Remains Of Prehistoric Sea "Monster" Found

(CBS/AP)  Remains of a bus-sized prehistoric "monster" reptile found on a remote Arctic island may be a new species never before recorded by science, researchers said Tuesday.

Initial excavation of a site on the Svalbard islands in August yielded the remains, teeth, skull fragments and vertebrae of a reptile estimated to measure nearly 40 feet long, said paleontologist Joern Harald Hurum of the Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo.

"The new monster we found this year is of the same species as the one we excavated this year (and found last year) there are not two new species of large pliosaurs but one," Hurm told CBSNews.com via e-mail.

His team described those 150-million-year-old remains as belonging to a short-necked plesiosaur measuring more than 30 feet - "as long as a bus ... with teeth larger than cucumbers."

The short-necked plesiosaur was a voracious reptile

(CBS)

often described as the Tyrannosaurus rex of the oceans.

Mark Evans, a plesiosaur expert at the Leicester City Museums in Britain, said he not know enough about the Norwegian find to comment on it specifically. But he said new types of the sea reptiles are being found regularly.

"We are regularly seeing new species of plesiosaurs popping up - in a way because, in the past 10 or 15 years, there has been what we call a renaissance in plesiosaur research," Evans said by telephone.

Hurum said the team had only managed to excavate a 3-yard area of the find. The Norwegian-led team plans to present more detailed findings early next year, and return to Svalbard, 300 miles north of Norway's mainland, to excavate further next year.

[the_quietman]

Good article. Finding 2 examples of a new species will be a great help in their diagnostics. Too bad some egocentric bible thumpers ruined the comments section.

[redbarron73]

So if these creatures can do these things, is it really far-fetched that at one point in history there was such a thing a a fire breathing dragon??? How do you know that these dinosaur fossils like the T-rex that we find are not those of a dragon???

The answer is you don''''t!





Posted by singinrick at 12:23 PM : Dec 06, 2007


I''m speechless......LOL!

[fibonacci_]

He has all these weird websites that come up with stuff.

[rf35]

rational_1...nice article on the dating techniques. Even tree rings prove the earth is over 10,000 years old. I wonder what rick will come up with to deny it. Probably fall back on the "it can''t be true because the Bible says so" defense.

[rational_1]

Singinrick,

Following up on your radiometeric dating arguments below, I thought you might find the following website interesting. It addresses radiometric dating from a "christian''s perspective" and it''s written by a guy with a Ph.D in physics who works at Caltech (a real university not some bumpkin bible college). I''m willing to bet he publishes in real scientific journals (like Science, Nature, Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences) and not some rag put out by the Institute for Creation Research.

Anyway his website is at
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

He argues against a young earth a lot better than I could.

[rational_1]

"Upon cooling, any uranium in them would have their clocks reset to zero, because of dramatic leaching factors during eruption and lava flow...."

This is one of the most profoundly stupid things I have ever read. If you truly believe this singinrick then your knowledge of physics matches your understanding of biology. Melting a rock converts lead back to uranium to "reset" the clock? LMAO. If that''s the case then we should just melt our depleted uranium from our reactors and revitalize so it can be reused.

This is the problem you creationists have with science. You really don''t understand it, pick and choose what to present and invariably look like an idiot when you pick the wrong wackjob''s theory to advocate. Or you misinterpret something like the second law of thermodynamics and think you have come up with some major revelation that disproves evolution. Again you come off looking like a fool. It''s actually laughable and amusing as long as you don''t try to teach this nonsense to our high school kids in science class.

[rational_1]

Fibonacci you are fighting a losing battle with singinrick. (By the way, do you guys ever sleep? Looks like you were posting all night.) Singinrick is convinced that there must be some sort of scientific conspiracy going on - 99.whatever percent of biologists, anthropologists and geologists believe in continental drift, evolution and natural selection and he''ll inevitably dig up some nobody from some Baptist Bible College and offer that up as proof that there is some major controversy going on and that the valiant few are being suppressed by the brainwashed. Ain''t so folks - if there was a chance that evolution was b.s. every biologist would be out there trying to disprove it and have himself go down in history as one of the greats like Newton and Einstein and instead of Darwin. It isn''t happening because no real biologist doubts evolution occurred; they''re just at the point of agreeing on details of natural selection. So why waste your time on fantasies?

[fibonacci_]

Anyone that believes in the old testament is a sick, sick dummy! Dummies!

[fibonacci_]

"If a man lies with a male as with a women, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have forfeited their lives." Leviticus 20:13

[fibonacci_]

Actually to refute what you believe we only need to believe that a rock could be sealed off for 10,000 years. Stupid, stupid dummies!

"A priest''s daughter who loses her honor by committing fornication and thereby dishonors her father also, shall be burned to death." Leviticus 21:9

Dummies! Stupid dummies!