Word: skeleton
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Nabokov liked to shock as well as enchant. A biology professor who suspects his wife of adultery frightens her to death by putting a skeleton in her bed. There is a boyish cruelty similar to Alfred Hitchcock's in many of Nabokov's mock-gothic tales. He was an ardent hunter of clichas and kitsch, and a mischievous parodist of traditional literary forms. The familiar 1952 story Lance sends up science fiction whose "Star tsars, directors of Galactic Unions, are practically replicas of those peppy, red-haired executives in earthy earth jobs." The little-known 1924 tale The Dragon turns...
...testing plays a major role in this brisk, whodunit-style narrative by a Russophile writer best known for his successful 1967 biography, Nicholas and Alexandra. The much publicized tool of forensic pathology led to an unseemly squabble among rival scientists trying to determine whether nine skeletons dug up near Ekaterinburg in 1991 were those of Nicholas and his family. At the end of August, U.S. and Russian experts announced that DNA testing had proved conclusively that one skeleton was that of Nicholas, thereby clearing the way for the family's interment in St. Petersburg's Cathedral of Sts. Peter...
...Some we have a complete skeleton," she said, "sometimes just one bone...
...unique geology. Layers of sediment preserved animal specimens, while the volcanic eruptions that periodically shook the valley produced ash and lava whose radioactive elements make the fossils easy to date. Probably the most famous inhabitant of the valley was the diminutive creature known as Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis), whose fossil skeleton was discovered in 1974 and who lived more than 3 million years...
Meanwhile, Louis's scientific and activist legacy is carried on by son Richard and daughter-in-law Meave. Among Rich ard's major finds are further evidence of Homo habilis and, with Alan Walker in 1984, "Turkana Boy," a 1.6 million-year-old skeleton of a strapping, adolescent Homo erectus. As director of the Kenya Wildlife Service from 1989 to 1994, Richard revitalized the country's national parks and deterred poachers, but he made political enemies in the process. As combative and tough as his father, he has survived a kidney transplant and the loss of both legs below...