Posted on 02/24/2010 9:51:06 AM PST by JoeProBono
The fossilised remains of a gigantic 10m-long predatory shark have been unearthed in Kansas, US.
Scientists dug up a gigantic jawbone, teeth and scales belonging to the shark which lived 89 million years ago. The bottom-dwelling predator had huge tooth plates, which it likely used to crush large shelled animals such as giant clams.
Palaeontologists already knew about the shark, but the new specimen suggests it was far bigger than previously thought.
The scientists who made the discovery, published in the journal Cretaceous Research, last week also released details of other newly discovered giant plankton-eating fish that swam in prehistoric seas for more than 100 million years.
The size of the jaw fragment in fact supports the contention that P. mortoni was a gigantic animal Dr Kenshu Shimada, DePaul University But this new fish, called Ptychodus mortoni, is both bigger and more fierce, having a taste for flesh rather than plankton.
It may even have been the largest shellfish-eating animal ever to have roamed the Earth.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
CANDYGRAM.
Why do you hate the ocean? Just curious.
Not usually. When deer browse my trees, the trees don’t die. When cattle graze, the grass is still alive. There is plant predation where the entire plant is consumed, but often those plants annuals that have already completed their life cycle.
An excellent example of predation.
ARE annuals
Wow!
“We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
Kansas, huh? Aren’t there those that claim there is no evidence the entire planet was ever covered in water? Interesting, very, very interesting...
An organism that eats plankton is called a planktivore, correct?
No, its called a customer at the Krabby Patty.
Sure - but it’s still predation.
Agreed, but next time you say fume when you mean vapor or vapor when you mean gas or mist when you mean aerosol I’ll be all over you like a predator on prey! LOL
Up with that I will not put. I speak good.
If scientists discover a fossil on Mars, would it be correct to say that it had been “unmarsed”...or does unearthed still apply?
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