove the vaccine’s efficiency at preventing symptomatic cases of COVID-19, it does not have sufficient data to gauge the effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing COVID-19 related hospitalizations among youths.
Israel was one of the first countries to launch a widespread COVID-19 vaccination effort, with all major healthcare providers in the country beginning to administer vaccines as early as December 2020.
Since then, over 15.8 million doses of the vaccine have been administered to 5.71 million people. Today, 62 percent of the population in Israel is fully vaccinated.
Israeli researchers also have determined that a third (“booster”) dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is effective at preventing both infection and severe illness.
The findings from the first such study were published Sept. 15 in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Findings suggest that the third dose boosts immunity about tenfold compared to those who had received only two doses of the vaccine at least five months earlier.
Another Israeli study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine on Sept. 16, reveals that the Pfizer vaccine was not associated with an elevated risk of adverse events such as Bell’s palsy, appendicitis and herpes zoster infection, among others, yet it was associated with an excess risk of myocarditis (1 to 5 events per 100,000 people).
However, the researchers found that the risk of myocarditis and of many other serious adverse events was substantially increased after SARS-CoV-2 infection — suggesting it’s safer to get the vaccine than the disease.
Produced in association with Israel21C.
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Tomb Savers: Archeologists Rescue Ancient Remains From 6,500-Year-Old Graves
Archeologists have unearthed eight prehistoric tombs, between 5,500 and 6,500 years old, in the heart of a Swiss town, but construction work has severely damaged three of them.
The site is the location of a famous necropolis in the Swiss town of Pully, which lies in the suburbs of the city of Lausanne in Vaud Canton, on the shores of Lake Geneva. The last discoveries reported in this district of Pully were made in 1984, according to state authorities.
A team of experts was sent in to check on the site while new construction work was underway in the area. They discovered eight new graves on Chemin de Verney Street dating back to the Neolithic period, between 4,500 and 3,500 B.C.
The necropolis stretches from Chemin de Verney Street to Chemin de Chamblandes Street and may extend even further. With the latest find, it is believed to house about 80 tombs.
The site was first discovered over a century ago by Swiss archeologist, historian and architect Albert Naef (1862–1936), a native of Lausanne.
The necropolis lies near the site of a previous discovery, in 1826, of 30 tombs dating back to the Neolithic period. Unfortunately, the artifacts from the Pierraz-Portay site were poorly preserved, so few of them remain.
“Archaeological monitoring of the work on Chemin de Verney, entrusted to the company Archeodunum SA, was carried out between 28th June and 17th August 2021,” Vaud Canton authorities said in a statement. “In an area of barely 10 square meters [32.8 square feet], eight vault tombs, made of molasse slabs, [were] unearthed.”
“Molasse” typically refers to sandstone, shale and other forms of stone that result from new mountain chains forming and rising. They are often found in the Alps and the Himalayas.
“They appeared at a shallow depth, and their cover slabs, which were very fragmented, were only very partially preserved. Two graves were intact in the center of the trench, the others having suffered damage caused by recent digging in connection with urban networks,” authorities said.
Only three tombs yielded skeletal remains, in the form of skulls, according to the statement.
Graves that weren’t likely to be affected by the construction work were “protected and left in situ.”
Vaud Canton authorities said the new sarcophagi represent a rare opportunity to complete the mapping of the necropolis, which still remains “difficult to fathom,” given the absence of “extensive, recent digs” at the site.
Edited by Siân Speakman and Kristen Butler
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Tree Rex: Dino Raptor Revealed To Be A Timid Plant Muncher
Scientists now believe that an Australian velociraptor-like dinosaur, previously considered a massive predator, was actually a “timid vegetarian.”
Anthony Romilio, a paleontologist at the University of Queensland in Australia, led an international research team that reanalyzed footprints left by the dinosaur and published their findings in the journal Historical Biology.
“Fossil footprints found in an Ipswich coal mine have long been thought to be that of a large ‘raptor-like’ predatory dinosaur,” the university said in a statement, adding that scientists have now established that it was in fact a timid herbivore.
The footprints were originally thought to fall under the Eubrontes style of tracks — typically made by two-legged carnivores. They were dated to the latter part of the Triassic Period, around 220 million years ago, according to the university. The research team decided to analyze the footprints again because of doubts over the original size estimates.
“For years, it’s been believed that these tracks were made by a massive theropod predator … with legs over two meters (6.5 feet) tall,” said Romilio. “This idea caused a sensation decades ago because no other meat-eating dinosaur in the world approached that size during the Triassic period.”
However, the research team identified the tracks as “Evazoum,” a type of footprint made by prosauropods — smaller vegetarian dinosaurs, with legs about 4.5 feet (1.4 meters) long and a body length of 19.6 feet (6 meters).
The fossilized footprints were “discovered more than half a century ago, around 200 meters (656 feet) deep underground, in a coal mine, just west of Brisbane,” according to the university.
“Unfortunately, earlier researchers could not directly access the footprint specimen for their study, instead relying on old drawings and photographs that lacked detail,” said Romilio. “It must have been quite a sight for the first miners in the 1960s to see big bird-like footprints jutting down from the ceiling.”
Hendrik Klein, a co-author of the study, said the footprints consisted of “water-sodden layers of ancient plant debris with the tracks later in-filled by silt and sand.”
He said this was why the footprints appear “in an upside-down position right above our heads.”
“After millions of years, the plant material turned into coal, which was extracted by the miners to reveal a ceiling of siltstone and sandstone, complete with the natural casts of dinosaur footprints,” said Klein, who is a fossil expert from the Saurierwelt Paläontologisches Museum (the Dinosaur World Palaeontological Museum) in the German capital of Berlin.
In 1964, geologists and experts from the Queensland Museum visited the closed mine to map the trackway and make plaster casts that are used in current research, according to the university.
“We made a virtual 3D model of the dinosaur footprint that was emailed to team members across the world to study,” said Klein.
“The more we looked at the footprint and toe impression shapes and proportions, the less they resembled tracks made by predatory dinosaurs. This monster dinosaur was definitely a much friendlier plant-eater.
“This is the earliest evidence we have for this type of dinosaur in Australia, marking a 50-million-year gap before the first [four-legged herbivore] fossils known.
“This is still a significant discovery, even if it isn’t a scary Triassic carnivore,” said Klein.
Edited by Siân Speakman and Kristen Butler
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