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SILLY theory of the week comes via the Japanese news site Mainichi, which features “saucy stories from Japan’s wild weeklies”. (http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/waiwai). According to Rikao Yanagida, described by Mainichi as “head of a think tank”, the dinosaurs died out not because of an asteroid impact but because they made too much noise when they were mating.

“Even if you calculated that dinosaurs only have the same impact when thrusting as humans,” Yanagida told the weekly Shukan Hoseki, “at 100 tonnes, thrusting every 6.7 seconds would create 2200 kilowatts of energy. About 50 per cent of that energy becomes noise. If dinosaurs were having sex, the…

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