A 65-Ton Dinosaur as a Distraction From NATO, Ukraine and ISIS
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Version 0 of 1. The important news was the convergence of a NATO summit meeting, the beginnings of a cease-fire in Ukraine and the commitment to destroy ISIS. Those events will shape the world. The news that won’t change anything is the discovery of a humongous dinosaur, and yet that may have been the most compelling story. Ukraine and ISIS are bad news in its purest form, dreary replays of horrors we thought we had left behind: Cold War sabre-rattling with Russia, only this time without the competition of ideologies; and with ISIS, medieval cruelties and religious fanaticism. Dinosaurs, by contrast, combine the “once upon a time” appeal of fantasy with the mind-boggling knowledge that these monsters actually walked our earth, when our ancestors were little mammals hopping around trees eating insects. The new dinosaur reported last week followed the preferred template of sandbox toys — small head dangling from a long neck and a long sweeping tail aft. But the scale of the vegetarian beast was one never unearthed before — 85 feet long, 30 feet tall and probably tipping the scales at 65 tons. That’s equal to more than eight African elephants, the biggest mammals on land today. And Dreadnoughtus, as its discoverers playfully named the giant, was only an adolescent when it perished in what is now the Patagonia region of Argentina. The Dreadnoughtus — actually, a big one and bits of a smaller one — was discovered in 2005 by an international team led by Kenneth J. Lacovara, a paleontologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, who described the find in the journal Scientific Reports. It took four years to excavate the skeleton and several more years to prepare and study the 16 tons of bones back in Philadelphia, where they were shipped. Dr. Lacovara said Dreadnoughtus lived between 84 million and 66 million years ago. “Probably a pretty surly beast,” he said. “If he leaned against you, you’re dead.” And now back to the present. Ukraine Cease-Fire After five months of fighting and at least 2,600 deaths, Ukraine and Russia’s proxy militias in Ukraine’s Donbass region agreed to a cease-fire on Friday. That was obviously good news for residents of Donetsk, Luhansk and surrounding regions that have been devastated by fighting since separatist rebels backed by Russia seized control and declared “peoples’ republics” in April. Ukrainian reports said the agreement called for a departure by rebels from the administrative buildings they controlled, amnesty to rebels who laid down their arms and did not commit serious crimes, a prisoner exchange and a 10-kilometer buffer zone along the Russia-Ukraine border. For the future, the accord said power would be decentralized and the Russian language protected. But many details remained unclear. A central question was whether the truce would create a “frozen conflict,” with details left unresolved and a Russian threat permanently hanging over southeastern Ukraine. The announcement of the cease-fire coincided with a NATO meeting in Wales at which the allies took a stern stance toward Russia. It included announcing the creation of a 4,000-member NATO rapid reaction force to be headquartered in a yet to be chosen site in Eastern Europe, neighboring Russia; imposing new economic sanctions against Russian officials, banks and enterprises; and inviting President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine to Wales to meet with the allies. The Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, most likely had the NATO session in mind when he first indicated on the eve of the meeting that a cease-fire was imminent and then announced it on Friday, figuring that a halt to fighting would weaken Europe’s resolve to order new measures against Russia that hurt its own economies. At a news conference in Newport, Wales, President Obama said he was “hopeful, but, based on past experience, also skeptical” about the cease-fire. In any case, he said, the United States and Europe were finalizing measures to “deepen and broaden” sanctions and to provide security assistance to Ukraine. Marshaling allied unity against Russia and reassuring Russia’s neighbors, especially the small Baltic States, was an important part of Mr. Obama’s mission. Stopping in Estonia before the NATO meeting, he promised that the United States and other allies would fight for any ally that came under attack, and he repeated the pledge in a joint op-ed article with Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain published in The Times of London. France took one of the more dramatic steps against Moscow when it announced that it would not schedule delivery of the first of the two Mistral-class amphibious warships that Russia had ordered. It was not immediately clear whether France intended to scrap the entire sale, but even if not, the announcement was an act of political courage by the Socialist president, François Hollande, given the number of jobs at stake. Vow to Eradicate ISIS Tangential to the meeting in Wales, but not as part of it, the Obama administration announced that it had formed a coalition to battle ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The plan called on the United States — for now alone — to bomb the jihadis from the air while the coalition bolstered moderate forces in Iraq and Syria. The American hope was to include as many countries as possible in the coalition, including Middle Eastern states like Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Secretary of State John Kerry declared that the policy was not just to contain but rather to eradicate ISIS. “They’re an ambitious, avowed, genocidal, territorial-grabbing, caliphate-desiring quasi-state with an irregular army, and leaving them in some capacity intact anywhere would leave a cancer in place that will ultimately come back to haunt us,” he declared. Mr. Kerry and other officials ruled out boots on the ground, and the effort to support the Iraqi Army, the Kurdish militia and moderate forces within Syria appeared to be still in the planning stages. Words of a Slain Journalist Nearly 1,000 mourners gathered at Temple Beth Am in Pinecrest, Fla., on Friday for a memorial service for Steven Sotloff, 31, the second American freelance journalist to be decapitated by ISIS. There, a cousin read a letter from Mr. Sotloff smuggled out by a former cellmate in May. “Please know I’m O.K.,” it read. “Live your life to the fullest and fight to be happy. ... Everyone has two lives. The second one begins when you realize you have only one.” |