Ancient super crocodile fossil found in museum drawer

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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The World's Smelliest Man: this man has not bathed in over 38 years!

The world's smelliest man is Indian, Kailash Singh (66) who did not bathe in over 38 years. He listened to the priest's advice back in 1974., that would have a son if stop to take a bath!
Today he has seven daughters and still not giving up on a given testament.

More precisely, the priest has guarantee him a son if he stop to take a bath and to cut his hair.
- He said he would rather die than take a bath and that the only son could force him to change his opinion. It's been so many years that I have already got used to it, says wife Kalavati Devi.

Make no mistake, Kailash is still "cares about personal hygiene." Every night he performs "fire bath" to resolve the odor. His bath form includes smoking marijuana, including a prayer to God Shiva and dancing around the fire. He claims that in this way solves the stench, but his family and neighbors is absolutely disagree with that. 

Although the priest's advice was obviously not good, this man still refuses to bathe, and only son could force him to change his opinion. Of course, it is unlikely that they will have another child, given that his wife is now sixty years old. 

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Do The World's Tiniest Fly Really Decapitate Ants?

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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Lolong, The Monster Crocodile Of The Philippines

A man-eating beast feared by locals, has set a Guinness Book of World Records mark as the world's largest saltwater crocodile in captivity. Reptile measuring 6.17 metres (20.24 feet) and weighs more than a ton, thought to have killed several people, before its capture by officials in the southern Philippines town of Bunawan in September, 2011. Lolong was captured with steel cable traps during a three-week hunt, after a child was killed in 2009 and a fisherman went missing. Water buffalos have also been attacked by crocodiles in the area, officials said.

Lolong, the monster crocodile of the philippines sets record as world’s largest in captivity

Lolong is responsible for an influx of tourists to the remote town where it was captured. Bunawan mayor Edwin Cox Elorde said the news sparked celebrations among the 37,000 inhabitants, but was also causing concern that more giant crocodiles might be lurking in a nearby marshland and creek where villagers fish.

"There were mixed feelings," Bunawan Mayor Edwin Cox Elorde told the Associated Press. "We're really proud because it proves the rich biodiversity of our place but at the same time, there are fears that Lolong may not be alone."

Elorde claimed to have seen a larger crocodile escape where Lolong was captured, and villagers remain wary of fishing in Bunawan at night. He said he has a new team of hunters and would seek government permission to start looking for the reptile.

Since its capture, Lolong has become the star attraction of a new ecotourism park and research centre in the outskirts of a new ecotourism and research center in the town and has drawn thousands of tourists since news of its capture spread.. And while the park has brought in 3m pesos ( $72,000, £46,000) in park fees since Lolong's debut, most of that money goes to feeding and taking care of the crocodile and for park maintenance.

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This is the Mugly - the New World's Ugliest Dog

Mugly Wins World's Ugliest Dog Title

Mugly, the eight year old Chinese crested dog, took the title of ugliest dog in the world for 2012. year.
And now lets look at some other competitors: 

Mugly beat 29 dogs in the competition and won the $ 1,000 annual food supply.
Ugliest dog competition held every year in the town of Petaluma, California.

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Unknown Creature in Kanas Lake

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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'Depraved' sex acts by penguins shocked polar explorer

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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Orang Pendek, Small Man of Sumatra

Deep in the jungles of Sumatra there lives a creature few outsiders have ever seen, a bipedal (walks on two legs) species of ape or proto-humanoid that stands roughly one meter tall and is generally reported as being covered in an orange fur or hair, similar to the Orangutan. Locals call it "Orang Pendek", which means Short Person in Indonesian. This is the name given to an animal that people have been seeing for hundreds of years in and around Kerinci-Seblat National Park in central Sumatra. However, the Orang Pendek is described as being distinctly different from the Orangutan in that it is more humanoid in appearance and walks in a completely upright, human-like posture. One of the most fascinating aspects of this animal is its bipedality. Can you guess the only ape we know of that walks primarily bipedally? Us humans! The existence of another bipedal ape could force us to reconsider fundamental questions about our own evolution.

Without fail, local witnesses and legends describe Orang Pendek as: an ape, who standing between three and five feet tall and covered with fur, with a strong chest and arms, the creature walks upright along the ground like a human. Though short in stature, many witnesses report it to have a thick, muscular upper body, and the strength to uproot small trees. Orang Pendek is said to eat vegetation and small animals.

Even though its name means "short person", everyone will tell you that, "Of course it's not a person, it's an animal!" Consider orang-utans, whose name means "forest person". Apes and monkeys have been ascribed human-like qualities throughout history in this region of the world.  It poses no threat to humans, though it can become quite ferocious when cornered. It is a creature well known to Sumatrans, but only relatively recently researchers have begun to investigate the truth behind Orang Pendek. Consider also that Orang Pendek is almost never described as being magical or spirit-like in nature. I think this is an important point in that, while legends of forest spirits and magical beings abound in the local culture, Orang Pendek is described matter-of-factly as just another animal of the forest.

There have never been any reports of Orang Pendek corpses or bones or body parts preserved in villages like the Tibetans do with Yeti skull caps (or goat skull caps, take your pick). There's nothing at all that a scientist would call evidence. There is tons of anecdotal evidence in the form of ancient legends and verbal reports, but none of that can be tested. There are footprint casts, which tend to be dismissed by most primatologists because they are indirect evidence of indirect evidence of something that's said to leave footprints exactly like those of a child. When you analyze footprints, you're up against some pretty long odds.

No specimen, living or dead, has ever been recovered, and little evidence exists beyond stories and footprints. Even barring the footprint evidence, the wide range of sightings alone calls for some investigation, and they're tough to dismiss. Some claim supposed sightings of Orang Pendek are misidentifications of local, known animals. The orangutan and gibbon are two primates that inhabit the same region, but if historical witness accounts are to be believed neither are likely explanations for this bizarre creature. Others believe Orang Pendek is possibly an unknown species of primate.

Recently, much more attention has been focused on legends of the Orang Pendek because of the discovery of the Indonesian "hobbit" or Homo floresiensis on the nearby island of Flores in 2003. Homo floresiensis is an extremely small species of human that was known to have survived at least until 12,000 years ago, which means it likely co-existed on the island with modern homo sapiens. According to local legend, which names Homo floresiensis the ebu gogo, it survived until at least the year 1900, and may still be alive today. Some researchers think that the Orang Pendek is the same species as the ebu gogo. The Orang Pendek is often classified as a proto-pygmy, a type of smaller, more human-like hairy humanoid.  

Is it reasonable to think that if Homo floresiensis were able to migrate to the island of Flores in ancient times, they may have gained a foothold in Sumatra as well?

Could Orang Pendek be an unknown primate, or is there an undocumented species of human running around the jungles of Sumatra? Or, Orang Pendek may be the product of misidentified animals, and generations of campfire stories dating back to a time when modern humans shared the land with a bizarre but now extinct creature. Perhaps someday we’ll know the truth, but until then the short people of the forest will remain a mystery. Maybe there is an Orang Pendek, but so far, if you want to believe in it, that's all you have to go on: Your own belief.

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Animals Inside Out Exhibition

The exhibit is currently touring large zoological gardens, museums of natural history, and popular science centers around the world.

Naked animals may not cause even a blush, but a look under the covers of our four-legged friends (and finned ones) is a revelation. London's Natural History Museum presents a new exhibition of preserved animals from the team behind the plastinated Body Worlds shows. With more than 100 exhibits – including a giant 56-year-old elephant, a giraffe balanced on one hoof, a blood-red shark and a hairless gorilla – it is the most recent creation of the 21st-century Frankenstein, Gunther von Hagens.

While zoos present animals in environments that resemble their natural habitat, Animals Inside Out give onlookers a peek inside, "into a 3rd dimension of experience."

He treats the animals with a process called plastination which removes all the blood from the muscles, veins and arteries and replaces them with a latex material. He suffered through a lot of controversy in the past when some people had suggested that Chinese prison inmates had been the source of his bodies.

With a body so heavy that it would collapse under its own weight, Von Hagens came up with the idea of creating an internal scaffolding for the creature – a series of blood red steel pipes designed to precisely represent its vascular system. This is a new method that preserves only the blood vessels, while removing all other tissue. You’ll be startled at the number and density of blood vessels in an ostrich or a shark.

After embalming stops the bodies' decay, body tissues that won't be on display are removed, and the specimen is placed in an acetone bath to remove water and fat. Then, the animal is immersed in a liquid plastic and placed in a vacuum chamber, which forces out the acetone and causes the plastic to replace it. The specimen is then put into position and then hardened with gas, heat or light.

The lack of human specimens does make it feel slightly less macabre than previous von Hagens shows, but we still wouldn’t recommend this display to the squeamish. It’s unsettling to see, under their skins, that these animals are remarkably similar to us, with the same organs and muscle groups in slightly different arrangements.

"We really want visitors to learn more about the anatomy and physiology of the animals that are on display. It's a really unique chance for visitors to sort of see under the skin of animals and see them in a way that they've never seen them before," said Georgina Bishop, curator at the Natural History Museum.

Animal Inside Out

6 April – 16 September 2012

10.00 – 17.50

Waterhouse Gallery

Ticket prices:

Adult £9

Child and concessions £6

Family £27

School groups £3 per pupil

Free to Members, Patrons and children aged 3 and under.

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Titanoboa - the largest snake ever lived

The largest snake the world has ever known — as long as a school bus and as heavy as a small car — ruled tropical ecosystems only 6 million years after the demise of the fearsome Tyrannosaurus Rex, according to a new discovery published in the journal Nature.

Partial skeletons of a new giant, boa constrictor-like snake named “Titanoboa” found in Colombia by an international team of scientists and now at the University of Florida are estimated to be 42 to 45 feet long, the length of the T-Rex “Sue” displayed at Chicago’s Field Museum, said Jonathan Bloch, a UF vertebrate paleontologist who co-led the expedition with Carlos Jaramillo, a paleobotanist from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

Researchers say the extinct snake was even larger than the wildest dreams of directors of modern horror movies.

“Truly enormous snakes really spark people’s imagination, but reality has exceeded the fantasies of Hollywood,” said Bloch, who is studying the snake at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus. “The snake that tried to eat Jennifer Lopez in the movie ‘Anaconda’ is not as big as the one we found.”

Jason Head, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto in Mississauga and the paper’s senior author, described it this way: “The snake’s body was so wide that if it were moving down the hall and decided to come into my office to eat me, it would literally have to squeeze through the door.”

Besides tipping the scales at an estimated 1.25 tons, the snake lived during the Paleocene Epoch, a 10-million-year period immediately following the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, Bloch said.

The scientists also found many skeletons of giant turtles and extinct primitive crocodile relatives that likely were eaten by the snake, he said. “Prior to our work, there had been no fossil vertebrates found between 65 million and 55 million years ago in tropical South America,leaving us with a very poor understanding of what life was like in the northern Neotropics,” he said. “Now we have a window into the time just after the dinosaurs went extinct and can actually see what the animals replacing them were like.”

Size does matter because the snake’s gigantic dimensions are a sign that temperatures along the equator were once much hotter. That is because snakes and other cold-blooded animals are limited in body size by the ambient temperature of where they live, Bloch said.

“If you look at cold-blooded animals and their distribution on the planet today, the large ones are in the tropics, where it’s hottest, and they become smaller the farther away they are from the equator,” he said.

Based on the snake’s size, the team was able to calculate that the mean annual temperature at equatorial South America 60 million years ago would have been about 91 degrees Fahrenheit, about 10 degrees warmer than today, Bloch said.

The presence of outsized snakes and turtles shows that even 60 million years ago the foundations of the modern Amazonian tropical ecosystem were in place, he said.

Fossil hunting is usually difficult in the forest-covered tropics because of the lack of exposed rock, Bloch said. But excavations in the Cerrejon Coal Mine in Northern Colombia exposed the rock and offered an unparalleled opportunity for discovery, he said.

After the team brought the fossils to the Florida Museum of Natural History, it was UF graduate students Alex Hastings and Jason Bourque who first recognized they belonged to a giant snake, Bloch said. Head, an expert on fossil snakes, worked with David Polly, a paleontologist at the University of Indiana, to estimate the snake’s length and mass by determining the relationship between body size and vertebral — backbone — size in living snakes and using that relationship to figure out body size of the fossil snake based on its vertebrae.

Harry W. Greene, professor in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University and one of the world’s leading snake experts, said the “colossal” ancient boa researchers found has “important implications for snake biology and our understanding of life in the ancient tropics.”

“The giant Colombian snake is a truly exciting discovery,” said Greene, who wrote the book “Snakes: The Evolution of Mystery in Nature.” “For decades herpetologists have argued about just how big snakes can get, with debatable estimates of the max somewhat less than 40 feet.”

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