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With a bite as crushing as this, who needs a bark?
Source: Agencies |
March 18, 2009, Wednesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
A GIANT fossil sea monster found in the Arctic and known as "Predator X" had a bite that would make T-Rex look feeble, according to scientists.
The 15-meter, Jurassic-era marine reptile had a crushing 15 tonnes per square inch bite force, the Natural History Museum of Oslo University said of the new find on the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.
"With a skull that's more than 13 meters long you'd expect the bite to be powerful but this is off the scale," said Joern Hurum, an associate professor of vertebrate paleontology at the museum who led the international excavation last year.
"It's much more powerful than T-Rex," he said of the pliosaur reptile that would have been a top marine predator. Tyrannosaurus Rex was a top land carnivore among dinosaurs.
The scientists reconstructed the predator's head and estimated the force by comparing it with the similarly-shaped jaws of alligators in a park in Florida.
"The calculation is one of the largest bite forces ever calculated for any creature," the museum said of the bite, estimated with the help of evolutionary biologist Greg Erickson from Florida State University.
Predator X's bite was more than 10 times more powerful than any modern animal and four times the bite of a T-Rex, it said of the fossil, reckoned to be 147 million years old.
The teeth of the pliosaur were 30 centimeters long. The scientists reconstructed the reptile from a partial skull and 20,000 fragments of skeleton.
The pliosaur, estimated to have weighed 45 tonnes, was similar to but had more massive bones than another fossil sea monster found on Svalbard in 2007, also estimated at 15 meters long and the largest pliosaur to date.
Hurum had said of the first fossil pliosaur that it was big enough to chew on a small car. He said the bite estimates for the latest fossil forced a rethink. "This one is more like it could crush a Hummer," he said, referring to General Motors' huge sport utility vehicle.
The 15-meter, Jurassic-era marine reptile had a crushing 15 tonnes per square inch bite force, the Natural History Museum of Oslo University said of the new find on the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.
"With a skull that's more than 13 meters long you'd expect the bite to be powerful but this is off the scale," said Joern Hurum, an associate professor of vertebrate paleontology at the museum who led the international excavation last year.
"It's much more powerful than T-Rex," he said of the pliosaur reptile that would have been a top marine predator. Tyrannosaurus Rex was a top land carnivore among dinosaurs.
The scientists reconstructed the predator's head and estimated the force by comparing it with the similarly-shaped jaws of alligators in a park in Florida.
"The calculation is one of the largest bite forces ever calculated for any creature," the museum said of the bite, estimated with the help of evolutionary biologist Greg Erickson from Florida State University.
Predator X's bite was more than 10 times more powerful than any modern animal and four times the bite of a T-Rex, it said of the fossil, reckoned to be 147 million years old.
The teeth of the pliosaur were 30 centimeters long. The scientists reconstructed the reptile from a partial skull and 20,000 fragments of skeleton.
The pliosaur, estimated to have weighed 45 tonnes, was similar to but had more massive bones than another fossil sea monster found on Svalbard in 2007, also estimated at 15 meters long and the largest pliosaur to date.
Hurum had said of the first fossil pliosaur that it was big enough to chew on a small car. He said the bite estimates for the latest fossil forced a rethink. "This one is more like it could crush a Hummer," he said, referring to General Motors' huge sport utility vehicle.
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