'Monster' fossil found in Jurassic graveyard (Reuters/CNN) {pliosaur}

[eppur_se_muova]

'Monster' fossil found in Jurassic graveyard

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OSLO, Norway (Reuters) -- Scientists have found a fossil of a "Monster" fish-like reptile in a 150 million-year-old Jurassic graveyard on an Arctic island off Norway.

The Norwegian researchers discovered remains of a total of 28 plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs -- top marine predators when dinosaurs dominated on land -- at a site on the island of Spitsbergen, about 800 miles from the North Pole.

"One of them was this gigantic monster, with vertebrae the size of dinner plates and teeth the size of cucumbers," Joern Hurum, an assistant professor at the University of Oslo, told Reuters on Thursday.

"We believe the skeleton is intact and that it's about 33 feet long," he told Reuters of the pliosaur, a type of plesiosaur with a short neck and massive skull. The team dubbed the specimen "The Monster".

Such pliosaurs are known from remains in countries including Britain and Argentina but no complete skeleton has been found, he said. The skull of the pliosaur -- perhaps a distant relative to Scotland's mythical Loch Ness monster -- was among the biggest on record.
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more: http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/10/05/monster.fossil.reut/index.html

No photos of the fossil, but the discoverers describe it here: http://www.toyen.uio.no/pliosaurus/index.html

[Double T]

1. Thanks for the paleontology article..........

very interesting.