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Trees which rely on animals rather than the wind to disperse their seeds have a significantly higher chance of surviving deforestation, a study has shown.

Being eaten and later excreted by animals, or getting entangled in fur or feathers to drop off later, guarantees the seeds reach locations better suited to their needs than the wind-blown varieties which are more likely to end up on barren ground.

Trees with seeds dispersed by animals were shown by researchers from Spain and the United Kingdom to grow in greater numbers than wind-borne species in surviving or regenerated woodland.

Researchers reached their conclusions after assesssing woodland in the Iberian Peninsula in Spain where deforestation has taken place over thousands of years.

They said that their results, published by the journal Science, suggested that trees and other plants dependent on the wind were are greater risk of extinction in other parts of the world.

“The differences in species responses to local forest cover are to a large extent driven by the dispersal vector used by trees,” they concluded.

“Whatever the mechanisms involved, the finding that animal-dispersed tree species are more robust to the effects of deforestation has an obvious implication for conservation.

“It might be expected that deforestation in other regions is more likely to threaten a given wind-dispersed, than an given animal-dispersed, plant species.”

THERE have been truly great footballers who couldn't score goals and there have been great players who were just goalscorers.

And then there was George Best, Pele and Diego Maradona.

When you combine world-class ability with being able to do the hardest thing in the game - putting the ball in the net - then you have a wonderful, special specimen.

Those three certainly were the all-round package and Cristiano Ronaldo is rapidly heading towards joining them in that elite band of the best the planet has ever seen on a football field. For someone like me, who will always say that George Best was the greatest player I ever played with or ever watched play, that is some accolade.

I have always done my utmost to avoid making comparisons with marvellous players like Bestie, but I have to confess that Ronaldo is forcing my hand and isn't making it easy for me to stick to my guns on steering clear of making judgments. Sooner or later, and it is likely to be sooner, you have to make those assessments. You cannot deny Cristiano much longer the right to be compared to George and those icons. He deserves to be on the verge of being placed up there on the pedestal with the very, very best of all time.

The United winger has already won over many with his achievement of passing George's 1968 haul of 32 goals from the wings. Over the next two months he has the chance to add a few more converts and that could probably just clinch his position alongside football's geniuses.

I say that, because in the final few weeks of this season, he has the platform to end a few nagging doubts about his qualifications for being in such grand company.

If I have the slightest hesitation about placing him among the greatest, and I only have a minute complaint, then it is that the 23-year-old has not fully imposed himself on the biggest matches.

He has swept aside most of the Premiership challenges put in front of him. In the Champions League he has scored goals and turned matches in the group stages and, of course, scored the winner against Lyon to put United through to the quarter-finals. At international level for Portugal he has been an inspiration to them both in European Championships and the World Cup.

But for United he hasn't yet been a match-winner against the other Big Four teams in England. He hasn't taken the heavyweight contests against Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool by the scruff of the neck and made an impact that has turned it for the Reds.

In the latter stages of Europe, when you are playing the elite of the continent, he hasn't turned it on in the way Kaka did last season for AC Milan.

It's in his locker, make no mistake about that, and he will deliver it in the future.

The way he is playing this season that final confirmation of his ticket to the list of greats could come between now and the end of May.

United have Liverpool on Sunday, Arsenal and Chelsea in April as they look to keep hold of their title, and a big Euro tie with Roma and possibly Barcelona, and hopefully a Champions League final.

If he can have the same influence on such matches as those as he has had recently against the likes of Bolton on Wednesday, for instance, then he'll be a paid up member of the elite greats.

The guidance came at the weekend when Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, the Vatican's number two man in the sometimes murky area of sins and penance, spoke of modern evils.

Asked what he believed were today's "new sins," he told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that the greatest danger zone for the modern soul was the largely uncharted world of bioethics.

"(Within bioethics) there are areas where we absolutely must denounce some violations of the fundamental rights of human nature through experiments and genetic manipulation whose outcome is difficult to predict and control," he said.

The Vatican opposes stem cell research that involves destruction of embryos and has warned against the prospect of human cloning.

Girotti, in an interview headlined "New Forms of Social Sin," also listed "ecological" offences as modern evils.

In recent months, Pope Benedict has made several strong appeals for the protection of the environment, saying issues such as climate change had become gravely important for the entire human race.

Under Benedict and his predecessor John Paul, the Vatican has become progressively "green."

It has installed photovoltaic cells on buildings to produce electricity and hosted a scientific conference to discuss the ramifications of global warming and climate change, widely blamed on human use of fossil fuels.

Girotti, who is number two in the Vatican "Apostolic Penitentiary," which deals with matter of conscience, also listed drug trafficking and social and economic injustices as modern sins.

But Girotti also bemoaned that fewer and fewer Catholics go to confession at all.

He pointed to a study by Milan's Catholic University that showed that up to 60 percent of Catholic faithful in Italy stopped going to confession.

In the sacrament of Penance, Catholics confess their sins to a priest who absolves them in God's name.

But the same study by the Catholic University showed that 30 percent of Italian Catholics believed that there was no need for a priest to be God's intermediary and 20 percent felt uncomfortable talking about their sins to another person.

Queen Elizabeth II became the longest living monarch in British history today.

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GOD save tha biatch  the Queen!