Largest Yet Antarctica Sea Monster Found

[Claire.]

Newfound Ancient 'Sea Monster' Is Largest Yet from Antarctica

About 66 million years ago, an ancient sea monster the height of a five-story office building once gnashed its sharp teeth as it swam around the dark waters of Antarctica, a new study finds. The newfound beast, known as a mosasaur — a Cretaceous-age aquatic reptile that sped through the ancient seas using its paddle-like limbs and long tail — is only the second fossilized mosasaur skull ever found in Antarctica.

Read more: Live Science

[oldrover]

1 hour ago, Clair said:

the height of a five-story office building

Well, it's more informative than the 'two upright pianos'. 

Here's some more mosasaur stuff (which I've yet to find to a chance to read)

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0019445

[Thorvir]

Mosasaurs are my all-time favorite dinosaur-types....er, prehistoric aquatic reptile.

[ShadowSot]

50 minutes ago, Thorvir Hrothgaard said:

Mosasaurs are my all-time favorite dinosaur-types....er, prehistoric aquatic reptile.

*puts the book back down*

[Sameerr]

I didn't knew that mosasaurs lived in Antarctica. It's quite interesting.

[ShadowSot]

17 minutes ago, Sameerr said:

I didn't knew that mosasaurs lived in Antarctica. It's quite interesting.

It wasn't Antarctica at the time. 

[EllJay]

 

There is..

"...Always a Bigger Fish"

 

 

 

 

[Skulduggery]

Nice find.

[paperdyer]

Do we really know that Antarctica wasn't there at the time this beast was alive?  I've read, a number of years ago, that India actually was part of Antarctica at one time.  If Antarctica was there it proves it wasn't ice laden before the event that took out the dinos.

[oldrover]

12 minutes ago, paperdyer said:

Do we really know that Antarctica wasn't there at the time this beast was alive?  I've read, a number of years ago, that India actually was part of Antarctica at one time.  If Antarctica was there it proves it wasn't ice laden before the event that took out the dinos.

Antarctica, India, Australia, Africa and South America were all part of Gondwanaland. It wasn't ice covered back at the time of the K-Pg extinction event, and wouldn't be for tens of millions of years afterward.  

[AdealJustice]

its interesting to see many myths related to large creatures such as these. Some of the oldest cultures claim they are remnants of even older civilizations. Slowly but surely I think archeological evidence will start mounding to support these claims. Humans are likely older than we currently perceive and with that said we might be able to look at older origins for the emergence of sophisticated civilization.

[aquatus1]

3 hours ago, paperdyer said:

Do we really know that Antarctica wasn't there at the time this beast was alive?  I've read, a number of years ago, that India actually was part of Antarctica at one time.  If Antarctica was there it proves it wasn't ice laden before the event that took out the dinos.

In addition to what Oldrover said, Antartica (rather, Gondwanaland) wasn't in the physical location it is now.  It was closer to the equator, and subsequently, warmer.

[oldrover]

52 minutes ago, AdealJustice said:

its interesting to see many myths related to large creatures such as these. Some of the oldest cultures claim they are remnants of even older civilizations. Slowly but surely I think archeological evidence will start mounding to support these claims. Humans are likely older than we currently perceive and with that said we might be able to look at older origins for the emergence of sophisticated civilization.

Creatures such as these? Mosasaurs became extinct in the multi eco-system collapse at the K-Pg extinction event. We aren't going to find new evidence that over turns this. Nor that humans were around at that time, it just isn't going to happen. 

Plus, although people say myths and legends seem to reference animals such as dinosaurs, mosasaurs, pterosaurs, they really don't. What they actually tend to reflect is what the people who make those claims believe these animals looked like. Which is usually about at least 30 years behind the current picture. 

Take the mosasaur, it's a reptile, so that's how it's been portrayed. As some sort of sea crocodile

https://thumb7.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/378040/168453839/stock-photo-mosasaur-tylosaurus-computer-generated-d-illustration-168453839.jpg

And that's what's informed the kind of source that makes claims fitting into indigenous stories and or myths.

Reality though is this

http://www.livescience.com/images/i/000/056/717/i02/mosasaurs.jpg?1378822432?interpolation=lanczos-none&downsize=640:*

Wouldn't really tell it apart from a shark or a whale. 

 

 

[AdealJustice]

19 hours ago, oldrover said:

Creatures such as these? Mosasaurs became extinct in the multi eco-system collapse at the K-Pg extinction event. We aren't going to find new evidence that over turns this. Nor that humans were around at that time, it just isn't going to happen. 

Plus, although people say myths and legends seem to reference animals such as dinosaurs, mosasaurs, pterosaurs, they really don't. What they actually tend to reflect is what the people who make those claims believe these animals looked like. Which is usually about at least 30 years behind the current picture. 

Take the mosasaur, it's a reptile, so that's how it's been portrayed. As some sort of sea crocodile

https://thumb7.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/378040/168453839/stock-photo-mosasaur-tylosaurus-computer-generated-d-illustration-168453839.jpg

And that's what's informed the kind of source that makes claims fitting into indigenous stories and or myths.

Reality though is this

http://www.livescience.com/images/i/000/056/717/i02/mosasaurs.jpg?1378822432?interpolation=lanczos-none&downsize=640:*

Wouldn't really tell it apart from a shark or a whale.

 

 

My apologies if I made it seem like I meant creatures of millions of years past. Even when the Australian aborigines cross over they met some very large land animals. Would it not be possible that some relative of these sized aquatic animals might have had interactions with early humans leading to the global myth making in regards to large sea creatures?

thanks for the links! ill be sure to check those out. I really like that part you wrote about perception of animals vs what the animal really is. It could be quite possible to see a large whale and let the human imagination run wild into believing greater more fantasized events. 

Edited November 17, 2016 by AdealJustice

[oldrover]

1 hour ago, AdealJustice said:

My apologies if I made it seem like I meant creatures of millions of years past. Even when the Australian aborigines cross over they met some very large land animals. Would it not be possible that some relative of these sized aquatic animals might have had interactions with early humans leading to the global myth making in regards to large sea creatures?

 The first people in Australia did meet several large land animals. There's a fair bit of work recently on what they met, but they would have encountered diprotodon, and possibly megalania. There were also then terrestrial crocodiles in Australasia, and huge horned, clubbed tailed land turtles, these two groups only going extinct as recently as 4 kya in some places. 

As for sea creatures, there's the sea going salt water crocodile, which would have reached even larger sizes back in the Pleistocene. Other than that, I can't think of any large particularly distinctive sea creature that isn't there today. Except for Stellar's sea cow, but that's the northern Pacific.  Other than specific members of groups that are still represented, there hasn't really been any large sea creature that survived into the Tertiary that isn't there now. 

2 hours ago, AdealJustice said:

It could be quite possible to see a large whale and let the human imagination run wild into believing greater more fantasized events. 

Yeah, I'd imagine that'd be very easy. Same with a manta ray, or a basking or whale shark. And a salt water croc far out from land would be a good starting point too.