It was huge. No, make that humongous - to the 10th degree. And it was fierce. So fierce, in fact, that paleontologists believe it was roughly four times more powerful than a Tyrannosaurus Rex, the consensus heavyweight champion of the prehistoric age.
It's called a pliosaur, a reptile that patrolled the seas during the Jurassic Age about 150 million years ago, preying on whoever and whatever it darn well wanted. Now, researchers making use of a CT scan, hope to get a good look inside the fossilized skull of one of the largest pliosaur fossils ever recovered.
This specimen, which was unearthed in 2009, is believed to have been 60 feet in length and weighed around 12 tons - even larger than a massive pliosaur discovered in 2008 on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.
When the latest pliosaur finding was announced last year, paleontologist Richard Forrest explained to the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper that the T-Rex would have been no match for the pliosaur.
"If we look at the lower jaw this is the point at which the muscles attach and then you've got the great beam coming forward - that bone is roughly the strength of steel, so think of the strength of a steel girder that size. So it was an enormously powerful biting machine. These things were big enough and powerful enough to bite a small car in half. It would take a human in one gulp. It would take T-Rex in one gulp. Compared to this beast T-Rex was a kitten."
The work will be carried out by scientists at the University of Southampton. The goal is to build up a 3D representation of the skull by taking X-rays of the interior of the fossilized skull. The BBC has an interview with University of Southampton engineer Dr Mark Mavrogordato explaining how the CT scanner will work.
Source: CBC News [December 23, 2010]
