Norway's only dinosaur researcher, Jørn Hurum, has found 160 million year old fossils of ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs in polar Svalbard. Hurum characterized the find as extremely good and enthused about the untouched area that appeared chock-full of paleontological treasure.Hurum said the icthyosaur fossils were 4-5 meters (13-16 feet) long while the plesiosaur find could be from a beast fully 10 meters (32.8 feet) long. "The fossils found are of icthyo- and plesiosaurs, a type of lizard that lived in the sea contemporaneously with the dinosaurs," Hurum said. The plesiosaur's full size was not known since the fossil entered mountain rock."It is incredible to come to a spot where no one has looked for such fossils and suddenly they start sprinkling out of the side of the mountain. There are bones everywhere," Hurum said. The finds have been made in the Janus mountain in Svalbard."They have been found in an area not larger than two soccer fields and we have found ten skeletons. Incredible. We have not dug out the whole skeletons yet, just parts of them. We have made three test digs to see how it looks inside the mountain," Hurum told Norwegian news agency NTB.
View: Full Article | Source: Aftenposten Norway
