Just for the Fun of it: Big Trouble for Asia's Giant Catfish

John Roach, for National Geographic News, May 15, 2003

This time of year, fishers along the banks of the Mekong River in the village of Chiang Khong in northern Thailand wait expectant, as they have for hundreds of years, for the arrival and harvest of giant catfish. But this year the catfish may never come.

"No fish have been captured in Thailand since 2001 and the giant catfish is in danger of disappearing from Thailand completely," said Zeb Hogan, a fisheries biologist at the University of California at Davis.

Hogan leads the Mekong Fish Conservation Project, an effort to protect vulnerable populations of migratory fish in the Mekong River Basin, including the critically endangered Mekong giant catfish (Pangasianodon gigas). The catfish is one of several fish species presently endangered in the watershed.

The project is supported by the National Geographic Society's Conservation Trust, the Cambodian Department of Fisheries, and the conservation group Save Cambodia's Wildlife.

Fish Threats

Called Pla Buek in Thai, the giant catfish can weigh as much as 650 pounds (300 kilograms) and measure up to 10 feet (3 meters) in length. They are the largest scaleless freshwater fish in the world. Chainarong Sretthachau, director of the conservation group Southeast Asia Rivers Network in Chiang Mai, Thailand, said threats to the giant catfish include commercial fishing, their touting to tourists as a food said to impart wisdom, and dynamite blasting of their spawning ground.

"The rapids and whirlpool ecosystem in Chiang Khong-Chiang Saen is the only area in the Mekong that giant catfish use as a spawning ground and it will be destroyed by Mekong rapids blasting," said Sretthachau.

The blasting project is part of navigation channel improvements planned by the governments of China, Burma, Thailand, and Lao People's Democratic Republic. According to Sretthachau, the spawning ground rapids will be dynamited in December.

As part of their project, Hogan and his colleague Heng Kong, a researcher with Cambodia's Department of Fisheries, buy live fish from fishers in Cambodia. They weigh and measure the fish, gather DNA samples for genetic studies, tag endangered fish, and release them back into the wild.

Over the short-term, the project keeps a handful of endangered fish, including the giant catfish, alive as researchers gain insight into fish migration patterns, habitat use, and mortality rates. "In the longer term, we hope our migration studies and environmental awareness campaign will lead toward more sustainable management of Cambodia's fisheries," said Hogan.

Buy and Release

Hogan launched the conservation project in Chiang Khong, Thailand, in 2000 but moved it to Cambodia in 2001 due to the collapse of Thailand's giant catfish fishery. "Cambodia is now the last place in the world where the giant catfish is captured on a regular basis," he said.

But Cambodia's giant catfish numbers are also low. Fishers along the Tonle Sap River, a tributary to the Mekong, set bag nets from October to December. In 2000, fishers hauled out 11 giant catfish. In 2001 they caught seven. In 2002 they caught just five...

Giant "Mega" Mammal Tooth; Probably a Cat

"The coal beds and seams in Pa. are all Carboniferous, supposedly the age of coal formation prior to the triassic and other dinosaur ages, and animal life in the Carboniferous is supposed to have consisted of invertibrates, insects, fish, and amphibeans at best. Sections of the Carboniferous age, in fact, appear to be termed "Mississippian" and "Pennsylvanian".

This tooth, is a tooth belonging to a very, very large mammal and should not have been found in rocks of the carboniferous. It's a petrified lower canine tooth and as you can see from its size, you would not have wanted to meet its owner.

This find would be just as out of place as would be evidence of man or dinosaur in rocks of this age. This find was made by Ed Conrad along with many other things he has found in coal that prove that something is wrong with the geological time scales favored by modern science.

Duck Soup for a Month

By Grant Holloway
CNN Sydney

ALICE SPRINGS, Australia (CNN) -- The remains of giant geese, some weighing up to 500 kilograms, or more than half a ton, have been discovered in the central Australian desert.

Paleontologist Peter Murray, from the Museum of Central Australia, told CNN Thursday the giant, flightless birds were originally thought to be related to ostriches or emus. But as more bones were unearthed it became apparent they were "definitely geese of some kind".

The fossils are located at Alcoota, about 150 kilometers (95 miles) north east of the central Australian town of Alice Springs. Murray said there were three species of giant goose at the site; two smaller types weighing between 150 kilograms and 200 kilograms, and the larger Dromornis Stirtoni, which tipped the scales at a massive 500 kilograms.

The giant birds -- thought to be the largest that ever lived -- roamed central Australia from "15 million years ago" up until just 30,000 years ago.

The environment is believed to have been vastly different from today's desert conditions, with forests, grasslands and a plentiful water supply. Murray said the latest archeological dig at the site had revealed larger numbers of the smaller species of birds, but they had yet to find a skull.

The team was hoping further excavations over the next few weeks would unearth a skull, enhancing their understanding of the birds. Skulls found of the larger birds show the giant geese had huge beaks and jaws capable of great force but did not have the beak or claws of a carnivore. As a result, it is uncertain what the giant birds may have eaten.

Giant Oyster Fossils Found at 13,000 Feet

Tasted like chicken? We’re not sure but, giant, fossilized oysters, over 500 of them have been found nearly two miles above sea level in the Andes mountains of Peru.

The bi-valve, ocean dwelling mollusks indicate quite obviously that at one time, despite the high altitude, that these mountains had once been under water—as would happen in say—a worldwide flood.

The fossils were found by Cuban paleontologist, Arturo Vildozola near the town of Acostambo in January of 2001. The fossilized oysters (Plagiostoma giganteum) reached a width of 12 feet and weighed up to 650 pounds.

Vildozola places the age of the fossils at “200 million years” (sic) . The fossils were disseminated over a wide area. The oysters were found closed suggesting that they had not been eaten, or had died a natural death. The shells of dead oysters tend to open and the fact that they were closed suggests that they were prevented from opening by burial in silt and earth.

In January 1993, three hikers in New Zealand’s Craigieburn Range (west of the city of Christchurch) reportedly saw a roughly 6 foot tall flightless bird.

They saw it at a distance of approximately 115 to 130 feet for about 30 seconds and managed to take a grainy photo before it ran off into the forest. They believe it was a moa.

The first humans known on the islands, the Maoris, arrived about 1000 years ago. The birds were believed to have become extinct before 1769 when the first Europeans arrived.

There were sporadic sightings in the 19th century, and although many expeditions looked for moas, no live or recently dead specimens were found.

New Zealand scientists admit a few birds may have survived into the 19th century, however a possible 20th century survival has been dismissed and sightings were generally ignored.

The three hikers explored the spot were the bird was seen and photographed what they believed were tracks it had left. They kept the sighting to themselves for two days until the 35mm film was developed and they could make an official report to the Department of Conservation (DOC).

The witnesses were apparently credible and the agency seemed impressed, making tentative plans for field work in the sighting area. Although DOC had developed a theoretical management plan for moas several years earlier, like true bureaucrats, they did no field work to follow up the report.

No one went to the site before rain washed away possible evidence such as footprints, dung, or feathers. Three days after the report was filed, five days after the sighting, the report was made public.

As readers may have guessed, there was an ensuing media circus, false allegations of one of the hikers being a practical joker were levied and serious scientific interest dried up. Many scientists appear to have a genuine phobia to public criticism that has repeatedly slowed confirmation of new discoveries and has crippled many investigations.

Independent photographic analysis by the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch shows promising results. The analysis confirmed the approximate size and distance by the hikers. The image was blurry, but three-dimensional– a silhouette cut out and a model of a moa had been ruled out.

There had been speculation that an emu or ostrich (both large and non-native birds) could have caused the sighting, but neither are large enough and no escaped emus or ostriches are known on the island.

The analysis also ruled out 4 legged animals such as red deer (introduced from Europe) or a llama (possibly escaped).

The conclusions were: it was a bird, a very large bird with a thickly feathered “neck” area. Photo analysis of the negative produced no further details. The DOC, which had already publicly denounced the sighting after the media uproar, finally expressed interest in examining the negative. However, the cameraman was understandably unreceptive to the organization.

As with many cryptozoology tales this one is inviting, tantalizing, and unresolved. The witnesses appear very reliable, however a blurry photograph, no matter how promising, can not be taken as hard proof.

Unfortunately, with the frequent advances in computer imaging techniques, soon a photograph may be no evidence at all.

The point we are trying to make with this section, we remind you is that dinosaurs weren't the only huge creatures populating the earth back in the day. Evolutionsits and materialists utilize the concept of uniformism to build their models of creeping, slow evolution. How did such creatures survive at weights and sizes that would make it difficult to walk, much less run? As you know, creationists contend that conditions were quite different prior to the flood and/or prior to the time death came into the world.

 

Big Birds on the Green River, By Sandi Doughton
Seattle Times staff reporter

Paleontologists call it the Cinderella syndrome: Like Prince Charming with his glass slipper, they often identify fossil tracks by simply figuring out which animal's foot best fits the print.

John Patterson with track.  

When John Patterson stumbled across what could be one of the biggest fossil finds in the Northwest, a fairy-tale ending seemed assured. The three-toed track he found near the Green River in 1992 was a near-perfect fit for Diatryma, a flightless bird that stood as tall as Shaquille O'Neal and weighed 350 pounds or more.

Then two experts examined the track and declared it a fake.

It was shelved away in a state storehouse and forgotten by almost everybody — except Patterson, a Maple Valley inventor, engineer and rockhound whose persistence paid off this fall when a world authority on prehistoric footprints said he's convinced the track is genuine.

 

"All my experience suggested to me that this was not a fake," said Martin Lockley, whose Dinosaur Trackers Research Group at the University of Colorado has collected and studied thousands of fossil footprints from around the globe. "This was a huge bird."

Lockley joined Patterson in arguing the fossil's authenticity in an article published recently in the paleontological journal Ichnos.

He estimates the footprint was made 45 million years ago, a time when Western Washington was a subtropical flood plain lush with tree-sized ferns and populated by dwarf hippos and horses the size of fox terriers.

The footlong track would be the first ever discovered from Diatryma (pronounced Di-uh-tri-mah), though Lockley says it may also have been made by an as-yet-unknown relative. It would also extend the known range for the big bird, which was previously thought to have lived only east of the Rocky Mountains.

And it would be an exciting discovery for a region that was under water during the reign of the dinosaurs and is today covered with dense vegetation and ancient layers of lava that make fossil hunting frustrating.

Real or not? "This is a really cool animal," said Thor Hansen, a marine paleontologist at Western Washington University in Bellingham, where the track is currently on display. "I lean toward believing it's real."

Not everyone agrees, including John Rensberger, the recently retired curator of vertebrate paleontology for the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle.

He examined the track 12 years ago and found several things fishy about it, including what he thought were chisel marks and scratches, and little indication that the sediments in the siltstone were compressed by the weight of a giant bird.

"There just wasn't any way to verify it was a track," Rensberger said.

"There was a good probability that whatever it was, it was modified by people."

Lockley heard about the controversy and was skeptical of the skeptics. "I thought even then that the case it was a fake was just extremely, extremely slim," he said.

 

 

Such disagreements are common in science, but especially prevalent in paleontology. The field has long been marked by vicious feuds and rivalries.

Two of the earliest dinosaur hunters, Edward Cope and Charles Marsh, waged open war in the late 1800s, stealing fossils from each other's digs, sabotaging skeletons and ridiculing each other in print.

"You have to have a thick skin in this field," said George Mustoe, a research technician specializing in paleontology at Western. "What happened to John [Patterson] is that he got caught in the crossfire."

A controversial find

Patterson discovered the track while stalking steelhead at Flaming Geyser State Park near Auburn. "I got on top of a big chunk of rock to get a better view of the water and see if there were any fish, then I looked down and saw it," he said. "It was obvious to me that it was a pretty amazing track."

An avid fossil hunter, Patterson's first thought was that it might be a dinosaur footprint. But the rock layer it came from was formed millions of years after the giant beasts became extinct.

Patterson started calling experts all over the country, finally connecting with Allison Andors, a researcher at the American Museum of Natural History in New York who had recently written his doctoral thesis on Diatryma.

Andors came to Washington to examine the track and site where it was found. He couldn't find any other tracks and concurred with Rensberger that it probably was bogus. Though no one ever accused Patterson of fabricating the track himself, the unspoken suggestion was always there. He's an accomplished rock carver, and his home is decorated with his handiwork, including a nearly life-sized head in deep green jade.

He also had angered Washington State Parks by removing the fossil because he feared it might be lost if the river level rose. The agency reclaimed the track and refused to give it back.

"Everybody was unhappy with me," Patterson recalled. A man of many interests, Patterson has been an actor and an aerospace engineer and has written seven unpublished novels and screenplays. More recently, he invented a tool for cleaning house gutters and a wraparound headset that allows people on airplanes to watch movies without a screen.

Used to solving problems and getting people with different interests to work together, he was frustrated to find the scientific door slammed in his face. He kept researching Diatryma and bugging experts to give his discovery another look.

He finally got Lockley's attention, and arranged for a cast of the track to be sent to Denver. Seeing the track in person, Lockley said he was most impressed with the deeply incised toe marks. The only other evidence of Diatryma are a few partial skeletons. Based on those bones and comparisons with other giant bird species, Andors had hypothesized that the creature was probably not a fierce predator, but a slow-moving herbivore with blunt claws and a strong bill for cracking nuts.

The notion of blunt claws was a sharp departure from the conventional wisdom — yet three broad "toenails" are clearly visible in the track Patterson found.

"In order for somebody to fake a track like that, they would have had to have as much or more knowledge than any specialist in the world today," Lockley said. They also would have had to make the track look as if it had weathered for decades or centuries.

"I just don't see how you could do it. It's got this organized feel to it, like that animal really stepped into that sediment and dug in its toes." Lockley gave the track a scientific name that mirrors its history: Ornithoformipes controversus, which means "controversial bird track."

Now that the footprint has emerged into the light again and is available for scholarly examination at Western, Patterson hopes experts and amateurs alike will be inspired to search for more tracks.

"I kind of like that it's still controversial," he said, "but once you find the second one, you know for sure it's genuine."

"The trilobites, and other mega fauna outlined on your website, existed in a hyperbaric (high pressure) atmospheric environment, functioning before the Genesis Flood occurred.

The high partial pressures for CO2 and O2 increases metabolic rates, plus the shielding effects to the H2Ov and much strong geomagnetic field...all resulted in increased longevity and overall size of both flora and fauna in a predeluvian world. This is the norm as seen in the paleontology record....Dr. Cliff Paiva

Giant Trilobite Discovered

About twice the size of the previous record holder
By BBC News Online science editor Dr David Whitehouse

Trilobites were very widely distributed. The creature, which dates from 4,450 years ago, measures 72 centimetres in length. This is about twice the size of the previous record holder.

Trilobites are an extinct group of sea-dwelling arthropods (animals with an outer skeleton and jointed body and limbs) that are distantly related to crabs, scorpions and beetles.

They are probably the most common fossils of the Paleozoic Era (about 5-2 thousand years ago) and scientists use them to help date different layers of rock.

"A trilobite of this size really is an amazing discovery," said Dr Graham Young, a member of the team that discovered it.

Useful creatures

The specimen is an example of a previously unknown species, and was found by researchers studying ancient tropical coasts, of the Late Ordovician and Early Silurian geological periods (4 thousand years ago), in Manitoba, Canada.

When the fossil was unearthed, most of its segmented exoskeleton was missing and only the rear most portion of the tail shield was present.

Scientists realised just what a monster they had when they started to clean up the specimen. The fossil is now on display in the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature in Winnipeg.

Most trilobites are between 3 and 10 cm (1 - 4 inches) in length. The creatures were quickly and widely distributed, making them useful tools to compare the ages of rock strata in different parts of the world.

Colder climates

"There is nothing familiar about this particular specimen! It is an important and amazing find," says Manitoba Museum's Dr Bob Elias.

The fossil is now on display to the public. Dr Graham Young said: "We have found a very unusual specimen that illustrates some of the diversity and weirdness of ancient life. A trilobite of this size really is an amazing discovery."

In July 1998, a team of scientists set out for northern Manitoba hoping to find fossils similar to those uncovered by previous digs, like the 43-cm (17-inch) long trilobite excavated in the area a decade before.

The team struck lucky just outside their original search area. The trilobite's size contradicts the idea that larger animals are more commonly associated with colder climates.

Although northern Manitoba is now sub-arctic, hundreds of thousands of years ago it would have been submerged in salty seawater located on the equator.

Extinct Giant Deer Survived Ice Age

James Owen in London
for National Geographic News
October 6, 2004

Saber-toothed cats, mastodons, giant sloths, woolly rhinos, and many other big, shaggy mammals are widely thought to have died out around the end of the last ice age, some 5,500 years ago.

More recently, however, evidence has emerged that at least two of the spectacular megafauna of the Pleistocene era (4,000 years ago) clung on until recent times.

In the 1990s mammoth remains found on an island north of Arctic Siberia revealed the animals still roamed a tiny corner of the planet just 3,600 years ago. Tantalizingly, this was almost a thousand years after the first pyramids were built in ancient Egypt.

Giant Irish Elk.

Now a new study, published tomorrow in the science journal Nature, suggests that another striking mammal, the Irish elk, likewise lived way beyond the last ice age.

The Irish elk is also known as the giant deer (Megaloceros giganteus - a scientific name for a very big deer). Analysis of ancient bones and teeth by scientists based in Britain and Russia show the huge herbivore survived until about 2,000 B.C.—more than three millennia later than previously believed.

The research team says this suggests additional factors, besides climate change, probably hastened the giant deer's eventual extinction. The factors could include hunting or habitat destruction by humans.

The Irish elk, so-called because its well-preserved remains are often found in lake sediments under peat bogs in Ireland, first appeared about 4,000 years ago in Europe and central Asia.

It stood 7 feet (2.1 meters) at the shoulder. Adult males had massive antlers that spanned 12 feet (3.7 meters) and weighed up to 88 pounds (40 kilos).

 

Through a combination of radiocarbon dating of skeletal remains and the mapping of locations where the remains were unearthed, the team shows the Irish elk was widespread across Europe before the last "big freeze." The deer's range later contracted to the Ural Mountains, in modern-day Russia, which separate Europe from Asia.

Last Stand in Siberia

The giant deer made its last stand in western Siberia, some 3,000 years after the ice sheets receded, said the study's co-author, Adrian Lister, professor of palaeobiology at University College London, England.

"The eastern foothills of the Urals became very densely forested about 5,050 years ago, which could have pushed them on to the plain," he said. He added that pollen analysis indicates the region then became very dry in response to further climactic change, leading to the loss of important food plants. "In combination with human pressures, this could have finally snuffed them out," Lister said.

Hunting by humans has often been put forward as a contributory cause of extinctions of the Pleistocene megafauna. The team, though, said their new date for the Irish elk's extinction hints at an additional human-made problem—habitat destruction.

Lister said, "We haven't got just hunting 5,000 years ago—this was also about the time the first neolithic people settled in the region. They were farmers who would have cleared the land."

The presence of humans may help explain why the Irish elk was unable to tough out the latest of many climatic fluctuations—periods it had survived in the past.

Meanwhile, Lister cast doubt on another possible explanation for the deer's demise—the male's huge antlers. Some scientists have suggested this exaggerated feature—the result of females preferring stags with the largest antlers, possibly because they advertised a male's fitness—contributed to the mammal's downfall.

They say such antlers would have been a serious inconvenience in the dense forests that spread northward after the last ice age.

But, Lister said, "That's a hard argument to make, because the deer previously survived perfectly well through wooded interglacials [warmer periods between ice ages]."

Moose Competition

He added, however, that the animal may have also suffered from increased competition from other species such as moose, which spread rapidly once the climate warmed. U.S. scientists from the University of Minnesota say the new study makes it clear that the reasons why so many Ice Age mammals went extinct are far more complex than previously realized.

Writing independently in tomorrow's Nature, biologists John Pastor and Ron Moen state: "The [Irish elk] finding lends weight to the idea that there is no one explanation for the so-called Pleistocene extinctions."

Alongside climate fluctuations and vegetation changes, they say, human activity, competing species, and other ecological pressures need to be taken into account for each animal.

Lister said, "Whereas people have been looking for single blanket explanation to account for all these species going extinct, we're saying you've got a range of species with different ecologies and adaptations."

So while the Irish elk preferred relatively temperate conditions and semi-woodland habitats, the woolly mammoth was adapted to cold temperatures and open tundra. "Past climate changes ( like a sudden drop to 300 below zero, froze them solid in about 5 hrs) would have impacted on those two species differently," Lister added.

And if the mammoth and Irish elk both survived, what of the other shaggy megafauna that supposedly perished during the last ice age? The woolly rhinos and cave bears of Europe and Asia, the saber-toothed cats, the mastodons and giant sloths of North and South America—could some of these have made it through too?

"It's entirely possible," Lister said. "I think there are all sorts of surprises around the corner."

If you believe the False "theory" of evolution, thats all it is, then you accept that this specimen is a "distant relative" of its smaller relatives living today, "millions of years" later. If, however you believe the Bible, as we do here at s8int.com, you understand that this "animal" is a larger version of the same type that exists today, who were alive prior to the flood. As we've demonstrated on this site--not just the dinosaurs were extremely large at one time.

If you read about their oxygen requirements at this size, you'll recognize further evidence that at one time the earth had lower gravity and a higher content of oxygen in the atmosphere.

This bug's a big one - 8 feet long - and New Mexico scientists

nabbed some of its fossils
By Sue Vorenberg
Tribune Reporter
April 14, 2005

Think mosquitoes and millipedes are nasty?

Then don't look too deeply into New Mexico's past.

Today, you can squish the tiny bugs, but 4,000 years ago, 8-foot-long millipedes were in control of the landscape, and humans weren't even a gleam in evolution's eye.

New Mexico is now a world record holder of such "exquisitely grotesque creatures," as one worker at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science calls them.

Evidence of the largest arthropleura - its technical name - ever found was recovered by the museum on Friday.

"In today's world, you couldn't have a bug this big," said Spencer Lucas, paleontology curator at the museum. "This is basically the Tyrannosaurus of the Pennsylvanian period, millions of years before dinosaurs evolved. If you took a time machine back, you'd definitely want to check your sleeping bag for these suckers before getting in." The Pennsylvanian time period lasted from 325 to 280 million years ago.

The museum has not found the bug itself. What it did find in a remote canyon near Española were the fossilized tracks of such a creature - which looks like a 3-by-8 speed bump with flat wings holding hundreds of nasty, ribbed, horseshoe-shaped feet.

"This is a very spectacular thing," said Adrian Hunt, director of the museum, who went out in the field with the team to recover it. "Think of it as a much bigger cross between a millipede and a centipede. It probably lived in swampy forest debris. Something like this has never been found before in the Western United States."

Evidence of the creatures has also been found in Nova Scotia and Scotland, but Jorg Schneider, an international expert on them and a paleontologist from the Freiberg Mining Academy in Germany, said New Mexico's find is evidence of the biggest arthropleura ever.

The second-largest creature was probably a few inches smaller than the one found in New Mexico. The New Mexico track is 39.3 centimeters wide, compared with the second-largest track, in Scotland, which is 36 centimeters wide, Schneider said.

Schnieder came to New Mexico for a two-week visit to look at the track and other New Mexico rocks from the same time period, he said.

"One question we have is, could such a large beast live on plant material only?" Schneider said. "In millipedes from the modern era, we know that scolopender (a type of millipede) is a predator.

Possibly these big extinct versions also ate other animals. This was the top of the food chain - with no natural enemy - for about 40 to 50 million years during the Pennsylvanian."

The creatures might have been vegetarians, but their large size suggests they might have eaten early reptiles that later evolved into dinosaurs and mammals, Schneider said. One favorite snack could have been the pelycosaur, a relative of the dimetrodon, a small, sail-backed lizard common in that age, Lucas said.

"We're still really not sure what they ate," Lucas said. "This guy was probably out patrolling the forest floor eating smaller bugs - which were still pretty big by today's standards - and maybe eating small vertebrates. New Mexico was near the equator then, and the land was much warmer and wetter."

Arthropleura died out at the end of the Pennsylvanian, probably because the amount of oxygen in the air was reduced from 30 percent during that time period to closer to the 21 percent we have today, Lucas said.

"They just couldn't survive at that size in modern air," Lucas said. "Their lungs weren't as evolved as ours. For an insect to get that big, you'd need to have a lot more oxygen in the air. These guys were an evolutionary dead end."

Millipedes and centipedes aren't directly related to arthropleura, he added, but might be from a related branch of the now-extinct creature's family tree, Lucas added. "Breathing, food, locomotion are all problematic for a bug that big," Lucas said. "When the world changed, they just couldn't adapt."

Ice Age Armadillos the Size of Cars, Fossil Shows

Builders have found the fossil of a giant armadillo, which lived up to 2,500 years ago and would have been the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, in southern Peru.

"They were carrying out work inside a private home and stumbled upon this surprise during the digging," Pedro Luna, an archaeologist from the National Institute of Culture, said.

The armadillo order first evolved around 50 million years ago in South America.

The type found in Cusco was a glyptodon, one of the biggest ancient armadillos from the Ice Ages.

"It was an animal that appeared 2,000 years before Christ and would have died out 1,000 to 500 years BC because of a freeze," Mr Luna said.

He said the fossil was "almost complete" and was two metres long including the tail, 1.1 metres wide and with an average height of almost one metre.

He said the animal would have been the size of "a Volkswagen".

Mr Luna said it was the fifth such fossil found since 1998 in Cusco, proving that there was a large lake and valley in the area with lush vegetation. Armadillos are herbivores.

The glyptodon, which means "carved tooth", had short legs with clawed toes, a dome-shaped bony shell composed of plates measuring one to seven centimetres thick, rings of bony armour on its tail and armour on its head.

DUBLIN -- The giant reptiles that flew above the earth until about 4,400 years ago could have grown to twice the size originally thought with wingspans of at least 18 meters, a paleontologist said on Thursday.

That would be almost the same width as the 64 foot fully extended wingspan of an F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft and roughly five times bigger than an albatross, which ranks among the birds with the largest wingspans in the modern world.

Dr David Martill of the University of Portsmouth in southern England, said his research on pterosaur wings appeared to solve the problem of how such enormous creatures managed to take to the skies and stay there.

Recent fossil finds in Mexico and Israel added weight to the theory that this prehistoric, flying reptile, which became extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs, could have been much bigger than many had realized.

"We haven't officially announced this yet but officially,  it might have been two times bigger," he told journalists at the British Association for the Advancement of Science's annual festival in the Irish capital.

"BIG FRAGMENTS"

Martill said fellow academic and collaborator Dr Eberhard "Dino" Frey of the Natural History museum in Karlsruhe, Germany, had recently found distinctive fossilized footprints in Mexico pointing to a creature with a wingspan "in excess of 18 meters (60 ft)."

 

"Even though they are just fragments, they are bloody big fragments," he said of the fossils. "We also have finger bones with really rather magnificent diameters."

Despite its size, Martill believes ( he hopes, he wishes & he prays )  that his studies of the bone structure and tissue of a pterosaur wing show it could have flown "really rather elegantly."

"The wing membrane is really very, very thin," he said, adding that the samples were about half a millimeter thick. "One of the other things we found out that was excitingly new was a very different shoulder joint."

The elaborate structure of the wing, more like that of a bat than a bird, combined with hollow bones and a body not much bigger than a human torso would have kept weight to a minimum.

"One imagines that the take off problems were less ... particularly if you add the fact that they were very, very lightly constructed to this enormous wing membrane area."  ( how did these guys get so smart, my dog could have told them all this)

Martill said he had established that the wing was locked into the bottom of the body rather than the top, providing a greater surface area to benefit from the thermal air currents that give lift during flight.

More cumbersome would have been the neck, stretching to three meters in length and attached to a skull that could have added an additional two meters. Although not very aerodynamic, it might have allowed the pterosaur to pick up prey from the sea without flying dangerously close, Martill suggested.

As for why they grew so big, it could have been a function of age: "One of the reasons might be that they just kept on growing," rather than reaching an adult size when growth stops.

Swiss Unearth Giant Camel Bones

Researchers from Basel and Zurich universities have discovered a new species of giant camel that lived thousands of years ago.

Bones uncovered in Syria reveal that the animal was more than three metres tall - closer in size to a giraffe than a modern camel.

"Between July and August we found several giant camel bones from different animals, which confirmed that this was a new species," said Jean-Marie Le Tensorer, professor of prehistory at Basel University.

The scientists unearthed more than 20 bone fragments from different layers of rock, leading them to believe that the animals had lived over a period of thousands of years.

The bone fragments – from the foot, shoulder and jaw - have been dated back to 5,000 years ago. All are around twice the normal size for a camel.

Tools made from animal foot bones were found close to the site, indicating that people had hunted these large animals.

"This find is sensational as it could help us understand the life of the camel," said anthropologist Peter Schmid of Zurich University.

Scientists don't know much about the history of the camel, and don't know whether it or the one-humped dromedary came first.

The discovery was made near the village of El Kown in central Syria, close to the site of one of the oldest human settlements ever excavated.