Posted on 07/01/2004 1:35:00 PM PDT by Junior
LONDON (Reuters) - A huge find of fossils in Eastern England has revealed a pre-glacial period when the area basked in temperatures now more closely associated with the African savannah, scientists said on Thursday.
The bones of seven-ton hippos half as big again as today's descendants have been found alongside those of horses, hyenas, deer, primitive mammoths, rodents and plants giving an unprecedented insight into the distant past.
"This is a very significant find," said palaeontologist Simon Parfitt at London's Natural History Museum. "The site is unique in that we have this huge variety of different species all perfectly preserved."
The site, inland from the East Anglian port of Lowestoft, was a steamy coastal swamp 700,000 years ago.
The herds of animals that lived and died there were either quickly eaten or equally quickly buried in the soft earth to lie undisturbed until several thousand years later -- a blink of an eye in geological terms -- the ice came.
"The ice brought with it huge quantities of glacial deposits as well as itself being about one kilometer thick," Parfitt said. "When it retreated it left behind a geological time capsule. These fossils are 10-15 meters under the surface."
The perfect state of preservation of the fossil remains has provided the scientists with a wealth of information and previously unseen detail.
They have found the clear marks of hyena teeth on the bones of one of the hippos and, close by, droppings that could well have come from the same hyenas.
But most intriguing of all is the clear evidence of climate change that can been seen through the layers of fossils -- unearthed by chance in a gravel pit -- as the climate slowly cooled and the ice age arrived.
"It is a very rich environment. We have a clear picture of how the climate changed. We can see the switch to the glacial system," Parfitt said. "We can start to interpret the landscape."
The fossils collected to date go on show from Thursday at the Natural History museum as part of its Festival of Fossils.
Scientists are also seeking evidence of early man at the site which is now some 15 km inland from the Norfolk coast, but so far with no luck.
"It would be wonderful if we found some worked flints or a hand axe. But it is almost literally like looking for a needle in a haystack," Parfitt added.
And time is not on their side. In just six months the whole site will be lost again, covered over and returned to agricultural use.
ROTFLMAO
ROTFLMAO AGAIN
It means they were 50% bigger than today's hippos. Probably should be "half again as big"...
Nothing has helped this woman. Botox treatments, face lift, she's still homely as a horse's rear end.
"half as big again" Another way of phrasing "half again as big," or "one and half times the size of."
I saw a documentary on fossils they found in the US. Volcanoes. Animals nearby died from suffocation by the ash,
or the ash depth made it impossible to move to food and water so they starved.
Animals further away died from "black lung" (actual medical term is the longest word in English - volcanopneumothora...).
So, no, it wasn't humans or SUVs. But you already knew that.
No, they are correct.
"Half *again* as big" means as 1.5x as big.
"Again" refers to starting with 1x. Then you add "half" to make it 1.5.
volcanopneumothora
disestablismentalism
Well, the 2nd word is longer when you write in fonts where each letter is the same width. :)
The whole issue, of course is
pseudointellectualism
They always used to say the longest word was "antiestablishmentarianism".
My bad: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
Is that longer than supercalifragilisticexpialidosious?
I thought you meant just your garden variety pneumonomicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis!
Ohhh, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
The way your lungs sound with it is really quite atrocious,
It's not really glacier flow, jus' pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis!!!
Actually, I don't know what happened to all of my posting but I did say,
Anyway, it's all simply pseudointellectualism,
a very common flaw among antidisestablismentarianists.
I guess I wasn't supposed to add the "dis."
(Famous last words of Baghdad Bob.)
O, and the distinction of course, is that pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is terminology (or jargon), where as antiestablishmentarianism is, supposedly, regular English.
Some people don't like including jargon because, for instance, organic chemistry names can become endless. For instance, you can specify each quirk of a nucleic acid, adding a complex prefix to each step. (Although, by common American conventions, hyphens and even commas are typically added in the middle of words to make them more readable!)
Picture relacing each of the 4 Sodiums in tetrasodium ethylenediaminetetraacetate (a common shampoo ingredient) with a different base. It gets real ugly, real quick.
But that's me.
I thought it was more impressive to determine how things died millions of years ago.
My best fossil find was a fern in slate(shale?) as a 10year-old or there abouts.
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