WOW CHRISTY YOU WILL LOVE THIS

News in Science - Sea monsters found in desert - 25/05/2005 [This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1375598.htm]

Sea monsters found in desert
Judy Skatssoon
ABC Science Online
Wednesday, 25 May 2005

One of the marine reptile fossils found at the Boulia site. This nose once belonged to an ichthyosaur, which looked like a dolphin (Image: Ben Kear)

Australia is emerging as a missing link in the evolution of giant prehistoric marine reptiles, says a scientist who has discovered what may be a new species of plesiosaur.

A team from the University of Adelaide and the South Australian Museum unearthed the remains of the creature in Queensland, at what was once a vast inland ocean.

Palaeontologist Dr Ben Kear says he thinks the reptile discovered at the Boulia site may be related to a group of long-necked plesiosaurs known as elasmosaurs.Kear says teeth found on its jawbone provide the best clue that scientists are dealing with something new

.The jaw has a mouthful of "very large fangs" bunched together at the front and "no other plesiosaur ever discovered has teeth like that",

Kear says.This potentially new species of plesiosaur is one of two plesiosaurs found recently at Boulia.

The other set of remains belong to a kronosaur, which Kear says was a fearsome predator
resembling "a gigantic salt water crocodile with flippers instead of legs".

The two plesiosaurs were found with remains of prehistoric sea turtles, sharks and ichthyosaurs, reptiles shaped like dolphins.

The finds date back to the early Cretaceous period about 110 million years ago when the world's sea levels were at their highest and the Eromanga Sea covered much of central Australia. >>>continued

http://www.abc.net.au/cgi-bin/common/printfriendly.pl?/science/news/stories/s1375598.htm