Monster pliosaur found, according to BBC News, 27 October 2009. A British fossil collector has found the skull of a giant pliosaur on the Dorset coast of southern England. The skull is 2.4m (7ft 9in) long, and fossil experts estimate the animal was approximately 16m (52ft) long, making it one of the largest pliosaurs ever found. Pliosaurs were enormous aquatic reptiles with short necks, large crocodile-like heads and long sharp teeth. David Martill, a palaeontologist from the University of Portsmouth, described them: “These creatures were monsters. They had massive big muscles on their necks, and you would have imagined that they would bite into the animal and get a good grip, and then with these massive neck muscles they probably would have thrashed the animals around and torn chunks off. It would have been a bit of a blood bath.” When he saw the new fossil he commented: “This thing is absolutely enormous. When I saw it, it really just hit me how big it was.”
The skull is remarkably well preserved. Richard Forrest, a plesiosaur expert, commented: “Pliosaur skulls are very big, but not that robust, in general, and you tend to find them crushed flat – completely ‘pancaked’. What is fantastic about this new skull, not only is it absolutely enormous, but it is pretty much in 3D and not much distorted.” He went on to say: “You have this wonderful lower jaw – and you can just see from the depth and the thickness that this was immensely strong. It could have taken a human in one gulp; in fact, something like a T. rex would have been breakfast for a beast like this.”
Editorial Comment: Notice how all fossil finds are interpreted in terms of Darwin’s “war of nature”, in spite of the fact no one has actually observed the behaviour or diet of this creature. Large size and large teeth do not make anything a ferocious predator. They do (or did) enable them to eat large things. The God who was there records that in the beginning all animals ate plants. Therefore, in the beginning, Adam and Eve and T. rex could have gone for a swim in the sea without becoming breakfast for a pliosaur. But by the days of Noah, man’s rebellion had afflicted all of creation and the world was filled with violence including the animals, so if pliosaurs had become savage killers it was because of degeneration, not evolution. (Ref. reptiles, plesiosaurs, diet)
Evidence News 28 July 2010