American paleontologist Steve Brusatte, PhD, teaches at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The paleontology advisor on the 'Jurassic World' film franchise, Brusatte discussed the history of dinosaurs and the rise of mammals in their wake. Mammals and dinosaurs both trace their ancestry back to the same place and time: when all land was joined together in the supercontinent Pangea, about 225 million years ago, he cited. Sixty-six million years ago, a six-mile-wide asteroid left a massive crater in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. It struck with the force of over "one billion nuclear bombs," said Brusatte, and "unleashed a cocktail of wildfires, tsunamis, and earthquakes." The subsequent dust and grime went into the atmosphere and blocked out the sun, causing the Earth to grow dark and cold. The dinosaurs, who'd survived and thrived for millions of years, died out completely within a few thousand years.
Less than 10% of mammals survived, but it was only with the death of the dinosaurs that the resilient creatures got the opportunity to grow bigger (they had never been larger than a lap dog), he reported. Some dinosaurs were massive in scale, like the fearsome T. rex, which was the size of a city bus-- some 40 ft. long, with a head as big as a bathtub and of a height that it could have peered into a second-story window. After the dinosaurs, many of the mammals also grew quite huge such as South American armadillos (now extinct) that reached the size of a Volkswagen, he added. There were once many different species of humans living together, Brusatte revealed, and in a sense, one group-- the Neanderthals, was "absorbed" into Homo sapiens through interbreeding (around 3% of our DNA is considered Neanderthal in origin).
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UK paranormal expert Richard Lawrence was the first to bring declassified CIA and Pentagon UFO files to Britain in 1980. In the latter half, he spoke about UAP sightings, the latest developments in disclosure, and his long-standing work with contactee Dr. George King and the Aetherius Society. The data revealed about UAPs has been extraordinary, he noted-- including the ability to maneuver abruptly at incredible speeds without any means of visible propulsion, instantaneous acceleration, control over atmospheric friction, and resisting Earth's gravity. Starting in the 1950s, Dr. King linked UFOs to spirituality and believed that higher intelligences live on other planets in our solar system in a multi-dimensional framework.
The UK astronaut Tim Peake has suggested that aliens/UFOs could represent a kind of time travel, Lawrence reported, and surprisingly, a recent poll found that one out of three people in the UK believe they have seen a UFO. Lawrence described a 1978 UFO photo he shared with us, which was said to be taken out of an open window, and the negative was studied and shown to be legitimate. In recent decades, there has been an increasing variety of UFO shapes beyond just 'flying saucers,' he pointed out. Some of the smaller orbs may represent psychic phenomena rather than extraterrestrials, and they could be manifestations of angelic beings or a spiritual force, he added.
News segment guests: Catherine Austin Fitts, John M. Curtis