The new issue has an article on some of the prehistoric reptiles that swam Earth's oceans during the age of dinosaurs. It also includes a short side article on Nessie. The pictures are pretty good. There's also an insert with some of the more prominent ones pictured. These sure do look like most of the sea serpents described over the centuries. Makes me wonder if they really did die out.

And after seeing the pictures, I'm kind of hoping they did.

Here's a link.
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/051...ure3/index.html

Long necked, distinctly reptilian creatures very similar to pliosaurs or plesiosaurs are fairly common in ancient artwork, so much so, that is it very plausible these creature must have actually been seen.

Captain_Geek:



Probably not! 3/4 of our World is covered by water with an overall average depth of 13,124 feet. Because the environment is so hostile, we will never fully understand the oceans, or the animals contained within it. Just the other day, I was looking at a map of the Pacific Ocean. What I really focused on was the region of the Pacific Ocean that lies between South America & Australia. The expanse is great! I know for a fact that scientist have done little study in this area. Who knows what they will find if they decide to explore this region! Even if they do find something substantial, the explorers will be given a gag order not to report their findings.

The big issue is a steady food supply. 40-ft sea predators need a lot of prey to feed on, and man's fishing industry surely has an effect on worldwide fish populaiton. I'd love it if there were Megalodon, Plesiosuars, and Chromosaurs lurking in the depths.

How cool would that be????

i wouldn't want to bump into one

...and just when i had conquered my fear of jellyfish enough to enjoy the beach...

well, if they do find and catch one of those things, poor shamu is going to have some serious competition.

Surprisingly they left out Liopleurodon when they had Xiphactinus there too...those two terrorized the seas...Xiphactinus being one hell of a predator, resorting to even cannibalism, and also being the fastest fish in the sea. While Liopleurodon was the biggest...growing to 80 feet...

Big Daddy,
Even though they are large and fearsome, being cold blooded reptiles they would require far less food than a mammal of the same size. There is far more food in the sea than most people can imagine. According to Jaucques Cousteau, the Worlds sperm whales consume the same weight in food each year as the biomass of the entire human race (but this was in a book written over 20 years ago). And most of what these Sperm Whals eat are deep sea squid humans never see.

So I don't think the availablility of food would be the problem. However, more advanced predators might be more succesful in getting the food, which is why we have extinctions.

Yes, competitions and other factors (i.e. temperature, volcanic activity, tectonic activity, other phenomena) account for extinctions....we will never know until one is found or caught.

Jesus I'm glad Megalodon is extinct! =/

i've never really thought about that, all the oceans and what could be living there..

i watched a show on national geographic that provided evidence that ruled out the belief that nessie could be a plesiosaur.

Yes, it is unlikely nessie could be a reptile in that cold climate, BUT although some of the great sea beasts of the mesozoic have a clear lineage to "lower" reptiles and therefore are devfinately cold-blood, like the Mososaurs which are related to monitor lizards, there may have been warm blooded marine "reptiles" just as some people believe dinosaurs were warm blooded.

I think it is much more likely that the majority of the "so-called" lake monsters, if discovered to be real animals, may be a kind of primitive whale like basilosaurus. I say this because their reported humps and locomotion suggest a marine mammal rather than a reptile.

Yes that was a great article. National Geographic is pretty reliable & jam-packed with lots of good info.

TeraLink Was Here!

What I wonder is why no-one has mentioned evolution in this cases! It seems like everybody really thinks that if they do still exist that this seacreatures would look just the same as for OVER 60 MILLION years ago, if not longer!!! I don't think so. Serious, humans evolved from a rat to what we are today during that time!

Aligators evolved from big cold blooded lizards to big cold blooded lizards in roughly the same time. I'm not saying that the creatures could not have evolved but, leave open the possibility that they stuck with what worked.

Maybe the ocean going variety evolved a dislike of the sun. Hence, they just stay deep down until night fall. That would make them much harder for us to see.

That's quite correct. Creature like sharks and crcodilians were so perfectly suited to their environments, that they did not have to change much at all in 200 millions years. However, when other "niches" opened, even some crocs did indeed evolve. With the predatory dinos gone, one kind of croc evolved into a kind of theropod dinosaur with hoof-like feet that ran down the large mammals. It finally couldn't compete with evoling large predatory mammals, but was still succesful much longer than humans at this point.

There was a much more recent, land dwelling croc living in Australia up until human times, but remained quadrapedal unlike the earlier one.

But then I have to point out (since no-one else does) that the environment has changed quite radically; for the first, new creatures dwells in the oceans (such as whales and giant squids) and the climate has change rather much. I can not believe that, if there is ancient predators in the depths, that they haven't evolved...

I wonder if they tasted good...