Mysterious 80million-year-old shark species caught off Portuguese coast
Patrick Knox, The Sun
Snake Shark
A REAL life sea monster “from the age of the dinosaurs” has caused waves in the scientific world after being caught off the Algarve coast.
The ultra-rare frilled shark — which has a body like a snake but the jaws of a terrifying sea predator — was hauled out of the water by EU fish stock researchers, reports The Sun.
The Portuguese Institute for the Sea and Atmosphere have now dubbed the shark a “living fossil” as the species dates back 80 million years.
This makes it one of very few creatures from the dinosaur times that are still around, with the shark discovered off the coast of Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
The male fish measured 1.5 metres in length and was captured at a depth of 701 metres off the resort of Portimao.
Another ‘snake shark’ was caught in Australia. Check out the video below.
Ever Hear of Megaladon?
It was the biggest shark ever to have swum the oceans of the world.
After months of waiting at last the Animal X Files are opened and are being made available for all to see. In a new Web based series called Animal X UnCut.
We have started with the San Francisco Bay Monsters as featured in Animal X Natural Mystery Unit – Monsters of the Deep.
Where Bill and Bob Clark describe the mysterious creatures they have seen and video taped in San Francisco Bay. Both interviews are now available to watch UNCUT. Also the video is available in its original form and UNCUT.
You’ll be surprised at what one of the brothers thinks these monsters are.
Check out Bob and Bill Clark’s UnCut interview and video recording of the mysterious Monsters of San Francisco Bay here:
Monster of San Francisco Bay
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Minnesota Iceman
The Animal X Files are opened for all to see. The Animal X Files are an archive of the middle to late 20th and 21st century’s most important international cryptozoology and mysterious nature’s oral and video history of stories, events and happenings.
With this new series of Animal X UnCut video clips, we are trying to preserve this unique collection; to create an online museum, if you like, of some of the world’s most well known cryptozoological and mysterious nature stories.
Chupacabra
If you are interested in cryptozoology, mysterious nature, paranormal, folklore the supernatural and monsters then you are invited to be part of this project by supporting the preservation of this collection. Watch out for more details. Subscribe to be notified.
Animal X UnCut is a unique new web based series where you can watch interviews and sightings from Animal X and Animal X Natural Mystery Unit – uncut, and make up your own mind.
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OK Crypto fans. How far do you want to blow your mind? Do you believe in Darwinism or Creationism?
This one deals with our actual existence as a menagerie of animals occupying a planet. In a galaxy. In a universe. In space somewhere.
Does all life come from goo? Spontaneously coming into existence? Or God – some kind of amazing alien creator who designed the whole box and dice.
If you do or don’t believe in Darwinism and evolution, then you should watch this clip. It’s from a documentary called Unlocking the Mystery of Life (Illustra Media) and looks at the basics science of molecular biology and the validity of Darwinism in the 21st century.
Sounds a bit too deep? Don’t you believe it. If I get it, then you will get it. It’ll stimulate you intellect and excite your soul.
It won’t change your mind but it will make you think. Trigger that basic question in your head. Why?
Basically this video is looking at the very basics of what life is. The chemistry. The mechanics. The mathematics but in a very simply and exciting way. Looking how bio-chemistry works with Darwinism.
No really, I mean exciting. Get you’re mind around what they are saying. Whether their take on it is right or wrong. It’s certainly arguable in my book.
“The science is solid and the computer animations are superb. This is a great film.”
—Philip S. Skell, Ph.D. Member, National Academy of Sciences
This next clip is much simpler but you really need to have watched the other clip (above) to give you full understanding of their argument.
You could watch this clip first but it will leave you with questions the other clip will have answered.
Nevertheless enjoy this brain food and please leave a comment.
The world is full of mysteries, but none like the mysterious animals that live in the world’s oceans, rivers and lakes. Here’s 6 of the top mysterious animal sighting. What do you think they are?
Top 6 mysterious animal sightings
From the Bloop, a mysterious creature that lives in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, to the San Fransisco Bay monster to the monster of Lake Van in Turkey. There are hundreds of stories from all over the world about mysterious monsters of the deep.
These creatures have been seen by hundreds of people but no one knows what these creatures are.
This video clip looks at six of the most mysterious creatures seen by humans.
Caddy from Cadboro Bay near Vancouver Canada. Sightings go back centuries.
Morgawr from Cornwall in England – said to have been conjured by by a Wizard.
New England Sea Serpent. With links to Indigenous American culture
Swedish Lake Monster. One of Europe’s most mysterious. It even has ‘protected’ status.
Howick Falls monster. The Inkanyumba a deadly giant snake like creature
The Monster of Lake Van. Another lake monster that has been around for centuries.
Top 6 mysterious animal sightings.
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Fossils shed light on bizarre reptile. A crocodile-sized creature that lived 242 million years ago was the first known vegetarian marine reptile, according to new fossil evidence.
Two specimens unearthed in China reveal details of the animal’s skull and how it fed.
Named Atopodentatus, scientists say its hammer-shaped skull helped it to feed on underwater plants.
Only a handful of marine reptiles, living or extinct, are known to be herbivores.
Dr Nick Fraser of National Museums Scotland, who worked on the fossil, said it belongs in the pages of a children’s storybook by Dr Seuss, which depicts animals with a strange jumble of features.
The reptile was “a bizarre, bizarre animal”, he explained.
“We envisage it scraping algae and the like off rocks underwater.
“Herbivorous marine reptiles are very rare – this is the oldest record that we know of.”
Strangely toothed
The first fossils of the creature were discovered a few years ago.
It was named Atopodentatus unicus, which is Latin for “unique strangely toothed”.
A reconstruction of the animal’s head
New fossils unearthed in China’s Yunnan Province by Chun Li of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing give a detailed picture of the animal’s skull.
The discoveries, unveiled in the journal, Science Advances, show that rather than having a zipper-like snout as previously thought, the animal had a wide hammer-headed jaw filled with peg-like front teeth.
Play-Doh
Scientists used clay to make a model of the jaw to work out how the animal fed.
“To figure out how the jaw fit together and how the animal actually fed, we bought some children’s clay, kind of like Play-Doh, and rebuilt it with toothpicks to represent the teeth,” said co-researcher Olivier Rieppel of the Field Museum in Chicago.
“We looked at how the upper and lower jaw locked together, and that’s how we proceeded and described it.”
He said Atopodentatus also helps tell a bigger story about the world’s largest mass extinction 252 million years ago.
It lived at a time when the Earth was recovering from the loss of 90% of all marine mammals.
“The existence of specialised animals like Atopodentatus unicus shows us that life recovered and diversified more quickly than previously thought,” he said.
“And it’s definitely a reptile that no one would have thought to exist – look at it, it’s crazy!”
What you can make with clay and toothpicks
Other bizarre sea and river monsters
There are still many strange creatures lurking in the waters around the world. From the Monster of Lake Van in Turkey to the various unidentified creatures that live off the west of of Britain, the Golden Gate San Fransisco Bay monster to the Altamaha-ha river monster of Georgia in the USA.
Here’s a video from Animal X Natural Mystery Unit that looks at sea and river monsters.
By News from Elsewhere…
…as found by BBC Monitoring
Contractors at a site in southern New Zealand have made an unexpected find while digging a trench – dozens of bones belonging to a long-extinct species of giant bird.
Workers spotted the bones during excavations in an area of South Canterbury which was once swamp land, the Stuff.co.nz website reports. They’ve been identified as belonging to a female South Island giant moa, an enormous flightless bird which roamed the area for millennia. One of the bones is thought to belong to a smaller male moa.
Stumbling upon moa bones is increasingly rare, according to South Canterbury Museum director Philip Howe. “This is quite a significant find because in this day and age we’re not finding moa bones all round the place like people did maybe 100 years ago,” he tells the site. “A discovery is quite a chance thing – it’s not something you can just hope to go out and find.”
Project manager Dave Sutton says the small size of the trench dug by his team made the discovery even more unlikely. “It’s not every day you dig a hole and find a moa,” he says. “Only one small hole and this is the result.”
Among the nine species of moa, the largest stood at about 2m (6.5ft) tall and weighed a whopping 250kg (550lb), while others were closer to the size of a turkey. Unlike other flightless birds, moa had lost all trace of ever having wings. They were hunted to extinction after Polynesian colonists arrived in New Zealand around AD1300.
How the newly excavated moa met their end isn’t clear. But Mr Howe says finding remains of both a male and female “begs the question: was this the tragic outcome of a Sunday picnic at the swamp with the moa family?”
Moa
Moa, extinct or not?
The moa is thought to have been eaten to extinction by New Zealand’s Maori people. But there are those who disagree. Like the people who claim to have seen one. Here’s a story of two me who claim to have seen a moa on New Zealand’s South Island.
Animal X is the first and premier TV series that looks at cryptozoology, paranormal, supernatural, aliens and UFO.
Its files go back to last century. As well as having files that are full of stories from today.
At last Animal X is opening its files for the first time to the public.
In Animal X Files
For the first time interviews with eyewitnesses, scientists, experts and others are going to be made available UN CUT right here on AnimalX.net, the official website of the TV series.
el Chupacabra
For the first time you will be able to see un-cut interviews with people who have been attacked by el Chupacabra. People who have seen and had a close encounter with Bigfoot.
People who have been abducted by aliens and people who seen lake and sea and river monsters.
People who have seen ghosts and much more.
Also interviews with scientists who try to explain what is going on.
People who believe we are in the ‘End Times’.
Experts who have also investigated these phenomena and have no explanation.
All Un-Cut.
Monsters
Animal X Files will also have uncut actuality from expeditions and hunts for these creatures.
Here’s the 2 trailers that will give you some idea of what you can expect.
Want to know more? want to be informed when these new videos are released?
Sign up on the left to be notified by email every time a new Animal X clip is uploaded.
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Animal X From the Cutting Room Floor trailer 1 – Looking for Mothman
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Scientists are using cutting-edge technology to map dinosaur tracks
Scientists are trying to reconstruct ancient Australian landscapes once roamed by some of the biggest dinosaurs to have ever walked the planet by surveying thousands of fossilised tracks in remote Western Australia.
Along a 100km stretch (62 miles) of coast in Western Australia’s Kimberley region, tens of thousands of dinosaur tracks are fossilised in sandstone.
The 130-million-year-old footprints are virtually the only record of dinosaurs in the western half of the continent.
They date to the Early Cretaceous Period when the continent was still connected by a land bridge to Antarctica and covered in towering conifer forests.
Unique snapshot
“These tracks are at least 15 to 20 million years older than the majority of dinosaur fossils that have been found at sites in eastern Australia,” says Dr Steve Salisbury, a palaeontologist from the University of Queensland.
“They provide a very detailed snapshot of the dinosaur fauna from a time and place where there’s almost nothing else,” he told the BBC.
Drones and low-speed aircraft sweep over the prints on the rare times they are exposed by the sea
The fossils also hold immense cultural value for local indigenous communities.
Dr Salisbury says they feature in an Aboriginal “song cycle” that extends along the coastline, and that “knowledge of the tracks probably extends back thousands of years”.
He was first invited to the region in 2011 by the Goolarabooloo people who were trying to halt the development of a proposed A$35bn ($24bn; £16bn) natural gas precinct at an area known as James Price Point, 50km north of Broome.
In 2013, two years after a section of the coast was granted National Heritage Status, the development was finally cancelled.
Dr Salisbury is now leading a project to digitally catalogue the fossils and reconstruct the landscapes these dinosaurs wandered through.
‘We’re talking huge, huge tracks’
To date, researchers have identified about 20 different types of tracks. The footprints include three-toed tracks belonging to carnivorous theropods that walked on two legs, as well as tracks believed to have been made by armoured dinosaurs like stegosaurs.
Some of the Broome dinosaur tracks are similar to those found at Lark Quarry in central-western Queensland, which the team recently determined were probably made by a large, two-legged plant-eating dinosaur similar to Muttaburrasaurus.
The Broome tracks are similar to those made elsewhere by Muttaburrasaurus
There are also large cylindrical depressions stamped into the earth by at least five different types of long-necked, long-tailed sauropods.
These are the only sauropod tracks in Australia and some of the depressions measure longer than 1.5m.
“They’re beyond the size that you normally expect dinosaur tracks to be,” says Dr Salisbury.
“We’re talking huge, huge tracks, probably made by some of the biggest animals to ever walk the planet.”
The tracks are found along coastal rock shelves and reefs, which are subject to some of the most extreme tides in Australia, with water levels rising 10 to 11m daily, he says.
Many are only exposed for a few hours each day, and only a few days each year, meaning the team has to work quickly.
“It’s a dynamic landscape, and we’ve seen tracks disappear altogether in the time we’ve been working there. Some get buried by shifting sands, while others are destroyed by pounding surf,” says Dr Salisbury.
To speed up the process of mapping and imaging the tracks, the team has adopted a range of new remote sensing technologies.
Remote-controlled drones
In addition to making physical moulds of the footprints using a rapid-setting silicon rubber and taking photographs on ground-mounted tripods, the team is now using a handheld LiDAR unit developed by Australia’s national science organisation, the CSIRO.
Dr Salisbury and colleagues can work out how the dinosaurs were moving by using the drones to view them from the air
They are also taking aerial photographs of the track sites using a remote controlled drone and a specialised, low-speed aircraft, which is also fitted with LiDAR.
A LiDAR uses pulsating laser light coupled with a global positioning system. It records the points where the laser light reflects off hard surfaces, combining data from multiple passes to generate a detailed 3D map of the coastline, says Prof Jorg Hacker, director of Airborne Research Australia at Flinders University.
Prof Hacker, the other main investigator on the project, says that for a 3km stretch of beach he usually spends about 1.5 hours flying his motor glider, making roughly 30 passes at altitudes between 20 to 100 metres.
Dr Salisbury says his team can now contextualise the tracks over larger geographic areas, and can better understand which direction the dinosaurs were travelling, whether they were walking or running, and if they were interacting or crossing the landscape in groups, searching for food, or trying to escape predators.
“We can, to a degree, accurately reconstruct scenes that happened 130 million years ago. That’s not imagination, that’s piecing it together from the evidence found in the rocks,” he says.
Best in the world?
“It’s a powerful way of bringing these ancient worlds back to life.”
Footprints require favourable circumstances to fossilise but when that happens a broad array of information is captured in the fossils, says Professor Anthony Martin, a palaeontologist from Emory University in the US specialising in animal tracks, who is not involved in the project.
“From a single, well-preserved dinosaur track way, we can determine the approximate type of dinosaur, its size, its speed, gait, and even how it was reacting to other dinosaurs or the landscape around it,” says Prof Martin.
“Once these tracks are properly surveyed, I would not be surprised if this area turns out to be one of the best dinosaur track sites in the world,” he says.
Mega Fauna
Once the dinosaurs died out Australia was occupied by the Mega Fauna. Wombats the size of a VW Beetle. Twenty foot tall Kangaroos and the largest carnivorous marsupial – Thylocaleo Carnifex – the Marsupial Lion.
Here is the documentary we made with NOVA and NHK on the excavation from a deep cave underneath Australia’s Nullarbor Plane, of the only fully intact thylacoleo skeleton