Word: deserts
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...pack-rat midden is a snapshot of the flora and fauna existing within about 50 m ((164 ft.)) of the midden at the time it was accumulating," explains Peter Wigand, a paleoecologist at the University of Nevada's Desert Research Institute. Scientists can pin down the approximate time the snapshot was taken by radiocarbon dating of a preserved twig or fecal pellet; the technique can date specimens that are more than 40,000 years old. And by studying middens of different vintages in the same area, researchers can in effect create a movie from a sequence of snapshots, showing changes...
...whatever name, the investigation of middens is paying off with a host of new insights about the past. Using midden evidence of tree growth and distribution in the Mojave Desert, botanist W. Geoffrey Spaulding of the University of Washington determined that average desert temperatures during the height of the last Ice Age, about 18,000 years ago, were 6 degreesC (11 degrees F) colder than they are today...
Meantime Jerry Ford was hobbling around his Palm Desert, Calif., digs, awaiting an artificial right knee to match the left knee he had inserted two years ago. Unable to get to his native Michigan to plug Bush for this week's primary, he boomed his message over the phone to several old friends in the media. "Pat Buchanan has had his run," said Ford. "It's time for him to get out of the race so the President can spend more time dealing with a Congress that is in total disarray." If the economy is improving, then Bush will...
Home-movie footage of the band wandering about a desert plain in their Joshua Tree days provided entertaining visual accompaniment to "Where the Streets Have No Name...
Like the Democratic primary campaign, the Republican race was settling into a two-man contest -- between Bush and his lesser self. Gone is the commander of Desert Storm, the man who confidently vowed that Saddam Hussein's aggression "will not stand." In his place is a calculating politician who whines about "flak." Rather than telling Americans why he wants another four years and what he intends to do with them, Bush is repudiating one of the few domestic accomplishments of his first term -- a successful budget compromise that cut and capped spending, raised taxes and reduced government borrowing by nearly...