Earth

Working amid the world's highest tides of the Bay of Fundy, Neil Shubin and Paul Olsen are trying to decipher one of the great scientific mysteries of all time. With hammers and chisels they slowly pound at rock outcroppings along the 300-foot-high cliffs that border the Minas Basin, painstakingly removing fossils of bizarre creatures that lived 200 million years ago. After carefully bagging, labeling and crating the fragile fossils - many no bigger than matchsticks - they ship them back to the United States for further study.

Well, sports fans, it's a sweep. In the space of one year, in every major sport, we've given our city a nationally televised shiner. Eagles' fans cheered Michael Irvin's career-threatening injury. Phillies' fans tossed batteries at J.D. Drew. Even in victory, a Flyers' fan pelted the Buffalo coach with beer.Then came Wednesday's ugly litterfest on the First Union Center floor as Indiana beat the Sixers. Face it, folks, we've run out of "it's blown out of proportion" excuses.

Warren, 13, wants to be part of a family. He doesn't care what race the family is, and he would like two parents, but one would do fine, too. And it would be especially nice if he could have siblings his age or younger. His social worker says he is a soft-spoken, mannerly child who gets along well with everybody. Therapy is helping him deal with feelings of low self-esteem, and he's able to talk about any problems that life presents. Warren does well in eighth grade, and testing has shown an average and above-average IQ. He's in good health, and enjoys running, track and football.

A retelling of a classic tale from the Depression, a discussion of the fate of the Earth, and a charming visit with "Generation X" top this week's list of new videos. OF MICE AND MEN (1992) (MGM/UA) $94.99. 110 minutes. John Malkovich, Gary Sinise, Ray Walston, Sherilyn Fenn. In this powerful, moving and timely remake of John Steinbeck's timeless story, Sinise, who stars and directs, doesn't belabor the parallels between the Depression and our own hard times. They speak for themselves in a brilliantly executed and urgently relevant reinterpretation of the story.

In this week's most noteworthy new video, the entire cast from a 1985 hit returns for a sequel - but missing is the person they needed most, the director who made it all work. COCOON: THE RETURN (1988) (CBS/Fox) $89.98. 131 minutes. Steve Guttenberg, Don Ameche, Maureen Stapleton, Wilford Brimley, Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn, Courtney Cox. The senior citizens who left for another world instead of the next one in Ron Howard's fey fantasy are here brought down to earth in every sense of the phrase.

A leading group of space scientists, with the endorsement of Vice President Quayle, recommended yesterday that an international group of astronomers, aided by military satellite-tracking equipment, search for asteroids headed toward Earth and destroy them before they hit the planet. "If we know where they are and know where they're going, then maybe we'll have time to do something about it," Jerry Grey, director of science and technology policy for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said yesterday.

MOSCOW - A Russian spacecraft on its way to Mars with 12 tons of toxic fuel is stuck circling the wrong planet: ours. And it could come crashing back to Earth in a couple of weeks if engineers can't coax it back on track. Space experts were hopeful yesterday that the space probe's silent engines can be fired to send it off to Mars. If not, it will plummet to Earth. But most U.S. space debris experts think that the fuel on board would explode harmlessly in the upper atmosphere and never reach the ground.

It wasn't 50 Ways to Save the Earth, but the message to pupils at Sabold Elementary School was clear: Respect the ecology of the planet. The Earthfest assembly Friday was the culmination of three days of activities and preparations meant to introduce first- to fourth-graders to earth science. Educator and performer Mike Weilbacher, who coordinated the assembly, used the strategy: Teach, don't preach, to kids about the natural order of life on Earth. "I don't beat them over the head.

THE DOCUMENTARY "No Place on Earth" doesn't seem as if it should work quite as well as it does. A History Channel production, the tale of Ukrainian Jews who survived in underground caves for 511 days while hiding from the Nazis during World War II is structured around lengthy, foreign-language re-enactments of the events featuring costumed performers. Why not just commit to the undeniably thrilling theatricality of the story and make a fictionalized dramatic feature? Instead, Emmy-winning documentarian Janet Tobias ("Life 360")

And you think it's hot here? You don't know hot. You can't handle hot. Try hot as in 11 suns flaming down on our poor Earth. Try highs of up to 950 degrees on the sun side and lows of down to minus-350 on the dark side. That's what it's like on Mercury, the planet closest to the sun. It's worse than here. Not a tourist destination. Who would want to go there? NASA would. And the rest of us should, too. NASA just launched a 1.2-ton interplanetary probe named Messenger.