Ancient super crocodile fossil found in museum drawer

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Long-forgotten remains of a long-forgotten species, have been discovered in a museum drawer in Scotland. The beast, a dolphin-shaped crocodilian “super predator,” was able to eat other species its size and larger.

The ancient newfound crocodilian is named Tyrannoneustes lythrodectikos, Greek for “blood-biting tyrant swimmer.” Sounds pretty friendly, doesn’t it? “Tyrannoneustes was a dolphinlike crocodile that lived 165 million years ago,” said researcher Mark Young, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and the University of Southampton in England.

The predator possessed a long snout, large flippers, armorless skin and a tail fin where the bottom half is larger than the top half, resembling an upside-down version of an ordinary shark’s tail fin.It’s uncertain how large Tyrannoneustes was, but the right side of its lower jaw was at least 26 inches (67 centimeters) long. It featured enlarged teeth with serrated edges, and a jaw that evolved to open wider, allowing it to swallow smaller prey whole.
Back when Tyrannoneustes was alive, the area in central England where the fossils were discovered was covered in a shallow sea encompassing much of what is now Europe. Originally found between 1907 and 1909, the fossil has been lost in a drawer at the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow for nearly 100 years.

There are no modern descendents of the animal. Instead, this predator was a kind of metriorhynchid, an extinct family of marine crocodiles.

The discovery of Tyrannoneustes shows that during the Middle Jurassic, metriorhynchid crocodiles were beginning to evolve into predators of large-bodied prey. By the Late Jurassic, numerous metriorhynchid species were suited to feeding on large prey, but Tyrannoneustes is the first known from the Middle Jurassic. How this impacted upon other predatory groups such as pliosaurs and ichthyosaurs is still unclear.
 

Future research can scan Tyrannoneustes bones to develop computer models of how it might have fed, Young said. He and his colleagues detailed their findings online Jan. 4 in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.

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Giant Earthworm Discovered In China

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In a province Binchaun County in southwest China was found a snake-like earthworm measuring over 19 inches (a half-meter) long in a house gutter. Li Zhiwei, a Forestry Bureau worker, made the discovery and eventually decided to keep the worm. “It looked like a snake, I looked carefully and found it was actually a huge earthworm,” said Li. Li’s neighbors who came to see his unusual find said they had never seen an earthworm that long in their area before.

Biologists said they plan to study the giant earthworm found in Li’s backyard to find out why it was able to grow to such an enormous length. An adult earthworm’s measurements vary by species and can range anywhere from 10mm long and 1mm wide, to 3-meters long and over 25mm wide. Environmental factors also influence an earthworm’s body size, and they tend to grow longer and larger during humid seasons if they take in sufficient nutrition and have no natural enemies. Biologists plan to study the earthworm found by Li to classify it and identify the reason it was able to grow to its current length.

The discovery is especially cool for Li. He said he plans to keep the giant earthworm in his backyard and raise it as a pet.

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Unknown Creature Discovered In Africa

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Hunters in Namibia have caught strange creature that has never been seen before. Recording of events caused strong reactions – is a being from another planet, the mythical creature or something completely different?
Video showing the unusual creature caught in Africa has become a hit on the Internet in just a few days. In his description states that local hunters in Namibia saw a strange creature in search of food. One of the hunters had shot him, after which the creature fled into the bush, but hunters nevertheless find it.

Hunters have found three other similar beings. One of them attacked them, so they killed him, but the other escaped.
The body of of the weird being were taken away in a hunting camp and is expected to detailed investigation. People on YouTube have made ​​a discussion on the origin of this creature. While some believe that it is a fake photographs, others are convinced of their authenticity, and some even claim to have themselves seen similar being.
Watch the video and judge for yourself whether he is a being from another planet, the mythical creature or something else.

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Fukushima butterflies show signs of mutation

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Exposure to the radioactive material that leaked from the damaged Japanese nuclear power plant Fukushima caused mutations among butterflies in Japan.

Scientists have noticed increasing number of mutations of legs, antennaes and wings of a butterflys, which were collected after the accident in Fukushima in March 2011. They argue that the relationship between mutations and radioactive materials is proved with laboratory experiments.

Two months after the accident in the Fukushima team of Japanese researchers has collected 144 adult butterflies of the species Zizeeria maha, within ten locations in Japan, including the area of ​​Fukushima. At the time when the accident occurred, the butterflies were in the form of larvae. In comparison of mutations in the butterflies from other locations was found that in regions with high levels of radiation insects have much smaller wings and improperly developed eyes.

From left to right, dented eyes, deformed left eye, deformed right palpus, and deformed wing shape.

“It has been believed that insects are very resistant to radiation. In that sense, our results were unexpected,” said lead researcher Joji Otaki from the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa. Professor Otaki and his associates continued to grow butterfly trapped in the laboratory which is 1750 kilometers away from Fukushima, where the radiation is almost not felt. They found that mutations in the next generation even stronger, as they become embedded in the genes of parents who used the contaminated feed.

Scientists have used this kind of butterflies as indicator of the environment, as previously known that these insects are very sensitive to changes in the nature.

“This study is important and overwhelming in its implications for both the human and biological communities living in Fukushima. These observations of mutations and morphological abnormalities can only be explained as having resulted from exposure to radioactive contaminants,” explained University of South Carolina biologist Tim Mousseau, who studies the impacts of radiation on animals and plants in Chernobyl and Fukushima, but was not involved in this research. 

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600-Year-Old Medieval Bras

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A revolutionary discovery! Surprisingly modern-looking linen bra dating back 600 years has been found in a medieval castle in Austria. Fashion experts describe the find as surprising because the bra had commonly been thought to be only little more than 100 years old as women abandoned the tight corset.

Working with a team of her colleagues, the University of Innsbruck archaeologist Beatrix Nutz recentlypublicized her discovery of several linen bras and some underwear in a medieval castle. “We didn’t believe it ourselves,” she said. “From what we knew, there was no such thing as bralike garments in the 15th century.” Nutz has presented academic papers about her discovery, and even analyzed the underwear for DNA.

Four bras in total were discovered mingled among dirt, straw, leather and other fabric scraps in Lemberg Castle in Tyrol, Austria. Four linen textiles resemble modern-time bras with distinct cups and one in particular looks like today’s version, with two broad shoulder straps and a possible back strap, not preserved but indicated by partially torn edges of the cups onto which it was attached. One specimen in particular “looks exactly like a (modern) brassiere,” says Hilary Davidson, fashion curator for the London Museum. “These are amazing finds.

The researchers also found linen underwear in the castle, Nutz told the AP. But that garment would have to belong to a man — medieval women went bare under their skirts. Does that mean the middle ages were actually a more liberal time than the corset-obsessed eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? 

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Ancient coins worth $15 million found by amateur treasure hunters after 30 year search

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Thirty years ago, a farmer found a few Iron Age coins on his property on the island of Jersey, off the coast of Normandy. For the next three decades, a pair of amateur treasure hunters combed the soil with metal detectors in search of more treasure. They found it!

Two amateur treasure hunters have unearthed a mass of celtic coins that are over 2,000 years and old and estimated to be worth a total of $15 million.

Reg Mead and Richard Miles found the stash using a high powered metal detector called a deepseeker. What they discovered was a large block of clay containing 30,000 to 50,000 gold and silver coins dating from the 1st Century BC.

The coins—which could have been buried to prevent Roman troops from getting them during Julius Caesar’s invasion of the British Islands—come from Armorica, modern day Brittany and Normandy. They have been buried for more than 2,000 years.
Each Roman or Celtic coin is said to be worth between 100 to 200 British Pounds ($156 to $311), according to Dr. Philip de Jersey, a former Celtic coin expert at Oxford University. He believes the haul is “extremely exciting and very significant.”

After finding the small batch of coins, the two amateur treasure hunters from the island of St. Clement, Jersey off the shores of France were inspired to strengthen their search to try and find the source of the coins.

Conservator Neil Mahrer of the Jersey Heritage Museum says the discovery is the largest of its kind: “This is the biggest Celtic coin hoard ever found which is tremendously exciting.”
Earlier this year, Mead and Miles found a much-smaller stash of 61 coins, 60 of them silver. The pair will continue to dig for more.
The States of Jersey must now determine who actually owns the treasure.

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‘Depraved’ sex acts by penguins shocked polar explorer

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Hidden for nearly 100 years for being too “graphic,” a report of “hooligan” behaviors, including sexual coercion, by Adelie penguins observed during Captain Scott’s 1910 polar expedition have been uncovered and interpreted. Dr George Murray Levick was among Captain Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova expedition team to the South Pole and was a pioneer in the study of penguins.

Amidst his incredible survival against the odds in the South Pole, Dr Levick made groundbreaking notes on the sexual shenanigans of the Adelie penguin, with findings so shocking they remained hidden for decades after. The naughty notes were rediscovered recently at the Natural History Museum in Tring, in England, and published in the recent issue of the journal Polar Record.

Homosexual acts, sexual abuse of chicks and even attempts by male penguins to mate with dead females are recorded in Levick’s paper “Sexual Habits of the Adelie Penguin”, which had been lost for decades.

To this day, Levick is the only scientist to have studied an entire breeding cycle at Cape Adare after he spent the Antarctic summer of 1911-12 there, the Guardian said.
On his return to Britain, Mr Levick attempted to publish a paper entitled “the natural history of the adelie penguin”, but according to Douglas Russell, curator of eggs and nests at the Natural History Museum, it was too much for the times.
However, scientists now understand the biological reasons behind the acts that Dr Levick considered “depraved”.

Homosexual behaviors in animals are no longer cause for hiding data, or even a blush.
Plenty of animals are out of the closet, so to speak, from dolphins and killer whales to bonobos and greylag geese. Some estimates put the number of animal species that practice same-sex coupling at 1,500.
And while Levick may have viewed the interactions between penguins through an anthropomorphic lens, today that’s not the case, the researchers note.
Necrophilia, for instance, is not the same in penguins and humans; Rather than being sexually aroused by a hot gal, male penguins are chemically wired to respond in certain ways to a seemingly compliant female of breeding age.
“What is happening there is not in any way analogous to necrophilia in the human context,” Mr Russell said. “It is the males seeing the positioning that is causing them to have a sexual reaction.
“They are not distinguishing between live females who are awaiting congress in the colony, and dead penguins from the previous year which just happen to be in the same position.”

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Vampire Skeletons found in Bulgaria

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If you thought vampires were simply the stuff of myth and legend – and perhaps the odd teen horror film – think again.

Archaeologists in Bulgaria have found two medieval skeletons pierced through the chest with iron rods to supposedly stop them from turning into vampires.
According to pagan beliefs, people who were considered bad during their lifetimes might turn into vampires after death unless stabbed in the chest with an iron or wooden rod before being buried. 

Bozhidar Dimitrov, the head of the national history museum, discovered the remains in the town of Sozopol, which is located near the Black Sea. Regarding the discovery, Dimitrov explained, “These two skeletons stabbed with rods illustrate a practice which was common in some Bulgarian villages up until the first decade of the 20th century.” 

The practice was common, Dimitrov added, saying some 100 similar burials had already been found in Bulgaria.
According to him, ‘vampires’ were often aristocrats and clerics. He added: ‘The curious thing is that there are no women among them. They were not afraid of witches.’

However last month Italian researchers discovered what they believed to be the remains of a female ‘vampire’ in Venice – buried with a brick jammed between her jaws to prevent her feeding on victims of a plague which swept the city in the 16th century.
The skeleton was unearthed in a mass grave from the Venetian plague of 1576 – in which the artist Titian died – on Lazzaretto Nuovo, which lies around two miles northeast of Venice and was used as a sanitorium for plague sufferers.

Archaeologist Petar Balabanov, who in 2004 unearthed six nailed-down skeletons at a site near the eastern town of Debelt, said the pagan rite was also practiced in neighbouring Serbia and other Balkan countries.

Vampire legends form an important part of the region’s folklore. The most famous tale is that of Romanian count Vlad the Impaler, known as Dracula, who staked his war enemies and drank their blood. 

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Mermaids: The Body Found

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Could mermaids actually exist?

The idea of mermaids has tantalized seafarers for millenia! According to Charlie Foley’s speculative documentary “Mermaids: The Body Found,” which aired Memorial Day weekend on Animal Planet, “real” mermaids are more like those scary merfolk from “Harry Potter” than the Disney version.

Paul Robertson, a former employee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), speaks in a two-hour Animal Planet special about his experiences with his research team while they were investigating mass whale beachings around the world.

The film, begins with the real, actual fact that the Navy’s use of sonar systems is suspected by some scientists of contributing to whale beachings. And it takes note of an odd underwater sound known as the Bloop that was recorded in the Pacific Ocean in 1997. It turns out that whales haven’t been the only creatures beaching themselves; two boys in Washington State caught something else on a cellphone camera before the authorities swooped in and pressured them into silence.

Also, remains found inside a shark in South Africa were decidedly mermaidlike.
An expert uses those remains to reconstruct a mermaid, which, sadly, is not nearly as cute as Ariel from the Disney film and doesn’t have her flowing red hair. But the public never got to meet this model mermaid because the whole project was black-opped.

People are taking it super-seriously — even pointing to the fact that the website listed in the trailer, BelieveInMermaids.com, has been seized by the Department of Homeland Security.

Could there actually be a scientific grounding to this legend?

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Tennessee man digs up surprise in yard

A Tennessee man doing some backyard maintenance was surprised to stumble across tombstones buried in his walkway. Jason Blackburn, 35, of Memphis was cleaning a stone walkway when he discovered 13 tombstones from a historic military cemetery buried about three inches deep.

“My first reaction was, ‘Oh my goodness, I hope there’s not dead bodies in my backyard,'” said Blackburn.
Turns out, there were no dead bodies, just the headstones. But typically when headstones are replaced, they are destroyed at the cemetery.

All the headstones were on record to have been removed in 1970, according to Ramon Miller, director of the cemetery, in the report. They found no headstones missing in the cemetery.

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