PREHISTORIC CREATURES
February 1st, 2002
BY MATTHEW BRACEONE of the world's most inhospitable deserts is yielding scores of unknown species that have existed since the time of the dinosaurs.They have been discovered in the Simpson Desert in central Australia, where summer temperatures reach 50C and where there is no rain for months, sometimes years.So when the Lake Eyre salt pan flooded to become an inland sea in September 2000 - a once in a century event, following the last, smaller, flood in 1974 - hundreds of micro-fauna that had sat out the 26-year drought cocooned in suspended animation beneath the ...
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