Word: boned
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Paleopathologists had suspected that TB existed in the New World before 1492. Ancient skeletons, for instance, have bone lesions that resemble those caused by TB. But the DNA discovery, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first firm proof of TB's longevity in the Americas. "It's about the best evidence you could hope for," says biochemist Wilmar Salo of the University of Minnesota, who was on the research team...
...ticket to the boneyard. If Asian cultures no longer revere the tiger as a god, many still believe that the animal is the source of healing power. Shamans and practitioners of traditional medicine, especially the Chinese, value almost every part of the cat. They believe that tiger-bone potions cure rheumatism and enhance longevity. Whiskers are thought to contain potent poisons or provide strength; pills made from the eyes purportedly calm convulsions. Affluent Taiwanese with flagging libidos pay as much as $320 for a bowl of tiger-penis soup, thinking the soup will make them like tigers, which can copulate...
...market was always there, but in the 1980s it posed little threat to most tiger populations. In previous years China had slaughtered thousands of its tigers, claiming the animal was a pest that endangered humans. The massacre created a temporary glut of tiger bone -- more than enough to satisfy the traditional medicine market. Looking back on what happened next, Peter Jackson, chairman of the cat-specialist group at IUCN, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, in Geneva, says ruefully, "We should have seen this coming." Only in the late 1980s, he notes, after the Chinese had exhausted their...
Only last year, however, did officials realize the scale of the slaughter. A sting operation organized by TRAFFIC, an organization that monitors the wildlife trade for the World Wildlife Fund, uncovered a vast poaching network. In one bust last August, New Delhi police found 850 lbs. of tiger bone (equivalent to 42 tigers) and eight pelts. Sansar Chand, a dealer who surrendered last December, has nearly two dozen wildlife cases pending against him. Given the ease with which traffickers can manipulate India's glacial judicial system -- where cases can drag on for decades -- arrest is often only an inconvenience...
...would bag eight or 10 of the cats during a single hunt. But the state exercised iron control over the region, and when it decided to protect the tigers, their population recovered from roughly 30 to as many as 400 during the mid-1980s. Unfortunately for the Amur, tiger-bone prices began surging in the early 1990s, just when the fall of the Soviet Union led to a breakdown of law and order in the taiga...