New Dinosaur Species Found In China 139
jones_supa writes "A previously unknown dinosaur has been identified from fossils dug up in China and has been nicknamed as 'T-Rex's cousin.' The gigantic creature roamed North America and east Asia between about 65 million and 99 million years ago. Named in honour of Zhucheng as Zhuchentyrannus magnus, this animal was about 11 metres long, 4 metres tall and it weighed about 6 tonnes. The research team was led by Dr. David Hone, from University College Dublin school of biology and environmental science."
How about.. (Score:1)
We don't dig up any more dinos in China, that name is horrific.
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We'll nickname him "The Zuck" and say China named it after the Facebook pioneer. Speaking of which, someone create a Zhuchentyrannus Magnus facebook account, stat.
Re:How about.. (Score:5, Funny)
We'll nickname him "The Zuck" and say China named it after the Facebook pioneer. Speaking of which, someone create a Zhuchentyrannus Magnus facebook account, stat.
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002230338954
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https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002230338954
Pretty good... although music should be 'Cher' instead of 'T-Rex'. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Cher roamed North America and east Asia between about 65 million and 99 million years ago.
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Yes but did they put the right wings on this dinosaur, this time?
Usually post-facto dinosaur gene splicing Chinese style is instantly classified bullshit science, but, I have admittedly found it to be entertaining.
Thankfully someone in China has no reservations about adding some National Enquirer philosophy to archeology. While it may not be science, who doesn't want to dream at night of flying T-rex cousins dive bombing the cavemen they will doubtlessly add to their find.
What? No wings? Quick resind the ar
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We don't dig up any more dinos in China, that name is horrific.
Still better than "Zuckenberg-tyrannus maximus"... aka "the FBeast"
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Zhucheng is the city where it was found.
Surnames in China are usually formed with a single vowel.
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There is a character in the extended Latin alphabet that expresses the sound... it gets used in Slavic, Baltic, and Finno-Ugric languages... it's a Z with a caron (hacek) on top of it. Unfortunately, Slashdot eats Unicode, so I can't copy it into this post, but if you go to Wiki and search for U+017E, the first link is the article about that particular character. :)
Let's see if this works... [wikimedia.org]
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Give up on the Chinese diction. No one pronounces it correctly, many don't write it correctly and none will remember it in English anyway.
Just for fun and so we have something pronounceable , let's apply Deutsch grammatical rules to it.
say Tzoo CHenk with the throat clearing sound on the CH.
There now we have something exotically passable enough to verbalize in communication about the lizard
and the fantasy that the Nazis could've eventually stomped China and affected the language as well as the quality of Wa
Horatio says... (Score:3, Funny)
I'll bet someone... *sunglasses* ...will have a bone to pick with this.
YEAAAAAAAAH!
Bring on the Bible jokes (Score:5, Insightful)
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Burn the Chinese flag [flagburningworld.com]
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Obviously, this one was too big for Noah to get on the boat.
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Obviously he didn't.
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Well, I actually don't know any Bible Jokes, but Archaeology and various Religions are sidelines of mine.
Science fact are that which is found to be in an irrefutable state of proof.
Science theory are that which is speculated based on past connected evidence combined with an educated guess.
Science Hypothesis be the educated guess sans previous evidence.
Religion requires faith(different than proof) in order that participants engage it of
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Religion requires faith(different than proof) in order that participants engage it of their own free will. Free will being the requirement of adherents in order to assess, the capacity for devotion.
You mean capacity for credulity... the ability to believe all sorts of crazy shit as a means to preserve your ego forever. Faith in and of itself has no value. The reason why religions attempts to promote "faith" itself as having value is that is the only way you can get a religion off the ground that does not have any real evidence.
since faith is a requirement.
Faith is a requirement because the hawkers of religion don't have any evidence to back their claims. Faith is something we strive to reduce by understanding and knowledge not so
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I see your point , but perhaps you are wrong as well.
I will stick to my requirement of proof. Frankly you are less convincing than MOST faithfull I've encountered.
All the faithless here in the room agree, you are no worthy spokesperson, but perhaps could make money with a tent and some folding chairs.
The ability to see the finer points of both sides of a view allow a theoretical meta-view from which to proceed is a helpful cure for regurgitative blathering.
Take two and call me in the morning.
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Truthfully there is just as much "theoretical evidence" for Gods existence as there is "theoretical evidence" to refute him. Atheists have no actual claim to any evidence, merely speculation and theory. Basically both religion and atheism are in the same boat as far as Science is concerned. Both share strong feelings, beliefs and thoughts forming philosophies, but NO EVIDENCE.
No, there is no actual evidence for the existence of gods. There is conjecture and hearsay aplenty though. The atheistic position is that it's safe to assume that gods don't exist, as we have no evidence to say that they do. Especially in the case of gods specific to the various religions of the world. Just like we assume that the Easter Bunny doesn't exist even though we can't prove it.
With that said, I'd like to add that Both the Faithful and the Faithless are political distractions to science and should both be IGNORED until such a time as Fact may be applied one way or the other.
Well, by excluding both "faithful" and "faithless", you've pretty much covered everyone. Right now though, the facts
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Glad to see you got my point.
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Glad to see you got my point.
I'm not sure you had one...
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Gave it a nick because of... (Score:1)
The dinosaur has been officially named Zhuchengtyrannus magnus in honour of Zhucheng, the city in which the fossils were found. But because of its huge size, scientists quickly tagged it T-Rex's cousin.
Yeah... Sure.... It because of its size... I believe you...
Disgusting (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't care what the dino people's fetish is, but stop naming dinos -annus.
And name this one Z-Rex.
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I believe this has already been named "The People's Liberation Lizard of Great Serenity", but yes, "Z-Rex" was a close second in the committee meeting.
April Fools (Score:3, Interesting)
12:30AM BST 01 Apr 2011
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April Fools' jokes don't get published as articles in scientific journals, cretin.
Re:April Fools (Score:5, Funny)
You've clearly never read an economics journal.
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For an Economics journal, April Fools makes no difference.
Took a while to hit the FP (Score:5, Informative)
This story's a few days old. Mind you, that's still not bad.
Anyways, the interesting part is that this new dino is only a little smaller than the largest T Rex ever found, making it quite possible larger specimins will be found. In turn, this raises the possibility that we're nowhere near as close to the top of the dino chain as we'd previously thought.
Having said that, we know T Rex had hollow bones essentially the same design and internal composition as modern birds. Now, it is true that the tallest bird that ever lived (the Giant Moa) was 13' tall, rather taller than a T Rex. This is important as a heavy weight on the top of tall spindly legs is going to generate rather different loads than a heavy weight much closer to the ground. It is also true that the heaviest dino, according to some estimates, may have been upwards of 20 tonnes. Clearly, this design of bone is capable of rather suprising feats under the right conditions. However, the T Rex is now thought by some to have been quite the Olympic sprinter, not a slow plodder like the Moa.
It doesn't take much to realize that if, indeed, that was the case that you simply can't up the tonnage to the limits the bones could take by standing still. They'd shatter long before you got to that point. Which means that if T Rex' ilk were indeed the sprinters claimed, you really are very close to the upper limits, ergo if the new cousin is found to be substantially larger, then T Rex was proportionally slower.
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> ergo if the new cousin is found to be substantially ... or this new cousin wasn't a sprinter and could get away with being bigger and heavier. It's not exactly unheard of some some oddball specimens of a species to develop different sizes and structures due to changes in hunting or food gathering strategies.
> larger, then T Rex was proportionally slower.
Mass comparison? (Score:2)
Now, it is true that the tallest bird that ever lived (the Giant Moa) was 13' tall, rather taller than a T Rex. This is important as a heavy weight on the top of tall spindly legs is going to generate rather different loads than a heavy weight much closer to the ground.
The Moa had a mass estimated at less than 300 kg, while T.Rex had a mass estimated at 5.5 to 7 tons, 25 times heavier.
I find it easier to believe the T.Rex was a slow plodder carrion eater, rather than the Olympic sprinter hunter some people claim.
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It is very well known that most of the strength of a structure [*] comes from the outermost parts of the structure and the center is usually a dead weight. That is why you see most wheels are thinned out between the hub and the rim with lots of weight reducing holes in the in-between portion. Next time you board a plane, gander a look at the thickness of the skin of the fuselage. What you see is the strengthened and parts because of the cutout for the door. Ev
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essentially the same design
I know I'm picking nits, but those bones were not designed.
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"Herr Franken Rex, you have created a... hey, we're monsters, so what DO we call that thing?"
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Funny, I thought there was a recent revolution in the way the T-Rex was preceived, such that instead of a hunter, it was more likely a scavenger. I'd imagine it wouldn't need the ability to run at high speeds to scavenge. Running in general is more a hunter's domain.
Scavenging also explains the disproportional arm size. Arms aren't really important for scavengers, though they're a very useful tool for hunters.
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"...Now, it is true that the tallest bird that ever lived (the Giant Moa) was 13' tall, rather taller than a T Rex...."?
I'm guessing you've never seen an assembled T.Rex in person? They're MUCH larger than a Moa ever was.
Er, the T.Rex was typically 13' tall...AT THE HIP. Adult T.Rex would have stood (depending on stance, but assuming they stood like a Moa) roughly 20-22' tall.
The Giant Moa was as much as 12'-13' tall to the top of the head. Its hip was perhaps 5'.
This of course ignores that the T.Rex was
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That's interesting. But you'd think if were really necessary to be that big, then evolution would simply construct a better bone. The way birds have especially light, kind of honeycomb bones so they can fly more easily.
What I really want to know is how the f* do they know what colour skin dinosaurs have?! We've had the smurf-blue kosmoceratops [guardian.co.uk], now this multi-coloured red thing. Is there any reasoning behind it, or just bored artists?
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Partly bored artists, but it's not without reasoning.
Extremely well-preserved skin and feathers from a variety of dinosaur clades (well ... there's a different argument) certainly show that there were different arrangements of melanocyte (-cete ?) grains which were present, and in more moder
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Same height and weight as an elephant (Score:4, Informative)
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I'm imagining, and it's big.. :0 big enough to feed my family for a few weeks, and it tastes just like chicken!
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You mean, like the Deinosuchus [wikipedia.org]?
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It sounds delicious and challenging :)
Pronunciation (Score:2, Informative)
For those of you struggling to figure out just exactly how you're supposed to pronounce this creatures name..
Zh is a tough sound to make for English speakers. The h represents aspiration of the z, and the z is pronounced as a 'ds' sound. Mix ds with a j, and you're pretty much there.
Fucking hell, why did they have to name this thing with -the- most difficult sound in the entire Chinese language?!
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Are you suggesting that English speakers should use the Mandarin pronounciation? That's insane. Where'd you get that idea? English speakers can't do it. It just gets pronounced zzzzzh. Try giving Mandarin speakers a name like Worthington or Covington, there is no way that they can pronouce it correctly, nor should they be expected to.
P.S. zh is not the most difficult sound in Mandarin for English speakers. The worst are j, q, x, and especially r. I have known several long-term residents of China wh
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Fucking hell, why did they have to name this thing with -the- most difficult sound in the entire Chinese language?!
The most difficult sound for native English speakers, perhaps. But what makes native English speakers so special that their linguistic needs should be taken into account when naming a creature?
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Revenge (Score:2)
Zh is a tough sound to make for English speakers. The h represents aspiration of the z, and the z is pronounced as a 'ds' sound. Mix ds with a j, and you're pretty much there.
Fucking hell, why did they have to name this thing with -the- most difficult sound in the entire Chinese language?!
Just payback for "Tyrannosaurus Rex". That's three Rs right there, a tough sound to make for Chinese speakers*.
*I am aware that Mandarin has the rhotic (as in Pinyin 'ri' or 'ren'), which for me is the most difficult sound in the Chinese language.
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Reminds of this joke:
James Bond was traveling in a
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Zh is a tough sound to make for English speakers
'j' is near enough. Chinese people have enough trouble pronouncing Mandarin. Countless millions cannot pronounce "sh", which is used in Mandarin, but not in southern dialects.
Interesting a European was the lead discoverer (Score:3)
Are the Chinese very generous in allowing access to their dinosaur quarry? Is there a shortage of Chinese paleontologists? (If so, why?) Was it really lead by a Chinese scientist but the western press gives us a biased story? Are there lots of these discoveries but the western press doesn't report them if made by a Chinese scientist? Was it just coincidence that one of only a few Europeans happened to get lucky? Do they have some exchange program, and we're just as likely to have a European dinosaur discovered by a Chinese scientist?
(Wild guess: China is somewhat short on paleontologists because China's per-capita wealth is fairly recent and paleontologists are a long lead-time item. Dr Hone's presence was in part to train the new wave of Chinese scientists. Also, he got lucky.)
Aside: TFA says "The research paper was published in Cretaceous Research in the online journal Science Direct." No - Science Direct is an aggregator/distributor of scientific papers in electronic form, from many journals. Cretaceous Research would be the journal.
Re:Interesting a European was the lead discoverer (Score:5, Informative)
There have been a bunch of interesting paleontological discoveries by Chinese scientists in the past few years. These were reported in western media [reuters.com]. Generally it's not surprising if they end up attracting good people from elsewhere and if there weren't scientists from other countries getting involved then you would begin to be concerned. International collaboration is a crucial element of scientific credibility. China probably (rightly) wants that more than it wants credit for any particular dinosaurs. From a long term economic point of view this should probably be more important in China's attempt to overtake the USA economically. There is no way that research like this is going to be properly funded by private companies but you need it to get the really bright fundamental science people to come and visit and that, long term, is what drives real invention, not just thousands of patents on minor variations of the same idea.
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Dr Hone's presence was in part to train the new wave of Chinese scientists. Also, he got lucky.
I didn't see anything in TFA about Dr. Hone's sex life.
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That is why you need a bio-chip to be installed like the Japanese trying to do.
Exchange Scientists (Score:2)
The visitor also seemed a bit surprised at the methodology that was being used over here. We've all seen dino digs in films, and they're at least semi-accurate. Over in China, though, the preferred method back then (I am not kidding here) is
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Using that technique, it's only a matter of time before they put the pieces together and re-discover Piltdown Man [wikipedia.org].
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In general, China is underexplored paleontologically compared to, say, Europe or North America. That's not a unique feature (there are many places around the world that have underexplored territory), but China has some very important sites, such as Chengjiang in the Cambrian [wikipedia.org] and the various Jurassic-Cretaceous lake basins, including the area of Liaoning that has yielded most of the feathered dinosaurs from the Yixian Formation [wikipedia.org] and other units, not to mention many other well-preserved fossils.
Because China
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I would say China is fairly short on paleontologists, especially of the experienced nature. In fact, China's pretty short on the academic fields of study, especially purely academic sciences like paleontology.
Neither field of study makes the big money, nor is there any amount of national pride in it, so it's more of an enthusiast's pastime. With a growing middle class, this will change, but not until children become comfortable enough that their every actions are no longer driven solely by the economic and
And the next Hollywood blockbuster is... (Score:2)
Anti Time? (Score:1)
Assumptions as Facts (Score:3, Interesting)
If they know the region where it roamed, does that mean this isn't the first of it's species discovered? Is there other evidence of this specific species in other areas? Are they just assuming and then stating as fact? I read the article, and it suggests the later.
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Re:Assumptions as Facts (Score:5, Funny)
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I wish I had moderator points today. Thanks for the chuckle.
Chinasaur? (Score:1)
lol...
Mildly Insulting (Score:1, Offtopic)
Bad Name. Sould have been named the Carolosaurus (Score:3)
Amazing conclusion from little information (Score:1)
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Yeah, it must have been found with its passport showing where it had traveled.
I'm still waiting for the new species of dinosaur to be discovered off Japan
Am I reading too much into this? (Score:2)
April 3: China Detects 10 Cases of Radiation Contamination
April 4: New Dinosaur Species Found In China
...Or is China about to becme totally awesome?
We found it here, so it was definitely there too.. (Score:1)
Yawn. (Score:2)
We find a new species of dinosaur about once a month.
Maybe we should have a dinosaurs.slashdot.org.
New, really? (Score:1)
I be worried if it really was a new dinosaur species as that would either indicate that a fraud is going on, or worse that the dinosaurs are once again ruling the planet! Yikes in either case. [:)]
did it look like a Windows computer (Score:2)
LoB
China it is (Score:1)
T-Wex (Score:1)
It's a T-Rex painted yellow. (Score:2)
And then it will vanish and no one will admit [escapistmagazine.com] it ever existed.
And then it will come back with horns and nuclear symbols [crunchgear.com], and was apparently "always like that".
Actually, it's not new (Score:1)
These guys existed well before us...
New dinosaur (Score:2)
This must be some newly invented meaning for the word "new".
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it's a faaake...
Its a guy in a Z-Wreck suit.
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Lets hear it for scales!
Does it scale well?
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It's newly _discovered_, not new as in new iPhone.
Overly pedantic post is overly pedantic.
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The gigantic creature roamed North America and east Asia
Reading comprehension failure? Also, try this. [wikipedia.org]
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Fossil found in China recently, yet it "roamed North America"? How do they work that out if it's found in China? Unless of course China has now taken over North America....
The gigantic creature roamed North America and east Asia
Reading comprehension failure? Also, try this.
Okay, we know it roamed East Asia smarty pants. But if this was a "previously unknown" dinosaur, then how does North America fit in that sentence? Reading comprehension failure indeed.
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The gigantic creature roamed North America and east Asia
Reading comprehension failure? Also, try this. [wikipedia.org]
No, more like a phrasal failure by the author. This dinosaur, if it existed as claimed, did not "roam North America".
It roamed northern Pangaea, including the two continental plates which would separate to become what we now know as North America and Asia.
Speaking of reading comprehension failure, you might want to follow your own link and read more than just the first paragraph. Pangaea (which was the supercontinent in existence during the relevant Cretaceous) consisted of the NORTHEAST edge of the North
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I might be being a bit of an anal retentive wise-ass, but isn't a dinosaur a reptile and not an animal?
Animal = member of the animalia kingdom
Reptile / dinosaur = member of the animalia kingdom = animal.
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A reptile is a type of animal. WTF, did I just get baited?
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As the other posters point out, a reptile is obviously also an animal. But, dinosaurs aren't reptiles. Reptiles have their legs besides their body, while dinosaurs have legs under their body (like mammals and birds). Also, there is evidence at least some dinosaurs might have been warm-blooded, which also disqualifies them as reptiles. And then there's the feathers...
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The term "reptile" is considered deprecated in Biology. The reptiles are a so called paraphyletic group.
In an ideal case, a term for a group of related livings (plants, animals, bacteria... you name it) should include both the common ancestor of all members in that group and all descentents of that group. Because not all descendents of reptiles are also reptiles (neither the mammals nor the birds are), biologist use the term Amniotes [wikipedia.org], which includes the classic reptile groups (turtles, snakes, lizards, dino
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New dino species but still no direct link between us and the apes. I mean we've been searching hard haven't we? The only reasonable conclusion is that there is no link!
Huh? What do you mean? The Bible Belt is full of such links!
Oh, I see. What you mean is that rednecks are a more primitive life form than apes. Well, I guess you are right...
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Maybe it would help if you actually read evolutionary theory first. Apes and humans split approx. 7 million years ago. Which means you won't find a human body with a chimpanzee head. It is still possible to find humans with chimpanzee brains, however. I'll leave it to your imagination where they can be found.
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