Posted on 09/28/2009 8:10:59 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Remains of a shark-bitten, 85-million-year-old plesiosaur reveal that around seven sharks likely consumed the enormous dinosaur-era marine reptile in a feeding frenzy, leaving some of their shark teeth stuck in the plesiosaur's bones, according to a new study... the first direct evidence of the diet and feeding behavior of Cretalamna appendiculata, a now-extinct early relative of today's great white sharks... lead author Kenshu Shimada describes as "arguably the most spectacular case of shark feeding on a vertebrate carcass reported to date." ...He and colleagues Takanobu Tsuihiji, Tamaki Sato and Yoshikazu Hasegawa analyzed the shark-decimated plesiosaur, Futabasaurus suzukii, which was unearthed in central Japan and then housed at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo. They found five C. appendiculata teeth embedded in four different bones of the plesiosaur, and additionally discovered 80 associated teeth of this same shark species with the remains. The size and shape of the teeth indicate they belonged to both juvenile and adult sharks.
(Excerpt) Read more at dsc.discovery.com ...
Kenshu Shimada | Feeding Frenzy | An illustration of what a feeding frenzy by Cretalamna appendiculata on a plesiosaur may have looked like.
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Gods |
The shark still looks fake. |
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We just saw Sea Monsters at IMAX. Good computer animation. It featured a family of dolichorhynchops—shortened to Dollies in the movie. The little female got attacked by a shark and the tooth embedded into the back of her. 80+ million years her fossil is discovered with the tooth still in there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEfQKSpONX8
Why did this story immediately cause me to think of the state owned media discovering a potentially damaging story on a Republican?
This is impossible. Adam and Eve had not yet sinned, and so death had not yet entered the world.
sheesh!!! No wonder we lose.
MMMMmmmmm...plesiosaur...tastes like chicken of the sea!
Holy Shark Repellent Batman!!
I wonder if anyone is ever going to ask how the fossil formed if it was attacked by sharks and eaten. Did the skeleton drift down to the sea floor in one piece and slowly get covered by silt? Nice....
Prayers for the family.
Some people just cannot be believed. What else did these dumb SOB think a shark even bigger than the great white with even bigger teeth, would eat? Plankton? Yeah, there's a mystery solved, a massive, huge extinct predator actually ate other animals and fish. Wow, how intelligent and insightful that they couldn't figure that out before finding an old chewed up carcass.
Credit where credit’s due: Jaws and his pals are why we never have to worry about Godzilla.
:’) Yeah, really! :’)
I think they just like to say Cretalamna appendiculata.
Thanks the upshot — the possibility that the plesiosaur died first is more likely, and it then settled into, and parts that stuck out of the silt were scavenged.
LOL!
Need a really big bucket of slaw though.
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