Researchers have confirmed that the giant prehistoric meat-eating sea monster is indeed a new species.Now known as "Pliosaurus funkei", the fearsome creature roamed the world"s oceans over 150 million years ago. With a bite several times more powerful than that of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, these denizens of the deep would have been at the top of the food chain. "They had teeth that would have made a T. rex whimper," said study co-author PatrickDruckenmiller.Evidence of the creatures was first found in 2006 when two pliosaur skeletons were unearthed in Norway with one showing unusual characteristics.
Dubbed "Predator X", the identity of the mysterious carnivore had remained something of a mystery until now. The discovery points to a prehistoric ocean teeming with giant predators that can grow up to 40ft in length.
Now, after years of painstaking analysis of the jaw, vertebrae and forelimbs, the researchers have determined thatPredator X is in fact a new species, and they have officially named it for Bjorn and May-Liss Funke, volunteers who first discovered the fossils.
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Source: Fox News
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Excavated panda fossils hold clues suggesting that our ancestors may have viewed pandas as a food source.These days pandas are a protected species, with only 1,600 of them left in the wild the Chinese government are doing everything they can to preserve and study the animals. But it wasn"t always this way. Between 10,000 to 1 million years ago pandas would have been plentiful in China"s high mountains and fossil evidencesuggests that prehistoric man may have found them to be a convenient source of nourishment.Scientist Wei Guangbiao believes that the discovery of panda fossils showing signs of damage from human weapons proves that man would have once feasted on them.
"In primitive times, people wouldn"t kill animals that were useless to them," he said.
China"s beloved national symbol -- the panda -- may have been seen quite differently by ancient humans: as food. Scientist WeiGuangbiao says prehistoric man ate pandas in an area that is now part of the city of Chongqing in southwest China.
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Despite everything we"ve learned about the dinosaurs we still know very little about how they slept.With no live specimens to observe palaeontologists are left to speculate on many aspects of dinosaur sleeping behaviours. For example did the giant sauropod dinosaurs sleep standing up ? In 2004 the fossil remains of a small feathered dinosaur called Mei long were discovered curled up in a roosting position similarto that observed in modern birds.Another interesting find was made in 1936 when the partial skeleton of a Segisaurus was discovered with its legs tucked beneath its body and its arms in a resting position.
Unfortunately however dinosaur fossils preserved in a sleeping position are few and far between. Bone by bone and study by study, paleontologists are learning more than ever before about dinosaurs. But there are still many aspects about prehistoricbiology that we know little about. In fact, some of the simplest facets of dinosaur lives remain elusive.
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Dinosaur cloning might never be possible as DNA is found to have a half-life of only 521 years.For a long time researchers have been investigating the possibility of recovering the DNA of a dinosaur, a concept used in the Jurassic Park film series to clone the creatures and bring them back to life. Now however it seems that this may never be possible at all because the half-life of DNA is too short for any to have survived since the last dinosaurs died out 65million years ago.
The research indicated that any preserved DNA is likely to become unusable after only 1.5 million years at most."This confirms the widely held suspicion that claims of DNA from dinosaurs and ancient insects trapped in amber are incorrect," said evolutionary biologist Simon Ho. "We might be able to break the record for the oldest authentic DNA sequence, which currently stands at about half a million years." By comparing the specimens" ages and degrees of DNA degradation, the researcherscalculated that DNA has a half-life of 521 years. That means that after 521 years, half of the bonds between nucleotides in the backbone of a sample would have broken.
View: Full article | Source: Nature.com
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