Free Republic

First, there’s the extremely significant fact that the plesiosaur surfaced around 250 million years ago and died out around 66/65 million years ago. Plesiosaurs, the fossil record has conclusively shown, lived in saltwater environments: our planet’s oceans. Loch Ness, however, is a freshwater loch. Yes, there is evidence of the occasional plesiosaur in a freshwater environment all those millions of years ago, but the bulk of the cases are not suggestive of entire colonies of the beasts inhabiting freshwater bodies. It’s far more likely and plausible that they wandered into them and died there. And, yes, there are both a...

Named Antarcticoolithus bradyi, the new fossil is the first fossilized egg found in Antarctica. The specimen exceeds eggs of all known non-avian dinosaurs in volume and differs from them in structure. Measuring 29 by 20 cm (11.4 by 7.9 inches) and weighing 6.5 kg, it is the largest soft-shell egg ever discovered and the second-largest egg of any known animal. Although the elephant bird egg is slightly larger, its eggshell is roughly five times thicker. University of Texas at Austin paleontologist Lucas Legendre and his colleagues from the United States and Chile think that Antarcticoolithus bradyi was laid by a...