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Jurassic Park author dies

Best-selling US author Michael Crichton, who wrote such novels as The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park and created the popular TV drama ER, has died unexpectedly of cancer at age 66, his family said on Wednesday.

Crichton, a medical doctor turned novelist and filmmaker whose books have sold more than 150 million copies worldwide, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles after what his family described as a "courageous and private battle against cancer."