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Blobrana


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Greenland shark
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In the frigid, murky waters of the St. Lawrence River in Québec, UBC marine biologist and veterinarian Chris Harvey-Clark is painting a clearer picture of a mysterious predator that could be the longest-lived vertebrate on the planet.
The Greenland shark typically inhabits the deep, dark waters between Greenland and the polar ice cap. At over six metres long and weighing up to 2,000 kilograms, it is the largest shark in the North Atlantic and the only shark in the world that lives under Arctic ice. Once heavily harvested for its vitamin A-rich oil -- as many as 50,000 were caught annually according to a 1948 estimate -- little is known about the animal.

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Blobrana


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Dunkleosteus terrelli
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It was the first super predator of the ancient seas and its fearsome, jagged jaws still inspire awe 400 million years later.
The armour-plated fish Dunkleosteus was a 10 metres, four-ton (3,600-kg) monster that terrorised other marine life in the Devonian Period, which spanned 415 million to 360 million years ago.

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Blobrana


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RE: Ancient Fish
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When two amateur fossil hunters cracked open a rock in the Australian outback they thought the preserved skull they uncovered was unlike anything they had found in all their earlier adventures.
It was more than 6ft long with a rounded snout and large blade-like teeth.
The force of the fish's bite is 40times that used by a pressure hose to blast away garden dust and grime.

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Blobrana


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Dunkleosteus terrelli
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Did someone say "jaws"? Forget the great white shark: a 400-million-year-old, multiton fish may have had a bite powerful enough to chop a shark--or just about anything else--clean in two. To determine its strength, researchers reconstructed the ancient creature's jaw muscles from the grooves of a well-preserved fossil.

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Blobrana


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It could bite a shark in two. It might have been the first “king of the beasts.” And it could teach scientists a lot about humans, because it is in the sister group of all jawed vertebrates.
Dunkleosteus terrelli lived 400 million years ago, grew up to 33 feet long and weighed up to four tons. Scientist have known for years that it was a dominant predator, but new embargoed research to be published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters on November 29 reveals that the force of this predator’s bite was remarkably powerful: 11,000 pounds. The bladed dentition focused the bite force into a small area, the fang tip, at an incredible force of 80,000 pounds per square inch.

Source Field Museum

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Blobrana


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Pachycormid
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A find of old bones in a disused brick pit has sparked a Jurassic mystery that is baffling experts.
The walker who made the discovery at the old King's Dyke pit near Whittlesey could not have realised that they would send a ripple of excitement through the archaeological world.
For the prehistoric skeleton which lay undiscovered in the mud for more than 180 million years, may be all that remains of a previously unseen 6ft long sea monster, which will add to our knowledge of life on earth before time began for mankind.

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Blobrana


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Protosphyraena
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It lived more than 100 million years ago, swimming in the southern ocean when Australia was effectively a polar continent.
At two metres long with large blade-like teeth, it was an impressive carnivore, something of a cross between a modern-day barracuda and a swordfish.
Now a pair of South Australian amateur fossil hunters, Tom and Sharon Hurley, say they have uncovered a wonderfully preserved snout of the previously unknown species, which will eventually bear their name.

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Blobrana


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Ancient Fish
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The coelacanth is no longer the only living fossil fish swimming in our oceans. A Wits University PhD student has discovered that the parasitic lamprey, a fish which sucks the blood of other fish, is also a living fossil.
After years of painstaking work, Robert Gess has uncovered a world first: a 360-million-year-old fossil of a lamprey fish. It is 35-million years older than the lamprey fossil previously thought to be the oldest.

Gess, a student at the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research at Wits, found the fossil of the parasitic fish trapped in a hardened piece of mud after painfully chipping away at more than 30 cubic metres of blasted rock with a penknife, removed from the construction of the N2 bypass around Grahamstown almost 25 years ago.
Working under the supervision of Wits Professor Bruce Rubidge and Dr Mike Coats from the University of Chicago, Gess's work is being featured in the world's most prestigious scientific journal, Nature.

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