Angry Driver Plows Pickup Through Native American Crowd Protesting Dakota Access Pipeline

Caught live on video, an 18-year old male driver plowed his pickup into a crowd of about 40 Native American protestors in Reno following an angry exchange of words. One woman was hospitalized. Quanah Brighten, executive director of United Native Americans Inc., called it a hate crime.
An 18-year old male driver plowed his pickup into a crowd of about 40 Native American protestors in Reno.
At about 6:40 p.m. Monday, the pickup truck approached the intersection where demonstrators had gathered under the Reno Arch. On video, the truck can be heard revving its engine. Witnesses said they heard racial slurs from the male driver and his 17-year old female companion. Angry words were exchanged. Then, suddenly, the man roared into the crowd. The entire horrific event was broadcast live on Facebook.
Five people were hurt, including Kitty Colbert, 59, of Carson City, Nevada, who was taken to the hospital with injuries that were described as non-life threatening. According to the Reno Police Department, four others were treated on the scene for minor injuries. "He could have killed me," Colbert says on the video.
It could have been far worse. "I heard the driver ask one of the protesters, 'Do you want me to kill your homies?' and that really set everybody off," Wayman told AP on Tuesday. "This is a hate crime," Brightman told the Reno Gazette-Journal.
Some say a hate crime was committed in Reno on Monday when a truck plowed through Columbus Day protest https://t.co/V3flRhU8HT— Yahoo News (@Yahoo News)1476212475.0
The driver stopped his vehicle several blocks from the scene and called police. The two occupants of the vehicle have been questioned, but no arrests have been made.
Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve said in a statement Tuesday:
This incident is troublesome and saddens us deeply. I take these matters very seriously, and I believe they must be investigated thoroughly and promptly. Public safety is our highest priority, and I want all Reno residents to know that we are working swiftly and diligently to make sense of the events that took place last night. Please be advised that the Reno Police Department will hold anyone responsible accountable for their actions once the investigation has concluded.
Activists exchange words with occupants of pickup truck moments before it drove into the crowd. Louis Magriel
"They sort of arrived with an antagonistic behavior," said Martin Christian, an eyewitness.
"They were saying derogatory remarks against Native American people," another witness said.
The event had been organized by the American Indian Movement of Northern Nevada in support of the Standing Rock action against the Dakota Access Pipeline and in protest of Columbus Day.
"I respect an individual or group's right to conduct lawful protest, and encourage people to express their First Amendment rights," Mayor Schieve said. The demonstration was one of many held on Monday as support grows for Indigenous Peoples Day to replace Columbus Day.
Shailene Woodley Arrested While Peacefully Protesting Dakota Access Pipeline https://t.co/8DIRfFJMTc @KXLBlockade @IdleNoMoreNews— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)1476221427.0
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By Aaron W Hunter
A chance discovery of a beautifully preserved fossil in the desert landscape of Morocco has solved one of the great mysteries of biology and paleontology: how starfish evolved their arms.
The Pompeii of palaeontology. Aaron Hunter, Author provided
<h2></h2><p>Although starfish might appear very robust animals, they are typically made up of lots of hard parts attached by ligaments and soft tissue which, upon death, quickly degrade. This means we rely on places like the Fezouata formations to provide snapshots of their evolution.</p><p>The starfish fossil record is patchy, especially at the critical time when many of these animal groups first appeared. Sorting out how each of the various types of ancient starfish relate to each other is like putting a puzzle together when many of the parts are missing.</p><h2>The Oldest Starfish</h2><p><em><a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/216101v1.full.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Cantabrigiaster</a></em> is the most primitive starfish-like animal to be discovered in the fossil record. It was discovered in 2003, but it has taken over 17 years to work out its true significance.</p><p>What makes <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> unique is that it lacks almost all the characteristics we find in brittle stars and starfish.</p><p>Starfish and brittle stars belong to the family Asterozoa. Their ancestors, the Somasteroids were especially fragile - before <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> we only had a handful of specimens. The celebrated Moroccan paleontologist Mohamed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2016.06.041" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ben Moula</a> and his local team was instrumental in discovering <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031018216302334?via%3Dihub" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">these amazing fossils</a> near the town of Zagora, in Morocco.</p><h2>The Breakthrough</h2><p>Our breakthrough moment came when I compared the arms of <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> with those of modern sea lilles, filter feeders with long feathery arms that tend to be attached to the sea floor by a stem or stalk.</p><p>The striking similarity between these modern filter feeders and the ancient starfish led our team from the University of Cambridge and Harvard University to create a new analysis. We applied a biological model to the features of all the current early Asterozoa fossils in existence, along with a sample of their closest relatives.</p>Cantabrigiaster is the most primitive starfish-like animal to be discovered in the fossil record. Aaron Hunter, Author provided
<p>Our results demonstrate <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> is the most primitive of all the Asterozoa, and most likely evolved from ancient animals called crinoids that lived 250 million years before dinosaurs. The five arms of starfish are a relic left over from these ancestors. In the case of <em>Cantabrigiaster</em>, and its starfish descendants, it evolved by flipping upside-down so its arms are face down on the sediment to feed.</p><p>Although we sampled a relatively small numbers of those ancestors, one of the unexpected outcomes was it provided an idea of how they could be related to each other. Paleontologists studying echinoderms are often lost in detail as all the different groups are so radically different from each other, so it is hard to tell which evolved first.</p>President Joe Biden officially took office Wednesday, and immediately set to work reversing some of former President Donald Trump's environmental policies.
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