REARVIEW

GIANT COCKROACHES PRECEDED DINOSAURS
According to a recent Reuters report, giant cockroaches were alive millions of years before the dinosaurs.

Scientists reported earlier this year that they had found the largest-ever complete fossil of a cockroach. The 300 million-year-old fossil is so complete that the team at Ohio State University can make out the veins on its wings and the bumps on its body.

The roach lived during the Carboniferous period, when Ohio was a giant tropical swamp, Cary Easterday, a graduate student who helped study the fossil, said.

“Normally, we can only hope to find fossils of shell and bones, because they have minerals in them that increase their chances for preservation, but something unusual about the chemistry of this ancient site preserved organisms without shell or bones with incredible detail,” Easterday said.

The 3½-inch-long insect known as Arthropleura pustulatus was so well preserved that Easterday could see its legs and antennae, folded around its body, as well as its mouthparts.

Easterday said the fossil cockroach is about twice as big as the average American roach, although just a bit smaller than cockroaches that live in some tropical areas.

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE RISES
Employment fell sharply in October, and the unemployment rate jumped to 5.4 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported in November. The job losses in October were spread across most industry groups, with especially large declines in manufacturing and services.
The labor market data from the household and payroll surveys for the month of October are the first data from these surveys to reflect broadly the impact of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. The labor market had been weakening before the attacks, and those events clearly exacerbated this weakness. It is not possible, however, to quantify the job-market effects of the terrorist attacks.
The number of unemployed persons increased by 732,000 to 7.7 million in October. The unemployment rate rose by 0.5 percentage point to 5.4 percent, seasonally adjusted, the highest level since December 1996. Since October 2000, when both measures had reached their most recent lows, the unemployment level has risen by 2.2 million and the rate by 1.5 percentage points.