schopenhauerjr
12-09-2007, 02:09 PM
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/images/2007/12/04/seareptile_2.jpg
Scientists in Norway have unearthed the remains of a prehistoric sea reptile previously unidentified by researchers.
University of Oslo researchers found new teeth, skull fragments, and vertebrae on the Svalbard islands, which have yielded dozens of sea reptile skeletons of the pliosaurus (pictured right). The new remains, however, appear to belong to a new species of prehistoric reptile.
Or not. The AP story filed out of Oslo is unclear. Behold self-contradiction:
"It seems the monster is a new species," (Jorn Harald Hurum of the University of Oslo) told The Associated Press.
The reptile appears be the same species as another sea predator whose remains were found nearby on Svalbard last year.
If you can parse what the AP meant, you are a better grammarian than I. Is the monster a new species or is it the same species? Or is it that all the Svalbard fossils, which made waves last year, were not pliosaurus after all?
What we do know is that increased research in more pristine environments, like the Arctic, have yielded remarkable new fossil discoveries, especially in sea reptile (aka plesiosaur) research. As Mark Evans, a plesiosaur expert at the Leicester City Museums in Britain, told the AP, "In the past 10 or 15 years, there has been what we call a renaissance in plesiosaur research."
UPDATE (12/5, 8:20 AM): Professor Horum came by the comments and cleared up the confusion. The short story: "there are not two new species of large pliosaurs but one."
There is some confusion around the AP story, just for the record:
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.
for something about this years fieldwork see:
http://www.nhm.uio.no/pliosaurus/
I have not had the time to translate it to English yet, but there will be a larger press-release in March when some of the large bones will be shown to the public.
Dr. F. Robin O'Keefe of Marshall also checked in to say that it does just take a while, as some commenters surmised, for new species like the ones that Horum has been discovering in Norway to elbow out room for themselves in the taxonomic literature.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/12/prehistoric-rep.html
Scientists in Norway have unearthed the remains of a prehistoric sea reptile previously unidentified by researchers.
University of Oslo researchers found new teeth, skull fragments, and vertebrae on the Svalbard islands, which have yielded dozens of sea reptile skeletons of the pliosaurus (pictured right). The new remains, however, appear to belong to a new species of prehistoric reptile.
Or not. The AP story filed out of Oslo is unclear. Behold self-contradiction:
"It seems the monster is a new species," (Jorn Harald Hurum of the University of Oslo) told The Associated Press.
The reptile appears be the same species as another sea predator whose remains were found nearby on Svalbard last year.
If you can parse what the AP meant, you are a better grammarian than I. Is the monster a new species or is it the same species? Or is it that all the Svalbard fossils, which made waves last year, were not pliosaurus after all?
What we do know is that increased research in more pristine environments, like the Arctic, have yielded remarkable new fossil discoveries, especially in sea reptile (aka plesiosaur) research. As Mark Evans, a plesiosaur expert at the Leicester City Museums in Britain, told the AP, "In the past 10 or 15 years, there has been what we call a renaissance in plesiosaur research."
UPDATE (12/5, 8:20 AM): Professor Horum came by the comments and cleared up the confusion. The short story: "there are not two new species of large pliosaurs but one."
There is some confusion around the AP story, just for the record:
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.
for something about this years fieldwork see:
http://www.nhm.uio.no/pliosaurus/
I have not had the time to translate it to English yet, but there will be a larger press-release in March when some of the large bones will be shown to the public.
Dr. F. Robin O'Keefe of Marshall also checked in to say that it does just take a while, as some commenters surmised, for new species like the ones that Horum has been discovering in Norway to elbow out room for themselves in the taxonomic literature.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/12/prehistoric-rep.html