Prize quarry

dogfish and a total allowable catch of zero for 2010. Scientists had recommended a zero catch for this year as studies suggest the northeast Atlantic population is on the verge of collapse. Catches for cod outside the North Sea, hake, monkfish, sole and whiting have also been agreed at levels higher than those recommended by EU advisors. The Bay of Biscay anchovy fishery is to remain closed but ministers rejected calls for a reduction in catch in the Gulf of Cadiz anchovy fishery. " Many of the science-based proposals made by the European Commission have been ignored by the Council. Short-term economic interests have once again won out and stocks will continue to be fished to depletion, " says Ricardo Agular, a researcher with Oceana. Willie MacKenzie, fisheries campaigner with Greenpeace, said the cod quota increase was " disastrous for the fishing industry " and went against scientific advice to ban all fishing until stocks recover. " Much more needs to be done to allow Europe's decimated fisheries to recover, and that includes setting aside large areas, off-limits to fishing, as marine reserves, " he said. In spite of all the economic problems, the British government included in its plans for legislation over the coming year provision for a marine bill, which may help establish just such no-fish refuges that conservationists are so keen to see established. China's already rich history in the discovery of fossil dinosaur remains got a major boost last month with the find of what the country believes may be the world's largest deposit of such remains. Workers digging along a 300-metre slope on the outskirts of the city of Zhucheng in the eastern province of Shandong unearthed a densely packed layer of fossils that could be more than 100 million years old. The state news agency, Xinhua, said 7,600 samples had been discovered, mostly dating from the Late Cretaceous period, the last era before dinosaurs were believed to have become extinct. Zhucheng is already on the map of key Chinese dinosaur sites, with the discovery of the world's largest remnant of the duck-billed hadrosaur, discovered near the city more than 20 years ago. But the city first came to palaeontologists' attention in 1964 when oil prospectors found dinosaur fossils during a routine dig. Zhao Xijin, the China Academy of Sciences researcher leading the Zhucheng project, said that in the late Cretaceous period the region must …