Sunday, September 23, 2007

Giant dinosaur dug out in Svalbard

A Danish newspaper brings the story of the finding of the fossil of an unknown dinosaur in Svalbard, Norway (link in Danish).

While trying to find out more about this find, I realized that it's really an year-old story, which is described here:
Entire predator found

The first intact example of the "Tyrannosaurus Rex of the sea" - a Pliosaur from 150 million years ago - has been found on Norwegian soil, in Svalbard.


The story back then was basically that an entire skeleton was found, but due to the climate, it could only be partly uncovered, and the rest had to wait for the 2007 expedition. According to the Danish newspaper, the rest has indeed been uncovered this year, and it has turn out to be a huge specimen - it was expected that it would be approximately 9m (approx 30'), but according to the Danish newspaper it's really 20m (approx 64') long, so it was quite a bit longer than expected. What's more, it's also quite a bit longer than the previous found specimens, which were never longer than 12-13m (approx 40').

Apparently there is another fossil the same size there, which they will try to uncover next summer.

The Natural History Museum of Oslo has a page dedicated to the expedition, but unfortunately it hasn't been updated with the new finds yet.

Labels: , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home