
Seek & Find
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Survival, Dog Style! Could YOU?

Thursday, February 5, 2009
Reptillicus Gigantis(Big Snake)

Never mind the 40-foot snake that menaced Jennifer Lopez in the 1997 movie "Anaconda." Not even Hollywood could match a new discovery from the ancient world. Fossils from northeastern Colombia reveal the biggest snake ever discovered: a behemoth that stretched 42 to 45 feet long, reaching more than 2,500 pounds.
"This thing weighs more than a bison and is longer than a city bus," enthused snake expert Jack Conrad of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was familiar with the find.
"It could easily eat something the size of a cow. A human would just be toast immediately."
"If it tried to enter my office to eat me, it would have a hard time squeezing through the door," reckoned paleontologist Jason Head of the University of Toronto Missisauga.
Actually, the beast probably munched on ancient relatives of crocodiles in its rainforest home some 58 million to 60 million years ago, he said.
Head is senior author of a report on the find in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
(The same issue carries another significant report from the distant past. Scientists said they'd found the oldest known evidence of animal life, remnants of steroids produced by sponges more than 635 million years ago in Oman.)
The discoverers of the snake named it Titanoboa cerrejonensis ("ty-TAN-o-BO-ah sare-ah-HONE-en-siss"). That means "titanic boa from Cerrejon," the region where it was found.
While related to modern boa constrictors, it behaved more like an anaconda and spent almost all its time in the water, Head said. It could slither on land as well as swim.
Conrad, who wasn't involved in the discovery, called the find "just unbelievable.... It mocks your preconceptions about how big a snake can get."
Titanoboa breaks the record for snake length by about 11 feet, surpassing a creature that lived about 40 million years ago in Egypt, Head said. Among living snake species, the record holder is an individual python measured at about 30 feet long, which is some 12 to 15 feet shorter than typical Titanoboas, said study co-author Jonathan Bloch.
The beast was revealed in early 2007 at the University of Florida's Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville. Bones collected at a huge open-pit coal mine in Colombia were being unpacked, said Bloch, the museum's curator of vertebrate paleontology.
Graduate students unwrapping the fossils "realized they were looking at the bones of a snake.
Not only a snake, but a really big snake."
So they quickly consulted the skeleton of a 17-foot anaconda for comparison. A backbone from that creature is about the size of a silver dollar, Bloch said, while a backbone from Titanoboa is "the size of a large Florida grapefruit."
So far the scientists have found about 180 fossils of backbone and ribs that came from about two dozen individual snakes, and now they hope to go back to Colombia to find parts of the skull, Bloch said.
Titanoboa's size gives clues about its environment. A snake's size is related to how warm its environment is. The fossils suggest equatorial temperatures in its day were significantly warmer than they are now, during a time when the world as a whole was warmer. So equatorial temperatures apparently rose along with the global levels, in contrast to the competing hypothesis that they would not go up much, Head noted.
"It's a leap" to apply the conditions of the past to modern climate change, Head said. But given that, the finding still has "some potentially scary implications for what we're doing to the climate today," he said.
The finding suggest the equatorial regions will warm up along with the planet, he said.
"We won't have giant snakes, however, because we are removing most of their habitats by development and deforestation" in equatorial regions, he said.
See, this is what nightmares are made from. Please, can YOU imagine hiking, biking, camping or, any outdoor activity, and running up on this?! Oh well, we are getting another step closer to finding Godzilla. By the way, there were other new discoveries made recently. Click this link to check some of them out
10 New Amphibian Species Discovered
"Animalz Rule, Even Titanic Size Snakes",
Bobby Sharpe Bobby Sharpe's " Opyn Mindz": South Beach & The Arctic Ocean Bobby Sharpe's "Witch"
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Pink Lizard 5 Million Yrs Old, Where's Godzilla?

QUITO, Ecuador (Jan. 7) - Hard to believe a giant, pink lizard could be overlooked for almost two centuries.
Charles Darwin missed it during his 1835 study of the Galapagos Islands that led to his theory of evolution. Park rangers ignored the pink and black-striped reptiles after accidentally happening upon them in 1986. Some thought the stripes were just stains.
But scientists now have documented a new species, the iguana "rosada," (pink in Spanish), which may be one of the archipelago's oldest, according to research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Blood and genetic tests on 36 pink iguanas -- which average 3 to 5 feet in length -- show the lizards belong to a previously undiscovered species that appears to live exclusively around Isabela Island's Wolf Volcano, an area Darwin never explored.
Researchers from the University of Rome Tor Vergata and Galapagos National Park began to investigate in 2001 whether the lizards were a different species or an adaptation for environmental or food reasons of the Galapagos' two known land iguanas: the Conolophus subcristatus and Conolophus pallidus.
But the pink iguana, it turns out, is older and likely the predecessor of the two, said Cruz Marquez, a biologist who is part of the research team. It dates back more than 5 million years, researchers say.
The pink iguana has not yet been given a scientific name.
"To discover a large vertebrate that was unknown in an area where there has been a lot of research is very special," Marquez told The Associated Press by telephone from the park.
The pink iguana population size, eating and reproductive habits are still unknown, and no young animals have been discovered, according to a park statement. Further research will determine what resources are needed to guarantee the lizards' survival.
"We need to clarify if reproduction is impeded and for what reasons," lead researcher Gabriele Gentile told the AP, noting that feral cats in the area may be eating the iguana's eggs.
The Galapagos islands, an archipelago located about 620 miles off Ecuador's Pacific coast, were protected as a UNESCO's Natural Heritage site in 1978. In 2007 UNESCO declared them at risk due to harm from invasive species, tourism and immigration.
The islands are known for their unique flora and fauna, including marine and land iguanas, blue-footed boobies and giant tortoises that live up to 150 years of age. The variety of finches on the islands inspired Darwin's theory of evolution.
Once again, we, humans that is, have discovered another new species. A large pink lizard. I know, if YOU don't read this story or see the picture, YOU are sitting there going, "yeah, right, a pink lizard"? Well, they found a "pink" lizard.
If they found a "pink lizard", YOU know it is just a matter of time before they find the "king". GODZILLA! Look, do YOU think some Japanese dude was sitting around drinking some bad sake and just came up with Godzilla? NOT! Somebody, during some period of time, saw this creature and passed it down through time. The same applies to "dragons". Keep looking. After all, "only 5% of the oceans on this planet have been explored. We still have 95% to give up the goodies"!
"Animalz, Pink Or Green, Rule,"
Bobby Sharpe Bobby Sharpe's "Indigo Spiritz": "I Don'T Know, Do YOU"? Bobby Sharpe's "Indigo Spiritz": "2012" Are YOU Prepared?
Friday, December 26, 2008
Dog & Cat Talk
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Three in 10 dog owners think their pet is baffled when they speak to it, compared with nearly half of cat owners who say the same about their animal.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Polar, Smarter Than The Average, Bears

Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Dogs - Fair & Smart
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Sunday, December 7, 2008
Who Needs Drugs? Where The Females?

Saturday, November 22, 2008
Panda To Student, "Hug This"...

Thursday, November 13, 2008
Whales & Dolphin Lose

The Bush administration argued that there is little evidence of harm to marine life in more than 40 years of exercises.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Parrot Saves Kid
Talking Parrot Saves Toddler's Life
Willie the parrot is no bird brain. He's being credited with helping save the life of a 2-year-old girl who was choking Friday at her Denver-area home while her babysitter was in the bathroom, according to CBS4Denver.com.
"While I was in the bathroom, Willie (the parrot) started screaming like I'd never heard him scream before and he started flapping his wings," said Meagan, the sitter who owns the bird. "Then he started saying 'mama baby' over and over and over again until I came out and looked at Hannah and Hannah's face was turning blue because she was choking on her pop tart."
Meagan quickly performed the Heimlich maneuver on the child, which dislodged the food.
"If (Willie) wouldn't have warned me, I probably wouldn't have come out of the bathroom in time because she was already turning blue, her lips
"Animalz Always Rule",
Bobby Sharpe Bobby Sharpe's " Opyn Mindz": Economic Help & Legend Crossing Over "Dragon, Book Of Shang": "Dragon, Book Of Shang" Screenplay, News & Reviews