Free Republic

Gavin MacLeod, a sitcom veteran who played seaman “Happy” Haines on “McHale’s Navy,” Murray on “Mary Tyler Moore” and the very different, vaguely patrician Captain Stubing on “The Love Boat,” has died. He was 90.

Gigantic dinosaurs frolicked and splashed some 170 million years ago in the lagoons of what is now Scotland. That’s what a team of paleontologists has determined after discovering dozens of jumbo-sized footprints belonging to long-necked sauropods on the Isle of Skye. Mixed with the herbivores’ tracks were a few clawed impressions left behind by two-legged meat-eaters known as theropods. The footprints present a snapshot of life during an important period in dinosaur history that has yielded relatively few fossil remains. In the mid-Jurassic, sauropods necks grew longer and the first birds were figuring out flight.Identifying two types of footprints in...

Geologists exploring volcanic rocks on Scotland's Isle of Skye have found ejecta from a previously unknown, 60 million-year-old meteorite impact. The discovery, the first meteorite impact described within the British Paleogene Igneous Province (BPIP), raises questions about the impact and its possible connection to Paleogene volcanic activity across the North Atlantic. Simon Drake, an associate lecturer in geology at Birkbeck University of London, zeroed in on a meter-thick layer at the base of a 60.0 million-year-old lava flow. "We thought it was an ignimbrite (a volcanic flow deposit)," said Drake. However, when researchers analysed the rock using an electron microprobe,...

The remains of hazelnuts eaten by some of Skye's earliest inhabitants were found at a dig on the island, archaeologists have revealed. Hazelnuts were a favourite snack of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, according to archaeologists at the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI). The shells found at an excavation above Staffin Bay could be 8,000-years-old. UHI carried out the dig along with Staffin Community Trust, school children and volunteers. Dan Lee, lifelong learning and outreach archaeologist at UHI, said: "We have found lots of fragments of charred hazelnut shells in the lower soil samples. "They are the ideal thing to date...

An archaeologist has uncovered the remains of an ancient burial cist and pottery at the site of a new £1.3m health centre on Skye. No human remains have been found, but further excavations and chemical tests on material recovered will delay the building project for about two weeks. Archaeologist Steven Birch also found a cairn and an underground structure known as a souterrain. NHS Highland said it still expected the centre to be completed by March 2012. The finds could date from the Iron Age. Mr Birch, of West Coast Archaeological Services, said: "There is a surprising range of important...

As we approach the end of 2009, the religious and moral outlook in Britain remains bleak. God continues to be very largely ignored by Government and people. Year after year, legislation pours out of Parliament but never, it seems, is it considered remotely possible that God may have declared his mind on some aspect of whatever area of human conduct is being further regulated. Or if it is abundantly clear that God has spoken – declaring, for instance, that homosexual behaviour is abominable – his revelation must be steadfastly ignored and the nation directed to conform to the norms of...