{"id":7503,"date":"2016-05-21T08:44:46","date_gmt":"2016-05-21T15:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=7503"},"modified":"2016-05-23T08:47:14","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T15:47:14","slug":"predator-x","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2016\/05\/21\/predator-x\/","title":{"rendered":"Predator X"},"content":{"rendered":"

from New Scientist<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Real sea monsters: The hunt for predator X<\/h1>\n

By\u00a0James O’Donoghue<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Plesiosaur\"(Image: Christian Darkin\/Science Photo Library)<\/em><\/p>\n

EACH summer, a team from the University of Oslo in Norway go hunting for monsters on the island of Spitsbergen. They carry guns in case they get menaced by the world\u2019s largest living land carnivore, the polar bear. But it is not bears they are after. They are searching for much bigger quarry, the most formidable predators that ever lived.<\/p>\n

Step back 150 million years and Spitsbergen was covered by a cool, shallow sea swarming with marine reptiles. The creatures died out and their fossils became part of an island stuffed full of bones. Nowhere else in the world are so many marine reptiles found in one place.<\/p>\n

For a few short weeks the sun never sets and temperatures soar to just above freezing. Knowing that before long the ground will be frozen solid, the researchers dig like crazy. \u201cIt\u2019s like a gold rush, there are so many fossils waiting to be found,\u201d says team leader J\u00f8rn Hurum. \u201cThe site is densely packed with skeletons. As we speak there are probably more than 1000 skeletons weathering out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hurum\u2019s Arctic discoveries are part of a remarkable renaissance in interest in the marine reptiles of the Mesozoic era, 251 to 65 million years ago \u2013 including this week\u2019s\u00a0announcement of a colossal new marine reptile from the \u201cJurassic coast\u201d of Dorset in southern England<\/a>. We now know more about this group of creatures than ever before.<\/p>\n

Marine reptiles were among the first vertebrate fossils known to science and were key to the development of the theory of evolution. In the late 18th century the massive jaws of a lizard-like beast were found in a mine in Maastricht in the Netherlands. Later named\u00a0Mosasaurus<\/i>, the creature helped convince scientists that animals could become extinct, a radical concept in its day. In the early 19th century, ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs discovered by legendary fossil hunter Mary Anning around Lyme Bay in south-west England helped establish the science of palaeontology. Marine reptiles were among the best-understood extinct creatures of the first half of the 19th century and played a major role in the intellectual debate nurturing Darwin\u2019s theory of evolution.<\/p>\n

Yet they faded from view as their terrestrial relatives moved to centre stage. It took nearly a century for marine reptile research to emerge from the shadow cast by the dinosaurs. \u201cScientists thought they knew all there was to know,\u201d says plesiosaur expert Leslie No\u00e8 of the Thinktank museum in Birmingham, UK. \u201cThe idea was that they weren\u2019t worth studying. Nobody would say that now. Our understanding of marine reptiles is phenomenally greater now than it was even 10 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

[ click to continue reading at New Scientist<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from New Scientist Real sea monsters: The hunt for predator X By\u00a0James O’Donoghue (Image: Christian Darkin\/Science Photo Library) EACH summer, a team from the University of Oslo in Norway go hunting for monsters on the island of Spitsbergen. They carry guns in case they get menaced by the world\u2019s largest living land carnivore, the polar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}