This is on my forum so i just thought i would share it with you.
Sea reptile is biggest on record
By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News
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A fossilised "sea monster" unearthed on an Arctic island is the largest reptile of its type known to science, Norwegian scientists have announced.
The 150 million-year-old specimen was found on Spitspergen, in the Arctic island chain of Svalbard, in 2006.
The Jurassic-era leviathan is one of 40 sea reptiles from a fossil "treasure trove" uncovered on the island.
Nicknamed "The Monster", the immense creature would have measured 15m (50ft) from nose to tail.
And during the last field expedition, scientists discovered the remains of another so-called pliosaur which is thought to belong to the same species as The Monster - and may have been just as colossal.
The expedition's director Dr Jorn Hurum, from the University of Oslo Natural History Museum, said the Svalbard specimen is 20% larger than the previous biggest pliosaur - another massive pliosaur from Australia called Kronosaurus.
"We have carried out a search of the literature, so we now know that we have the biggest [pliosaur]. It's not just arm-waving anymore," Dr Hurum told the BBC News website.
"The flipper is 3m long with very few parts missing. On Monday, we assembled all the bones in our basement and we amazed ourselves - we had never seen it together before."
Pliosaurs were a short-necked form of plesiosaur, a group of extinct reptiles that lived in the world's oceans during the age of the dinosaurs.
A pliosaur's body was tear drop-shaped with two sets of powerful flippers which it used to propel itself through the water
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