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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Bigfoot In Oregon? Strange Bloodcurdling Noises In Pendleton Swamp

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Is there a bigfoot in Oregon?

The sounds of cries and roars can be heard throughout the Umatilla Indian Reservation near Pendleton, The Oregonian reports Jan. 25. The reservation is home to about 1,500 people across 178,000 acres in Oregon’s Blue Mountains. The possible Bigfoot noises were heard near an old reservation community center just north of Wilhorse Resort and Casino. Residents first started hearing the noises last month, and rumors quickly spread that it could be a mythical ape-like humanoid creature, Bigfoot.

Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is the name given to the mysterious ape-like creature that some people believe inhabits forests, mainly in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. Scientists discount the existence of Bigfoot, usually described as a large, hairy, bipedal humanoid, and consider it to be a combination of folklore, misidentification, and hoax.

Among some Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest, however, the Bigfoot is not to be taken lightly. Stories about the hominid hairy creatures roaming the forests of the region have been passed down from generation to generation in some tribal cultures, so when the screeches first drifted over the swampland, it did not take much to convince the locals that those were the cries of Bigfoot.

According to the Oregon Live, the eerie late-night sounds, which range from high-pitched screams to basso profundo roars, started in November and have caused bigfoot rumors to spread. Several reservation unit tenants and home owners call authorities to report the strange sounds. One man even claimed his dog was too afraid to go outside.

One said the cries were made by “a young Bigfoot that had got separated from the rest of his clan.” The howls also make some believe the animal making those noises are foxes or a female coyote.

So far no one has been able to nail down exactly what the source is of the spooky sounds. For decades many have believed Bigfoot does, in fact, live in Oregon within its thick forests. Reported Examiner…

Carl Sheeler, wildlife program manager for the Walla Walla and Cayuse tribes, said the strange noises may just be from animals known to live in the area.

But some of those who have heard the sounds don’t agree with Sheeler. “Foxes do sound creepy,” said Sylvia Minthorn. “But it’s not the same sound, not even close.”

Did Oregon residents within the reservation actually hear Bigfoot? Enthusiasts of the creature think that they are getting closer to finding the elusive Bigfoot, and sightings continue. Late last year, a group of hikers in Utah encountered what they thought was a bear, but then the animal turned and stood on two legs, looking very much like Bigfoot.

Sasquatch Watch Canada posted a recording of the howls to Youtube. Listen to them below:

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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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Spooky cemetery in Peru

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The oldest cemetery in Peru has become a hit with tourists and locals.

The Presbitero Maestro Cemetery was built between 1805 and 1808 on the former outskirts of Lima and was the first municipal cemetery in Latin America. This impressive and beautiful historical Sanctuary houses the final resting places of many historical important personalities, but is still in use. The neoclassical complex contains the largest collection of 19th century European marble sculptures in Latin America. It’s absolutely worth seeing!

It was cold and dark, and people clutching lanterns in the moonlight gave a spooky cast to Peru’s oldest cemetery, now Lima’s oddball hit with locals and tourists. “It is scary. But we’re into it,” said a teenage girl clinging to her boyfriend as they walked through darkness and silence interrupted only by visitors’ footsteps.
Each group has a guide who entertain visitors with tales about those buried at the Presbitero Matias Maestro Museum-Cemetery, a Peruvian national historical monument.

The cemetery covers an area of 25,000 m². It has 6 magnificent main gates and over 220,000 people found their final resting place at this outstanding burial ground. Although the Presbitero Maestro Cemetery was declared a National Historic Monument in 1972 the sculptures and the impressive mausoleums are threatened by natural aging, air pollution, pressure of the growing population and unfortunately by vandalism. At least the Public Beneficence Society of Lima tries to preserve this jewel of peace with a very tight budget.

Night tours are scheduled with different themes for different crowds: one focuses on love; another on patriotic fervor; still others on presidents; and inevitably one focuses on death itself. “What really brings in the most people is the tour focused on death, in November, and another on love, in February,” says historian Jose Bocanegra, who has the historical details at the ready.

Some visitors are so apprehensive about being in a cemetery that they tiptoe around expecting something worthy of a horror movie. 

When tours started a decade ago they were limited to no more than 40 people; but they have become so popular that groups are now as large as 350 people, mainly young people and tourists, Bocanegra said.

One of the most popular tombs for local visitors is Peruvian poet Jose Santos Chocano, who asked to be buried standing, in a one square meter space. “So his coffin was placed in the niche vertically. And on his tombstone, there are lines from his poem ‘Shipwrecked Life,'” Bocanegra said. “This square meter that I have looked for on Earth will be mine, if a bit late. Dead, in the end, I shall have it. … I only expect now a square meter, where one day they’ll have to bury me, standing,” the poem reads.

It is a cemetery, and it is dark, to be sure. But there is enough light for visitors to stop and get a look at Carrara marble sculptures like the “La Dama de la Mantilla” (Lady in a mantilla) and “El bastón de Hermes” (Hermes’ staff). Bronze works such as “A mother weeping at her son’s tomb” and “A cry of pain” also are on display, steeped in the mood of the location, adorning mausoleums that are often caked in mud and apparently forgotten.

The cemetery, tucked into a corner of Lima’s Barrios Altos district, was named for its designer, the priest Matias Maestro, who also was buried there. Opened in 1808 by Viceroy Fernando Abascal during Spanish colonial rule, the facility is a sort of history of Peru in tombs and crypts. Decorated with a staggering 940 sculptures — some of them from as far away as Italy, by sculptors like Santo Varni, Pietro Costa, Ulderico Tenderini, and Rinaldo Rinaldi, or France’s Jean Louis Barrias and Antonin Marcie.

The success of the tours is a blessing for the facility, providing a source of funding to care for tombs and sculptures that have themselves often seemed on their last legs.

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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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Mysterious blotch in photo from Mars rover Curiosity

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Conspiracy theorists have worked themselves up into a lather over a mysterious blotch that appeared along the horizon in a photo from the surface of Mars visible in the first black and white photographs taken from NASA’s new Curiosity rover as it landed, as two hours later it was gone.

Seconds after the NASA robot’s landing Sunday night, Curiosity managed to squeeze off a handful of fuzzy, black-and-white photographs. One, taken with a device on its rear known as a Hazcam, captured the pebble-strewn ground beneath the rover and one of its wheels — and a blotch, faint but distinctive, on the horizon.
The images were relayed by a passing satellite. Two hours later, the satellite passed overhead again. However, two hours later when the satellite made another pass over Curiosity, the rover sent another batch of images that revealed that the blotch had eerily disappeared. They showed the same horizon. The blotch was gone.

Space junkies raced onto the Internet with giddy speculation about the difference between the photos.
One theory put forth by space enthusiasts in the L.A. Times story is that Curiosity had somehow snapped a photo of part of the spacecraft that escorted the rover through the Martian atmosphere crash-landing a distance away.

Furthermore, the rover was acting autonomously, meaning that scientists did not command the robot to photograph the exact views containing the blotch.
Others say more feasible possibilities would be simply dirt on the lens, or maybe a dust devil twisting far in the distance.
But as more images start to pour into NASA, more is being learned about the rover’s pinpoint landing.

Curiosity, the largest spacecraft ever sent to another planet, had just sailed through deep space for almost nine months and more than 350 million miles. It landed on its own, meaning scientists had no control over where, exactly, it would wind up, what direction it would be pointed in or when it would snap its first images.

The blotch did look like a billowing plume of some sort, erupting from the horizon. However, one engineer working on the project told the LA Times that ‘would be an insane coincidence’ and that the shape on the horizon was most likely dirt on the lens.

Images from Mars have always fueled curiosity.
Remember what folks thought was a huge face on Mars? An image from Viking 1 in 1976 that appeared to show a rock formation with eyes, a nose and a mouth? Later high-resolution imaging and side-by-side analysis proved the “face” to be a mesa, like the flat-topped natural formations found in the southwestern U.S.

It is the most expensive and ambitious mission yet to Mars.
Its ultimate destination is a mountain towering from the centre of the crater floor.Before the one-ton, nuclear-powered Curiosity can start roving, it has to undergo several weeks of tedious but essential health checks.

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Is Nibiru (Planet X) Approaching?

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Russian scientists have discovered in a documentary called “Military Secret – Nibiru” that the great danger threatens to humanity in February 2013th. Earth and the planet cald Nibiru then will be in closest distance. A fact circulating the Internet that NASA expects to get a crash 21st July this year, but the U.S. Agency flatly denied. NASA themselves officially recognized the possibility of Planet X, with an announce-ment that ‘some kind of mystery object is really there – far beyond the outermost planets’.

The Nibiru collision with Earth in 2012 has been predicted for a long time, but astrophysicists, cosmologists and astronomers around the world have now come to a consensus that Earth will indeed collide with the planet.

In 1976, the late Zecharia Sitchin stirred up a great deal of controversy with the publication of his book, The Twelfth Planet. His work has garnered much attention among ufologists, ancient astronaut theorists and conspiracy theorists. He claims to have uncovered, through his retranslations of Sumerian texts, evidence that the human race was visited by a group of extraterrestrials from a distant planet in our own Solar System.

To the Babylonians, Nibiru was the celestial body or region sometimes associated with the god Marduk. The word is Akkadian and the meaning is uncertain. Because of this, the planet Nibiru is sometimes also referred to as Marduk. Nibiru, in Babylonian Astronomy translates to “Planet of Crossing” or “Point of Transition”, especially of rivers, i.e. river crossings or ferry-boats, a term of the highest point of the ecliptic, i.e. the point of summer solstice, and its associated constellation. The establishment of the Nibiru point is described in tablet 5 of the Enuma Elish. Its cuneiform sign was often a cross, or various winged disc. Sitchin hypothesizes it as a planet in a highly elliptic orbit around the Sun, with a perihelion passage some 3,600 years ago and assumed orbital period of about 3,750 years; he also claims it was the home of a technologically advanced human-like alien race, the Anunnaki, who allegedly visited Earth in search of gold. These beings eventually created humanity by genetically crossing themselves with extant primates, and thus became the first gods. The ancient cuneiform texts — some of the earliest known writing, dating back some 6,000 years — told the story of a race of beings called the Anunnaki. The Anunnaki came to Earth from a planet in our solar system called Nibiru, according to the Sumerians via Sitchin. If you’ve never heard of it, that’s because mainstream science does not recognize Nibiru as one of the planets that revolves around our Sun. Yet it is there, claims Sitchin, and its presence holds great importance not only for humankind’s past, but our future as well.

Some authors believe that the observations of ancient astronomers provide proof that Nibiru is an actual planet or brown dwarf in our solar system. These claims are for the most part dismissed as fringe science or pseudoscience by the mainstream scientific communities of archaeology and astronomy.

One conspiracy theory says that Nibiru is not only planets, but spacecraft on which the resident advanced races. These creatures have emerged from lower forms of life, thanks to the unusual nature of the planet-ship – the favored their prolonged absence of sunlight, proponents of this theory. On its surface, apparently, there are various plants, military bases and weapons.

A various kinds of beliefs, superstitions and conspiracy theories about Nibiru and prompted a letter from a Norwegian politician, written after the murder of his friend, the Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto. He argues that because of the arrival of Nibiru around the world are building secret underground bases and bunkers which would be evacuated just specially selected. Although his government says the bases for the salvation of Norwegians, this politician says that they will be accommodated only by the political elite and members of those professions that could be helpful.

NASA is publicly denying anything about collision (and even deny the existence of Nibiru), but privately several sources in NASA have confirmed the projected collision date of July 21, 2012.
The world has seen many such claims of doom come and go. But many believe that with The Nibiru collision fits in well with the Mayan prophecy – the apocalypse in 2012.

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Do The World’s Tiniest Fly Really Decapitate Ants?

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A new species of phorid fly from Thailand is the smallest fly ever discovered. The tiny fly, Euryplatea nanaknihali, is also the first of its genus to be discovered in Asia, and it belongs to a fly family (Phoridae) that is known for “decapitating” ants.

It is a gruesome parasite that lives inside the heads of ants, growing in size until the victim is decapitated.
They lay their eggs inside their victims. When the maggots hatch, they move towards the ant’s head, where they gorge upon the brain and other tissues. The ant stumbles about in a literally mindless stupor until the connection between its head and body is dissolved by a enzyme released from the maggot. The head falls off and the adult flies burst out.

It is five times smaller than a fruit fly and tinier than a grain of salt (0.4 millimeters) in length — half the size of the smallest “no see-ums.””It’s so small you can barely see it with the naked eye on a microscope slide. It’s smaller than a flake of pepper,” said Brian Brown, of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, who identified the fly as a new species. “The housefly looks like a Godzilla fly beside it.”

Although this has not yet been observed, it is highly likely because the fly’s only known relative, Euryplatea eidmanni, is known to parasitize ants in Equatorial Guinea.

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Mysterious African ‘Fairy Circles’

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In the sandy desert grasslands of Namibia in southern Africa, mysterious bare spots known as “fairy circles” will form and then disappear years later for no reason anyone can determine. A new look at these strange patterns doesn’t solve the wistful mystery but at least reveals that the largest of the circles can linger for a lifetime.

When it rains substantially, a thick carpet of grass covers the sand. But this green down is punctuated by bare red soil circular patches, which appear as though drawn by a compass. And there’s not just one or two of them but thousands. These mysterious sand circles appear at around 60 to 120 kilometres inland from the coast from South Africa to Angola, at an altitude of between 500 and 1000 metres. To humans, they make no sense at all. To animals, they’re a source of succulent grass in an arid no man’s land between savannah and sand dunes.

Small fairy circles stick around an average of 24 years, while larger ones can exist as long as 75 years, according to research detailed today (June 27) in the journal PLoS ONE.

Walter Tschinkel may not have solved the mystery of the fairy circles, but he can tell you that they’re alive. Tens of thousands of the formations—bare patches of soil, 2 to 12 meters in diameter—freckle grasslands from southern Angola to northern South Africa, their perimeters often marked by a tall fringe of grass. Locals say they’re the footprints of the gods. Scientists have thrown their hands up in the air. But now Tschinkel, a biologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee, has discovered something no one else has.
Tschinkel grew interested in fairy circles during a 2005 safari to NamibRand Nature Reserve in southwest Namibia, in the Namib Desert. It was his first experience with the round clearings, tens of thousands of which expose the red sandy soil in the area. A short time after the circles form, a tall ring of grass grows around the border, highlighting the bare area.
By comparing satellite images from 2004 and 2008, Tschinkel found that circles are quite stable, popping up at nearly their full size, or at least growing quickly once they get started. Here, the circles are shown dotting the landscape of Jagkop, Namibia, after a rain.

Few researchers have studied fairy circles, in part because of their remoteness, 111 miles (180 km) from the nearest village, and their work is usually based on opportunistic experiments done on quick trips, Tschinkel says. “There’s no program really focused on trying to figure this out.”

Over the past 10 years, the park has sold fairy circles to ecotourists for about $50 each. The buyers don’t actually get the land; they just adopt it—kind of like people who “purchase” stars. Each circle the reserve sells is marked with the date of sale, and new owners are given the latitude and longitude so they can check up on their purchase on Google Earth.

Did these shallow craters come from space? Are they the work of termites or are they caused by particular mineral compounds in the ground? They’re here in their hundreds of thousands and they’re called “Fairy Circles” — for want of a better name. And all we know is Namibia’s Fairy Circles are neither a fraud nor a joke, but they’re one of Africa’s most mysterious natural wonders.

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Unknown Creature in Kanas Lake

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Kanas Lake, which means “beautiful, mysterious lake” in Mongolian, is tucked away in Xinjiang and China’s far North Western corner. The scenery here is more like Kazakstan or Russia than China with the 24km long and up to 2km wide lake flanked by birch and larch forest. The lake is 1,374 meters above sea level and covers an area of 45.73 square kilometers with the deepest point of 196 meters. The famous legend about “Kanas Monster” adds another air of mystery to the lake. If the stunning, Siberian-like scenery wasn’t enough there is some mystery thrown in regarding what is known as China’s Nessie – the Kanas Lake Monster! According to the legend, huge monsters dwell in the lake’s depths and often dragged horses and camels drinking into the water before swallowing them.

Some scientists believe, however, that the monsters may be taimen trout, one of the world’s largest and most ferocious freshwater fish which can grow as long as 10 meters.

This footage was filmed in China, where lake monster sightings have been popping up around a Kanas lake. Usually, lake monster “sightings” are later discovered to be common animals such as otters or eels. According to CCTV, about 15 of the unknown creature was found in Kanas Lake in China’s Xinjiang Province on the 5th of July.

Not just one, but more than a dozen huge creatures can be seen churning across Lake Kanas in remote western China, leaving a foamy wake more like an enormous motorboat than a big fish.
The tourists saw the lake monster in the lake at the foot of a mountain more than 2,000 meters away. The lake monster, four or five meters long, appeared in the lake with the huge wave, revealing its white belly.

This video recording is the latest sighting of the creature captured in June 2012, by a local worker Wang.

The tale about this monster has been spread for thousands of years in the Kanas area of China, which is about the creature engulf cattle and horses in one swallow and then dive down into the deep bottom of the cold Kanas Lake.

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