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PANICKING pet owners are reportedly throwing cats and dogs out of towerblocks following bogus claims deadly coronavirus can be passed on by animals.

Chilling pictures coming out of crisis-hit China are said to show the bloodied corpses of animals lying in the road after being hurled to their death.

One dog was found dead after allegedly being thrown from one block of flats in Tianjin City in Hebei Province — home to the outbreak epicentre Wuhan.

Canberra fires: Extraordinary images emerging from the fires in Canberra.

The Australian Capital is under threat tonight as a massive bushfire emerges amid soaring heat and high winds.

A huge wall of flames moving over hills toward the Australian capital of Canberra tonight.

Images posted to social media show the terrifying display of Mother Nature, as massive flames consume the hills near the city.

Even though we are led to believe that during the Cretaceous the Earth used to be an exclusive home for fearsome giants, including carnivorous velociraptors and arthropods larger than a modern adult human, it turns out that there was still room for harmless minute invertebrates measuring only several millimetres.

Such is the case of a tiny millipede of only 8.2 mm in length, recently found in 99-million-year-old amber in Myanmar. Using the latest research technologies, the scientists concluded that not only were they handling the first fossil millipede of the order (Callipodida) and also the smallest amongst its contemporary relatives, but that its morphology was so unusual that it drastically deviated from its contemporary relatives.

As a result, Prof. Pavel Stoev of the National Museum of Natural History (Bulgaria) together with his colleagues Dr. Thomas Wesener and Leif Moritz of the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig (Germany) had to revise the current millipede classification and introduce a new suborder. To put it in perspective, there have only been a handful of millipede suborders erected in the last 50 years. The findings are published in the open-access journal ZooKeys.

The outbreak of the Wuhan coronavirus in central China has infected thousands and spread overseas, raising the specter of a potential global epidemic as authorities desperately try to contain it.

Since the first case was identified in early December in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, more than 5,900 people have fallen sick and at least 132 people have died in mainland China. In addition, there are dozens of confirmed cases in 17 locations outside of mainland China, including at least five in the United States.

The number of total cases worldwide now exceeds 6,000.