Wednesday, December 05, 2007

New Plesiosaur?

From AP Press:

Our old buddy Jørn Hurum makes the news again with the “remains of a bus-sized prehistoric "monster" reptile found on a remote Arctic island may be a new species never before recorded by science.”

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 Jørn Hurum of the University of Oslo.

"It seems the monster is a new species," he told The Associated Press.

The reptile appears be the same species as another sea predator whose remains were found nearby on Svalbard last year. 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 often compared to the Tyrannosaurus rex of the oceans.

Hurum said the team had only managed to excavate a 3-meter (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.

This may be the same material reported on HERE.