Double-nosed dog not to be sniffed at

Explorer Colonel John Blashford-Snell has had close encounters with vampire bats and angry bees, but his latest brush has been with a rather odd dog. He spotted a rare breed of Double-Nosed Andean tiger hound, which has two noses, on a recent trip to Bolivia.

The chairman of the Scientific Exploration Society said the dog, named Xingu, was "not terribly handsome".

He said: "This breed could be used for sniffing out mines or narcotics because they have an enhanced sense of smell."

Colonel Blashford-Snell first encountered a Double-Nosed Andean tiger hound called Bella in 2005 when he was carrying out reconnaissance for this year's expedition in the area near Ojaki.

He told Radio 4's Today programme: "While we were there, sitting by the fire one night, I saw an extraordinary-looking dog that appeared to have two noses.

"I was sober at the time, and then I remembered the story that the legendary explorer Colonel Percy Fawcett came back with in 1913 of seeing such strange dogs in the Amazon jungle.

The dog seen two years ago was Bella, and on a second trip to the area, which began in May and has just ended, the explorer discovered her son Xingu in the village of Ojaki.

Two of their offspring had double noses, and two had the normal quantity, but the double-nosed pups died after three days.

A veterinary expert with the group examined Xingu to see if he had a cleft palate, but this was not the case.

"There is a chance that these dogs came from a breed with double noses that's known in Spain as Pachon Navarro, which were hunting dogs at the time of the Conquistadors," said Colonel Blashford-Snell.

"I think it's highly likely some of these were taken to South America and they continued to breed. They're good hunting dogs."

He added that Xingu was "quite an aggressive little chap" who stood about 16 inches in height and loved salt biscuits but "wasn't a terribly handsome dog".

Xingu's best friend is apparently a wild pig called Gregory, and the two animals "rule the roost" in their village.

"Other dogs snarl at Xingu, because they can sense he's different. He's the smallest dog there but he sees the other dogs off," Colonel Blashford-Snell said.

"The Bolivian Army came and took DNA samples because they're interested in the breed. He's not the only dog like this, there are others in the area."

The Scientific Exploration Society was in Bolivia to investigate a shallow crater about five miles in width.

According to Colonel Blashford-Snell, he has now found evidence that this was caused by a giant meteorite, which struck the Bolivian Amazon Basin up to 30,000 years ago.

He says he has found evidence of human habitation within 50 miles of the blast zone, and believes these people were wiped out as a result of the meteor's impact.

The explorers also carried with them a church organ from Dorset as a gift to local Bolivians in order to secure their help with finding the meteorite.

Satellite images have revealed a circular feature in the Bolivian Amazon basin, 400kms NE of La Paz. This 8 km diameter structure appears likely to be an impact crater caused by a meteorite, either an asteroid, or a comet, colliding with the Earth between 5000 and 30,000 years ago. If so, it is possibly one of the Earth’s most recent major impact events and could have been caused by a meteorite the size of a bus. In which case the resultant ‘explosion’ (equivalent to many megatons of dynamite) could have affected much of the Amazon Basin.

The effects of such impacts are important in biological and geological history of our planet and consequently this unusual structure is of considerable scientific interest. If found to be one of the Earth’s youngest impact craters, it’s creation could be indicated in folklore of indigenous South American people.

The impact of a meteorite in this swampy area would probably have thrown up a massive quantity of waterlogged material which could then have fallen back into the crater. This might explain why the average depth is only one metre and it is the dramatic change in vegetation that has made the structure visible from space.

There are many questions to be answered and several expeditions have attempted to do this. However the challenging terrain and adverse climatic conditions have made it extremely difficult to achieve conclusive results.

Sergeotechmin have also considered what else might have caused the crater and one possibility is that it is a volcanic pipe. If so this is of considerable geological interest.

http://www.ses-explore.org/Page3.aspx?PageID=70

and yes, the dog gets a mention, too...

Looks like a big eye and eyebrow, eh? ;')

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) -- A meteorite slammed into a sparsely populated area of Honduras last month, terrifying residents and leaving a 165-foot-wide crater, scientists confirmed Sunday. Villagers reported seeing a fireball crash and break into small red and yellow pieces on November 22 [1996] near San Luis, in the western province of Santa Barbara. But Sunday's statement was the first official word that the object was a meteorite. Residents of San Luis, 125 miles west of the capital, were terrified by the meteorite's crash, which sparked a fire that destroyed several acres of coffee plants and damaged a main highway. "I arrived almost immediately to the site of the explosion," said peasant Francisco Aguilar Sabillon. "There were enormous flames, and everything was destroyed. Because of that I fled from the place, frightened." Authorities have asked those living nearby to stay away from the crash site. The meteorite did not appear to have any properties that would pose a threat to humans, they said.
A Meteor Impact Or Earth Slump?
William Corliss
About 10:10 PM [November 22, 1996], the residents of this area [the Honduras-Guatemala border] observed a red-and yellow fireball moving east-to-west. The bolide's passing was marked by a loud detonation. From this information, one would bet heavily that this was simply a routine meteor detonation caused by the heat generated during entry into the atmosphere... So far, investigators have not been able to decide whether the landslide is just gravity-slumping on the slope or a disturbance created by the night's meteor.

Here's an online facsimile of a paper rejected for publication in 1968. Have times changed? Or is it like Thoreau (or somebody) said -- "Times don't change. We change." ;') I didn't check to see if the URL is still alive:

Possible Formation of the Guatemala Basin by the Impact of an Extraterrestrial Body
by Charles E. Corry and Miller L. Bell
The earth must be as frequently cratered per unit area as the moon. By a relative cross section argument, more than 13 times the number of craters the size of the maria on the moon exist, or existed, on the earth. Whether such events occur with sufficient frequency in recent geologic time to provide tangible evidence today of such cratering is uncertain. From the arguments set forth, and the continuing discovery of meteorite craters on the continents (Short, 1966, Baldwin, 1963, Dietz, 1961, and Prouty, 1952) it seems likely that the importance of the effect of extraterrestrial bodies impacting the earth has been, at least, underestimated (the Alverez's hypothesis concerning the end of the dinosaurs by such a mechanism was more than a decade in the future). Certainly there is as much evidence at present to support our hypothesis for the formation of the Guatemala Basin as other hypotheses advanced to explain the low heat flow found in this basin.

With the tests for shock processes advanced by Short (1966), our hypothesis should be capable of field verification or rejection.

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